Instead of telling you what I think this month, I will just ask some questions to provoke some thought. I think you’ll likely know what I think by reading the questions I ask.

• Are you running your business, or is your business running you?
• Do you control the expenses in your business by operating from a budget, or do you operate by the “seat of the pants”?
• Do you have processes in place (and documented) for internal job functions, or do you assume everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing?
• You know that everyone in your organization has certain responsibilities. Have they been clearly communicated, and do the people in your organization know they have these responsibilities?
• Do you know the true cost of items that you produce or buy for resale, including indirect costs?
• Do you know what your most profitable items are and those items that are not so profitable and maybe should be discontinued?
• Do you know your businesses key financial ratios, what they mean, and where the danger levels are?
• Do you analyze the return on new asset purchases before the purchase has been made?

If you think you have good answers to all of these questions, ask them again. I challenge you to continually ask these questions throughout the year, and improve operations through better management. At Red Wing Software, we evaluate our position and try to answer these questions regularly. Once we think we know all the answers, we stop improving.

- Ken Hilton, President

Red Wing Software customer, Indy Family Farms, recently was awarded the Cropland Environmental Certification and the On-Farm Security Certification by Validus Ventures LLC for a commitment to environmental cropland stewardship and on-farm safety and security standards. To read the full story, please click here: Daily Journal Online.

Just two months ago I wrote about summer storms and having a disaster recovery plan. Well, the Red Wing, MN office had a chance to experience this very problem, and try out our plan.

Last Saturday evening, we had an electrical storm that knocked out power for a few hours. When the power to the building came back on, not everything restarted the way it should have. Our file servers that hold all our database information needed to be restarted. All individual computers had to be manually turned back on, which prevented employees from logging into their computer from remote locations. And, the computerized phone system would not reboot at all.

Larry, our “computer wizard” and IT Manager, worked Sunday and had almost everything back up and running by the time everyone arrived at the office Monday morning. He had a technician arrive at the office first thing Monday to repair our phone system. Knowing that the repair would take some time, he already connected an old analog telephone to our fax line and rerouted our incoming phone numbers to all ring in on that line so we could at least take incoming calls.

While Roxie could take calls and log them into our customer service software for support technicians to return calls when the system came back up, with only one line, we didn’t have a way to make outgoing calls to answer support questions. Not wanting to make our customers wait an unknown amount of time to receive a call back, our support staff took it upon themselves to use their personal cell phones to make the return calls and take care of our customers even before the phone system was fixed.

This certainly doesn’t qualify as a major disaster, but it does show the importance of having the right people in place and a plan to get things back in operating condition. Thank you to our entire staff for pulling together and minimizing the effect of this temporary problem, and to our customers for being patient through this process.

Ken Hilton - President

Due to popular demand, customers are able to sign up for classroom training sessions online! Simply go to our web site and from the top menu select Training and then select Classroom Training, choose the name of the Classroom Training session you are interested in, and then click Register on the lower left-hand side of the page. (Note: If you are signed in before performing these steps, your customer information will automatically appear during the registration process.)

You can access all of your activation codes and/or registration codes online. Just sign in at www.redwingsoftware.com, click on My RWS in the upper right, click on the My Products tab, and you will be able to view all of the products you use, along with each of their activation/registration codes.

On another note, up to 96% of support calls to Red Wing Software are taken directly from our automated phone system, meaning those customers reached support directly, rather than waiting for a call back. To access the number for your own specific product and access the technicians directly, sign in to the web site, click on My RWS in the upper right, and you will see your support telephone number on the lower left.