New Year's Resolution: Improve Your Business in 2007

WebKnowHow
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; 04:57 AM

Every year, people celebrate the New Year with resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking, or pay off their credit card debt. But what about business goals for 2007? New Year’s Day is an opportune time for businesses to commit to improving customer relationships, developing better billing systems, increasing overall efficiency, and driving more revenue. Intervals, a robust web-based task and time management system developed by Pelago, helps businesses fulfill those resolutions, even if getting to the gym three times a week is still a highly unlikely prospect for many business owners, managers and project directors.

The time that most managers spend in administrative and project management hell translates into lost billable hours—in other words, lost revenue.

“Intervals is great because I realize how many hours we all spend where: how much time I spend in meetings, on testing, lab maintenance, and so on,” said Jennifer Payne, a manager of quality assurance at software services giant Computer Associates and a corporate user of Intervals. “My team now recognizes the value of knowing where their time goes. And if the boss questions any of it, I can give answers fast.”

"We encourage everyone to go to the Intervals web site and calculate how much their business is losing each year," said Intervals developer John Reeve. "It's always amazing to see how quickly a few minutes here and there add up."

But how much could a business really save? According to the Intervals calculator:

• A consultant who bills at $150/hour and spends an hour each day on administrative tasks is losing $37,500 every year.
• A team of four people with an average $100/hour rate, each spending 45 minutes each day on paperwork, loses a total of $75,000 annually.
• A business of 10 employees with an average hourly salary of $75 and a half hour of daily red tape is missing $93,750 in potential revenue.

About Intervals

Created by Pelago, Intervals was originally designed to solve Pelago’s own struggles with tracking time, billing clients, and knowing where projects stood in real-time. Intervals is ideal for service companies that bill based on hourly work, freelancers and independent contractors, and small businesses, but can be used by anyone who needs to manage tasks and track time. Learn more about Intervals at www.myintervals.com.

About Pelago

Pelago is a Santa Barbara, California-based web design and web development firm founded in 2000. Pelago specializes in developing highly intuitive web sites and reliable web-based applications, and injecting them with solid business sense and functionality. Pelago clients include JD Power and Associates, Nexxus, Xplane, Network Hardware Resale, and TenetCare. Learn more about Pelago at www.pelagodesign.com.