Category Archives: Increasing Knowledge of Your Business

Learning Plans = Intentions

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If you don’t create the budget for learning and development, your staff will not get the training they need to stay competitive and efficient. Your organization has to set the intention, not just react to a changing IT scene or a challenging economy.

Intention is everything, from closing a deal to deciding what you want to learn this year. One way that we work with intention with our clients is to help them create Learning Plans. It’s not a new concept, but one that served me well in my higher education days and fits nicely with business and resource planning. Knowledge must be at the top of your 2013 list, along with internal and external learning.

Jim Collins www.jimcollins.com, author of Good to Great, said, “It is my belief that continuing education in a company…will be one of the distinguishing forces that sorts the great from the good brands.” Learning Plans are like timelines that help individuals, teams and organizations achieve their educational goals.

Here are a few reasons why we use them.

  • To drive adoption of new technology and business solutions
  • Provides a timeline and roadmap for organizational and individual development
  • Learning Assessments empower organizations to use the correct environment, communication styles and incentives to facilitate behavioral change
  • Enable better use and efficiency of implementations
  • Learning materials reflect the level and/or role of the learner

Here are the results of using Learning Plans.

  • Alignment between business and technology strategies
  • Culture of learning is established within the organization
  • Users engage with the new technology and become proficient
  • Metrics to measure before, during and after the project
  • Proven methods of motivation

At the organizational level, the C-suite minds decide that a new customer relationship system is going to enhance the client experience.

The questions that pop up for the IT/HR director should sound like this.

  • Will users perceive this as better than our old process?
  • How much change will be required?
  • Will this adoption be easy or hard for users?
  • How quickly will the benefits be visible?

Above all else, remember learning should be fun. Arnold Toynbee said, “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” Set your intentions for 2013. Develop and expand your employees’ knowledge and enhance their ability to make your organization competitive and successful!

Whiteboard Session: Endless Possibilities

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A blank piece of paper is filled with opportunity. The opportunity to express feelings, thoughts, or pictures is possible with a blank piece of paper. Blank pieces of paper can also be shopping lists, invitations, maps or contracts. The possibilities are endless.

If you consider a Whiteboard as a piece of paper, and begin to think about your company goals and objectives, the current state of the infrastructure, the number of applications, data sources, workflow and processes you have, the possibilities of enhancing productivity while improving the infrastructure may also seem endless.

And though the goal of the Whiteboard Session is not to overwhelm with possibilities, we do wish to identify valuable options. We begin by engaging the customers team in formal discussions to identify the strategic layers of each organization: Business Strategy, Application, and Infrastructure/IT. Next, we provide a snap-shot of the current state of the systems and processes. Finally, we look for areas of improvement to reduce risk, enhance productivity, and align strategy and systems with the organizations goals and objectives.

Each Whiteboard Session serves as the preface to the Technology Roadmap (TR). The TR is a 90-day, 1- and/or 3-year timeline for project implementation. [Link Reference to Previous Blog about TR.] The identified projects are the result of collaboration by the customer representatives at the Whiteboard Session. After agreeing on a timeframe for the projects, we document the project in a TR for project tracking and management.

Typically, we also discover a plethora of Excel spreadsheets in use. Because Excel spreadsheets are most often created by manually inputting data, or importing information from multiple datasets, silos of data become common place. Reconciling this information to reports created by others is nearly impossible as the datasets for the two reports may be different, and/or the search criteria may be different.

We also discover infrastructure opportunities for improvement. For instance, when considering hosted or cloud applications, the infrastructure must be configured to support the user base and the hosted application. Many of the customers we meet with today are not cloud-ready. We help them budget for changes to allow for cloud adoption.

In reviewing the data sources, we identify the data sources for ERP, Sales/CRM, Data Management, Data Imaging and Line-of-Business. We look for current and missing integration points between data sources, overlaps of data, and duplicate data entry processes. It is during this review where process improvement occurs. When automation of processes and reduction of manual data entry can be accomplished, costs are reduced. Creating a system that incorporates automated processes with sharing of information throughout the organization provides a streamlined approach to managing data sources.

