Are employees laying bricks or building a cathedral?

There is an old story about three bricklayers, who were asked what they were doing.
The first said he was laying bricks.
The second said he was buliding a wall.
The third said he was building a cathedral.

Many people think they are doing their jobs when they do as the first bricklayer said. This is all most managers expect them to do. That is the cause of many problems and the reason that many managers are busy. They have to handle all of the issues caused by people who are simply laying bricks.

Just think of the third bricklayer. Is he likely to leave issues hanging? He is building a cathedral! You can't build a cathedral if you don't know what it takes to build a cathedral. The third bricklayer will do everything in his power to ensure that the cathedral will stand for centuries. The job of the manager is much simpler, as he knows that the bricklayer will not leave new issues to be dealt with every day.

What does this have to do with business?

I work with small businesses and help them to get a better return on their software investments. Invariably, I find them struggling with the software, because they may know how to use the software, but they don't understand how that helps the business to succeed. I work with them until they understand the business process and how they must work together to achieve the goals.

Two things happen:

• They understand what impact they are having on each other. They look for ways to eliminate negative impacts.
• They find that when they work together, the job is much easier for all of them. It is also easier on the manager, because he doesn't have to watch their every move.

At one company that I recently worked with, they found both those results. The comment made by one of the employees was that "he now understood all of the layers of the BIG MAC and why they were necessary".

This company got out of their silos and started to work together to achieve better results for their company as welll as made their own jobs easier.

When Should you Focus on Process Improvement?

Somebody asked me that recently and I had difficulty answering that question. My view is that you should continually focus on improvement. If you do, then you will minimize the amount of waste in your business.

However, that doesn't help someone who wants to start. There are good times and bad times to start. I'll focus here on good times to start. Once you have it working, it is much easier to maintain.

The good times are when there are major changes in your business. The timing is the same whether you are in a service business or manufacturing.

Typically, when you start a business, you develop solutions to meet your customers needs. The product or service varies depending on what the customer asks for. In your search for customers, you try to be flexible and provide it. This type of business is classified as a custom business. You deliver custom solutions based on your customer's needs. Your business processes are often customized as well.

As your business grows, you find that most of your customers are asking for very similar solutions, so you recognize that you can be much more efficient, perhaps more effective and deliver a better quality service or product, if you standardize. You look at ways to standardize the solutions that you provide. If you standardize your services or products, you also need to standardize your business processes to support it. If not, your business will become more complex and you will waste resources. This business is delivering standard products to a niche market.

The next stage is the mass market. Here there is not only a standard product, but also a very large market. In order to produce in these volumes you need not only standized business processes, but efficient ones as well. Mass market products are usually much cheaper. The business processes that support them must also be much more efficient.

When products are widely available, there is seldom enough market to justify a large number of players. onsolidation is the result. With consolidation, comes mergers. When two or more companies merge, there is significant upheaval. The business processes are different, the software used by the companies is different and often the company culture is very different. Attempts to merge without a review of business processes can be fatal.

To answer the question of when should you focus on your business processes, we look at the changes in the business model. There are three critical situations:

• When you move from custom to standard products.
• When you move from standard to mass market.
• When you enter a merger or joint venture.

Each of these is a critical stage. In general, I have found that growth beyond about 15 people makes it difficult for any manager to keep everything in his head. He needs good business processes which provide him with the information that he needs to manage his business. Good processes require software that support the process.

Too busy to focus on process improvements?

In many of the assignments that I take on, I find that small businesses are struggling to make progress and move their business forward. The primary reason that they give is that they are too busy. When business is good they are run off their feet responding to customers' needs (often reacting to service problems) and when business is bad, they are too busy looking for business and finding ways to cut costs.

In many cases, they have made decisions to upgrade their business by buying software. Installing software takes a lot of time and effort. It isn't a silver bullet, automatically changing your business for the better. When it comes down to the hard work of implementing, the business is too busy dealing with day-to-day issues, and does not complete the implementation successfully.

Recognize that being too busy is a symptom of problems. Yes, on any one day, priorities arise that keep you from achieving everything you want to. But if it happens every day, something is wrong. A good reason is that your business has grown very quickly and you are responding to customer orders. However, if you don't look at how you can support this level of activity, then you will quickly deteriorate into the second reason.

