But when was the last time you carried out quickie health checkups on your business? I’m not talking about financial advice from accountants or other professionals. That is the equivalent of being referred to a specialist. I am talking about the day to day running of your business and the projects under your management.

Making time to regularly speak to key members of staff for a maximum of 10 minutes can alert you to problems so you can make minor course corrections to keep your department or project moving as expected.  Asking very focussed questions is the key. If a larger problem is revealed during the 10 minute checkup, schedule a more extensive meeting to allow all persons involved time to collate all the relevant information to expedite a resolution.

As tempting as it might be to try and fix the problem right there and then the chances are, if you a maintaining these regular quick checkups, you will regularly avoid major problems in the future.

It is also worth noting the majority of problems are caused by a small number of areas or individuals. Quick checkups will allow you to quickly identify these root causes and allow you to allocate alternate or additional resources.

I feel that I want more than just a treatment from my salon. I also want the feel good factor.

Here are some of the things that I feel a salon has got to have to ensure it’s clients enjoy a stress free experience.

I want to be able to book online as this comes with many benefits to ensure I can book at a time convenient to me. With an online booking system you can see the time slots available for your chosen treatment so you have a chance to decide the best time for you. For example, if you want to go on a quiet day you may chose to book when there are lots of slots available rather than be squeezed in on the last available appointment. An online booking system allows you to view this information.  With an online booking system you can make an appointment whenever you want, even out of office hours, which is such a benefit especially if you are working all day and want to book your appointment later that night.

A salon which utilizes an online scheduling system will usually be a calmer, more relaxed place. Without phones constantly ringing, taking your therapist’s attention away from you! Is there anything worse?  A salon which offers online bookings is also less likely to make a mistake and accept bookings from two clients for the same time slot!  It does happen and more than you might imagine.

My wife’s salon has recently adopted this option into their business and things have never been better, at least it seems that way to me! The salon is quieter but busier but not manic, so you relax a whole lot more.

It is a win win situation for all involved especially the salon’s customers.

Next time you book a treatment at your beauty salon, ask them if they offer the facility to accept appointments online. The best ones will offer more – for instance, text reminders in case you have forgotten you have an appointment. This is great for the salon because they hate no –shows, as they call them, as much as a customer hates being charged a cancellation fee. No one benefits and it can lead to bad feeling. Since the customer doesn’t want to pay because they forgot to turn up or perhaps because they are sure they phoned to cancel but the massage wasn’t received. The salon hates no shows because they cannot charge as much, they lose out on product sales and worse still they may even lose a customer.

Scheduling systems work – make sure your salon knows you want this facility or you may decide to find another salon that does.

This famous quote by Lord Chesterfield explains the importance of time management in just a few words. In today’s world, where any business is driven by interaction, each person spends a lot of time in appointments and meetings. Often, people spend a lot of time in keeping track of their appointments and others appointments too. Personal trainers, hair stylists, doctors, various free lancers spend a significant amount of time keeping track of their schedules and making sure that they do not disappoint their customers by not meeting them on time.

Online appointment systems have simplified the lives of many people. A few intuitive features of such appointment systems include provision of a one stop platform to view the schedules of all the staff members, ease of scheduling and rescheduling appointments, generating invoices and billing customers and easy customization of online scheduling system. Such appointment systems help a business owner maintain his schedule effectively but they can be more effective if they provide a few more features. Today, each appointment system has something unique to offer. In future, scheduling systems will have more features than what are available today.

From a business owner perspective, a few useful features (absent in most appointment systems today) could be

1. Scheduling group appointments. Most appointment systems allow creation of an appointment for a single customer. Once a customer books a slot, it is shown as unavailable to any other customer. For businesses like beauty salons, a facility for group booking should be made available.

2. Selecting multiple time slots. A convenient feature for both, the business owner and the client, multiple time slots offer a great deal of flexibility. Multiple users should be able to select a particular time slot and a majority opinion could be taken while deciding the actual time for a meeting.

3. Scheduling appointment with a staff member. A certain client who learns music in a musical institute might request the services of a particular trainer. At times, various fees can be levied by the same institute for various trainers depending on their experience and feedback. A booking and billing system that can capture such requirements will make online transactions simpler.

4. Text messaging. A few scheduling systems have the option of texting reminders to clients while most others don’t. This is a very powerful feature and it should be made available to business owners at a small cost.

5. Mobile apps. Apps for smart phones that can be easily integrated with online appointment systems are the next big step. They will empower the businessman and his clientele to access their schedules from any place at any time. The apps can also send timely reminders to clients and allow clients to pay for the services from their mobiles. The powerful features of todayís smartphones should be leveraged to build such apps.

