The “Bizmanualz On-Line” Policies and Procedures management software system is now undergoing testing. When you try it, you’ll see it’s primarily an Internet-based application. Very little runs on your local PC or network.

A few people have wondered about working online, asking, “Why would I want an online policy application that Bizmanualz hosts and maintains, rather than a policy application installed locally?”

#1 - It Costs Less

The Bizmanualz online solution spreads the cost of hardware and software across many customers, so you receive one low monthly fee for editors/authors and nothing for read-only access. If your company wants its own policy server, it wouldn’t enjoy the cost-sharing advantages and it would incur the entire cost of purchasing and maintaining the needed infrastructure.

Some still insist on an in-house installation because it gives them greater control. However, the business world, in general, is moving away from local software and toward hosted software services, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and cloud solutions.  Companies don’t want to pay for software and hardware, especially when it sits idle much of the time. The great thing about software-as-a-service is that pricing reflects what you actually use.

#2 - You Get a Policy Management Solution Now

In large organizations, defining policty management application requirements and allocating resources to buy or build are fraught with political obstacles. Gaining buy-in from all stakeholders takes time. It’s easier for stakeholders to agree on what they need from a policy management software application when they can try it out first.

Because SaaS policy management solutions can be turned on instantly and require no installation, they offer an immediate solution. Users can then define their needs in terms of what the SaaS policy management solutions solutions does or does not do.  You can then offer cost-benefit trade-offs in response to specific user needs.

Meeting user needs is not always possible at an acceptable level of investment. But by establishing good communications with your SaaS policy management solutions vendor, you may better understand the trade-offs and even influence the vendor’s development plans. As the polciy manager who uses the system, it’s easier for you to get a vendor to add the exact policy management features you need than for your company to allocate scarce resources. Under a SaaS model, new policy software features and upgrades are part of the value delivered for your subscription fee.

#3 - Continual SaaS Upgrades and Improvements

While large organizations have business analysts collecting user needs and defining what a policy management software application should do for them, smaller companies often do not. Often that role in an SMB is filled on an as-needed basis by an IT manager, and conflicting priorities may require redeployment of resources right after the software launches.

Software-as-a-service vendors on the other hand live or die by how well they support and improve their product. They must deliver value and ever-improved features and performance in exchange so that customers feel good about their monthly subscription fees.

Under the licensed server approach, improvements often come in annual or longer installation cycles with renewal fees attached. It could be a year or longer before you get upgrades. Furthermore, the cost of upgrading often means putting it off, which means you could fall behind companies that can afford to upgrade. Under the SaaS model, you get upgrades continually and you don’t pay any more for them.

#4 - No Unnecessary Technology Investment

For many companies, installed policy servers just don’t make sense anymore. Big, expensive server hardware and software has to be in place to run your policy procedure management software, but the necessary platform is underused. That is, policy management as a category of software demands little in the way of computing power. Unless yours is a vast organization with intensive policy compliance needs, your investment would sit idle most of the time and you’d end up paying for power you didn’t need.

It makes sense to spread the fixed costs across many companies, and get someone else (Bizmanualz) to take care of all that computing power for you, and that is the advantage of SaaS policy management.

#5 - SaaS Monthly Fees are Cheaper and Easier to Budget

Under a dedicated-server approach, IT departments typically pay annual license and maintenance fees of about 20% to 40% of the up-front software license fees. So our SaaS (on-line) policy solution is actually much cheaper to maintain from IT’s perspective. And because Bizmanualz online fully supports the SaaS solution, your IT department doesn’t have to allocate technical time and talent to maintain a dedicated solution.

SaaS enables you to share most of the costs of the hardware and software across all the provider’s (Bizmanualz’s) customers, while protecting your data. As a matter of fact, policy managers and finance professionals (to name two) who use our policy software are commonly surprised when they approach their IT department heads and find that initiatives are underway to identify SaaS or cloud applications like the Bizmanualz policy management system.

Remote hosting is becoming more common. If you approach IT management with a SaaS option, they may consider you to be a real forward-thinking user!

#6 - Compliance with SAS 70 Type II

Some companies like SaaS as a concept but they don’t want their data to reside outside their firewall. Our hosting is fully compliant and audited to SAS 70 Type II standards. Conforming to Type II standards means your data are fully protected. Has your in-house IT department met the SAS 70 standard?

#7 - Polciy workflow Compliance for editors but users don’t have to do anything differently.

While it is true that draft policy and procedure files are stored on our secure server outside your firewall, your company can store “released” documents on your in-house server. In that way, you could use our workflow management tools and still publish the released files to a location behind your firewall. Authors and editors gain policy workflow and compliance tools, and the majority of employees don’t have to change the way they access released documents. They would simply read the released policy documents as they have been doing in your Intranet or SharePoint, and released documents would reside within your firewall.

Our editing module stores Bizmanualz policies and procedures templates, as well as any changes you make or any other documents that you upload. Most customers tell us that their compliance policies and procedures are not considered sensitive documents. There should be no reason to upload sensitive documents. For most customers, released files are published to a secure web site that your employees - or anyone you want - can access them.

