Are you asleep at the technology wheel?

By Jeff Lovelady, CPA

I had a meeting this week with the IT department here at Bell & Company. WOW what an eye opener. We have some technology that is being implemented here at the firm that just blows me away. The things you can do with it are almost limitless. Down time is virtually nonexistent baring a natural disaster.(Knock on wood, right) The ease of working within the systems while people are still working is a breeze. They refer to it as “Cloud” computing. In our industry protecting the information of our clients is top priority. I would say that we are 100% paperless at this time. That does not mean that we do not have paper lying around, that will never change but all of our workpapers, etc are online. Us older coots have to spread paper out on our desk at times and until they give me a 4 monitor system, I will still have to sometimes print it all out to see the big picture, you know, to grind in the details and formulate a conclusion. Which brings me to the point of my message: If you do not have the technology in place to manage your business in such a tight market as it is today, you are setting yourself up for failure. You as a business owner need real time accurate information that you can use to manage your business. You need numbers weekly from your systems that give you rate per mile, deadhead, Fuel Surcharge per mile, Miles per truck, revenue per truck or a plethora of other benchmarks that you may use. What we see is most companies have their own set of benchmarks that they like to analyz. The important thing is that you get something that works for you. Also, don’t just accept the numbers for what they are, dig into the details and try to understand where they come from. You may be surprised at what you find. If your technology is suffering the “I do not want to change” attitude, change it, you’ll be glad you did. After all, you have hundreds or even thousands of mouths to feed. Don’t let the attitude of the few impact the lives of the many.

Have an attitude of gratitude!