Herzog & Associates LLC http://www.herzogsoftware.com Custom Database Software that Helps You Reclaim Your Time, Energy, and Sanity Thu, 28 May 2015 22:21:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3 How the click of a mouse can keep American jobs from being shipped overseas http://www.herzogsoftware.com/how-the-click-of-a-mouse-can-keep-american-jobs-from-being-shipped-overseas/ http://www.herzogsoftware.com/how-the-click-of-a-mouse-can-keep-american-jobs-from-being-shipped-overseas/#comments Fri, 15 May 2015 00:58:40 +0000 http://www.herzogsoftware.com/?p=31 click

Which is more efficient for inventory? Going shelf by shelf and using a paper and pencil to manage a checklist, or having everything in a database that allows you to see the entire inventory all at once? It’s a click of the mouse versus sending people down to the warehouse day after day, hour after hour, to look stuff up. With databases, employees can go onto their computer screens, and their computers all see the same thing. No more walking all the way across the machine shop and shuffling papers and folders around. These blue-collar companies have all been doing business in the dark ages. We are more technologically advanced, yet the manufacturing world doesn’t use it—and union shops fight it. We want these companies to stay in business and increase output for the same costs! Japan, Korea, China, and Germany are finding ways to exponentially increase each employee’s productivity through American database software. If I can make 1000 units for $1000 in 1 hour, and we can make 3000 units for $1000 in 1 hour, nobody lost their jobs. Plus, we can outcompete foreign factories! Implementing systems and processes doesn’t put people out of business; not keeping up with foreigners’ exponentially increasing productivity is what puts you out of business. Sick of shipping jobs overseas? It’s not the corporate greed or lack of regulations, it’s that American companies can’t keep up with systems-driven productivity! A lot of manufacturers issue price quotes broken down to the fourth decimal for each unit (i.e., $1.0002 versus $1.0004). It’s because these factories produce widgets in the millions and millions, so these things add up. So you can become even cheaper than foreign factories using simple databases. (1st article about manufacturing)

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The biggest myths about productivity that actually STOP us from being efficient http://www.herzogsoftware.com/the-biggest-myths-about-productivity-that-actually-stop-us-from-being-efficient/ http://www.herzogsoftware.com/the-biggest-myths-about-productivity-that-actually-stop-us-from-being-efficient/#comments Fri, 15 May 2015 00:57:50 +0000 http://www.herzogsoftware.com/?p=29 myth

The biggest assumption is that just because you have technology, you’re running things as efficiently as possible. So many businesses say, “We use spreadsheets. We bought this $50k software 3 years ago. It cannot get any better than this.” When I go into these companies, I say to them, “Hey, what if I can show you a way to do something with 1 click in 1 second, something that has been taking your employees and entire day to do manually—even using your own technology? It’ll cost only $1000 or $2000, and you’ll never have to pay that money again.” One time, a client bought an off-the-shelf $50k database software package to oversee all orders, quotes, and bookkeeping. But none of it was customized to their business operations, so when they started using it, they realize it didn’t so a single thing for them that they wanted it to. The sales rep told them they needed to spend another $50k to upgrade to a new database—then charged them $800 for that “advice.” I just can’t believe that anybody would still be using such an archaic tool, especially one with such a big price tag. myths about automation that cause XYZ bad things to happen (If you are using spreadsheets and word processing you are automated! Faster document management and document generation only happens with expensive packages (myth of technology = efficiency)

The purpose of a database is to help your business stay organized and keep information easily accessible, so that you can use it.
small businesses are heavy users of Microsoft Excel or Google spreadsheets. A spreadsheet may seem similar to a database. But a spreadsheet is not nearly as powerful as a database for large volumes of information. Also, getting information into and out of spreadsheets can be clunky. You may have to do a lot of manual data entry, or manually exporting and importing data to other programs. And you can’t easily manipulate spreadsheet data — i.e., analyze it, move it into other applications, or run reports with it. Databases can make your organization much more efficient and give management valuable insights. They help make sense of your information. They can help you make your products and services more valuable. They can help you sell more. For example, if you own an online store, you could use a database for your website to keep track of customer data, purchases, prices, and other information. This can be transferred directly into your accounting system — saving you the time to collect the data, find the corresponding spreadsheet, and input the data yourself. With sophisticated software, this data could be used on the fly to make suggestions for additional purchases. The data can also help you manage inventory levels, to know when inventory is getting low or when something is out of stock.

 

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Asking, “Why would my organization need a database?” would be like asking, “Why does a human being need his brain to remember things?” http://www.herzogsoftware.com/asking-why-would-my-organization-need-a-database-would-be-like-asking-why-does-a-human-being-need-his-brain-to-remember-things/ http://www.herzogsoftware.com/asking-why-would-my-organization-need-a-database-would-be-like-asking-why-does-a-human-being-need-his-brain-to-remember-things/#comments Fri, 15 May 2015 00:56:17 +0000 http://www.herzogsoftware.com/?p=27 brain

Have you ever calculated how much time it takes to rifle through a multitude of filing cabinets to find specific documents? Suppose it takes an employee making $20 an hour ten minutes to walk to a records room, find a particular document in a file cabinet, make a copy of the file, deliver the copy to the intended recipient, re-file the original document and return to his desk. If he has to perform that function only six times a day, that’s an hour of lost productivity per day – or about $5,200 per year in wages.

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