• Stephanie (Marketing) will be teaching a TechovationMN class - to teach high school students how to develop and build an app. Winners could compete on a national level.
• Many Red Wing Software employees and their significant others from our Red Wing location enjoyed a fun company Christmas party that included dinner and a play at The Sheldon Theatre.
• Ryan (Marketing) and Cori (QA) took their son, Liam, on the North Pole Express. Liam is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, and was so excited to ride on a real life steam train.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and any other holiday or special event celebrated this time of year.

I had a conversation with a prominent consultant in the accounting industry regarding best management practices for high growth business. This is a very timely topic for the first newsletter of 2016, as everyone in business should be considering how to make the new year more profitable than the last. While the conversation initially centered on accounting software, it quickly became clear the focus really revolved around systems and processes. Here are a few of the observations we discussed during our conversation.

The best software in the world (of course that means software from Red Wing Software) can’t fix broken processes. A business needs to identify what is important to them for analysis purposes, and then implement a system that provides that information. That may mean changing some internal processes, so data that is being collected is sufficient to get the results they’re after. Change in process is always a difficult thing to implement, but may be necessary to accomplish an ultimate goal. The way to make a change successful is to make the process as easy as possible for people to understand, inform them of the importance of the information, how it will be used (share results), and then enforce implementation. It normally takes sticking to a new daily routine for just a couple of weeks for it to become habit.

I know many people reading this newsletter have great systems in place already, and have coworkers that would argue that there is no better way to do things. I would argue that any time we start to believe that our business can’t improve each and every thing that it does, the business stops growing, and we all know that without growth the business will fade away. I challenge everyone to take a look at what you’re doing today, tweak something that will make your business better, and reap the rewards. Here’s to a successful, different, and more profitable 2016.

- Ken Hilton, President

• Chad (Sales) was a successful bow hunter on his birthday.
• Carole (Finance) and her daughter Zoe won championship belt buckles in their local horse show circuit.
• Leah (Support) attended a Managerial Accounting Training class.
• Katrina (Admin) and her husband Josh are first time home owners.
• Roxie (Admin) headed up a drop-off location for collecting shoebox gifts for Operation Christmas Child - helpers include her grandsons Ezra and Ashton.
• Dan's (Design) daughter Tiffany graduated from the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago with a doctorate degree on his birthday.
• Mike (QA) received a surprise gift for his 40th birthday - a weekend trip to Seattle.
• Mark (Business Development) was visited at work by his grandsons. Ronan may have found a future; he seemed pretty happy.