- You have 250 projects, 2000 tasks assigned to 25 staff (With 150 projects overdue). The Excel doc you keep track of everything in is 400mb and takes a month to update after getting manual printed reports from the team. The Manager walks in and says “Budget meeting with team leaders in 10 minutes, bring your summaries” – Your heart breaks, you shed a tear and working at a laundrette now sounds appealing.
. - Your entire project management process hinges on the availability and stock numbers of yellow, green and orange hilighter pens and A2 cardboard sheets in the office. If you run out, chaos reigns.
. - The new Creative Director comes from the school of ‘Web2.0′ thinking. He tries to instil in you the value of having your project management software run on every wired device possible. He wants your project list available on your Laptop, browser, iPhone, BlackBerry, Car GPS, Bedroom TV, Boat’s Fish Finder and Watch. He also brags about how he can access project data when on a plane, in the car, or on a toilet. Then he asks you to “Go find that piece of software”.
. - You save important info about a $100,000 project on a $0.05 sticky note because it’s ‘efficient’ and makes good ‘business sense’.
. - It’s nearly Christmas and the client gives you 6 months work to do in 2 weeks. Then he decides to head to the Caribbean to spend time with family but insists on having direct access to his projects. You cancel your holiday plans as you need to manage the team and projects. You think “If only I had some web based project management software, I could head to the Bahamas with my family and still manage this project remotely”.
. - Your 4 year old son is managing his kindergarten homework on the home PC, using a web based application.
. - Your wallet contains scribbled lists for work, people to contact, personal, shopping, and your monitor is covered head to toe with Post-it notes.
. - You keep a basic notepad on your desk. You list all your work to do and where it’s all at. Your management style is to hilight different projects on the list using different borders, color pens and font sizes. When the page is no longer readable, you rewrite the list on a new page.
. - You work for an Ice research team, and have staff in the Arctic, Antarctica, Siberia and other places around the globe. The old method of mailing lists of projects to people just isn’t working…
. - “Where’s that memo so-and-so sent me? I knew I had it somewhere on my computer. Bob, can you fix my computer – it’s virused my floppy and I can’t find my memo…”
. - Your desk, keyboard and monitor become covered in sticky notes. The sticky notes become invisible and never get removed. One day the office cleaner comes in and tidies up all the stickies. As a result of losing that info, the company goes bankrupt.
. - You take a flash new high paying job at a design company as a project manager. On the first day you ask the team to put the project summaries on your desk so you can start to get sorted. You head out to lunch and when back are greeted with:
- A filing cabinet full of project files
- 200+ Sticky notes
- 75 big brown job bags (full of material)
- 3 hand written job books with no logic to the numbering
- 29 printouts of email conversations
- 65 flowcharts of various work
- Some old pieces of paper with important contact details
- A staff list showing that all staff are ‘jack of all trades’
- 15 messages from disgruntled clients about deadlines
- 12 new project quotes to write
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- You are the CEO of a large company. The current project manager was a legend he knew everything going on. Where deadlines were at, and who’s doing what. You had about 500 projects on the go and it was all in his head. You get a call one morning and it’s the project managers Deer hunting buddy. He informs you that he died in the weekend from a freak shooting accident. He put on the Christmas reindeer antler headpiece as a joke whilst away hunting, but unfortunately was mistaken for the real thing. About now (after feeling some grief) you realize nothing was written down. It was ALL in his head.
. - “Did you get that email?” “what email?” “oh, i only send it to so-and-so and what-his-name and not you…” ” Can you ask the new guy to get the old guys permission to approve the, um big projects budget.” ” What project – we have heaps on!” ” Do we? You know the one, um… thingy was doing stuff on the tasks, but I’m not sure ‘cos we got a fax asking to stop the project” ” What bloody project are you talking about?” “You know, the red one. Ask the new guy”
. - You manage projects… ;-)
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Feel welcome to add more comments to this post!!
It’d love to here other people’s thoughts!
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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Firstly, understand that whilst you can control your business to some degree, you can’t control the general market atmosphere. Up’s, downs, good times & recessions are all just a normal part of the swings and roundabouts of business. In the ‘old days’ I used to have a small design business that was affected by market conditions. In the down times, I would stress, panic, chase work and generally lose focus.
After 5-10 years of similar trends of up and downtime, it became apparent that no matter how much I fought, the quiet patches still occurred and revenue dropped. On the flipside, I found during the busy, more positive times that business was good, and revenue flowed. It was also during these busy times that the busyness hilighted the need for good systems and processes. Trouble was though that I had no time to put any new processes and systems in place. I was too busy!
It tome some years to recognize that these periods were actually market trends and not just a result of bad business effort. Look around and talk to business people today and you’ll find that nearly all businesses are in the same economic condition. Almost all are noticing the same patterns, so it’s not just you – we’re in a bad trend.
Here are some simple tips you should consider to help your business run smoother in tough times…
In the good times, setup a buffer for the bad times.
There are some times every year that all businesses are either negatively or positively affected by. Usually these are either holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving etc) or seasonal (Winter, Summer etc).
If you know you have a good season each year, (ie: Advertising/Design peaks between holidays and drops off in holidays), during your good revenue period, put some money aside! Simple advice I know, but I still hear of people spending big during the good times rather than saving, and when the bad times hit they’re unprepared! So put cash reserves aside in the good times to carry you through the bad!
Cut paid advertising, Use free marketing instead
In good times, pay for advertising as when people are in ‘buying mode’, advertising works. In bad times, you may notice the response or conversion rates dropping from your advertising efforts. It’s pointless using paid marketing when the customers aren’t in ‘buying mode’. It’s just throwing money away!
