In a meeting the other day, an owner looks to me and says “Bret, we don’t really depend on technology here, we’re probably not like your other clients that really depend on their computers”. In the context of the conversation it sort of made sense. But we walked out of the meeting and the office manager said to me. “He’s got to be off his rocker!”

“If my floor guys don’t have their systems up, we stop production.”
“If my sales guys are down I have every one of them breathing down my neck.”
“Our customer service people do about 80% of their communication via email.”
“Some of our distributors won’t even accept call in orders any more. Web based only.”

“Don’t depend on technology? I tell you what, shut off all the computers for a day and see what happens.”

Ok, so I embellished a bit, and this conversation happened more than “the other day” ago. But it’s “based on a true story” and a great example of the disconnect between ownership, management, sales, customer service and others.

Have meetings about technology, workflow and efficiency. Being on the same page is step one.

Written by Bret Erickson of Passkey Computer Services
http://www.passkeyinc.com @passkeycs