Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom How to Prevent Business Tech Overload

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom How to Prevent Business Tech Overload Technology for technologys sake canhurt. We are so inundated with new solutions that its difficult to assess whats truly important. Idiscussed this issue with Amber Anderson, CEO of organizational advisory firm Kaysonin Phoenix; Rebecca Devaney, CEO of Hunter Creative Labs, a pro-social product development lab in Boston; and Thomas Smale, co-founder of online business brokerage FE Internationalin London. What business technology do you need to runa successfulcompany? AmberAnderson: It totally depends on the business. Every business is different, and the technology that you need to run YOUR business successfully depends on a variety of factors including what your business does, your teams capacity, your budgetand your goals. But for the most part, youll find all businesses nowadays should be using email,cloud storage, and a well-designed, easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly and -functional website. Also, you need a list and email marketing tool, as well as a bookkeeping [and]accounting system. Rebecca Devaney: In addition to the obvious needs such as computers and hardware, there should be software systems in place to address casual project conversations, such as Slack, and project management systems, such as Project, Wrike,Basecampor Zoho Projects. The PM software you choose depends on a few things, including time-tracking and task dependencies. In addition, you will need bookkeeping software, such as Botkeeper or Quickbooks, and then a shared file service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. No document should ever live on a staff members desk. Thomas Smale:Agood portable laptop and smartphone are essential to keeping up on the go. I always carry a portable charger to ensure that I dont have battery issues. Tell me about a business technology youve employed for your business that hasnt been worth the time, money and energy. Smale: We tried to make everyone have a smartphone, tablet, laptopand desktop PC. We found that some people preferred using two or three devices and almost no one used all of them. Individually, each can be incredibly useful, but when you have them all, the benefits are mitigated. If your people work in an office with permanent desks, get them PCs with dual monitors and a smartphone. Thats really all that most will need. Devaney: Several years ago, we built a 16 terabyte, fiber-optic storage system to produce and share videos. It was great, except that there were about three people in the world who could fix the system.It broke all the time, and we couldnt upgrade our computers or add any new software to it. It would have been better to pass hard drives around old school! Anderson: In the beginning stages of my business, we implemented a customerrelationship management (CRM) system. The system was complicated and expensive, and we werent ready. We didnt have the team in place to manage it, nor the processes to make it useful. CRMs and other automated systems are amazing, but only when implemented at the right time and the right place. For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.