The American workforce is changing, and with it, the expectations of the companies, organizations, and brands that enterprise-level service providers service. It’s no longer a capital sales cycle, multiple months long, followed by a sale, installation and a hand-off to a third party. It’s a shift to relationships – one that spans before, during, and after the sale. It’s a lesson that applies beyond enterprise into the realm of startups (which this company once was) and anyone who strives to build something that has staying power in his or her chosen industry.

The Change: Humans as Resources

Staffing is more than just onboarding and other fancy buzzwords. It’s choosing the people and personalities who will build relationships not only with your customers and co-workers, but your company as well. It used to be that the only people with customer interaction were part of a sales or customer service team. These days, that’s untrue. In hiring, it’s imperative that we shift decisions to hiring those with whom we not only want to have in charge of our customer relationships, but ones who will work towards a collaborative internal work environment. Strong relationships inside a company extend to a stronger brand presence outside of your four walls.

The Change: Customers as Colleagues

Gone are the days of the Mad Men era, where we can take a client out to dinner, buy a few drinks and call it good for the quarter. Today’s environment demands more. When I think about taking on a new client for Solany, I think – How can we go above and beyond for this client? What resources do we have that will benefit them beyond the services we provide? How can we bring even more value to their organization with our relationships – even if it doesn’t mean an extra dime in our pocket?

When we start to think of customers as colleagues, we put everyone on even ground. We’re able to collaborate, share, and help one another build our respective businesses. And it all comes from the understanding that we’re never in competition with one another and no one is superior. It’s just the simple fact that when one of us does well, we both do well.There’s never a losing side to that proposition.

I have more thoughts on how “average” has been blown out of the water, but I’ll leave it with those two changes today. The best thing that can happen at the end of any work day is to realize that we’ve done something to do better business – and shifting the way we think about our business practices can create more days like that.

Technology: It’s not just the cost of technology that matters to companies these days – it’s the manufacturing practices and ideology behind the technology itself. For best-in-class examples, look at what outdoor retailer companies like Columbia and Patagonia are doing in corporate sustainability. They’re not only creating great products through great manufacturing and materials technology. They’re creating programs that recycle their own products and promoting fair labor practices in countries abroad.

Don’t forget the human resources: As mentioned above, companies with strong corporate sustainability practices aren’t just focusing on what they manufacture. They’re focused on who’s doing the manufacturing. When shaping your own corporate sustainability policy, be sure to look at things like certified Fair Trade goods and suppliers, programs that ensure humane working conditions, and how your local human resources – the people who help run your business day to day – can use their resources to give back and have those efforts supported by the company.

Spinning a green web: Did you ever think that your website could enhance your corporate sustainability practices? It’s true. There are several hosting providers that are everything from wind powered to offsetting their own energy costs through green energy certificates. This list of green hosting companies can help you make a better choice for something you might not ordinarily think of.

Other ways to save: One of the best ways to shape your corporate sustainability practices is to ask for feedback from your employees. As managers and owners, we’re not the only ones with good ideas! By establishing a feedback mechanism for your staff, you’re opening yourself up to hearing about processes you might otherwise ignore – ones creating waste where it isn’t necessary and overuse of resources where savings could occur. Sometimes our best ideas come from those who are using the processes every day – give them a voice. They’ll show you how to save today and improve processes and practices for a brighter, more conscious future.

I have yet to run into a business situation where partnerships aren’t important. They might come in the form of referrals, vendors, strategic partners, fellow professional association members – just to name a few. Let’s have a look at one simple way we can use social tools to our advantage to build even stronger relationships with the people and companies who let us get business done each day.

Taking “Selfish” Out of Our Vocabularies

When we spend time online, it’s generally for ourselves. Even in social outlets like Facebook and Twitter – we’re there to talk to our friends, our colleagues, and other people that we already know. What we’re forgetting, however, is that those are pretty selfish activities. If we shifted our school of thought to one that looks at our online social interactions as being altruistic versus selfish, there’s the potential to have an entirely new world of allies, contact, and potential clients come into view. Some tips we’ve found useful to make our online social presences less about us and more about the people who help us get business done (and many of whom ARE our business):

• Sharing: We find interesting articles all the time, so we share those. But what about the articles that our partners find interesting? We take the time to not just re-share those (through retweets or Facebook posts), but read them so that we can keep educating ourselves about our colleagues and partners.
• Setting Up Alerts: We’re old school and use Google Alerts to keep tabs on our customers and strategic partners. When we see a press release of news about that company come across, we’re in there reading, staying up-to-date, and sharing with our audience. The more people who know about the people with whom we do business, the more people who will eventually know about our relationship with them. And honestly, our customers are appreciative that we support their news and milestones, too.
• Having Conversations: We like Twitter very much for this. Not only is it easy to accomplish the above two bulletpoints using this short-form medium, but it allows us to have more conversations with the people who matter most to our services industries and business. And no – not everything is on-topic. We all like coffee and hate traffic. Talking about life’s nuances builds relationships on an ever deeper level than incessant all-business talks. (yawn)