The second reason is that the quality of service is a problem. You are constantly dealing with customer complaints. If that is the case, this is a huge waste. You must respond to this in the short term, but prevent it in the future. If you don't, you will lose customers or your costs of delivering service will grow and profits will drop.

As an owner or manager, you can't afford to let this happen. Waste is a natural occurrence in a business. You take care of your customers and as your business changes, processes are forced to change. As these processes are changed, waste gets introduced, because only part of the process changes. What no longer is required often remains because nobody has looked at it. This waste is easy to understand in large organizations, but assumed to be small in small businesses because everybody "knows what's going on". On the contrary, small business often starat to miscommunicate when there are about 5 people involved. It hurts more as it grows, often being very painful as you reach 20-25. Unless you stand back and look at how your business runs, the problem is there.

Stepping back and looking at your business can be very difficult when you are reacting to what's happenning. "When you are up to your neck in alligators, it's difficult to remember that you are there to drain the swamp". Often the business owner will need help to remain focused. The help can come in the form of a business coach or consultant, a mastermind group or mentor that can help you to remain focused, as well as provide advice and support as you make changes.

The benefits are significant. Some studies have shown that 30-40% of activities and supplies do not help to deliver value to your clients But they do add to costs. Looking for a bigger profit? Improving you business processes can be a major source. If you are looking at software, don't automate the speed at which you can produce this waste. Fix the process, then get the software to improve on it.

When you need Information, Think Process

Every business neds information to operate effectively. Much of the information that we use to make decisions is subjective, based on what we think is happenning, or what has happenned in the past. As your business grows and develops, this changes, but our thinking about it often doesn't.

A set of studies done by Kodak described the following:

• 20% of the data that we have in our business is structured.
• 80% of the data that we have is unstructured.
• Unstructured data is growing at a rate of 36%, which means that the problem will continue to grow.

What is unstructured data? Unstructured data is data that is disconnected from our business processes. It is produced by our business processes, but may not be captured automatically nor stored in a consistent form.

What does this mean? It means that when we need this data is required, time is wasted searching for it, or recreating it or finding it. This is time wasted or decisions being made based on outdated or incorrect information. A further element of the study, showed that:

• Most Managers spend 15% of their time searching for information.
• 42% use the wrong information once per week.

Before you suggest that this is a big business problem, I have found that small businesses have the same kinds of problems. When I start to work with an organziation, I ask them what data they have in electronic form and try to analyze what's happening. Invariably, I am able to tell them something that they were unaware of. The problem is that the data is typically not 100% accurate, because it was not captured by a process that was designed for that purpose.

I often see decisions being made due to a lack of information. Attempts to collect the information often fail (except in large businesses where there are resources to do it) because staff are too busy delivering service and they must take time away from this to collect information. This seldom works very well of for very long.

The solution is to make data collection a by product of the process that you design. Most software has an assumed process built in. When you use it the way it was designed, it captures all of the data that you need and allows you to provide the information that you need to make decisions. When you only use the parts that you think you need, you lose all of the information you need for decision making, because not all of this data is captured.

The first thing you should do when you decide to buy new software, is to look at your business process (right after you define your goal and decide which process will help you deliver it). Identify how the software will help you meet your goal, including the information that you will need to make decisions or understand when you are having problems meeting your goal. Collecting the data should not be a major effort. It should be a byproduct of the process.

So when you want information about your business, think process. Design the process that will deliver not only the functionality that you are looking for, but also the information. Use the software as a tool to help you get there.

Information Technology is like a one legged stool

Every business today uses computers. It's hard to run a business without one. Even if you have a very simple business, you need to communicate with your clients and your suppliers and they force you into this world. Most businesses look at computers to improve the waay they do business. They look to productivity improvements, or functions that cannot be done without them.

Most of the technology that we buy is underutilized. The price of hardware has dropped so much that is is cheaper to put in too much hardware than to provide smaller alternatives. Software is the same. It is cheaper to distribute a single piece of software than to try and maintain multiple copies. So we have much more than we need.

There are two problems with this excess capacity. First, the software and hardware is more complex and harder to maintain. Each of us pays for this complexity. We may think we are getting value for money, but unless we can use it, the complexity adds up to more costs. In a large business, this may be manageable. In many small businesses, this can add up to slowdowns, extra downtime, extra support costs, productivity loss.