With the trade-offs in mind, the online SaaS policy management approach works for most customers. Furthermore, we can customize a solution for you. Just email sales@bizmanualz.com. Sign up for a free trial and see for yourself.

Policies and procedures provide the framework and direction for addressing many common business problems your organization might face.  Let’s look at the top ten business problems solved by Policies and Procedures.

1. Accounts Receivable procedures to reduce accounts receivable (A/R) aging and ensure even cash flow.  Every company needs Strategies for Writing Accounts Receivable Procedures.  Your accounts receivable process is the heart of your cash cycle.  Salespeople can find plenty of customers but without cash-paying customers, you can’t pay your bills, which is part of your Strategies for Writing Accounts Payable Procedures.

2. Sales procedures to standardize sales pipeline management and ensure a consistent sales pipeline.  Sales procedures allow you to take control of the sales and marketing cycle.  Developing measurements, sales assignments, and target markets are all important elements of your sales process.

3. Disaster Recovery procedures will assist in an orderly and timely response to emergencies your company may face, as well as control the inevitable chaos that occurs.  Every company needs to effectively respond to disasters or emergencies in a timely manner; if not, they could be out of business.  In recent months, we’ve had ample opportunity to learn the lessons of the Gulf oil disaster, such as “having a disaster recovery plan before the need arises”.

4. Human Resources procedures ensure non-discriminatory practices; specifically, well-defined employee hiring and termination practices will help you avoid costly litigation.  Human resources procedures address diverse topics such as recruiting, hiring, training, retention, termination, and — most importantly –complying with local, state, Federal, and even international employment laws.

5. Quality procedures (nonconformance, corrective action, and auditing) improve product and process quality.  The ISO 9001 quality standard addresses quality control, quality assurance, and quality management practices.  Learning how to meet quality standards with ISO 9001 will help your organization reduce costly rework and overtime, thereby improving quality, satisfying customers, and contributing to your competitive advantages.

6. Customer communications procedures, like collecting data from customer feedback and complaint handling for process improvement.  ”Poor customer communication” is the root cause of much customer dissatisfaction.  If you know what your target customer wants, your business has all the information it needs to satisfy the customer. Implementing communication procedures will help you act on your customers’ wants, improving sales.

7. Shipping and receiving procedures are needed to track materials purchased and sold.  Most of shipping and receiving revolves around inventory or assets, which requires processes for handling, inventory management, asset acquisition, and asset disposition.  Specific supplier requirements — and the policies and procedures that flow from them — ensure that you receive what you want, when you want it, in the quantity you want, and with quality built in.

8. Management procedures can improve poor meetings, poor internal communications, and poor reporting.  Management is really about communication — that’s why improving internal communication benefits the whole company.  One of the best ways to improve communications is to develop, document, implement, and monitor a procedure for communications.

Also, it’s important that management shows its commitment to the highest standards, whether those standards have to do with internal processes or processes that directly involve your customers.

9. You also need compliance procedures to ensure your company conforms to the requirements of various regulations, statutes, and standards.  This is where policies and procedures can help your organization.  Compliance is one of the primary problems solved with policies and procedures.

10. Accounting procedures ensure that you fulfill your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders.  Accounting is a process to track transactions of items, cash, and information.  Accounting procedures help to ensure consistency, reliability, and accuracy of those transactions, which (in turn) helps to build trust in your financial statements.  What Are the Top Ten Accounting Policies and Procedures?

Prewritten policies and procedures from Bizmanualz help solve many of these common business problems.  The Top Ten Core Business Policies and Procedures you will need can be found in the Bizmanualz CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals bundle.

Top 10 Business Problems Solved by Policies and Procedures

1. Accounts Receivable procedures, to reduce A/R aging and ensure even cash flow.
2. Sales procedures, to standardize sales pipeline management to ensure consistent sales.
3. Disaster Recovery procedures, to control the response to chaos in an emergency.
4. Human Resources procedures, to ensure non-discriminatory employee hiring and termination.
5. Quality procedures, to improve quality.
6. Customer communications procedures, to collect data from feedback and complaint handling for process improvement.
7. Shipping and receiving procedures, to track materials purchased and sold.
8. Management procedures to improve poor meetings, communications, and reporting.
9. Compliance procedures to conform to regulations, standards, and laws.
10. Accounting procedures, to fulfill your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders.

What do you think? How quickly could your most urgent problems be solved by implementing effective policies and procedures?

Does your organization talk about quality? Does it put quality concepts into practice in every aspect of the business, from design and development to product delivery? Is your firm practicing quality from top to bottom, from the chief executive to your newest hires?

Commitment to quality starts at the top and flows from there throughout the organization. Whether management is sold on the notion of “quality in everything we do” or they’re not, the rest of the company follows suit. Here are ten indicators that your company’s top management is making the quality commitment:

1. You have a quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits. If management puts money on the table, they’re obviously committed to quality.  Quality requires a budget to prevent problems from occurring and recurring.  Quality requires training.  And Quality requires gentle prodding from internal audits, to ensure the quality system is continuously improving, not stagnating.

