Sunwapta Blog

Sunwapta Blog2020-06-10T21:41:48-06:00
19Jul 2011

Are You Working on the Business?

By |July 19th, 2011|

Man On Roof - Working on the Business

What does working on the business really mean?

As a business owner (or entrepreneur) you spend a lot of time working to build your business. You are:

  • Finding new customers,
  • Keeping existing customers happy,
  • Providing your product or service to customers,
  • Hiring good people,
  • Retaining your employees,
  • Keeping on top of the finances,
  • Putting out fires,
  • And generally growing your business.

And many business owners can generate a lot of revenue and even profit doing the above. They may even significantly grow their businesses.

So isn’t that […]

6Jul 2011

Timesheets Don’t Lie – The Power of Tracking Effort

By |July 6th, 2011|

Timesheets don't lie.

Sure people filling out timesheets can be less than honest, but more often than not, they are more inaccurate than dishonest.

Measure It To Improve It

I've come to the very firm conclusion that if want to achieve your full potential, obtain your peak performance or build a great company you need to measure where you and everyone else spend their time.

When you are doing your strategic planning, looking to improve your business, thinking to grow sales or just working to satisfy your existing customers; it is likely that free time is in short supply.

This means you will tend to be […]

28Jun 2011

Top Challenges for Businesses – Top 5 List

By |June 28th, 2011|

In my prior post I listed 15 business challenges and received another eight (8) and counting additional ideas from the crowd. When I wrote the list I purposely stated similar problems a few different ways to see if they would form “bunches” in the responses.

Based on preliminary feedback (I’ll post an updated list later in the summer), the following are the top 5 statements/challenges:

  1. Hiring good people and long-term employee retention; having the right people.
  2. The people in the business are so busy with serving customers and keeping the business alive they don’t have time to work on the […]
27Jun 2011

The End Is Near!

By |June 27th, 2011|

The forecast for today is fire. If we make it through that the rest of the week looks pretty good.

Cgy-flames

Are you accomplishing your most important work?

We are on our count-down to our product launch. We just need to make it through the next few weeks and focus on our most important work.

For us, the end is near… then things get going for real. 

23Jun 2011

Happy 11th Anniversary Sunwapta Solutions!

By |June 23rd, 2011|

Wow, 11 years.

As they say, I wish I knew then what I know now.

We started out as a software development consulting firm. We moved into building and managing hosted applications for our customers and their clients. Over 150,000 employees have had access to tools we have built at companies with pretty impressive credentials.

Then we built and sold our first hosted application (PenForms) obtaining well over 40% of the available market. Near as we can tell, we have the largest market share out of our competitors, largely because we had a good product and good customer service. The biggest thing we got […]

21Jun 2011

Who Owns Quality In Development

By |June 21st, 2011|

The simple answer: Everyone.

Actually this goes for any business. Quality is not a department or a person, it is something a company needs to live and breath from top to bottom.

It Starts With Development

The development team creates the code. If the software contains bugs, the developers created them.

If you are using third party libraries, developer may have inherited some bugs, but again, it is up to the developers to deal with them.

Quality is as much an attitude as a practice.

If you don't own the code as a team and own quality as a team; you won't have the right attitude to […]

16Jun 2011

Top Challenges for Businesses

By |June 16th, 2011|

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of crowd sourcing.

I’ve compiled a list of business challenges that are all somewhat related but stated in different ways for people in different situations. We are looking at getting some feedback to support some of our marketing and product development efforts. Leave a comment or contact us directly, we’d love to hear from you.

Which of the following can you relate to personally the most? Which do you think are the most prevalent and compelling for businesses in general?

  1. 80% of businesses fail within 5 years. That number repeats again […]
9Jun 2011

Opening Your Books To Employees

By |June 9th, 2011|

If you tell one or more people something, it is not a secret; or at least assume it isn't.

Our society discourages people from talking about money.

  • How much do you make? Sorry it is a secret.
  • How much did you pay for that house or car? Polite people don't ask?
  • How much money does you business make? Where do you spend your money? What are your profits? Sorry all that can't be shared.

If employees know too much they will ask for more money if the company is doing well or panic and leave if the company is doing poorly.

If your customers knew that […]

3Jun 2011

Achieving Your Full Potential Starts With Health

By |June 3rd, 2011|

I just went through one of those smack in the side the head reminders. Actually I am still going through it.

Like many busy professionals and business owners, I was finding myself grabbing lunch and/or dinner out. In this section of downtown, there don't seem to be a lot of healthy choices for food. I made the mistake of stopping at Tim Horton's for their chili combo.

I ended up spending the night regretting that decision immensely. The regret continued into the following day and well into the next. I still regret it. I won't get graphic so let's leave it at bad chili.

I really feel sorry […]

26May 2011

The Slippery Slope of Being a Horse Trader

By |May 26th, 2011|

Back in the old days, horse traders were the equivalent of used car salesmen today.

Their business model was to buy horses cheap and sell them high. Reputable horse traders dealing with knowledgeable buyers were as close to a fair transaction as you could get. But in reality there were many not so reputable sellers and often buyers didn't have all of the skills or knowledge to price a horse correctly; buyer beware. As the saying goes, "a fool and his money are soon parted."

When you start or buy a business there are two ways of making money when you sell it.