It was 10:00. I was sitting in front of my living room TV watching a baseball game. And, as usual, I was catching up on my company's daily paperwork. My wife came in the room and took the remote from me. She switched the channel to Bravo and together we watched The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

My life has never been the same.

I was riveted. Who wouldn't be? Ashley, who is Jacqueline's 19-year-old daughter, got into a fight with Danielle and -- can you believe this -- ripped out some of her hair extensions in front of everyone. At a benefit party, no less. Danielle was understandably upset. The police got involved. The husbands got involved. I got involved.

This show makes the Sopranos look like English royalty. I must see more episodes, but the only way I'm going to be able to do this is to get more work done during the day. I need to be more efficient if I'm going to make The Real Housewives of New Jersey a major part of my life.

How am I going to do this? With good, productive small business technology.

A Social Network of Your Own

First, I'm going to cut down on the number of service calls my people are answering and try to get my clients to answer their questions faster. The more we work online, the more time I'll have to watch Teresa and Jacqueline complain about Danielle. I'm going to get my webmaster to install a gadget from Chat4Support or Zopim on my Web site so clients can chat with us online rather than wasting valuable TV time yapping on the phone. And instead of running into my high school friends on Facebook, I'm going to create my company's own social network on Ning or Forumotion so my clients can research issues themselves or post questions and we can respond with advice, support, and articles.

Next, I'm going to eliminate all the different calendars in my company and improve the way my people schedule appointments. I'm sick of spinning wheels asking where everyone is or having to explain why we double-booked a client visit. I should be spending more time figuring out how in the world Danielle's breast became infected and how she can avoid such things in the future. When scheduling internal appointments I'm going to use Google's calendar or FindMyShift, or just move everything we're doing to an online project management tool such as Basecamp, Skylight, Ubidesk, or Wrike. And if I need to involve outsiders I'm going to make more use of Tungle or Meetifyr to coordinate everyone's available time. (continued...)

1  |  2  |  3  |  Next Page >

 

© 2010 Business Week Online under contract with MarketWatch. All rights reserved.