2. You’re allowed to use the quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits. Having a monetary budget for Quality is great but if you can’t use it because there are too many orders that need to get out or there are never enough worker-hours to work on Quality, do you really have a budget for Quality? Don’t forget — time has to be budgeted, too.

3. You track the cost of quality in your budgeting process. Your cost of quality includes scrap, defects, rework, corrective actions, preventive actions, quality training, audits, management reviews, lost business due to customer complaints (i.e., returns), warranty claims, and other such “quality” costs.  If you’re actively tracking and comparing your cost of quality to your revenues, expenses, and profits, you’re displaying a keen sense of what quality means to your business.

4. Top management actively participates in your regular (weekly/monthly) management reviews. Quality management reviews are critical to management’s understanding of the future of the business.  Top management’s attendance demonstrates that the future of the business is important to it and the results of management reviews are a valuable input to management’s strategic direction and execution.

5. Quality management participates in regular (weekly/monthly) management meetings, planning sessions, and decision processes. Quality management’s attendance at the management meetings demonstrates that input from quality is important.  Can your company expand, add new products, contract, cut costs, or implement strategic actions without understanding how it may impact the operation’s quality?  Cross-functional teams at all levels provide an early warning to management that improves the execution of your plans.

6. Quality management reports directly to top management. Quality management’s input is vital to strategic execution and requires that quality management be a peer (equal) at the top management level.  Quality management needs to attend critical meetings, needs resources to act on Quality issues, needs to act across the organization chart, and needs the active support of top management for quality success.  Can you really achieve high levels of quality by delegating quality to lower levels of the organization’s management?

7. Top management champions quality, communicates it, and understands its bottom line impact. In order for top management to appoint a quality manager at the top management level, that quality manager has to have a budget and has to interact with all other departments. To ensure the future of the business is secure, top management needs to understand how quality impacts the company and it needs to communicate that impact to the entire organization.  Quality takes discipline and only top management can instill the discipline required for success.

8. Management’s strategic plan includes quality milestones. The road to quality takes time measured in years.  Top management can communicate its commitment to quality through the successive achievement of quality awards over the years (e.g., ISO 9001, Shingo, state Quality awards, Baldrige).  I have seen one organization that, after winning Baldrige, required its individual operating units to all go for Baldrige.  Top management can keep on the continuous improvement road by driving quality milestones deeper into the organization.

9. Management allows people to fail, make mistakes, experiment, and improve without serious repercussion. Improvement is really about failure. If you’re allowed to fail, you can learn from your mistakes. Conversely, if you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re being deprived of learning and growth opportunities.

Without learning, there is no quality.  When top management allows people to fail, they allow people to learn and grow.  Fire people for failure and people will stop reporting failures…and they will stop learning, too.

10. Quality is implemented as a strategic requirement to build competitive advantage, not as a customer requirement to qualify for new business. A committed top management is focused on quality because it represents improvement, being better than others, and the future.  If a customer has to ask you for proof of quality, do you have a problem?  Even worse, if you only implement quality because the customer asks and not because you want to, then do you really have quality?  Committed top management doesn’t wait for customers to ask for quality — they integrate quality into their strategy.

Top Ten Signs of Management’s Commitment to Quality

1. You have a quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits.
2. You’re allowed to use the quality budget for Corrective and Preventive Action, Training, and Internal Audits.
3. You track the cost of quality in your budgeting process.
4. Top management actively participates in regular management reviews.
5. Quality management participates in regular management meetings, planning sessions, and decision processes.
6. Quality management reports directly to top management.
7. Top management champions quality, communicates it, and understands its impact.
8. Management’s strategic plan includes quality milestones.
9. Management allows people to fail, make mistakes, experiment, and improve.
10. Quality is implemented as a strategic requirement to build competitive advantage.

Your thoughts?

There are many reasons why procedures become too complex.  Many revolve around “too much”, “too many”, or “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Reducing the complexity of your procedure is simple.  Keep it simple.  Less is more.  Don’t go into long explanations, use industry- or profession-specific terminology, or try to dispense too much information. Remember — complexity is one of the enemies of consistency and quality. Keep it simple.

How do you know if your procedures are too complex? Here are the top ten signs:

1. Your procedures are too long.  This is possibly the most common kind of complexity. If your procedures are 30 pages in length, they’re too long.  It is very difficult to follow a 30-page procedure (try it).

The fewer the pages, the better. This forces you to simplify your procedures — to make them more concise. If you have a 30-page procedure, try breaking it into three 10-page procedures.  See if you can simplify each ten-page procedure — maybe eliminate or repurpose the information into work instructions, training material, or pictures.  Pictures are a great substitute for excess verbiage and should reduce your document size.