6. Integration with other software and services. The online scheduling systems can also provide interfaces to connect to other web conferencing, voice conferencing or video conferencing software and services. Users will be able to manage multiple accounts from one place and this will bring more business for the providers of appointment systems and will prove to be very convenient for the customers.

7. Other features. The appointment systems can also have provisions to share documents like presentation for a meeting, notes shared by trainer, invoices, etc. They can also have a dedicated task monitoring system coupled to the scheduling system. For big enterprises, these appointment systems could provide interfaces to connect to other software like Microsoft Project Planner.

The current scheduling systems have made things simpler but addition of a few features can make the applications more powerful, useful and provide a better package to the consumers. The futuristic appointment systems will make better use of cloud computing and turn the simple calendar into a desktop application that manages schedules, billing, helps consumers update their website quickly, broadcast messages and do much more.

I suspect the day will come when you will be able to analyse what you really do with your time. A kind of pie chart depicting your time/life activities. I think this will be a massive wake up call for many individuals who will see a large proportion of their time/life spent on activities which are less than productive.

Imagine a system which indicates that an individual has spent 75% or more of their productive hours either in front of a tv or computer screen. How will that change the way that person views their lifestyle.

We are already seeing the way people view entertainment change. People are recording programmes, not because they don’t have the time to watch at broadcast, but because they know you can skip the ads during playback is just the beginning. Attention spans are dwindling.  In a world where anyone can be a journalist/film maker / publisher  - the quality of input is diminished to a general chatter. We judge everything in a split second, breaking it down just like a computer system does – Zero or One. Yes or No. Good or Bad. Right or wrong. Want or don’t want.  We are becoming used to making split decisions concerning our immediate needs and forming opinions about what interested us for the next 8 seconds and so on. But view the patterns of our lives with computerised efficiency and I wonder if we will like what we discover.

I believe in the future, we will all become less frivolous with our time. The medias which currently bombard us, trying to gain a few minutes of our attention, will eventually accept this no longer works. People will become much more selective about who is seeking to get their attention and why. The veneer of popularity which having 500+ friends on Facebook might ostensibly seem to confer is illusory and damaging. Attempting to maintain that many friends will have an adverse affect on your small group of real friends. If you are trying to find the time to stay in touch and genuinely interested in so many lives, something has to suffer. Invariably at the moment, it will be your close group who will notice the dilution of your attention. Of course, this will be reciprocated – will we lose real friendships in favour of a multitude of acquaintances? I seriously doubt it. These relationships will be even more valued and the maintenance of those relationships will benefit from systematic scheduling.

Time saving devices intended to help us waste less time are for nothing if we allow our time to be frittered away for other reasons ie. Telephone conversations which go on and on, meetings which go on and on, missed calls and missed returned calls.

Why not opt for a personalised scheduling system. A system which helps to coordinate personal and business commitments seamlessly. Like having an army of assistants all intent on optimising your life. Filtering out noise, presenting you with what is relevant in your life.

Well, not anymore, because there is a new kid in town and she will have quite a few people worried especially the nice folks at Google and Facebook.

No way you say, ‘Google will be around forever’. Well no actually.  Nothing lasts forever not even search engines like Google. The reason is simple. Siri is more than just voice recognition software, Siri understands, and considering this is still in beta v1.0 it is very impressive.

Siri gives seamless access to information. In fact far more effectively and quickly than Google. With Siri you just say what you want, almost like thinking out loud and the answer is brought to you with a little bit of personality to boot. Siri has certain characteristics which make her seem more, dare I say ‘human’. This interaction is the major difference between previous attempts at voice controlled systems. That and the very sophisticated voice recognition software which Apple has bought/developed. Couple this with what Apple does better than anyone – making things work and work in style, and you have something which is fun and very practical and a potential giant killer.

Siri removes the need for Google or Bing or any search engine. After all search engines are basically just big databases, Just like banks didn’t invent money , Google didn’t invent the internet. It just catalogues it and makes it easier to find what we are looking for. But who decides what is best for us? Google won’t say why it thinks one website is better for our needs than another. Their ranking algorithms are their best kept secret. So the only surest and quickest way to get ranked is to pay using the Google money making machine called adwords. Is that fair? Should perfectly viable businesses be unable to trade with a domain name that is perfect for them because of speculative purchasing of tens of thousands of domain names, the majority of which will never be used. Is it fair that an older busines with deeper pockets can command the high ground and deny new energy to compete on a level playing field? Google would say yes. Siri will say no.