Once the data sources are aligned, Business Intelligence (BI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be mined. BI and KPIs are presented in real-time to decision makers as dashboards. Where previous information was individually and manually gathered and stored in Excel and/or Access, it is now stored in SQL databases. The SQL databases are accessible by all the users (with appropriate security) and data can be mined to provide real-time statistics.

Think of three key pieces of information that you wish you had each morning that would streamline your decision making process. As an example, for each of the roles below, the following information may allow for more informed decisions:

  • Sales Manager: Total Pipeline per Rep / MTD & YTD Deals Closed / Activity Tracking\
  • Warehouse Manager: Inventory on Hand / Number of Back Orders / Efficiency of Order Picking
  • Production Supervisor: % of Scrap / Number of Lines Operational & Issues / Efficiency of Lines
  • CFO/CEO: % Sales to YTD Goals / Safety Statistics / % Scrap to Revenue

In order to gain this valuable business information, the systems, applications, processes, data sources and infrastructure must be in sync. Through the Whiteboard Session, Pinnacle identifies, advises and assists in aligning customers business strategy with IT strategy to attain achievement of company goals and objectives.

8 Is Great!

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Im not talking about Microsoft 8; well have that conversation later! Multiple Intelligences (MI) is another Learning Styles theory and also happens to be my favorite. Howard Gardner published his MI theories in 1983 with updates as his research continues. Gardners theory explains how everyone has specific intelligences. Scholars have discovered that not everyone learns the same which can affect ones professional and personal life. Learning needs to be accessible in multiple ways to ensure understanding, retention and adoption. Use this learning tool to better your life and the lives around you.

Literacy Works has a free MI quiz to find out what your intelligences are. Once you have the results, read on to learn about your MI.

http://www.literacyworks.org/mi/assessment/findyourstrengths.html

Visual-Spatial: (picture smart) think in terms of physical space, aware of ones environment, like to draw, read maps and day dream

  • Learn best through verbal and physical imagery, drawings, video and multimedia

Bodily-Kinesthetic: (body smart) use the body well, very aware of the body and movement, like to build things by hand, communicate through body language and is touchy-feely

  • Learn best through physical activity, role playing, hands-on-learning and building curiosity

Musical: (music smart) sensitive to rhythm and sound, love music and aware of all environmental sounds, prefer to study or work with music in the background

  • Learn best making lessons into lyrics or songs and prefer multimedia, music and instruments

Interpersonal: (people smart) understand others, many friends, empathize easily, street smarts

  • Learn best in group activities, collaboration, seminars and active discussions

Intrapersonal: (self-smart) understands the self and ones goals, interests and needs while shying away from others, very in touch with personal feelings, intuitive and may focus on health and exercise

  • Learn best through introspection and independent study with books, journaling and privacy

Linguistic: (word smart) speak very effectively with very developed auditory skills, enjoy reading, word games and creating narratives

  • Learn best by reading, dialoguing and using computers, books, lectures and multimedia

Logical-Mathematical: (logic smart) tidy, always calculating and reasoning things, conceptual and abstract thinker, sees things in patterns and likes to experiment and solve puzzles

  • Learn best using logic games, solving mysteries and investigating topics, must form concepts before handling details

Naturalist: (nature smart) in tune with nature, recognizes and categorizes features of ones environment, likes to be outside doing activities like gardening, hiking and exploring

  • Learn best when relating things to nature, prefers hands-on experiences and being outside

People vary in their intelligences; many have two or three that are dominant. Most educational tactics focus on verbal and logical/mathematical intelligences; imagine how many learners miss out on valuable learning experiences because of this. In order to be effective in your career broaden the methods you use to educate, inform and communicate with others. Next time try interactive media in your presentation or facilitate experiential learning for your clients with a hands-on demonstration.

Keep in mind that MI influences how one understands others, the self, remembers information, carries out tasks, solves problems and gauges success. There is even an Associated Thinking Language that goes along with each MI. Your inner voice and thinking process reflects your MI. If my boss is an Interpersonal MI, she would use words like interact, collaborate, connect, relate and perceive. If she was Logical-Mathematical, she would use words like generalize, abstract, sequence, analyze and classify.