2. Your procedures have too many steps. If your procedure contains — let’s say, 27 — steps, it has too many. Follow the “rule of seven” — use no more than seven steps to describe a process.  No more than seven activities to describe a procedure.  Use no more than seven tasks to describe an activity, and no more than seven lines to a paragraph.  Break information into chunks that can be easily understood and followed.

3. Your procedures reference too many other documents. If you have to keep flipping between documents, it’s difficult to follow the main procedure (and easy to derail your train of thought). If your procedures reference multiple documents, this leads to straying from the main path.

4. Your procedures contain too much terminology. Industry jargon needs to be defined in the procedure.  Does everyone really know how the “takt time” on your value stream map is used to improve your OEE? Instead of assuming they know, define your terms or use them in such a context that your readers can infer what you mean.

5. Your procedures involve too many people. If your procedure requires a lot of different individuals, you probably have too many handoffs. The more information and materials are handled, the greater the likelihood of a breakdown in the process. Therefore, you have an opportunity to simplify the process.  Break your procedure into several discrete procedures and focus the responsibility on fewer people in each procedure.

6. Your procedures involve too many reviews. Do you really need as many reviews, meetings, or inspections as your procedure calls for?  Can you combine, eliminate, or substitute a review with another element? Individuals can do self-inspections with checklists.  A lot of reviews make for a complex process.  Simplify.

7. Your procedures cover a long period of time. Delays allow for interruptions.  Eliminate them.  Reorganize the procedure into time-based elements that can be easily followed.

8. Your procedures encompass asynchronous activities. Loosely related activities that occur in their own time frame are hard to coordinate. Tie the activities together with milestones — have them share start times or end times. Synchronize them.

9. Your procedures leave out important information. This is the opposite of using jargon, or giving too much information. By leaving out bits of necessary information for the sake of saving time or space, you increase the risk of process failure. The reader does not know what they do not know. Economize and keep it simple, but don’t omit important information.

10. Your procedures use too many big words and long sentences. The average person reads at a ninth-grade level.  Using too many “big college words” and stuffing a lot of information into long sentences or paragraphs introduces unnecessary complexity. Use smaller words, shorter sentences, and shorter paragraphs. Remember the Rule of Seven (above).

Your Procedures Are Too Complex If They:

1. Are too long with too many pages;
2. Have too many steps, activities, or tasks;
3. Reference too many documents, work instructions, or forms;
4. Contain too much jargon, industry terminology, or slang;
5. Involve too many people, jobs descriptions, or managers;
6. Involve too many review steps, meetings, or inspections;
7. Cover a long period of time;
8. Discuss a series of asynchronous activities;
9. Leave out important information, pictures, or explanations; or
10. Use too many big words, long sentences, and long paragraphs.

So, are some of your procedures too complex? What is the most complicated procedure you have ever had to work with?

Here we go again. Just as it did a decade ago, questionable or downright unethical behavior has led to the enrichment of a few and the financial ruin of many. And after the damage has been done, the legislature has vowed to make sure “it will never happen again”.

Here’s the story in 2010: Citigroup allegedly did not see the mortgage crisis coming, or it failed to properly manage risk. Either way, a lot of mortgage holders are in extreme financial difficulty. Goldman Sachs is reported to have made an enormous profit a couple of years ago by betting against the mortgage market, supposedly with help from Paulson & Company.

And before that, there was Madoff Securities. Bernie Madoff was put in jail for running a “Ponzi scheme” for a number of years, but not before investors in his scheme lost everything.

The situation is strikingly similar to that of about a decade ago, when executives at Enron, Tyco, and other companies enriched themselves at the expense of shareholders.  Then, the U.S. Congress developed the regulation known as Sarbanes-Oxley as a result of the financial misdeeds.

Now, Congress is again debating the need for legislation to combat ethical “lapses”. Why legislation should even be considered is a mystery — we know from history (e.g., Prohibition, the War on Drugs) that moral behavior cannot be legislated. When people want badly enough to make a profit, gain power, improve their competitive position, or do whatever it is they want to do, they will:

• Prevent the undesirable (e.g., ethics legislation) from happening;
• Water down the legislation so as to make it virtually worthless; and
• Find ways to circumvent the law, even as it’s being enacted.

So, how do you make people behave in an ethical manner, especially in settings where temptation is hard to avoid? Well, you can’t ensure everyone will behave ethically in all circumstances. If Mom and Dad and all the other influential people in their lives couldn’t plant a fully functioning moral compass in them, you’re not going to have much luck.

It’s an almost certain bet that the companies in question have an ethics policy in place. Merely having an ethics policy isn’t enough, though, any more than having legislation in place is a cure for society’s ills.  However, there are ways you might be able to lessen the risk of unethical behavior. To make your ethics policy work, you can:

• Develop a clear, concise ethics policy (a “code of ethics”);
• Communicate your ethics policy to employees, management, suppliers, customers - in other words, let all stakeholders know where you stand;
• Enforce the policy - punish unethical conduct and positively reinforce ethical behavior;
• Establish a framework (hierarchy) of ethical responsibility;
• Develop and implement a system of checks and balances within the framework of your policy;
• Make all stakeholders part of your ethical framework - everyone is responsible; and
• Regardless of where you are in the hierarchy, set an example for others.

