Be prepared and have a plan. The last few weeks have had some excellent and unfortunate examples of the importance of being prepared and having a plan. The recent weather tragedies around the country, especially in the south central United States, are perfect examples of how critical it can be if you’re not prepared for the possibility of severe weather events. Many people’s lives were saved because of severe weather warnings, and their own individual preparedness with storm shelters or evacuation plans.

Even the less severe weather events that have been prevalent throughout the central and upper Midwest with the late, wet spring and farmers’ inability to get field work done as early as normal, required contingency plans for the rest of the season.

Closer to home, we had a customer recently lose over two years of financial information because of a problem with his main computer. He had religiously backed up his data, only to discover his backups were not going to the correct location, and when his computer had a problem, he found that his last good backup was two years old.

These conditions give us a good wake-up call on the importance of being prepared and having a plan for the unexpected. Whether dealing with weather, economic conditions, or technology problems, we all need to think about what our plan is to recover from unexpected and uncontrollable situations.

“Creating the Best Management Software Experience” is our vision at Red Wing Software. Now, we don’t pretend that we are perfect in every way, but we do try hard to reach this vision every day. Even if our software was completely error free, there is much more in creating the best “experience.”

The experience that our (and your) customers get when they deal with us (you) involves the entire organization. When you think about every contact point a customer has with any company, you start to see the importance of the experience. For example, at Red Wing Software, these contact points include; printed sales and marketing materials, salesperson conversations, Web site, front desk personnel, support people, the invoice the customer receives, the packaging of the product, and all of these experiences can take place before they even see the software.

So, when we think about the “experience,” we look at every function and process in the company that can affect a customer’s opinion of us. Most importantly, the only way we can improve on this experience is to get feedback from our -customers. So, please let us know whenever you feel there is something we can do to improve your “experience” working with us.

- Ken Hilton, President

It’s that time of year again, time for us in the United States to calculate what we owe in taxes to our Federal and State treasuries. Whether you choose to do your own tax returns or hire another professional to help, you should have a good and complete accounting of the financial information you need to complete the task.

At Red Wing Software, we believe that you should keep records for your own business analysis. You need this information more than any other person or entity to ensure you have a firm grasp on the profitability of your business. On the plus side, it also allows you to easily prepare your taxes. If you keep good records for yourself, information for your accountant, banker, consultant, or anyone else should be an easily extracted by-product of those records.

If your records aren’t complete, you should seriously take a look at the process you use to keep these records. Since most of you reading this are likely using some Red Wing Software accounting product, you have the foundation to keep accurate, detailed, and complete records.

While I’m certain most of us don’t want to pay more taxes than we owe, we need to remember that taxes are the rent we pay for the privilege of living in this great country.

On a topic closer to all of us at Red Wing Software, this month marks the end of an era. Long-time co-worker and mentor Jon Isackson has decided to retire. Jon has been with the company since the beginning. You can only imagine the number of hats a person can wear over a career that spans more than three decades. Jon has had a huge impact on making the company what it is today, and his vast knowledge, history, and leadership will be missed. Knowing Jon, he won’t be slowing down, and will likely look back and try to figure out how he ever had time to work. We certainly wish Jon the best in his well deserved retirement.

As you probably already know, January is the busiest month of the year at Red Wing Software. It is also a busy time for many of our customers with year-end reporting, installing new tax updates, and getting W-2s out to employees. It was especially challenging this year with the late decisions by Congress to change federal tax tables after the first of the year.

We try very hard to make sure we provide the best customer service we can by preparing for the season. I thought I would share a few things that happen before and during this busy time:

• It is a written company policy that no one takes extended vacations in January. We want to make sure that we are fully staffed to handle the call load.
• Each year, we hold several planning meetings to make sure everyone has a chance to provide input on how we help each other be as efficient as possible.
• Our Red Wing Software University created several videos to include in our help files, and on-line, showing some common processes that need to be accomplished at year-end.
• During the first two weeks of the year, we have a local restaurant bring lunches in for everyone in our Red Wing location. This keeps us fully staffed throughout the lunch hour. Plus, it keeps people from having to go outside to get lunch at the coldest time of year.
• Everyone in positions that don’t normally deal directly with customers, put on multiple hats, and pitch in to help in any way they can. Marketing people get up-to-speed on handling the front desk phones, developers work on problem data for customers, sales people and the design team handle professional services requests, and the list goes on.

I don’t normally like to brag about our company. Okay, that’s a lie. I love to brag about how hard our employees work to take care of our customers. Each year we look for, and find, new ways to improve our services during this busy time. In the rare event that we did not handle your request as quickly as you (or us) would have liked, we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.

- Ken Hilton, President

Are you a driver or a passenger? I read quite a bit, and it seems a lot of the things I’ve been reading and observing lately are related to this question. I’ll give you a few examples of what I’m talking about.

In a book that I just finished reading, a group conducted a study in which participants were to watch a video and afterwards would be tested on what they had seen. While they were focusing on the subject of the video, a person in a monkey suit walked pasted in the background. When they were tested on what they saw in the video, almost no one remembered seeing the monkey. As a driver, you need to be focused on the task at hand, but also need to be aware of what’s going on around you.

To support one of my hobbies, I subscribe to over ten aviation publications that come at least once per month, and in many of the publications there are summaries of accident reports. I read these religiously, because in this case, I would rather learn from the mistakes of others, than learn from my own. In one case, an airplane with two pilots crashed when a warning indicator light came on and in an attempt to troubleshoot the problem, both pilots focused on finding the source of the failure, and neither pilot remembered to fly the airplane. The result wasn’t pretty.

Here’s one we all see every day. Someone “driving” down the road while talking on the phone, sending a text message, eating, you name it. They clearly are not aware of what’s happening around them because they don’t maintain constant speed, they wander about in their lane, don’t go forward when the light turns green, or any number of other obvious non-driver acts. I argue that many of these people are passengers in a car with no driver.

One last example that hits close to home. My mom recently told me that when she and another person are traveling together, one person is behind the wheel and the other is driving. I’m not sure what to think of that one.

My point to all this is; when running your business (driving), and while focusing on the task at hand, don’t forget to pay attention to your peripheral vision. You might regrettably find that the task you’re focused on is being handled very well, while the business is crashing around you.

- Ken Hilton, President