The biggest myths about productivity that actually STOP us from being efficient

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.