And no, I don’t expect that “it’s just that simple”. No matter what you do, you will not eliminate unethical behavior entirely. People succumb to temptation when it becomes too great, and this is probably the most important point. Understand what tempts people to act unethically and do what you can to prevent or lessen the temptation.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any answers.

* * * * * * *

Recommended Reading

1. Grace, H.S., Jr., and Haupert, J. E., “How to Make an Ethics Program Work”, The CPA Journal, April, 2006 - http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2006/406/essentials/p66.htm
2. Crosby, David C., “Who Is Responsible for Quality?”, Quality Digest, April 20, 2010 - http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/who-responsible-quality.html#

When was the last time you had to manage a “critical” project without the support of top management in word and deed? If it’s happened once, it’s happened too often.

Yet, this happens all the time with quality management systems. Quality management systems are commonly — and wrongly — viewed as a “necessary evil”. That is, your company’s top management feels a QMS project won’t have an immediate and positive effect on the bottom line but they’re going ahead with the project because “they’re making us do it!”

A customer may require its vendors (and maybe you’re one of them) to have an ISO-9001-certified QMS in place. Or, maybe you deal in a product or service that’s highly regulated, so you’re implementing a QMS only “because it’s the law.”

ATTITUDE

If your attitude is “we have to” instead of “we want to”, you may be setting up your QMS  to fail before you’ve begun.

Think about it. You always perform a task better when your heart and mind are in it, right?Isn’t the same true of your employees? If you’re not sold on the QMS as a win-win, your employees won’t be, either. And neither will the certification auditor.

Besides management having a poor attitude, there are other ways to sink your QMS project. Here are just a few:

• No development plan or one that’s insufficient
• Unrealistic expectations
• Lack of management support
• Poor communication
• Not enough resources
• Lack of user involvement

NO DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Just as with any other project, a QMS is more likely to yield desired results when a realistic plan is drawn up in advance. It’s just that simple: thorough project planning leads to a greater likelihood of success than relying on chance.

When you started your company, you drew up a detailed business plan before you went to borrow seed capital. True, the bank required you to have a business plan, but not because they just “felt like it”. They wanted you to succeed so they’d get their money back and so you’d become a regular customer.

The same is true of your QMS project — plan now for success, or pay dearly later.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

Without bothering to put a plan together, top management will say, “We need a functional QMS in three months and we can spare one person from the staff to work on it.” It’s just a QMS, right? You only need a half-dozen procedures and a quality manual and you’re done, right?

WRONG! If you don’t do the research, you ensure that your expectations will NEVER be met. Realistic, achievable objectives come only from careful research and planning. If you don’t have a history of QMS projects, look at other projects.

Look at what other companies have done with their quality management systems. Ask around — maybe you know someone who’s been through the experience. The point is to have a clear idea of what you’re getting into and what to expect.

Next, we’ll look at four more reasons why QMS projects fail. In the meantime, I’d like your comments. Why do QMS projects fail? Why does any kind of project fail?

Thanks for your time.

For large and small businesses, there’s much to like about cloud computing.  Cloud computing — basically, hosted services delivered across the Internet — is associated with “software as a service“, or SaaS. Cloud computing offers your organization a great deal of flexibility — you can readily adapt to momentary spikes in demand without investing enormous amounts of time, people power, and money. Here’s what else I like about cloud computing:

WHAT’S TO LIKE?

1. It reduces overhead. 500 Gb hard disks are common for a very good reason: applications are so feature-rich and graphics-intensive. For instance, Dreamweaver is taking 165 Mb of my local hard disk’s space. InstallShield uses 215 Mb, and Adobe Reader, another 146. And Silverlight? I didn’t even order it, yet there it is, all 43.2 Mb of it. The point being? That applications on your hard drive not only take up space but so many run involuntarily — and concurrently — that they significantly drag down your computer’s performance.
2. You’re not tied to one machine. I can do more work from home as we turn to the cloud for more of our computing. I not only check on my e-mail from anywhere (I head off a lot of junk that way) but I gather and exchange a lot of info and ideas in the cloud.
3. Your outlay is spread evenly throughout the year. With locally installed applications, you typically shell out thousands all at once for a licenses, support, etc.
4. There’s no need to purchase memory-hogging applications. When you have localized applications, you’re responsible for staying current with updates for as long as the license is in force. Sure, the vendor says updates are automatic, but that’s not 100% accurate. When it’s time to renew that license, there’s a lot to consider (see #5, for one). And if you get in trouble and have to reinstall the application, you’re at the mercy of customer service.
5. You always have the current version of the software. Look at the differences between Word 2003 and 2007. The newer version was a sudden and dramatic change: you got a lot of features you didn’t want, and some features you liked went away. Many companies stayed put because change is difficult; procrastination only makes the eventual more traumatic. Cloud applications, on the other hand, are usually changed so gradually that you don’t notice them.
6. File backup is easy and automatic. Cloud apps generally offer backup capability. Not enough companies take advantage of this, and they’re going to pay for their hubris sooner or later. Symantec’s 2009 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey found that fewer than one in four respondents backed up their data every day. There’s no good reason for not backing up your stuff - not when cloud computing makes it so easy.
7. Cloud computing is the ideal environment for coordinating your company communications. Unified communications (UC) offers the potential for significant cost control without sacrificing the functionality of in-house management. In this recession, everyone wants to drive and keep costs down, but there’s a right way to do it. With cloud-based UC, overhead drops but functionality stays.

WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?

There’s just a couple of things, though they’re not minor points:

1. Net traffic jams. Net capacity has had a hard time keeping up with demand. Two examples I can think of — CBSsports-dot-com during the NCAA basketball tournament, and Facebook’s “FarmVille”.
2. Security, or the lack of it. Every cloud app is a potential opening for the bad guys. A lot of skepticism — even a tiny bit of paranoia — is called for whether you’re considering the cloud or already using it.

ON THE WHOLE…

There’s a lot to like about cloud computing, especially for small businesses. Now, if your business, large or small, has experience with cloud computing, would you share that experience with us?

If you haven’t had any experience with cloud computing, are you thinking about it? What’s holding you back?

Thank you for your responses. Oh, by the way…

YOU SHOULD ALSO SEE:

• Explaining Cloud Computing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplXnFUlPmg.
• What Cloud Computing Really Means - http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031.

When we talk about helping companies obtain ISO 9001:2008 certification, people often ask us, “Why does our company need to be ISO 9001 certified?” Good question. ISO 9001 is the quality management system (QMS) standard and it produces numerous benefits for any company willing to go that route. So, why should your organization obtain ISO 9001 certification?

1. Meet Customer Requirements

Many companies want to get ISO 9001 certified just to satisfy one customer requirement. The customer states that it will only do business with vendors that are certified as ISO 9001 compliant, so to get (or keep) the business they need that certification. The problem with these companies is that they’re looking for a short-term payoff.  They see nothing but that one benefit — we need money– and ignore the long-term benefits, like “if we keep the customer well satisfied, they will want to come back again and again”.

They don’t embrace the concept of quality through continual improvement. They don’t understand that continued customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of a QMS. In other words, these companies haven’t “bought into the program”. See, you may obtain a piece of paper (that ISO certificate) that claims ISO 9001 certification without seeing much actual quality or improvement. Focusing only on that one benefit — your immediate gain — without putting the customer in front will end up costing you much more in the long run. Hopefully, some of the quality management system ideas may rub off and eventually stick…but wouldn’t you rather have a plan than trust to luck?

2. Get More Revenue and Business from New Customers

Once you earn your ISO 9001 certification, you can advertise your quality certification and respond to requests for quotes (RFQ) from companies that make ISO 9001 certification a “must-have”. ISO 9001 certification can open up new markets you were virtually unable to do business with before your certification.

3. Improve Company and Product Quality

A quality management system standard is all about quality (really!) so, of course, one result of adopting a QMS should be an improved level of quality for the entire organization — every process, and every product. There are many definitions of “quality”, but Philip Crosby and Joseph Juran provide two of the best. Crosby defined it as “conformance to requirements”; Juran called it “fitness for use”.  A well-designed, effectively implemented ISO 9001 Quality Management System will put your company on the Road to Quality.

4. Increase Customer Satisfaction with your Products

Quality means whatever you produce will work as your customers expect. You will meet not only their stated requirements — you will meet more of their implied requirements, too.

Quality also means far fewer complaints and doing a better job of resolving those you do.  If your quality management system is working correctly, you should know what your customers expect and you should be providing it, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

5. Describe, Understand, and Communicate Your Company Processes

The ISO 9001 QMS standard requires that you identify and describe your processes using business metrics, the purpose of which is to better manage and control your business processes.  Quality objectives form the center of your system.  Metrics are used to understand and communicate your system’s performance relative to your quality objectives.  If you make an honest attempt to conform to the requirements of ISO 9001, you’ll learn more about your business.

6. Develop a Professional Culture and Better Employee Morale

Implementing an ISO 9001 Quality Management System can empower employees. Your QMS will provide them with clear expectations (quality objectives and job descriptions), the tools to do their job (procedures and work instructions), and prompt, actionable feedback on their performance (process metrics). The result? An improved company culture and a more professional staff!

7. Improve the Consistency of Your Operations

What is consistency? Well, one way to think of it is “decreased variation”.  Reducing the variation in your processes is the definition of consistency. Is your customer better served by you supplying them with a consistent product — same dimensions, same weight, same tolerances, same output every time — or by your products being unpredictable and “all over the place”? (I hope you’re not thinking too hard on this.)