The second problem is that the complexity makes the software more difficult to learn and implement. I see many small organizations that fail to achieve the benefits from the software they bought. Part of this is caused by the fact that there are too many features. Part of it is caused by the expectation that the software is bought as a "silver bullet". Install the software and it's magic. Things will be better. It doesn't happen. It takes a lot of effort to get value from new software. Some parts may be easy. Getting real value is not.

I see Information Technology as a three legged stool. I will ignore the hardware at this point, because it doesn't provide value. It simply allows you to use the software. I will also ignore tools like Microsoft Office for the moment.

Leg #1 is the business software. It can be as simply as Quickbooks or as complex as SAP. Business software comes with built in business process assumed. It expects you to work in a certain way. If you do, then you get the best return. It helps you to do the job. If you don't, then it can make your life difficult, whether by forcing you to do things multiple times or by getting bad information because of the quality of data entered. If you look at your business process before you try to implement, you will be more successful.

That leads us to leg#2, the business process. The business process is how something moves through your organization, say from order to cash (your real goal is to get paid for the product or service that you deliver). If you understand all of the steps in this process, and understand how the software will help you to make that process more effective, then you will get significantly more value from the software. In many cases, even when an organization has looked at its business process, they encounter problems. The reason is that when you change business processes, you affect people. It's often been said that people resist change. That is true. People don't want to change if they don't see the value! Why should we? We are comfortable with what we do, we are more efficient when we know what we are doing, and we know how to prevent errors. Give me a new process that I don't understand, I will be less productive and I am more likely to produce errors. Why should I change? OK, some people like change for the sake of change, but we can only take so much. If you wake up one morning in a new house, have to drive a new car and go to a new job, how comfortable are you?

This leads us to the third leg: People. If you don't consider people, you will be less successful. I have seen many software projects that redesigned and implemented processes without involving the staff that did the job. The designs were based on senior staff or management input, and the process was automated to do what they wanted. The problem was that the process was not based on current reality. It was based on old experience (Senior staff and management don't do the day to day job), or on ideas of how things should work. The staff tried to work with it, but had to create all kinds of workarounds to get the job done. This reduced productivity, created frustrations with the staff and made them resent the change. Is there any doubt as to why people resist change? By involving staff in the goals of the change, in the redesign of the process and in how the software can provide tools to improve the process, you end up with a more effective process and less resistance to change.

So there you have it. A stool with three legs: Software, process and people. All three are critical for success.

There are two other elements that you will see on a stool and these are important as well.

• The first is the goal. The goal is to have a place to sit. The seat describes the goal of the project. This goal is a business goal, not a technical one. See yesterday's post for examples of the business goal. It's important that the goal be well understood and repeated regularly. Try sitting on a stool without a seat, if you don't understand. I have seen many stools without a proper seat.
• The second is support. Ever seen a stool without supports between the legs? Doesn't last for long does it? As with the stool, you need support between the legs (Software to people and process, process to people).

The most important thing is Focus. In real estate, they say there are three things that are important: Location, location, location. In IT projects, it's: Focus, focus, focus.

What is Business Value from Information Technology?

I've made a number of posts to this BLOG talking about getting business value from Information Technology. In discussions with different people, I have found many different interpretations. I've often commented on the fact that many IT projects have failed to deliver business value, and often get lost in "successful technology implementations". In these cases, the operation was a success, but the patient died.

In order to clarify, I want to describe business value in terms that might be better understood. Business Value can be measured by:

• Cash Flow
• Sales
• Cost of Sales
• Cost of Administration

It's that simple. There are many aspects of each of these, but if you have enough cash to manage your business, you have adequate sales, and your costs are in line so that you can make a profit, you are OK.

When you take on a technology project, you are trying to drive improvement in one of those elements. If not, why are you doing it? You may be doing something to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce inventory, improve productivity, but the real goal is to improve one of these four items. If your expenditure in technology or other services doesn't return value here, then it is a failure.

An assignment with a client recently, outlined the following problem:

• The company had installed software a year ago yet was not using it effectively.
• They took too long to issue invoices - weeks, sometimes months.
• They had opportunities to grow the business, but were restricted due to cash flow.

The focus of our actions was on improved cash flow. Within three months, we were able to get the software operational, tracking business from order to cash, and significantly improving cash flow. With improved cash flow, the business can now invest in equipment that will provide growth in sales.

