Time

Time. If you operate a service based business, Time is one of the most difficult things that you have to deal with. Time can be your friend or your enemy. There is 24 hours in a day and 168 hour in a week. From a business perspective, it is not only a matter of what we do with it, but sometimes more importantly how we account for it.

Quality Systems Solutions, Inc. is a full service IT solution provider. That means that we offer hardware, software and services to our clients. Hardware, such as Servers, Desktop PCs, Laptops, Phone Systems and Windows Mobile devices are fairly easy to keep track of. For each "unit" there is normally some fixed profit (or loss) associated with the sale of that product. Software is pretty much the same thing, although recently Microsoft Software has has a good deal of back-end money associated with it in the form of Big Easy Partner Subsidies and various VAR Rebates. Generally speaking there is still some sort of linear relationship between the units sold and the profit (or loss) realized.

Services are a whole different thing. SPOILER ALERT! If you landed on this page looking for a solution to your Time problems, I'm afraid that you will be disappointed. This posting is primarily about me sharing my pain. If I had a solution, I'd be selling a book, like so many others in the Tech Business seem to be doing these days. But I don't so, let's just compare notes...

There to two primary categories of time that I am concerned with as well as the relationship between the two. Let's call them billable time and payroll time. Billable time "represents" time for which a client is going to be charged. Payroll time is the time for which an employee's hourly pay is figured or for which some other compensation scheme is associated. Part of the frustration is that neither is absolute and seldom are the two related.

Wouldn't it be nice if technician Timmy worked 8 hours a day, five days a week and 100% of his time were billable? In such a situation, the difference between what you pay him and what you charge the customer would be your profit. Yes, I know that even that simple example has lots of hidden variables such as overhead and employee benefits, but you get the idea.

Now, one of the question is, is that really so nice? What if you are an MSP? Would that work for you? If Timmy is 100% billable to one or more clients, who is delivering your Managed Services? So perhaps that one-to-one relationship isn't so good.

I believe that before you can even begin to optimize your time you need to have a full understanding of how your company uses time and most importantly how it is accounted for. I will tell you that for years, we used nothing more complicated than Microsoft Outlook and Quick Books. I can also tell you that such a "simple" system was one of the greatest impediments to our growth and success. In my next posting, I'll discuss IT PSA systems and describe out experience with one of the leading solutions.