Of course, they won’t accept variation, and neither should you! And how do you decrease variation?  Increase control of your processes!  Control comes from having a clear target to shoot for (objective), collecting data on the process (metrics), and understanding how to adjust the process (procedures and work instructions) to maintain the target output.  If your ISO 9001 QMS is working, you should be increasing operational…and product…consistency.

8. Focus Management and Employees

We’ve discussed quality objectives, metrics, and procedures used within an ISO 9001 Quality Management System. Having the right objectives, metrics, and procedures, management and employees should be able to focus better on what’s important.  Yet, this isn’t always the case — it’s easy to lose focus over a period of time.

The ISO 9001 QMS has a way to ensure the company stays focused, and that’s quality auditing.  Internal audits, registration (and surveillance) audits, and self-process audits. ISO 9001 requires that the company periodically audit its quality processes. Regular process audits and as-needed audits, when done correctly, provide the objective feedback needed to correct any deviations from the quality path and keep the company focused on its goals.

9. Improve Efficiency, Reduce Waste, and Save Money

An ISO 9001 Quality Management System isn’t perfect; no process and no one is perfect.  (Why else would the standard devote a clause to “continual improvement”?) A well-run QMS does enable your company to approach perfection.  As your processes improve, become more consistent, and you achieve your target objectives with greater regularity, you will see tangible results. Your process waste will decrease, for one.

Waste is money lost forever. Waste results from poor quality and inefficiency.  Inefficiency results from variation and inconsistent processes.  Reduce variation, improve consistency, and you’ll have less waste…and more money.  It’s that simple!

10. Achieve International Quality Recognition

ISO 9001 is a worldwide standard administered by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), based in Switzerland. ISO 9001 is currently in use by close to one million organizations around the world!  It is truly a world wide standard for quality! Obtaining ISO 9001 certification puts your company in a very select group.

Why Should Your Organization Obtain ISO 9001 Certification?

Recapping the article, your company’s certification to ISO 9001 will help you:

1. Meet customer requirements;
2. Get more revenue and business from new customers;
3. Improve company and product quality;
4. Increase customer satisfaction with your products;
5. Document, understand, and communicate your company processes;
6. Develop a professional culture and better employee morale;
7. Improve the consistency of your operations;
8. Keep management and employees focused on quality;
9. Improve efficiency, reduce waste and save money; and
10. Achieve international quality recognition.

To learn more about improving your processes, attend our How to Create Well-Defined Processes Class, coming this spring to our St. Louis, Missouri, offices.

The Internet is great, isn’t it? You can do so much with it. More importantly, a lot of what you can do is free. Depending on your goals and requirements, some of these tools may require some knowledge of HTML but, for the most part, they do their jobs quite well. Some of the best “freebies”, listed in no particular order, are:

1. Google Docs - Online Office Applications (docs.google.com)

Google Docs is Google’s free web-based office application suite. It lets you create, use, and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms (for surveys and data collections).

2. AVG – Anti-Virus Tool (free.avg.com)

AVG offers a range of anti-virus and internet security software tools and compares favorably with other highly regarded players, like McAfee and Symantec. AVG’s free version is for individual users, which means you can’t technically use it for your business; see AVG’s web site for terms and other details.

3. Mailchimp – Email Marketing (www.mailchimp.com)

You’ve identified potential customers for your business. You also have a number of organizations that you’re doing - or have done - business with. If you need to get in touch with your customers and prospects and track how well your emails are performing, you’ll need email blasting software. Mailchimp does that — and more. An account with up to 500 email addresses is free.

4. WordPress - Blogging (www.wordpress.org)

Social media — in particular, blogging — is the rage not only for individuals, but also for businesses. If you want to blog without going through the hassles of installing software on your own website (which isn’t a very good idea, in the long run), you definitely want to go to http://www.wordpress.com. However, if you want to take full charge of the blogging process and make it part of your own website, WordPress, the open source and free blogging tool, is your best friend.

5. Gmail - (mail.google.com)

Online email that you can access anywhere, at any time — that’s Gmail. You can’t go wrong with Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, either, but I like Gmail, primarily because I have a Google account and I’m using it all day, every day. And, as long as I’m logged into Google, it just makes sense for me to use Gmail. Another Gmail plus, in my estimation — the filter setting and labeling features of Gmail are very intuitive and easy to use.

6. Xobni - Outlook Tool (www.xobni.com)

For those of you drowning in the flood of emails in your Outlook “Inbox”, Xobni works wonders. It not only indexes your emails for really quick searching — it also shows the “conversations” you’ve had with the sender of any email, let’s you view their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles (based on their email addresses), and shows interesting and potentially useful tidbits, like who you respond fastest to, or who sends you the most emails.

7. OpenOffice - Office Productivity Suite (www.openoffice.org)

Need something that pretty much does everyting that Microsoft Office does, only for free? Well, then check out OpenOffice - your new best friend (but don’t tell WordPress). This Open Source office productivity suite has robust word processing, spreadsheet, database, and presentation tools, without the enormous overhead of MS-Office. It has built-in Adobe PDF file export capability, too.