For the time being, Siri uses Google to search on your behalf. But Siri also consults other directories like Yelp.com, looking at customer reviews to decide which site or business is likely to give better service based on the opinions of people who have actually used the service. Ok Google does the same with local search, but Google just can’t help itself, it has to charge for listings and sure enough even the local listings are now for sale.

So imagine a system which sidesteps search engines and finds what you need based on what other people thought was good. A system which in theory can make more money in one day than google can make in a year. Just by charging a fixed fee to be included. The algorithm is simple. Location and reviews and a willingness to pay a membership fee.

Imagine a system which listens passively to your conversations, picks up hints from your conversation and offers helpful ideas. You mention a physical ailment like a sports injury you sustained last night. Siri will helpfully suggest sports masseurs and chiropractors nearby. She will even book you an appointment. ’2pm is open in your calendar’ shall I confirm that for you?. How can you say no? Haven’t had a break in a while? She knows where you like to go, she knows what you like to do, how? well you told her. Over weeks and months, she will get to know you as well as anyone and she will be there to suggest answers or remind you of tasks or help you with Christmas shopping or upcoming birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions. The list goes on. So where does that leave Google? A generation from now you may just have to explain to your kids what Google was – or,  you could just get Siri to do it for you.

Google believes it has spotted an opportunity and created a platform which they hope will penetrate the present social market in their creation of Google+.  Google+ has taken the direction of creating a social network which will be directed more towards a person’s professional and business needs targeting an audience similar to LinkedIn.  The Google + system differentiates itself from Facebook, by allowing users to create pages, develop relationships with potential customers and better engage with them, to mention a few. If successful this would capture the attention of the 30+ crowd as well as the younger people who are trying to connect to each other on a business level.

Many Businesses already recognize the strength, success and reliability of Google’s search engine, Gmail, Google Earth etc. and therefore it is not a stretch to believe that a social network built upon this system would be just as reliable.  Businesses typically do not want to take chances on an unproven product which is why Google may be able to capture a large market share, at a faster pace, utilizing its brand name alone.

Just like the early days of Facebook, people maintained a MySpace and a Facebook account until a clear winner emerged.  Google is hoping that they can entice people to come over from Facebook and try them out by offering a more powerful way of communicating and creating group interaction.  Google has very deep pockets and plenty of time to slowly build its customer base and chip away at Facebook’s market share.  Based on Google’s history they will continually respond to customer feedback, reinvent themselves and add on services.  Unless Facebook continues to evolve and outpace their competitors they may see their market share quickly erode.

Do a visual scan from left to right of the entire waiting area. Look at the space as if you were a customer arriving for the first time. Does it look clean? Is the furniture comfortable? Lighting and Flooring next. Brightly lit? Clean uncluttered flooring? This is particularly important not just from an aesthetic viewpoint but also from a health and safety aspect. Carpet showing signs of wear? Replace it. Furniture looking a bit too homely? Replace it. Furniture should be comfortable but functional. Big soft sofas are fine at home but are difficult to maintain in a business environment. Also, make sure the seating is not too low to the floor. Older customers will hate having to struggle to stand from crouched position.
Coffee tables are a necessary item in a waiting room but avoid glass topped tables – you will spend all day removing smudges and marks.
The colour scheme you choose should be in line with your business premises.

Those magazines you placed on a table – are they your taste in reading or that of your customers? The best answer is to ensure the reading material you place in the waiting area is up to date. In fact I would go so far as to say that magazines should be fairly generic. Additional reading material should be newspapers, delivered daily. The newspapers should fit with the type of business you are operating. But the most importnat reading material will be the information about your company and services. If available, make it clear that you are happy for your visitors to take a copy of your brochure and business card.

Display fresh cut flowers – never plastic or silk. They will look tired very quickly and will not give a good impression. keep the floral display small and colourful. Of course, if the area is of sufficient space, have a larger plant within the area as a permanent feature. There are companies from whom you can rent these type of plants. They will make sure they are watered and kept looking in tip top condition or they will replace a plant which is not thriving with one that does. If that is beyond your budget, talk to your local florist and ask if they would be willing to supply, free of charge to you, a regular floral display, in return for allowing the florist to place their business cards in your waiting area.

There are many more ways to improve your waiting area but none are more effective than being greeted with a smile and shown courteousness by offering a hot or cold beverage. You only get one chance to make a good first impression so make it count.