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| Never Thought It Might Be Green From the time I started Kaleidoscopic, Inc. in 1997, I have always embraced new technologies in the office. Within the first few weeks of opening the doors, I decided to build my own database for tracking jobs and invoicing. My newly started business still consumed it's share of resources, but I was able to keep the amount of office supplies down to a minimum. However; as my business grew, so did our consumption of resources and with each new employee and each new client, the need for office supplies grew. Within 2 years my business had outgrown the simple database I was using to keep track of jobs and before long we where consuming a considerable amount of office materials. So I began browsing office supply stores and online stores for software to help us get control of our job production tickets and invoicing. I tried many different softwares with no success. The real problem with the various softwares we tried was that it was not a complete solution and actually increased the amount of data entry that was required to track the job and on many occasions there was duplication that threw off our job tickets. It was a real hassle and eventually the employees would just quit using the software and resort back to pen and paper. Then one evening I was up late relaxing on the sofa after a long day at the office an info commercial came on the TV about a software called DayLite. I was about to flip the channel, but within a few seconds the commercial had captured my attention and before I knew it an hour had passed, the commercial was over and I was on the internet logging onto their URL to learn more. I spent about two weeks researching their software, wondering if it might be the solution I was looking for or would it be yet another failed attempt at streamlining our production and keeping track of jobs. I finally decided to give it a try and downloaded a single copy to test out. I spent the next three weeks testing Daylite locally on my computer, customizing the application to fit my business needs, plugging in data and tracking the jobs I worked on. It didn't take too long to figure out that Daylite was very powerful and had many features I had not even considered for streamlining our production. OnAt the end of the third week of testing I finally introduced my staff to Daylite and told them, "This is how we'll be managing jobs from now on!" After many previously failed attempts with other softwares, I must say, "they where not too thrilled about trying yet another". On the forth week I purchased a Daylite license for each work station and spent a few long evenings fine tuning it to fit our business needs and take full advantage of all Daylite's capabilities. At the end of the forth week we had a production meeting and I gave the employees the full tour of what I had learned, how to use Daylite. I explained how it was going to help us reduce time spent on job tracking and increase our production in the process. That following week I had to keep on the staff to insure they used Daylite. I found that they where still pushing a pen around, then plugging the data into Daylite at the end of the day. A few weeks passed, but eventually everyone had made the transition from pen and paper to Daylite, and we went to a completely digital production environment. It's been a few years now that we made the transition from pen and paper to a completely digital environment and it has paid off considerably. My goal was to reduce duplication, job production ticket mistakes, increase production efficiency and reduce the amount of paper we needed to track jobs. At the time I was pushing to use Daylite within our office, I never realized how much of a success it would be and how it would help us reduce our environmental footprint. Switching to Daylite has reduced our office consumables considerably, it has practically eliminated all duplication, job ticket mistakes and we have achieve a production efficiency that I could have never imaged possible. There have been many benefits to making the switch to a digital production environment as mentioned above. But one of the most unexpected benefits is the fact that we have reduced our operating cost through a reduction of office consumables. At the time I didn't realize just how much a digital environment would benefit us, but it is quite obvious now that it is financially viable and is better for the environment as well. Below is a list of consumable resources we have been able to reduce considerably or eliminate altogether:
Green benefits to these reductions:
We've also implemented other actions and solutions at my business to reduce operating cost a few years ago as well, and without realizing it at the time, we where also taking a step towards going green. My original intentions had little to do with considerations towards the environment, it was all about the bottom line and reducing operating cost. I've always been pro-environment and have taken efforts to do what is right. So it has been a pleasant surprise to discover that as I applied these production efficiency solutions to my business, I have also moved in a direction that is more environmentally responsible. I'm always searching for new ways to run my business more efficiently and reduce operating cost, but these days I make a point to look for the greener solution. And as I have become more environmentally aware, I have also stepped up our efforts to further reduce consumables at the source and recycle as much as possible. What has really captured my attention with our recycling efforts is the fact that our recycling bins now out weight our waste bins 2 to 1. Our latest green actions include:
And one of my personal favorites that I have put to use at the home is the recent purchase of a Reel Mower to cut my lawn. It makes mowing the lawn enjoyable. Michael |
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