We even wrote about one of our strategic partners in our blog earlier this week. It’s easier than you might think to take selfish out of your online activities and make them more customer-centric. And no – that doesn’t mean you have to turn off your own agenda. It’s just a volume knob that we could all do better at turning down on occasion.

Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) keeps our state beautiful and includes such divisions as Parks and Recreation and the Water Conservation Board. Given that they are one of the leading Departments that needs to filter information out to our citizens, they were looking for a way to speed – and ease – that process. They discovered the idea solution in one of our partner’s solutions, Laserfiche’s Rio enterprise content management system. The solution developed for the State of Colorado using Laserfische works on multiple levels – examples that other state- and municipal-level governments can take to the bank when looking for red tape-reducing avenues. (Read about the entire DNR solution created by Laserfiche.)

• Improved Access: The records management capabilities of the Rio system allows citizens to quickly access the most current records and reports from the DNR.
• Archive Structure: For citizens searching for historical data, the content management system now allows for custom searches, making the DNR’s historical information just as easy to find as their current reporting.
• Electronic Forms Processing: They’ve revolutionized the permitting process for their Oil & Gas Conservation Commission by instituting and online permit approval process. An additional 6 applications of e-forms are in development.
• Time Savings: It’s no secret that organizations of all types spend a fair share of man hours with the manual approval process for documents. The new electronic forms processing reduces approval time – and all by simply changing a step of the process. Forms were usually scanned last, following the approvals process. Forms are now scanned in advance.

While there are many more benefits to the DNR’s ECM (enterprise content management), here’s the bottom line for the State of Colorado. When our citizens are looking for critical information – historical flood zone information, parks and recreation information, and more – the DNR’s efforts to change the way they do business have resulted in improvements across the board. Better internal procedures mixed with an ECM system built to serve our State’s citizenry is a win, no matter how you look at it. We look forward to seeing more governments buying into enterprise-level technology and showing citizens how big, seemingly complex solutions are in fact working to make everyday needs simple.

And if you have a moment, pop over to the project announcement at Laserfiche. There are some pretty cool links (especially the Flood Decision Support System) that show you how simple it is for Coloradans to find what they’re looking for in 30 seconds or less. Information – delivered.

Funny thing happened: I realized I didn’t want to work at Google. Ever.

Barriers to Entry

Google apparently has quite the test for potential employees to take. I’ll assume that the tests vary depending on position, but, well, I guess tests can be good. It’s a huge barrier to entry, however.

Every industry has its nuances and demands, but what kind of barriers to entry are you setting up in your hiring practices that might be keeping quality applications out of the running? We all have to put exclusionary criteria into our hiring practices, but when we’re in search of that elusive, incredible, invaluable asset to the team, shouldn’t we be thinking of ways to tap into talent we might not have found through regular channels? Google’s barriers to entry, to me at least, seem excessive. I have plenty of people in my circle whom I’ve known for years who are incredible business owners, colleagues, and leaders yet were lacking in the test taking department.

Ongoing Hurdles

When you set up the barriers to entry – whatever they might be – you have to set up ongoing hurdles or objectives for employees to meet. It’s how we evaluate their ongoing contribution. It’s through them that our companies can grow. While not every employee aspires to advance, there’s something to be said for a hire who meets or exceeds expectations on an ongoing basis. I can only imagine what Google’s hurdles look like if they’re wanting me to sequence numbers in my head during the hiring process. As leaders and business owners, however, we should be considering the ongoing hurdles in advance of making a hire as opposed to on the fly when things aren’t going our way. An employee not meeting expectations is generally one of three things: not a good fit, unclear about expectations, or has never been offered expectations.

The Bus

Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great,” says that it’s imperative to get the right people on the bus. That’s staffing and team building. So the thought I’ll leave you with today is this: How are you mapping your route? In order to get the right people on the bus, you have to know where to look and be willing to go out of your way to pick them up. Sometimes traditional job searches don’t work, so the onus is upon us to leverage our relationships to find what and whom we need to take our businesses beyond where they are today. So it’s not just about getting people on the bus, it’s about driving the bus, too.

