September 11, 2009 Day of Remembrance
Today is a day to reflect on what's good in the world.
September 7th, 2009
Happy Labor Day, I hope all of you are enjoying your day off.
Our software conversion over the past month as been for the most part, very succesful. As we knew woudl happen, it has slowed down all of the administrative wrk like order entry, payables and receiveables for the short term as we have all learned how the system works. The good news is, we are learning quickly and gaining speed every day.
Our online system, DOTS, is now functioning with the very basic information now available. Over the next week or two, the bells and whistles will start to be implemented.
Our automated e-mail communications are also a priority to get re-started. I am hoping that we will have that part of the new engine built and running by the end of the week. Our old system of e-mails was built to send out individual e-mails for every order and were told many times, it was annoying to get so many e-mails. Our new model is to send out one e-mail daily updating the status of every current in the system. We are thinking that it will be easier to follow the orders and react to any issue that may be occuring that would prevent an order from being produced and shipped on time.
I am also getting ready this week to continue my travels with the New Product Showcase. The schedule is posted on the website, so those of you in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwuakee, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Des Moines and Omaha, can check to see the day, place and time I will be there. I will be displaying a whole new setup of designs and techniques in the booth, so be sure to stop by if you can.
Since it is Labor Day, it is now time for me to take a nap.
Rob
August 18th, 2009
After 6 days of use, we are getting more and more comfortable using our new system. Unfortunately, the first week did not come without some issues and all we can do is apologize to the customers we caused problems to and promise that we are rapidly making the necessary adjustments so it never happens again.
We are rapidly getting caught up on entering the backlog of orders and are making sure all rushes, arts and revisions are taking priority. Our goal is to be completely caught up sometime midweek, this week. DOTS and the automated e-mail communication shoudl be up and running today, so those of you that miss the real-time status information, you will have it shortly.
i have had some questions about our sanity of changing systems when we had one of the best, if not the best system of anyone in the contract decorating industry. the way I explain it is as a metaphor. 5 years ago, Tiger Woods was the best golfer of his time, and possibly ever. However, he realized that he could not sustain that status for the rest of his career if he continued with the same golf swing. Working with his swing coach, he totally re-built his swing to assure he would always be the best of the best even though it caused temporary problems. We were in the exact same situation. Using our old system, we were the best of the best in my opinion however we would not have been able to sustain that for the next 10 - 20 years with the system we were using. So, I elected to write a whole new custom program that would enable us to remain on top and go beyond in the future knowing that we would have hiccups along the way. It worked and we are accomplishing what we dreamed about when the decision was made to proceed.
If you would like to know more about the opportunities we now have, do not hesitate in calling. I am always looking to have solid discussions on what we can do and what our great customers would like to see us do going forward.
Rob