8. FeedBurner - RSS Feed Management (www.feedburner.com)

FeedBurner is another Google offering — one that makes managing and distributing RSS feeds a breeze! FeedBurner is invaluable for promoting your blogs and podcasts. It lets you see how many people subscribe to your feeds and it has a feature that updates readers via email each time you update your company blog.

9. Joomla! - Content Management System (www.joomla.org)

A very powerful Open Source content management system (CMS), Joomla! lets you build websites and web applications. It’s designed to help organizations of all sizes, whether they’re building a website, a news portal, or an e-commerce site.

10. Bizmanualz – Policies and Procedures Samples  (www.bizmanualz.com)

Call it a shameless plug, but the company I work for provides some of the best written — and most complete — policies and procedures manuals, handbooks, and documents. And, we provide free sample procedures from every one of our 12 manuals! If you’re looking to write new - or enhance your existing - policies and procedures, you’ll love what we have to offer.

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In addition to the ten resources listed above, there are many, many more on the web — free and low-cost — that offer tremendous value to businesses of every kind and size. Have you used any of the tools in this list? What’s been your experience - good, bad, or other? What free web tools do you use that aren’t listed here? Which do you find most helpful?

Policies are the backbone of every organization.  Even startup companies that don’t yet have formal policies follow long-standing, commonly accepted “rules” of individual and corporate behavior — implicit policies (e.g., the “Golden Rule”) that guide them.  Formal, written policies guide appropriate (ethical) behavior in larger companies.

Yet, everyone has had to deal sooner or later with policies that are so poorly written that they’re without meaning and validity.  In short, they’re unenforceable.  But if good policies are so important to the company, why and how do bad policies happen?  Well, here’s how…

One: They’re Written for Problems That Don’t Exist

Outside of the corporate policy statement — which stems from your vision and mission statements — a policy statement is generally a response to a problem.  Policy is one aspect of a plan to rectify the problem (a corrective action, if you will). One example of a policy written in response to a problem is, “We will respond to every customer complaint within 24 hours.”

You write such a policy not for an isolated complaint, but because complaints are piling on top of complaints and customers are beyond “dissatisfied”.  If you’re introducing a new product or line of business and you have no customers yet…well, what’s the point of having a complaint policy? How would you know if it’s appropriate if you’ve never received a complaint?

Two: Employees Are Unaware That a Policy Exists

If you have a policy that no one knows about, it’s as bad as having no policy. The last time you wrote and implemented a policy, how did you get the word out to employees? How do you notify new employees that the policy exists and how do you train them?

Three: Policies Are Difficult to Understand

• They’re too long. Observe – but do not follow blindly – the Golden Rule of Policy Writing. If it’s longer than twenty words, make sure the point of the policy is perfectly clear.
• Their scope is undefined or unclear. Who does the policy apply to? Under what conditions? If it’s a blanket policy, it’s not an appropriate response to a specific problem.
• The policy is too complex. Another Golden Rule of Policy Writing ought to be “stay away from buzzwords, jargon, and platitudes”. Get to the point.
• It’s too vague. If the average employee can’t tell who the policy is meant for, what the point of the policy is, or you use indefinite words like “sometimes” or “often”, your policy will eventually be misinterpreted.

Also, if your policy lacks specific terms of compliance (e.g., a definition of compliance, how to monitor it, and what to measure), how do you know if people are complying?

Four: Who Owns the Policy Is Unknown or Unclear

Who has additional information regarding the policy? Who is empowered to make policy changes? If you’re not empowered but you see a need for a change, who do you go to and how do you get it taken care of?

Five: Responsibility for Enforcement is Unclear

Whether the penalty for a policy violation is “a maximum of 30 days in jail, $5,000 fine, or both”, “thirty lashes at the mast”, probationary status, or a stern talking-to, who’s going to enforce the policy? What enforcement tools are you giving them?

Six: Consequences of Policy Violation Are Unclear or Don’t Exist

How do you reward compliance?  How do you penalize noncompliance? Is the reward or penalty appropriate to the noncompliance? (Or, do you figure on using the “honor system”?)

Seven: People Don’t Believe in the Policy

This ties together “not understanding the policy” and “who owns the policy”. If your employees don’t understand the reason for the policy – if they don’t buy into it – they’re not going to throw their weight behind it. People need to have a vested interest in policy development, implementation, and enforcement. They need to participate in – have a stake in the outcome of – the process.

So, if you want meaningful, effective, and enforceable policies, start with these seven basic tenets:

1. Don’t write a policy for a nonexistent problem;
2. Be sure all employees are fully informed;
3. Write policies so they’re easy to understand;
4. Let everyone know who “owns” the policy;
5. Make it clear how the policy will be enforced and by whom;
6. State the consequences of noncompliance; and
7. Implement policies people can believe in.

Do you have an example of a really good – or a truly atrocious – policy? If it’s an example of “bad policy”, how might you make it right?

Best of luck, and best holiday wishes.
Steve