The world is not static. The business was constantly changing while this activity took place. Traditional methods of measuring benefits would not have been possible. What was obvious, is that the order to cash cycle was improved, allowing the business to invest in growth. The improved cash flow was measurable.

Bringing the world of Information Technology, Business and Health together

I attended a set of seminars at BITNET (Business and Information Technology Network) yesterday. The presentations were focused on Health Care and its use of technology, and the progress (or lack thereof) that was being made.

A lot of interesting presentations, especially if you are in the Health Care field. But what does it have to do with Small Business? Part of the presentation included the efforts of McMaster University in bringing together three part of the University to develop this area. They have created a structure that brings their Business School, the Health program and their Information Technology program to address the issues.

What a concept!

Much of my BLOG has talked about bringing business and technology together to provide business value and measure success, not by projects or successful technology implementations, but by successful business outcomes.

With McMaster's program, they have brought the needs (the Health Care industry) for information and decision support together with the tools (information Technology) and the Business Management into one group. They have the opportunity to bring business reality to the Health Care needs and Information Technology.

I have seen too many situations where needs are defined as all of the things that I'd like to have, and the solutions developed by an "I can do that" attitude. The results are often a complex technical solution that does little to solve the business problem at too high a cost.

Small Businesses don't need a large, complex organization to develop solutions. They do need technology. They do need to understand the business processes they are addressing and the business outcomes to be delivered. And, they need to keep control of costs. Too often software is installed and business results aren't delivered.

In the Health Care industry, MacMaster is trying to solve that, and I applaud them.

BITNET is expecting to post the presentations on their website. If you want to check them out, see BITNET. For McMaster's eHealth program see eHealth.

Computer Training and Support - Return on Investment (ROI)

Many businesses look at training as an expense to be cut whenever times are difficult. They also look at computer support in the same way. They don't get support unless they have no other alternative.

This article that I found talks about these two "expenses" as something that should be looked at as an investment. Although much of the content is worthwhile, the challenge is to show that benefit. Some of the recommendations in terms of in house support is something that I disagree with.

First let's look at training. A lot of the article talks about measuring the value of training. This is one of the BIG issues and is the primary reason why training is often cut when it is needed the most. How do you measure the value of training. The article talks about how much people have learned. Is this measurable? The real issue is that training is of little measurable value unless it returns something to the business. Generally, we know and understand very little about the capabilities of the software that we buy. There is plenty of opportunity to use much more of the software. But whether we know how to use it, whether we use it, and whether we get business value from it is the important question. If we start with the end in mind (getting business value), then we can get a return on our training investment. If we become more productive, if we get information we didn't have before, if we are able to increase revenues, then we have created value. This is how we get ROI! Training does not provide value! The results that we achieve by the training is what is important. You canlook at the article to see how you can make it happen.

The second area referenced is support. The article recommends that every small business find themselves a good computer support company. If the support company is proactive (fixes problems before they happen), then what you gain is increased productivity because you don't sit around with failing equipment. You also will get better performance and response time. You get better technical skills and don't spend your time on trying to hire capable computer technicians. Unless someone deals with computer support every day, they aren't good enough. Your son or the neighbour's son, who is great at games and social networking is not good at maintaining a stable environment. This savings will far exceed the cost of preventative maintenance.

However, I disagree with a few recommendations related to what should be done in house vs outourced. For inhouse support:

1. I agree that staff should maintain a list of all day-to-day problems. This is necessary to identify whether adequate support is provided and whether it is getting better.
2. I disagree with running of tape backups should be done in house. In house staff are focused on day-to-day production. They don't understand the implications of backup and recovery. When something goes wrong, they invariably do the wrong thing. I have seen many cases where backup fails and they are "too busy" to take care of it, or have a problem with testing recovery, but don't get it fixed. We now have remote backup services that can be monitored and managed by a supplier.
3. I disagree with handling all first level Microsoft/Desktop issues. Many problems are created by staff trying to fix problems. If the problems require fixes, they are installed improperly and your supplier doesn't know what was done. If the questions require a how to, the scope of the solution is based on the skills and knowledge of the person answering the question. The training portion of the article describes the problem here. Most of our staff don't have a good understanding of the software being used. So look for expertise and measure the results.
4. I disagree that strategic planning should be done by the outsourcer. This is a business issue! The business may not have the technical skills to define the technology strategy and they will need support for this. But they must define the business strategy. Their supplier can help them to identify the technology that will help to deliver it.
5. I disagree that the outsourer should develop the Disaster Prevention and Recovery plan. This is a business issue! Business recovery involves much more than technology. Only the business managers understand what is needed. The supplier can help to develop solutions.

