Probably everybody is wondering why this title, after a while I realize that produce good software is pretty much like produce good food, in this case fine dinning, with the next words that I will write, I’m not trying to say that I’m a guru or that I’m the absolute and final word about software development, is just an opinion based on the experience that I gather during the past years about this subject.
Good software requires:
- Good team - Proper communication - Standards - Good Knowledge - Experience - Methodology
If he were alive today, Luca Pacioli would probably love poring over a Web analytics report. Pacioli, a Franciscan monk who published the first balance sheet in 1494, understood the power of data to transform the way companies make decisions. Today, thanks to the Internet, the amount of data available to any company with a website dwarfs anything Pacioli could have imagined. Web analytics programs track nearly everything that happens on a website, keeping a real-time record of how potential customers find the site, how they behave on it, and why (or why not) they buy stuff.
The wealth of data is so great -- you might learn, for instance, that customers in Milwaukee typically spend three minutes on your site and use Firefox -- that many entrepreneurs find it overwhelming. "If you try to look at every piece of data, you'll go crazy," says Andy Beal, an online-marketing consultant and co-author of Radically Transparent, a book on the power of new-media tools to build a brand.
To get a sense of how to use analytics to uncover your website's flaws and make more money, we asked a fast-growing start-up to let three online-marketing experts review its analytics reports. The panel included Beal; Reid Carr, CEO of Red Door Interactive, an online-marketing firm based in San Diego; and Avinash Kaushik, from Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) analytics division.
Our guinea pig, Bonobos, is an apparel company founded a year ago by Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn, both Stanford M.B.A.'s. Based in New York City, Bonobos sells fitted men's pants that, according to Dunn, avoid "the khaki diaper butt problem." The company sells its products on its website (it has no retail distribution), and prices typically range from $110 to $190.
By September, when we looked at Bonobos' analytics data, the company had already gotten off to a fast start. The company was booking about $170,000 a month in sales. What were the keys to Bonobos' success, and how could the site be improved? Here's what the numbers told us.
Here the tips from Norm Brodsky he is a veteran entrepreneur. His co-author is editor-at-large Bo Burlingham. Their book, The Knack, will be published by Portfolio this month.
Norm Brodsky believes that these are the 10 most important lessons This is 29 years of experience:
1. Numbers run a business. If you don't know how to read them, you are flying blind.
You do have to know enough accounting, however, to figure out which numbers are most important in your particular business, and then you should develop the habit of watching them like a hawk.
2. A sale isn't a sale until you collect.
There's a common assumption that when somebody buys something from you, it's like money in the bank. Sooner or later, you are going to get paid. That's not always true, of course, and just how much sooner or later the payment arrives can make a big difference. But most people don't think about that when they first go into business. The term bad debt doesn't enter their vocabulary until they suddenly find themselves with a receivable they can't collect. By the same token, the concept of collection time doesn't become meaningful until they discover they don't have enough cash to pay their bills despite having made a lot of sales.
The crisis are affecting everyone, that’s why I was reading Inc Magazine ( One of the magazines around) and I saw this article about how to save money, and perhaps could be useful to everyone. Enjoy.
Are your costs on the rise? Don't bother answering -- it's a rhetorical question. Inflation recently reached a 17-year high, and the economy is still dragging along at a maybe-we're-not-technically- in-a-recession-but- it-sure-feels-like-it pace. Earlier this year, there were lots of optimistic predictions that growth would pick up in the fall, but you don't hear that kind of talk much anymore. Businesses need to find every possible way to cut costs -- while, ideally, avoiding morale-busters like layoffs. Here are five ways companies are doing just that.
1. Send Your Employees Home
Earlier this year, David Nilssen went searching for ways to cut down on office space. His Bellevue, Washington, financial services company, Guidant Financial Group, has 110 employees and occupies about 11,000 square feet of space. Despite the real estate downturn, commercial rents are still high in the Bellevue area, thanks in part to neighbors like Microsoft. So Nilssen decided to send some of his employee’s home. Starting this month, Guidant's 15-person Web publishing team will be working remotely, bringing the total number of telecommuters at the company to 20. Nilssen will supply these employees with laptops and Internet connections -- costs he would incur even if they worked in the office. Guidant has also begun testing out four-day, 40-hour weeks for some administrative employees. The workers will have rotating schedules and share desks to cut back on the need for space.
The arrangement does present some challenges. Nilssen knows he will need to work harder to communicate with his remote staff and to organize events that bring everyone in the office together. But he thinks the savings will make it all worthwhile: This month, he won't renew the lease on 3,000 square feet of office space, which will save the company $48,000 in rent and operations costs next year.
In this point the only complicated thing here is the commitment and responsibility from the employees, and the communication. Besides that is a great solution
I’m writing this post because lately a lot of people were asking me why I use the name Tekton Labs, well first let’s start for the meaning of the word Tekton:
In Greek Tekton means a worker of wood, a craftsman.
So after that I said, why not the laboratory of the worker of wood, that’s why the name of Tekton Labs, means the house of the man who do everything, at least that the meaning that I gave to Tekton Labs.
