August 12, 2009 - Is time really money?

Like many good techies, I have this quirky habit of trying to fix things myself. This has
led to friendly jabs from my business friends over the years.

"Mike, do you realize what your time is worth?" they ask.

"They have people that know how to fix brakes, you know!"

I nod my head and accept my friend's superior wisdom, but then as soon as they leave, I
sneak back into the garage and finish the repairs.

So what is right? I agree that my time is worth something, but I also want to enjoy my
life. And many techies like me consider fixing things to be part of a happy life. But
business is different. Your employees' time really is money. This is because most
employees have this thing about wanting to be paid! If you can save your employees
time, it will ultimately save you money (among other benefits).

Let's look at some interesting examples.

Start me up
Did you know that Microsoft Windows XP had a design goal of 30 seconds from powerup
to usability? Wouldn't life be great if this were actually the case? But to make things
worse, PCs gradually degrade, pushing the power-up time into minutes rather than
seconds! Your employees start their computers once a day (plus restarts when their
applications crash) and then they wait. A couple of two-minute boot-ups per day,
multiplied by 250 work days per year, works out to 16 hours and 40 minutes per
employee.

A good IT person can restore the original 30-second boot-up by various methods, such as
reformatting and reinstalling applications. It's not pretty work, but neither is watching all
your employees watch their computers boot up. Even if it takes two hours and 40 minutes
for an IT person to reinstall Windows and applications, it still results in a net 14 hours
saved.

In a company like Fidus, with approximately 60 employees, we're looking at a net
savings of $58,800 (using a $70 fully loaded hourly rate). And the real savings could be
closer to $200,000, if you consider all of the benefits of speeding up application software.
Consider how many times people open Word, Excel and PowerPoint each day.
Everything goes faster, which means more productivity. Adding $200,000 to the bottom
line of a 60-person company isn't negligible.

And there's more than the monetary savings. Employees who get more done per day will
be happier and will be able to get home sooner to spend time with their family.

Food, glorious food
At Fidus we spend thousands of dollars per year to keep the kitchen stocked with free,
healthy food (we do let some good stuff in occasionally). We didn't do this at Fidus to
increase the average weight of our company. We do it to save our employees time and
money. But ultimately, we do it to make Fidus money by eliminating the need for
employees to roam the streets looking for food.

I'm not going to tell you exactly how much money this saves Fidus, because we consider
this to be a trade secret. However, I will tell you that our CFO is Scottish and knows how
to save every possible penny, and our food policy has passed his scrutiny!

Fast and furious
Let's say your dinosaur fax machine just blew up and caught fire - you lost the fax
machine and need a new one, not to mention a new fire extinguisher. Do you buy the fax
machine that is the cheapest, or do you spend the extra $300 to get the fastest and most
trouble-free machine? Well, the answer depends on your business. If you do a lot of
faxing, you should buy the absolute fastest machine possible. Capital purchases are a
one-time cost, but your employees' time is a daily expense.

If you frequently scan documents, buy a machine with a document feeder that actually
works. And set it up so that the scanned files go directly to your server, so that everyone
can use the shared scanner with ease.

Don't sweat the small stuff
Another common criticism: "Mike, you are the CEO - don't worry about the small stuff."
Again, this is probably true, but I failed CEO 101. Here's my opinion, for what it's worth.
If you as the CEO identify and fix one or two time-wasting annoyances that impact your
staff, they may decide to fix one or two other time-wasters themselves. This models
positive behaviour where the benefits turn out to be geometrically progressive.
So, at work, time is money. But at home, time is precious.

Michael Wakim is the founder and CEO of Fidus Systems, an Ottawa-based electronic
product development company.