The two issues identified are valid as well as a lot of their responses and recommendations. If you want to see the full article, check

Why IT Training and Support Makes Business Sense

Business Analytics and Business Process

Business analytics is a fancy name for getting information about your business. Most small businesses (the size is dependent on who you talk to) will probably not want to talk about business analytics because these projects typically have a big price tag. But whether they are big projects or not isn't the issue. The issue is whether there is value in getting information about your business to allow you to better understand your customers, your costs, etc.

Most small business owners think they understand their business, and they do, to a point. What is surprising are the things that they don't see. As a business grows, things change and from the owner's standpoint, they still look the same. One of the first things that I do when I start an assignment, is to look at data that is already being captured in a company. I also interview staff to get the personal perspective. I invariably find things that surprise owners and managers. Through the interviews, I also find out why this is happenning and what may have caused the change. This helps me to provide advice to the owners and managers on how to address the issues that I found. This isn't even close to what business analytics is doing, but the concept is the same. There is no way that a small business could afford the cost associated with something of significant depth.

Why did I title the article business analytics and business process? Because I found an article that talks about the failure or success of business analytics is based on an understanding of business process. If you don't have a detailed understanding of your business process, you can't get good data and you can't get a good analysis of that data. Bad data means poor decisions.

If you develop good business processes, ensure that your software supports your business process to give you good data, you can analyze that data to help you make good decisions.

Thinking Outside the Box

We have all heard the term "Thinking Outside the Box". We know that it is thinking differently, but how do we do it?

We need to start by what is meant by the box. A box has four walls (and a top and bottom). When we want to store something in the box, we must put it within those four walls. We can't put it outside the box, because then it won't be stored.

Our thinking is limited by the same four walls. Everything we know creates the four walls.

Why is this important? If you are limited by what you know, you can't think outside the box! That's why many inventions come from people who are not focused in the area where they invent. They have a different background (a different box). They think "outside of your box".

What can you do about this? There are many ways, including reading books in fields, taking courses, hiring a coach, talking to suppliers, etc. Having a mentor helps you think about your business and challenges differently. Often you can solve your own problems by having them ask questions. As you try to explain, you come up with the answer.

In my case, I do a lot of reading, I work with different types of businesses and get to learn as I help them. I am also a member of BNI (Business Network International) as well as an Ambassador with BNI. This allows me to visit other chapters. Each week, one of the specialists within the chapter gives a ten minute speech about his/her business. I have been amazed at how much I learned about subjects that I knew nothing about. My learning has not allowed me to be a specialist at these services. It has provided me an insight into problems that I may encounter in my business or in my clients' businesses. When I encounter these problems, I know who to go to. I know someone who specializes in solving or preventing this type of problem.

Have problems that you don't know how to solve? Need to think outside the box? Start to network and find people that can help you do it? It can save your business!

SOA - Another Technical Solution with the same issues

IT organizations and specialists come up with new buzz words and three letter acronyms all the time. One of the current ones is SOA - Service Oriented Architecture. At this time, it isn't of interest to small businesses, but the issues raised follow the same pattern that can be found in all IT related projects.

A recent article talks about ten mistakes that are made with SOA projects:

1. Failure to explain SOA's business value.
2. Underestimating the impact of organizational change.
3. Lack of strong Executive sponsorship.
4. Attempting to do SOA on the cheap.
5. No SOA skills on staff.
6. Poor project management.
7. Viewing SOA as a project instead of an architecture.
8. Underestimating the complexity of SOA.
9. Failure to implement and adhere to SOA Governance.
10. Letting the vendor drive the Architecture.

These issues are true for SOA, but they are also true for any IT project. SOA is new to most IT organizations. In the same way, new business software is new to a small business. Change the acronym to anything else, and you will have the same issues. In the past 30 years, significant effort has been expended by IT organizations to solve the overall problems. The failure rate is still very high. Even worse than absolute failure is that those organizations that feel that they have succeeded, do not get as much value from the implementation as they could.