The goal is to learn how to employ each of the intelligences, 8 is great! Empower yourself, use this knowledge to build better relationships and continue lifelong learningand encourage others to do the same!

“Sir, Do You Know How Fast You Were Going?”

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If you’ve been driving for a while you probably have been there. You’re cruising along and out of nowhere there are flashing lights in your rearview mirror. You’re being pulled over. You roll down the window as the policeman walks up to your car and asks for your driver’s license and registration.

And then the question comes: “Sir, do you know how fast you were going?”

Most of the time,you know the answer to the policeman’s question. Why?Because cars come equipped with a conveniently placed array of dials and gauges that tell us at a glance all the most important information we need to understand what’s happening in car:engine temp, RPM, mileage, location (if you get the NAV package) and of course, our speed. This is the car’s dashboard.

Cars are pretty complicatedand we need to know what’s happening with them quickly and accurately so we can make necessary adjustments as we’re driving: shift gears, stop, get some gas, speed up … and of course, slow down (I have a hard time with that one.)

Running your business can be awhole lot more complicated than driving a car, yet I find thatmost businesses are operating without dashboards! With the technology readily available today, this simply should not be the case. Applications like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and GP all contain customizable reporting that can be placed on an internal site and made available to any decision-maker in your company from virtually any place in the world.

Some things we’ve learned at Pinnacle about dashboards:

  • Dashboards should be different for the various roles in the business (CEO, COO, CFO, etc.)and their specific requirements for business data.
  • Dashboardsusually contain 7 to 10 dashboard components.
  • Dashboardsshould NOT be manually created – that just uses labor and increases the odds of not being correct.
  • Dashboard shouldNOT USE FINANCIALS THAT ARE IN EXCEL. This is just very wrong to me. the breakdown begins and the spreadsheet abyss gets bigger (too much $$$$ is wasted in this situation).
  • Any system to be fully utilized and to recognize the ROI of a system must be accurate with all the data sources coming from as few data bases as possible.

Dashboard are here and nowand are best practice.So, if you’re going to win the business race, I suggest you look further into implementingdashboards into your systems and processes.

Almost any format can be created. Here arejust a fewexamples:

Should I try to CONTROL the Uncontrollable?

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Financial management professionals are given job titles such as Controller yet when I talk to these people their #1 complaint is that things are out of control in their organizations.

Control is about having the power to influence or direct peoples behaviors.

Usually when someone does something that isnt desirable, the reactive organizational response goes something like this:

  • An emergency meeting is convened to discuss the matter. The goal is to determine what went wrong.
  • After the determination has been made, options are discussed as to what can be done to insure that the situation doesnt repeat itself in the future.
  • New process rules are put into place to prevent the situation from happening again and these new rules are communicated to the appropriate personnel.
  • The situation happens again because people arent following the rules.

One thing that I notice consistently is that many of our clients are trying to develop processes that control events that have already taken place. For example, once an Accounts Payable invoice is received from a vendor, it is given to a Department Manager for approval. After this, it goes along with the check to a higher ranking employee for final review and check signature. The problem is that when it is determined that the order should have never been placed with that vendor, there is very little that can be done about it because the event took place 30 days ago.

In effect, we are trying to control something that has already taken place.

Process definition is very important to the life of a Controller. Requisitions should be approved PRIOR to the order being placed with the vendor. More time should be spent controlling things BEFORE THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN PLACE – RATHER THAN AFTER! So once a good process has been developed, how do you implement it and make sure the rules are being followed? Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM combined with SharePoint – provide the platform and tools to accommodate and enforce the process. Let us show you how it works!

How to Spend Money

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With a title like that, many of you are likely thinking that I will be authoring a biographical article about my wife. However, that is not the case. What I would like to discuss are some different styles of spending specifically related to IT Hardware and Software.

