You know what one of the best things about owning your own company is?  Flexibility.

Many of you who don’t know me well have no idea that I have a 5 year-old boy, a 3 year-old boy and a newborn little girl at home.  In addition, I help to chair the AMA SIG on Social Media and the Columbus MBA Club, volunteer my time every Wednesday evening to work with kids, sit on a few boards…you get the idea.

Owning my company gives me the flexibility to bend my work around my life.   Today I had breakfast with my family, took my son to school, worked from home in the morning, ran across town for meetings and now I’m at my office at 7:30 pm.  Tomorrow will be different.  Flexibility is critical.

Software isn’t much different than life.  Software that forces you to bend around it is like being stuck in that 8-5 job.  You lose flexibility and control.  When you are forced to bend your business to fit the software, something is wrong.

http://www.scottberkun.com/

The sad thing is much software is like this.  You know, those multi-million dollar ERP systems that require an entire consulting firm to install and configure?  You then spend the next six months reworking how you do business to fit the software.  As you grow and change, the software doesn’t change with you.

Now I suppose that’s fine if you plan to stay exactly how you are.  Be sure not to innovate or try new things, enter new businesses or change your processes to be more efficient.  Just keep on doing things the way you always have and that big clunky software you bought will do just fine.

Otherwise, you may want to invest in that  small firm who knows how to bend around you and grow with you.  Just a thought for the year 2KX.

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