As the article explains, the biggest issues relate to people and process. This is true of all technical projects. If these issues are not addressed, your chance of failure is high.

The full article can be found at: http://www.cio.com.au/article/253821/10_mistakes_cause_soa_fail?pp=6

Are your systems too complex for your staff?

Is your software doing the job that you expected when you bought it? When a small business buys new software, they are usually looking for something that they don't have. They need new tools, improved productivity, reduced cost.

Most software products are built over many years with features and functions added to meet the needs of their customers. Each customer has unique needs. Some features are used by most businesses, but many find little use for most of the features. The larger companies are most likely to use more features. If you look at something as basic as Microsoft Office, how much of it does the average user know and understand. Most people never get beyond Word and Excel. Even then, how much do you Word. In my case, I used Word for over 10 years before I ever needed the Table of Contents function.

What does this mean to a small business? It means that you have a very complex software product. There is too much of it to learn and you don't need most of it anyway! The real question is "Do you know the features and functions that can help you?". If you don't, you are wasting money! You wasted money because you bought more than you needed. You are wasting money because there are functions that could help you be more productive.

This problem is not helped by the fact that software suppliers train you on the basic functions (because most people need them), but they seldom understand the real needs of your business. So they don't train you on functions that may be of the most value, because they don't know.

What does this mean to your business? The complexity can affect you in several ways:

• Your people are unproductive because they are doing things in an unproductive way (there are simpler ways of accomplishing the same thing).
• They don't take actions that could be of value because it takes too much time.
• They don't take actions that would help because they don't even know that it is possible.

How do you solve this problem? The best way is to look at your business processes before you buy software. If you look at your business process, you find what is working and what is not working as well as it could. You can streamline the business process. If automation can help, you can investigate software that can help you solve that business problem. You evaluate the software based on what it will do for your business and how easy it is to implement (not just what your software supplier tells you). When you buy, you won't buy what you don't need and your implementation will go much faster, thereby reaping benefits more quickly.

What if you've already installed? Can you still gain the benefits? You can gain major improvements by reviewing your business processes and how well they are working. Then look for ways to exploit what you already have. You won't save on what you've already invested, but you can still gain major improvements in productivity and quality of service.

Why should you focus on your business processes?

Business Process Management is a big thing in large businesses. It is a hot topic and many large companies have attempted to improve their business processes. There have also been many failures and I've mentioned some of the reasons in yesterday's BLOG.

But what about small business? Is there really any value in it? I recently came across some statistics that warrant a review at the point. This was from a study of business process management and two numbers are worth mentioning:

• Most managers spend 15% of their time searching for information.
• 42% of managers use the wrong information on average once per week.

The first number says that managers are not as productive as they could be if they have information at their fingertips. The second says that they are using the wrong information to make decisions almost half the time. This has a huge impact on their performance! Before you say that this is probably in large businesses, I have recently had an experience with a small company that indicates otherwise. It may be understandable in a large company because there are so many people involved.

Why does this happen? What is the impact? What does this have to do with Business Process Management?

The business processes that I saw were simple and straightforward. It involved all of the activities in a construction company from estimate through to billing and receivables. This is a straightforward process, so you would think. The business had grown and was no longer visible from end to end by one person. Estimates were made for new jobs verbally. Job scheduling came from what individuals remembered about these estimates. Job scheduling was difficult and often crews might sit idle while salespeople looked for new jobs. When the jobs were done, paperwork for materials and labour were submitted to the office. Because payroll and payables needed action, this is where the paperwork went first. Project Managers searched for the paperwork in order to produce the invoices. Since they were busy, they didn't have time to search, so days and weeks often passed before invoices were prepared. This created a cash flow and receivables problem.

The were two major problems identified in this process. Work could not be properly planned, delaying revenues and sometimes seeing work crews idle. Invoicing was delayed. Cost kept piling up, but revenues were slowed.

By focusing on the end to end business process, we started tracking all jobs when requests originally came in. We have a written record of the size of the job, and its priority. This allowed for proper planning and identified the potential times when crews might not be busy. It allowed the sales people to get out early and find new work, before the crews were idled.

We changed the flow of paper, so that completed jobs were highlighted and the necessary cost information immediately sent to Project Managers, allowing them to complete their costings and proceed with invoicing.

The net result was better productivity of work crews, faster invoicing and better cash flow. I think any small business would like to have that.