In the past, it was common for companies to have a very sporadic spend style. For example, a Company may desire to purchase a new ERP Software system that required updated Hardware, so they would go to their Management / Board of Directors and ask for approval to spend up to $100,000 on the project. The Board (with much deliberation and stress) considered the request and would ask if this was a one-time spend, or if it was going to have recurring annual costs to the Company. It was typical that the response would be that it was a one-time spend item. Then the Company would try to go 3 or 4 years without spending any additional money on IT Hardware or Software. After 4 years, the computers would get slow or breakdown and then another Capital Spend request would be sent to the Board asking for a very material amount of money so that all of the equipment could be replaced. Then the realization set in that the new hardware would not be compatible with the old software so now a software upgrade was necessary which made the spend request even higher. This was greeted with much tension and stress again because of the amount of money being requested.

Due to the weak economy of the last few years, many of our clients have become more budget driven and the above sporadic spend style has fallen out of favor. Most businesses are looking for a more consistent spending style, which is more in line with budgeting concepts. Below would be an example of the transition that we are witnessing:

Spend Style 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 TOTAL SPEND
Old-Sporadic $100,000 0 0 0 $75,000 $175,000
New-Balanced $35,000 $35,000 $35,000 $35,000 $35,000 $175,000

This new style of spending makes so much more sense, and is much more reflective of the way almost ALL of the other expenses of a Company are managed. For example, if the Sporadic way of investing made financial sense, why dont we just pay all of our expenses for the next 4 years with a check today? Another benefit of the balanced spend style is that in many companies, a financial threshold is established for items that require Board approval. If that amount is $50,000 for the fictitious Company described above, then no one will ever have to approach the Board again and ask for money.

We are working with many of our clients to develop formalized Technology Roadmaps that manage the spend process for the future can we help your Company do the same?

File Server Resource Manager

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Since Windows Server 2003 R2, there has been a hidden gem called the File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) and Id like to take a few minutes to talk to you about it.

Even though the FSRM has been around for a while,it is still widely unknown. So, what is so great about this obscure tool? Well, Im glad you asked. With this tool you can:

  • Create quotas to limit the space that is allowed for a volume or folder, and generate e-mail and other notifications when the quota limits are approached or exceeded.
  • Generate and apply quotas automatically to existing and new subfolders in a volume or folder.
  • Create file screens to control the type of files that users can save, and send notifications when users attempt to save blocked files.
  • Create quota templates that can be easily applied to new volumes or folders.
  • Schedule periodic storage reports to help identify trends in disk usage.
  • Create scheduled tasks that apply actions to subsets of files.
  • Create File Expiration dates (well they are really Tasks).
  • Generate storage reports (my personal favorite).

Before you can get started, you need to get FSRM installed. In server 2008 and 2008 R2 you can add the FSRM by launching the Server Manager. In most cases, the FSRM isnt installed, so youll want toinstall it by clicking the Add Role Services.

While adding it, youll come to the Set Report Options Screen where youll want to configure where you save the storage reports and where to email the reports once they are generated.

Once you have the FSRM installed, youll see it in the Server Manager under Share and Storage Manager.

There are so many things you can do with this tool that I can only touch the tip of this mighty iceberg in this post. With that said, Ill walk you through the Storage Reports tool and then let you spend some quality time getting to know this new friend on your own.

As you can see below, Ive highlighted the Storage Reports Management in the Left Pane, in the far Right Pane, I clicked the Generate Reports Now link which launched the wizard in the middle.

Ive chosen to AddC:\ as the scope since Im not doing any file sharing on the Exchange server in my lab. If I were working in a production environment, I most certainly would have had file shares that would have Quotas enabled on even if they were not enforced. Here in my lab, things are very exciting when it comes to users files so Ichecked all the check boxes for reports and lookedthough them. Here are some of the highlights:

This first one is Duplicate Files and even though this is just an Exchange Sever in my Lab, I was surprised to findDuplicates but there they were 4GB of them.

This second shot is of Large files:

And this last one is of the File Owners:

Im certain the reports youll generate will be a lot more exciting than the ones from my Lab.

Hope to see you here soon!