Notes from the President

06 May 2020 khilton Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

First, I want to thank our entire amazing staff at Red Wing Software for their dedication to taking care of our customers’ needs during this difficult time. In addition, I want to sincerely thank you, our awesome customers, for supporting us, and I want to assure you that we are here to support you in any way we are able.
The current situation is affecting each business in unique ways. Some were forced to close (hopefully temporarily), some have remained open with some changes in logistics, and some have had to ramp up their operations and add employees.
Whatever the situation is, it is time to look at your annual projections that you budgeted before the beginning of the year. I can imagine that very few of us predicted this kind of change in our operations. What do we need to do as the economy reopens to make sure we are ready? Are there places that we need to adjust expenses? Are there processes that we need to change to keep our employees safe as they return to work? And, are there business opportunities that we should be looking at to help our customers as their business changes? It is always a good idea to think about the future and stay ahead of the game.
Finally, I want to welcome our newest member of the Red Wing Software team. Allison joined our support staff on April 20th and brings great customer service skills to our talented group. She will soon be shadowing her teammates on calls as she gets up to speed on the software.

A Message to our Customers about COVID-19

20 April 2020 khilton
As the world continues to monitor the situation with COVID-19, we wanted to share that we hope you, your families, and your employees are staying healthy, and we want to provide an update on the steps we continue to take to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and to provide the excellent service our customers are accustomed to.
Red Wing Software is closely monitoring developments with respect to COVID-19, including information and guidance published by healthcare authorities around the globe. We want you to stay focused on your business and employees and assure you that we are focused on maintaining support for our accounting and payroll software solutions and services that you rely on.
• The Red Wing Software office remains open. We have 100% of our services available and do not anticipate disruption in service. If there is anything we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to call us.
• All Red Wing Software employees now have the option to work remotely, and we are equipping them to do so, if they so choose.
• We request that, during this difficult time, all customers refrain from visiting the Red Wing Software office in person, but rather seek support via phone or email.
• The classroom training that is scheduled for May, 2020, in Red Wing, Minnesota, will be rescheduled for a later date once the situation changes.
• Red Wing Software has restricted non-essential commercial business travel for our employees and are adhering to guidance from the World Health Organization on self-quarantine and testing guidelines.
We are in regular communication with our teams, keeping them updated on evolving situations and any associated adjustments we need to make. We continue to closely monitor the situation and may send periodic updates if the COVID-19 situation evolves and anything changes on our side.
As we all navigate through these challenging days, please know that you have our ongoing support and commitment.

Notes from the President

08 April 2020 khilton Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

I hope this newsletter finds everyone healthy and safe during this COVID-19 pandemic. At Red Wing Software, we are fortunate to be in a business that can adapt quickly to changes. All our amazing and dedicated employees are working remotely. We were able to get everyone up and running at home in a short amount of time, without any interruption of service for our customers. The only services that we are temporarily suspending are our face-to-face classroom training and professional services. We encourage anyone needing more instruction and training, when a quick call to support isn’t enough, to request online help. We are very effective at providing training online using our remote software tools.
We are here to help, and elsewhere in this newsletter is an article that describes some of the built-in tools and options available in our software that can help our customers work remotely and more efficiently. Now would be a good time to evaluate the processes that you have in place for dealing with adverse situations or disaster recovery. While these recent changes that were forced upon you are fresh in your mind, refine your plans for dealing with similar situations in the future. We will do what we can to help your business get through this time with as little interruption as possible. Stay safe, and we will get through this together.

 

Notes from the President

11 March 2020 khilton Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Almost every Tuesday morning, I have the opportunity to join our amazing support team for a short meeting. We discuss recent issues they’ve helped customers with and ways that we might be able to make our customer experience better. We may talk about tweaks to the software, a better process to accomplish a task, or a recent common problem with an operating system update and how to help our customers solve it.
At a recent meeting, one of the topics was about an issue with ransomware. Ransomware is a malicious program that infects a computer by opening a file or clicking on a link in an e-mail that comes from an unrecognized source or may have even been forwarded by someone you know. This program typically prevents access to information on the machine until you pay a ransom to the individual that created the virus. The alternative is restoring a backup from a time before the computer was infected.
I bring this up to point out the importance of keeping your antivirus software and operating system up to date with current versions. As older versions of operating systems and software are phased out and not supported by the authors, the updates that include code that attempts to prevent these attacks are no longer available. The cost of keeping your technology (hardware and software) up to date is far lower than the cost of recovering from malicious activity.
As you create your budget for the year (which should be complete for 2020 by now) in addition to the normal budgeted items, you should include a line item for keeping your technology current.

Notes from the President

06 February 2020 khilton Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

I am a firm believer in the value of continuing education. I’m not necessarily saying everyone should go back to school and get an advanced degree. What I am talking about is getting little snippets of knowledge from a wide variety of sources.
It might be a few minutes in an internal meeting where someone in your organization can share something they recently learned that helped them be more efficient in their job. It could be an hour-long webinar from an industry expert, many times offered at little or no cost. Maybe it’s spending time reading a book about your area of expertise. Or, you might spend a day or two, perhaps even an entire week at an advanced classroom training learning about the latest advances in your industry. My personal goal is to get 40 hours of continuing education every year using a variety of sources.
I know you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to waste away from my regular job duties.” I would almost guarantee, in a short amount of time, you will learn something that saves you more time in your day than you spent on the continuing education exercise. Whenever someone tells me they don’t have time to do something, my response is always, “Everyone has the same number of minutes in a day; it’s all about how you choose to spend them.”