When Time is Up »

As an entrepreneur you will encounter all different stages with your company, but more important also your own. As your company grows you will find yourself with more work and less time at the same moment. That’s not a bad thing, just something you have to cope with and reorganize within your own work process.

The next step you take is usually getting the tools to work faster, know more and be efficient. Your employees register their own hours and are highly self-employed with work as they become more experienced within their jobs as well. Being an engineer scholar I entrusted my people with all operational tasks and project work, restricting myself to being an entrepreneur, project manager and salesperson.

When all operational work is off your desk you will have time to think again. That’s when you notice you’re doing a lot of stuff you’re not supposed to: administration, telephone calls, putting stamps on the invoices and ordering stuff. Next to this - but you don’t miss it when you don’t have it - is accounting, legal and debtors management. Slowly you’re spending more and more time learning about this and - as this is not what you’ve been trained for - getting mediocre stuff off the shelve. This is the time to get yourself a good accountant and legal advisor (doesn’t have to be a lawyer at first).

Fast forward to my situation today, still left with the office work, project management and sales. Now this has become a too big of a job for one person alone. You still try to be smart, manage things differently, try to automate, but all what’s left is human work. Well, better get the ‘dirty work’ off my shoulders now and get an office manager / secretary. This should offload the unstructured phonecalls, arrangement of meetings and putting the stamps on the invoices.

Every step along the way there’s should be a cost/benefit analysis of your situation. There are no predefined steps as each improvement should fit the company, entrepreneur and situation at the same time - you might need a secretary from the start - but there are always ways to increase your playtime and offload you with less important stuff.

There’s always one major factor that can accellerate or limit your company’s growth more than anything else; and that factor is YOU. So when time is up take a break to think straight again… and reorganize.

Related subjects: entrepreneur work management management self-improvement

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Second half 2010 a (Google) Wave for IT companies? »

2010 has been an interesting year so far. Recession can still be felt, although some companies - like my own - seem to thrive during this period. Traditional sectors seem to be caught by the distress much worse, which will cause them to cut back personnel and expenses. Next to that, they seem to increase spending on IT for more flexibility and efficiency.

The IT companies are on a wave right now, but is this good or not? Having to increase the amount of resources will cause investments to be made, while clients knocking at the door will take larger terms to pay the goods. This will bring a lot of IT companies to the ever growing risk of cashflow shortage. Unless you’ve seen the bad times before, chances are young entrepreneurs may not have the reserves and will be caught in a bad spot.

It will be interesting to see how smaller IT companies will cope with this. You can have a healthy company with loads of clients, but when you don’t have cashflow you’re at the mercy of the banks or the tax office. Cashflow shortage is one of the biggest threats of every enterprise. But what will happen to the companies expecting their software? They will suffer yet another loss when the IT company goes broke and will set back their efficiency some months or years. Still, most companies will opt for a slower payment.

Fact is, most clients see their IT companies as a supplies, which in most cases they are. But when their core business processes are automated by that company they will need those experience and skills to survive, whether they will like it or not. When your company is in the last category, better treat your IT company as a partner instead of a supplier. A body can’t move (easily) without its legs and cannot make new things without its arms. IT has become just in the last 10 years.

So what will it be for the second half of 2010? Will it be like riding on a wave, or will it be like Google Wave? I actually think IT companies can choose themselves. There is no shortage of work for the small to midsized ISV’s and when you’re not on the cowmarket (putting peope at the client’s office and expecting money for that, regardless of result) you should be good. It now comes down to the managerial skills of the often young(er) entrepreneurs.

It will be interesting to see who’s going to ride the wave… and who will be under it.

Related subjects: entrepreneur software it management

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Project Management 2010 »

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future. Being an EPM Live partner we got to see the early scoop of their new 2010 project management solution called WorkEngine.

Sure, you’re a partner you will say, so you have to sell it whether you like it or not. Wrong. As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) we seek to implement the very best 3rd party products for our clients and will not be limited to just one supplier. We do however make a strong selection of the ones which we want to offer in the first place. Being very enthusiastic of what I have seen so far I think it is mandatory for anyone related to project management to take a good look at this product.

Last year, EPM Live was being named the global Microsoft EPM Partner of the year for a fourth year in a row. This year, EPM Live has been introduced into the Gartner PPM Quadrant as one of the 25 best project solutions available. Next to that, the product has had the most new clients of all project solutions in 2009. Now these are some facts that count.

With their new concept of WorkEngine 2010 they have taken the product to a whole new level. The product has been built on top of the new Sharepoint 2010 platform and uses all capabilities, added with some nifty features of their own. With the 2007 version just being the full package, different product levels and solutions are available for the 2010 version so smaller companies can take advantage of the product as well.

WorkEngine 2010 also features the increasingly popular Agile Scrum methodology in one of their solutions, next to the standard waterfall / MS Project methodology. This is good news for software developers seeking to leverage this method to their advantage. A special solution for service calls / helpdesk is available as well and if you want you can tie it all together with shared resources. I suggest you just take a look at www.workengine.com to get a glimpse of the product.

Being the partner for the North European market we can’t wait to implement this product for our own organization. We already run on the 2007 version, but the 2010 version should make us even more efficient and effective. Our 50% projected growth in turnover this year is in no small part also the result of implementing this solution into our organization.

I am sure others will brag about the product in the coming months in high volume as well. Hopefully we have gained an advantage over competition at that point already, catapulting growth even further. Damn, I’m excited!

You can find out more about the product at www.workengine.com or ask me about it directly.

Related subjects: epm live sharepoint workengine 2010 project management scrum development management

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To all the girls I’ve loved before »

Did you know singer Julio Iglesias was actually bound for the first team of Real Madrid, before an accident cut off his career? He started writing songs to ease his way back into life and well, you might know how the story went on. He became the best Spanish artist all-time. OK, at least at selling his records, I would prefer his son’s music (Enrique) before his.

This poses an interesting question: “What would you like to be when you couldn’t do your current job anymore?”. Some of you would jump up in the air and start fantasizing about all what you ever wanted to be. Some of you would scratch your head and say “bummer”. And there’s a group that might say “I’m good for nothing else”, but then you might not be reading this blog.

Fact is that good old Julio thought he could only do soccer very well, until he tried something else. I firmly believe everyone has a set of qualities that can become good to world-class talents. Sure, when you’re like a wooden plank you will never become a great sportsman, but there is a fine line. You might be a great sports coach.

During daily business I look at the people working at my office having different set of qualities, still everyone being a programmer. They add something extra to their programming with their own qualities, each one being the member of a team. Why have 6 forwards on the team, you need a keeper as well! It’s important not to discard those qualities and try to blend everyone into the same prototype.

The current World Cup (soccer) let us see those same qualities in the good teams over and over again. Ofcourse, you need a set of highly skilled players to go deep into the tournament, but it takes the best team to win it.

So what do you want to do / be when you can’t be an entrepreneur anymore? I would love to have my own professional sports team! But hey, then I first have to complete my entrepreneurial course first before I can buy a club…

Related subjects: entrepreneur management

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