Red Wing Software - Notes from the President Ken Hilton

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

I often write and talk about the great people we have working at Red Wing Software, and how long many of them have been with the company. Of course, when you have the kind of dedicated, long-tenured people we have, they eventually think they have earned the right to retire. Greg, one of our Senior Support Specialists, after 20 years with us, has rightfully earned his place among the retired.

Even though Greg will no longer be blessing us and our customers with his presence in the office, he will certainly not be slowing down.

Greg has been a go-to person on our support team with his vast knowledge of our products, and especially payroll processes and requirements. I’m sure many of you have talked to Greg over the years, and really appreciate his ability to answer any question you have without even thinking about it. Greg was thoughtful enough to give us many months’ notice of his retirement to prepare us for his absence. After February 3rd, when you call for help, and Greg is not available, you will have the opportunity to learn what a great job Greg did of passing his expertise on to the rest of our excellent support team.

We at Red Wing Software, as well as our customers will certainly miss Greg’s knowledge, but even more important, we will miss having Greg around. We were fortunate to have Greg as a member of our team for so many years, and we wish him the best in his new adventures.

- Ken Hilton, President


Red Wing Software - Notes from the President Ken Hilton

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Every day, we all make important decisions that affect how our business is going to operate and those decisions determine the path we want the business to follow. The same holds true for our local, state, and national elections. You get to determine the direction of your community, region, and country by exercising your right and responsibility to vote.

These decisions can be difficult because of all of the confusing messages we hear, but we need to sift through the noise and try to get to the facts. We have to look past the bumper sticker messages and look at the underlying philosophy of the candidates. What direction do they want to take the community, country, and world? We need to ignore the pundits that try to tell us what a candidate means from their point of view. One way to do this is, after an interview, speech, or debate, change the channel to something non-political, and decide for yourself whether the candidate is the kind of leader you would like to see guiding their respective geographic area.

Remember, whether your candidate wins his/her race, or the opposition comes out victorious, know that you’ll get another chance to vote in two more years. However things turn out, there isn’t a better place in the world to call home.

- Ken Hilton, President


Red Wing Software - Notes from the President Ken Hilton

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

If this information looks familiar, it’s because I repeat it every couple years and I think it’s so important. We are fast approaching the end of 2015, and I want to point out some important information that needs to be considered before year-end, or shortly after the beginning of a new year.

Even if your company operates on a fiscal year, there are a few things that may need to be considered to prepare for the new calendar year:

  • How is your budgeting process going for next year? Will next year be the same as this year, or should you be planning some much needed changes to make it better?
  • Have you installed all of the latest versions of your software? You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) wait until after the first of the year to get up-to-date. Doing it now saves pressure later.
  • There are new Affordable Care Act reporting requirements for 2015 that need to be considered for many companies. Have you collected all the information needed to complete the forms? Did you know CenterPoint Payroll helps maintain this information and can fill in the forms and file them electronically?
  • How about retirement plans, and other items important to you and your employees? It is harder now than ever to find good employees, and we need to remain competitive in the marketplace to keep them.
  • It is a good time to remind employees to update their W-4 information for changes that have occurred during the year like getting married, having children, buying a house, or anything else that might change their withholding needs.
  • How is your budgeting process going? Oh, did I already ask that? I read once that “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you already are.” Is it time for some changes?

So, update that important technology today, review procedures and policies, help employees be better managers of their information, and plan for the New Year.

- Ken Hilton, President


Red Wing Software - Notes from the President Ken Hilton

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

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


Notes from Red Wing Software President, Ken Hilton

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Sometimes what seems to be an insurmountable problem can have a simple solution, if only we look at it from a different perspective. Here are a couple examples that I have been directly involved with. The first happened at a recent event I attended in Indianapolis, and the second happened early in the development of the ratio/index analysis functionality in our software and forever affected how we look at new software features.

I was recently at a conference attended by a large number of Certified Public Accountants. They were all highly educated, extremely sharp people. At the final break, the sponsors of the event provided milk and cookies as an afternoon snack. The cookies were large, and the milk was in individual serving bottles with a small opening in the top. I was talking to one of the participants as he stood with a cookie in one hand and milk in the other, when he said, “It sure would be nice to be able to dunk this cookie, but it won’t fit in the top of the bottle.” I just politely suggested he dump the milk into one of the glasses that were neatly stacked next to the big bowl filled with milk on ice, and he could dunk the cookie.

Over twenty-five years ago, I was having an intense discussion with our (then and current) Development Manager on how the data in our Ratio/Index analysis program should be displayed. This was as close to a knock-down, drag-out fight as we’ve ever had over a software feature. I thought the trend information on the reports should be presented in reverse chronological order so the most recent information was closest to the line titles, and he thought that was crazy, because financial information should always be in chronological order. One of our partners, at the time, entered the conversation at about the breaking point and after hearing just a small portion of the discussion, he suggested, “do it both ways and let the customers decide how they want to see the data,” totally ruining a perfectly good argument.

Next time you are confronted with a problem that seems to have no solution, step back, take a breath, and look at the issue from a different angle.

- Ken Hilton, President