This post is part of our business processes series, looking at the strategies and ideas implemented at Thomas Multimedia.

Create systems for every possible procedure that the business will encounter. This allows people with the lowest possible skills to follow a procedure and produce a predictable, consistent, high quality result.

Think of how McDonalds hires unskilled teenagers and efficiently produces a consistent range of products worldwide. As a former teenage employee of McDonalds I can tell you precisely why our otherwise rag tag team could produce a big mac, exactly the same, in a blistering time, over and over again.

1. Rack up buns on a tray, separating bottom and middle sections, and placing top (crown) on a large spatula
2. Insert lower and middle buns into toaster
3. After about 30 seconds, buns are toasted. Insert crown. Remove bottom and middle bun from toaster. Add cardboard ring around lower bun.
4. Lay as many meat patties as required (2 per burger) onto the double side grill and lower lid. Meat takes 42 seconds to cook.
5. Commence dressing middle and bottom buns with big mac sauce, onions, lettuce. 1x cheese on bottom, 2x pickles on middle.
6. Move tray to grill, before or as grill lid is automatically opening after its cooking time has completed. Add meat.
7. Get crowns from toaster, add to top, wrap and place in production chute.
8. Scrape grill, and repeat the whole process from step 1 again.

I haven’t worked inside a McDonalds since about 2003, and yet the process to create every burger of the day is still stuck like glue in my head. Clearly the head office has recently found further ways to optimize this process, now pre-cooking and using warmers to keep the meat, and dressing the burger at order time rather than using a… Read more

Thomas Multimedia’s web auction software TM Auctions, has been available on a monthly price basis for about 12 months.

While their was a fair amount of interest in that time period – with virtually zero active marketing from our end – including several new auction sites being launched,  some things quickly became evident:

• An auction site needs regular love and attention
• An auction site needs a strong existing business and existing customer base
• A site owner needs to be driven and expend energy getting their site to the target market

What we found is  that we need to target stronger,  better resourced, better dedicated businesses as opposed to the smaller startups who are probably doing this part time or as a side project.

Frankly, I can’t stand to see an auction site go down the gurgler, even if the loss of time and expense was minimal.

Analysing my own mistakes, the target market was wrong.  By lowering the barrier of entry to a starting price of $49 a month, combined with a free 30 day trial, I was attracting the smallest end of business who thought they could enter the e-commerce market without anymore than a small monthly fee. As time has shown, this is not the case; as a site owner, you need to know how to sell, and you need to know how to build up a membership base.

To address this misconception, TM Auctions as a product has been redefined.

The new emphasis is to target stronger established businesses, who have the resources to dedicate man hours and budget towards a stronger push onto the market. This most certainly is a combination of a strong marketing campaign, and an existing customer base to direct toward the auction site. An existing website with steady traffic is… Read more

Following the recent feature to specify a due date for a to-do item, A new filter has been added to the Studiotime to-do manager page, allowing you to filter based on items due today, tomorrow and overdue.

This is a great way to setup a quick one day list to progress through over the course of your work day.