Category: Business

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Business Life

Business for the Future

Why is the sole purpose of a business the short-term gain instead of on the long-term future on not just the business, but the customers as well? At least that is sometimes how it feels. With Go the Extra Mile – Not Quite What You Thought, my friend Nate Beran touches on this when he links to a piece on the Mittelstand at Inc.com. The Mittelstand are small-to-medium sized businesses in Germany that are unique in the fact that they are usually family-owned and centuries-old. If you are planning on opening your own business, you will want to hire Top Rated Security Services. As a relatively recent convert to the family farm (as compared to my younger brother), it is an almost inspiring read and look at how a person might frame decisions when thinking not of just profitability for the next quarter, but for the long-term viability of the entire business.

Since I’ve had children of my own, my perspective has changed drastically. A decision to be made isn’t just about how it will affect the bottom line of today, tomorrow, or even five years down the road … no, it is made with an eye to the distant future, to a time when my sons might be the ones walking on the same land and looking at the same sunset as it goes down over the same fields. I want to be able to supply that to my own children, and their children. The idea of a business, in this case a farm, staying within our family for centuries excites me, but for this a business need to be well managed, including production and finances, so things like budget and payment can be handled with services as payroll systems uk so everything is more easy and effective.

Many times that can mean temporary difficulties to get over the proverbial “hump” to some different time. It might mean forgoing the run-up to try to keep up with the people around you. It might mean staying smaller so that the family can be the ones to take care of the entire operation instead of needing to bring on help.

I know I don’t have the answers, but this is just a small taste of the lens I look through when a decision is needing to be made. We are blessed to currently be looking at the third and fourth generation of Martens farmers working the place … I hope to one day maybe see the fifth and sixth do the same. I want to provide that opportunity for my family.

Categories
Business Life Technology

Technology in the Barn

Now that we have almost 4000 little pigs in our hog barns, our focus turns to how to better manage the double-sized operation without needing to add manpower. My dad and brother are excellent herdsmen, and I have no doubt that the added pigs are in good hands … but my end revolves around making sure that our numbers stay good and that we are building a sustainable business not just for the short-and-medium term but for the future a well.

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Of course I jump to thinking about using technology in some capacity, so I’ve been working in my mind about how that will work.

The most obvious change we have made is to move our bookkeeping online to Quickbooks Online and using the iOS apps to make us more honest and to easily add receipts for those things we purchase. The update to the website has made the service much easier to use and we have been pleased with it so far.

However, when it comes to working out at the barns themselves that is still going to be a WIP. Since the office is not complete (it is currently a covered mud hole until the ground thaws enough to pour the concrete floor), that will need to happen in the future. However, here are some thoughts on what I am going to be attempting.

  • I am going to keep as little technology permanently out in the office. I’ll have a place to keep papers that need to be scanned, but the technology for the office will be completely mobile so that it can be kept in better conditions.
  • Every piece of paper we need to keep around will be scanned, organized, and stored where it can be backed up continuously. The documents we have are too important to have in only one physical location.
  • I am looking at moving some of our paper stuff to an iOS application. Some benefits would be digital historical records for the pigs along with additional features like a camera that can be used to document needs within the barns and easy access to information like dosage recommendations for medications and other information. That is a very long-term project but after going through PQA Plus certification there is so much to keep track of that you really need to have a companion with you and I think an app could do just that.
  • Our generator maintenance schedule and information will also need to be digital in some way. Possibly a separate application or maybe just a spreadsheet to start until I get a better handle on what the information needs to look like.

Those are just a few ideas I am tossing around at the moment. More will come, many will die off and be replaced with others but the idea is to try and use technology to make things easier and not more difficult. The benefits should always benefit the farmer and the animals and I think there are huge areas completely ignored by the technology industry right now to do just that.

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Business Technology

WSJ, HP, and Me

This is a pseudo follow-up to yesterday’s post on HP’s new firmware support policy, and has the benefit of also including a quote from me on a Wall Street Journal Digits post titled H-P Says It Will Clarify Controversial Server Software Policy by Spencer E. Ante.

Mr. Ante reached out to me over Facebook and asked for some comments. Shockingly (to me, at least), he included one of them in the linked post.

Besides the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it abbreviated H-P before and my positions as “webmaster” really is an old position (but still the official one), I think it is kind of cool.

However, as to the remarks made by the HP executives, I’m not assuaged at all. The fact that they announced the change at all is an indication of where they are going in the future (or at least, where they are considering going in the future).

As a campus that relies on HP ProCurve networking gear, HP portables for faculty and staff, and was considering HP servers for a needed storage solution that is worrying. They’ve fallen down the line as far as vendors are concerned and I’ll be looking elsewhere for our server needs in the future.

Update on 2014/2/11 @ 11:49am – HP has clarified its statements from a couple of days ago with another blog post. While it does leave it open for security updates and some other issues to be available to everyone, it still creates a barrier between users and HP. While it might appeal to some, I’m still highly skeptical of the move and it hasn’t changed my stance at all.

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Business Technology

Open Enterprise Server 11 SP2 Released

I’m a little excited about this announcement because OES 11 SP2 is going to serve as the backbone for some major infrastructure improvements here at work in the near future. The use of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 as the backbone has me excited along with a bunch of nice little additions and improvements.OES 11

The main thing I have  been testing is connecting OS X 10.9 Mavericks machines via AFP and I am happy to announce that it is working as it should right out of the box! That will open up some exciting possibilities for the future here on campus.

I still have some testing to do and then to actually order the hardware and do more testing … then FINALLY be able to make the switch and move us over to OES 11 and retire our aging NetWare 6.5 servers. They have served us extremely well, but I am looking forward to being able to shut them down for the first time and hopefully have our OES cluster serve us for years to come.

Categories
Business Technology

Bringing the Change

First of all, congrats to Novell on winning the award. From the looks of it, iPrint is getting some well-needed accolades for the work they have been putting in. I’m looking forward to playing with it soon myself.

When I retweeted that link today the back of my head was screaming PRINTING IS DEAD as loud as it could. I had to ignore it and retweet it anyway because if there is one thing I have learned over the past few years it is that printing might be dying, but it is not dead and printing will still be a vital part of any organization for a while to come.

As people steeped in technology, we might see the end coming and might even be able to get there ahead of others. However, if we want to bring everyone else along for the ride we need to do a few things:

  1. Stop yelling that it is going to happen.
  2. Figure out what problems your current solution is not solving for them.
  3. Solve those problems BETTER than their current solution.

You need to respect the people you are working with first because you’re not going to find out why they are doing what they are doing until they are willing to sit down and open up with you. Then work to solve those problems in a manner better than they are already doing. People aren’t going to give up their solution until it is worse in some way that affects them directly and painfully.

Then everyone is happy!