By Bob Hubbard
Today in the opening years of the 21st century, computers are everywhere. They are in our cars, our stores, our phones and our home appliances. To exist in the business world of the 21st century, we need to understand the benefits that their use can provide our businesses. There are two main benefits to using computers today.
Benefit #1: They can help organize the chaos of modern life.
You’ve seen them. The walls full of sticky notes, the piles of paperwork on the desk, stacks of business cards, half done “todo” lists, and other assorted cluttered time stealers.
Proper use of a computer can organize this chaos and save you hours of time each week.
- Contacts can be organized into an easily searchable list; thereby avoiding stacks of easily lost or misfiled index or business cards.
- “ToDo” lists can be sorted, redone, reorganized, and worked from, all in seconds, compared to standard paper based systems.
- Scheduled appointments can be setup to automatically remind you about them, saving you from having to remember to check the paper planner in your drawer or on your wall that’s half hidden by sticky notes.
- Financial information can be quickly, securely and easily accessed, updated and maintained avoiding keeping track of paper registers and old fashioned accounting ledgers.
- Student information can be easily tracked, including contact information, special needs, attendance history, payment records, and promotions.
- Personal and Business expenses can be tracked allowing a more efficient means of financial planning.
- And many more.
Benefit #2: The can save you both time and money.
How many times have you thrown out old business cards, flyers, brochures or other paperwork? How much time do you spend doing paperwork each day rather than teaching or training? Have you ever needed 1 more flyer, or ran short of business cards during an event at your school? How much time do you spend tracking down paperwork needed each day or filing the days paperwork? Properly used, computers can save you time, and we all know time is money.
- Student attendance can be tracked quickly on a computer, replacing or improving the efficiency of old paper based systems of index cards, time cards, or similar.
- Student payments can be quickly checked, letting you know before class who hasn’t paid that month, thereby improving your payment speed.
- Rather than spend a lot of money on flyers at a print shop, you can print smaller quantities of flyers as needed, saving you money and helping the environment by cutting back on paper waste.
- You can quickly print out a few business cards as needed, even have several different ones using affordable off the shelf card stock that works in almost every printer.
- Using certain tools that either come with a computer or can be affordably added, you can plan out your day, week, month, and even year, increasing the efficiency of your use of time.
In order to get the most from your computer, there are a few basic skills you must have, and several advanced ones that will be of great benefit. Both you as a school owner, and one or more of your staff should have these basic skills.
Join us next week for part 2, understanding your computer.
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Bob Hubbard is an administrator of the popular martial arts portal site MartialTalk.com and president of SilverStar WebDesigns inc., a web site design and hosting company specializing in affordable solutions for martial artists. Bob can be reached at webmaster@martialtalk.com
Article Copyright © 2008 - Bob Hubbard - All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction Without Written Permission of Author.
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