Instead of investing money, invest time. Use other free methods to drive traffic and leads such as social networking, blogs, PR, articles etc. They cost only the time, but still drive traffic to your door!
Here’s some articles worth reading:
Organic Marketing – A better choice!
Do you need Google Adwords and PPC?
Key Marketing Methods for 2008
Change focus from Sales to Systems and R&D
As mentioned above, if people aren’t buying, you’ll end up beating your head against a wall trying to advertise (sell) to them. I don’t suggest you stop selling, but rather you should take advantage of the spare time to focus on your core business systems.
Try to systemize and automate as many processes as you can. This will make your business processes and administration run smoother as well as save you money (and possibly a wage). Create or implement a CRM tool or Project Management software. Look at improving your Accounts System. Anything that will make life simpler and easier should be addressed. Then, when the market picks up you’ll be better equipped to handle a greater level of sales focus!
Want more tips?
Software Startups: Tips for Surviving a Recession!
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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ProActive Software is an innovative SaaS company that develops a web based project management tool called ProWorkflow. The business is almost entirely virtual with remote staff in NZ (and elsewhere), servers in the USA and customers all over the globe.
I’m the CEO, Alan Barlow is the CTO and we have a tight team of legends. We spend all our days (and nights/weekends) working on our dream app – ProWorkflow. Here’s the crux through… Although we have thousands of users, and the tool is being well adopted and used by some big companies, because we’re virtual it’s hard to get any sort of ‘emotive’ sense of what we’re actually doing for the customer.
If they’re happy, they just use it (and we don’t hear from them), if they’re grumpy they email us, and otherwise it’s relatively quiet! Just a world of ‘ProWorkers‘ busily working away. That’s why it’s great to receive feedback (from our feedback survey) like the below comments! These made our day!
What does your company do?Crash Brokers provides a unique premium service in motor vehicle accident & collision repair management.
What services do you provide?
Crash Brokers’ service is available to fleet operators and the general public. When car accidents happen, we provide a one-call solution that saves customers time, stress and money. We manage all logistics before, during and after repairs – from the point of impact through to the day of re-delivery. This includes free pick-up/delivery, free late model courtesy cars & vans, fantastic customer service and communications using ProWorkflow.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
Professional accident management has only ever been available to large fleets at significant cost. Crash Brokers’ model is completely different, and requires no registration or contract so it’s available to everyone when they need it – and the best part is our service is completely free of charge to customers
What’s the back-story of your company? How/when/why was it founded?
I launched Crash Brokers in 2004 in response to an obvious gap in the market – initially SME’s, professionals and individual motorists, though we now serve fleets of all sizes too. I have over 20 years experience in collision repair (“panel beating”) and have held senior roles in car sales and car leasing. As such I’ve experienced the collision repair sector from both sides of the fence, and recognized that there was an opportunity to turn my old “trade” into a professional service that would ensure consistent technical and customer service quality for customers.
What’s your latest piece(s) of work, a recent project, something your company does or did that you’re proud of?
Crash Brokers strength has always been in the caliber of our business partners including preferred supplier status with the professional institutes and car leasing firms. Our most recent, and greatest, success has been a strategic alliance with Protecta Insurance. All Protecta clients now have direct access to Crash Brokers’ expertise so can expect first-class quality and a superior service experience if they’re involved in a collision. Protecta are a great success story themselves, being the only remaining NZ-owned insurance company, they’re very customer focused and Crash Brokers are very proud to be working with them.
Do you have any tips or tricks for other companies to help through the tough economic times?
Nothing is impossible, never give up. It’s a big business pie out there, focus on finding ways to get more of it. Our Protecta Insurance success was no overnight sensation, it’s taken four long years of hard word and determination in the face of constant market resistance and great adversity.
You’re obviously a ProWorkflow customer, why did you choose it over competitors?
I was working with an IT consultant at the time in order to design and develop the perfect web-based system for managing multiple collision repair cases. I happened to mention this to a friend involved in software sales and complained about why there wasn’t an off-the-shelf program that would suit – I got a call from her two days later to say she’d found ProWorkflow and it appeared to provide all the functionality from my wish-list.
How do you use ProWorkflow in your company?
ProWorkflow is now the heart of Crash Brokers’ operation, we’ve eliminated paper records and simply could not function without it. It’s much more than record keeping and billing for us, it is our entire communications system for our staff, service providers, customers and insurance brokers. ProWorkflow provides total transparency and accountability for every case we handle. We love it and our customers love it.
What has ProActive software been like to deal with?
Amazing! I had to become expert in ProWorkflow before training our staff. IT is a major challenge for me, but I found ProWorkflow easy to navigate and intuitive to use, and the technical support is fantastic!
Any final words?
I could not overstate the transformation to Crash Brokers’ operation that has been facilitated by ProWorkflow. I literally is the heart of our operation. I find three factors particularly astounding:
a) That an off-the-shelf program that was never designed for our application or industry can deliver 100% of the functionality we need,
b) We were initially prepared to spend a 6-figure sum to achieve this result and…
c) ProWorkflow does all this for $20/month per user. I consider our move to ProWorkflow to have been our best business decision to date, and the most significant operational improvement by far.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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I thought I’d have a crack at the new http://www.cuil.com search engine today. The first thing I did was search (obviously) for “Project Management Software”. Check out the results!
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Project+Management+Software
As you can imagine I was pretty brassed off to see our logo linking to a competitor’s URL and the same thing happening with another ad. Check out the screenshot above (Click for a larger image).
I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m unimpressed and will be emailing them this blog post link as it’s just ridiculous to have one company’s logo linking to another company’s URL.
So have a search around, check your own phrases and make sure Cuil isn’t doing the same to your company image. Let me know if you find any other dodgy results.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com, ProWorkflowBlog.com & Julian101.com
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