As for what to look for in the year ahead? We think it begins with a greater responsibility for service providers – everyone from software companies to scanning and document management services – to educate their healthcare industry clients. Help walk them through Meaningful Use. Be an ongoing resource for compliance and indexing questions. Become partners in the EHR transition process and establish consulting protocols to ensure the move-forward success of transitions. It’s incumbent upon service providers to not only run profitable businesses, but also ensure that the transitions we help our clients make lead to more profitable business and better patient care as well.

While getting caught up on industry news today, I came across this post over at FierceEMR that offers 5 predictions for the sector for 2012. Definitely a great read, and we concur on their points regarding Cloud EHR, purchaser demands on vendors, and compliance. Enjoy – and welcome once again to 2012!

Corporate sustainability – the practice by which companies establish business practices with an eye towards improving social, consumer, and environmental implications – is poised to make significant inroads in the coming year. What we hope is that even more companies – and on an even greater scale – will look to those already putting these sustainability practices into play and not just establish new policies, but also encourage other businesses in their communities to follow suit. We’re starting the year off with a view of corporate sustainability trends from around the web. Expert opinions on where the practice is headed, potential trends – you’ve got it all right here in one easy read. Bookmark and share. Why? Because sharing information is the easiest way to get started practicing corporate sustainability in your own business today.

What Will Be the Biggest Driver for Corporate Sustainability in 2012? (GreenBiz.com) Get the inside scoop on what today’s business leaders see as the coming trends in corporate sustainability. Insights from leaders at Molson Coors, The North Face, Hasbro, NRDC and more.

Top Corporate Sustainability Trends to Watch in 2012 (Huffington Post) Patti Prairie, CEO of Brighter Planet, discusses everything from water risks to increasing employee engagement in sustainability practices. She also produces an informative Twitter stream on sustainability and green business practices as well.

The 10 Emerging Sustainable Cities to Watch in 2012 (Triple Pundit) Which cities will emerge as the world’s leaders in sustainability practices? Businesses, take note. This list can lead you to even deeper reading on how other countries and cities are embracing sustainability (as wel often get wrapped-up in thinking it’s a practice exclusive to North America).

The short week is the ideal time to let things fall by the wayside when in all actuality, we should be grabbing those dangling tasks and loose ands and wrestling them to the ground. No more things left undone. No more “I should haves” to worry about in the New Year. So here’s my list of 4 questions I’m asking myself as the year comes to an end, as with every end, there’s a beginning. I’m determined to make 2012 the best beginning yet.

People: Whom do I need?

When you’re trying to pull a Jim Collins and get the right people on the bus, there’s no shame in continuously re-evaluating who’s on board and just maybe, who needs to be getting off at the next stop. Are you staffed with a team that will help you scale or are you bogged-down by a crew that leaves you wanting?

Cash: Where is it?

From January 1 onward, your books should be in order. Your cash position should be a few clicks of the mouse or a phone call away. Have you put yourself in a position where you own lock, stock, and barrel your company’s cash position? And if not, what are you going to do about it?

Priorities: What are they?

Every year brings something new to a business owner. What does 2012 hold for you? If you think you’re going to trudge along with more of the same old, same old from this year on into next, you might be missing the boat – or the bus, as the case may be. If you can, on January 1, enumerate your priorities for the business year ahead, consider the clear vision with which you can approach each new business venture. It’s great to see situations through a clear lens instead of ones clouded by oversight.

Personal Life: Does it exist?

Being in business 24/7 only does one thing: It kills every other part of your existence. If you’re fighting tooth and nail to keep your business afloat or moving forward at the expense of YOU time, you might be building your business wrong. Where do YOU fit into your business strategy for 2012? And do yourself a favor: pencil this question into your calendar once a quarter. It’s funny how we shift our personal lives for the sake of business, yet rarely vice versa.

As soon as this post goes live, we’ll be unplugging. That means office doors are closed (yes, they already are), lights are off, email is in the “off” position and we’re taking the entirety of the next four days to be with our families. They’ll be the ones in the “on” position. We’ll sleep in, begrudgingly get out of bed, make jokes over french toast, and probably refuse to get out of our pajamas until at least noon every day. We’ll smile more than we usually do and the Work Virus won’t be creeping into phone calls or conversations, because we’re plugging in to something else – people.

As a company, we’ve tried to get better about creating an environment where this is possible for our employees year-round, instead of just a few occasions throughout the calendar. But as of today, this is what we’re doing. We are off the grid and we aren’t making the ask for any of our employees to carry their phones or check their email until 8AM on December 27.

We own, run, and work in businesses in an age where we’re always plugged in, yet there’s no app that replaces the people with whom we spend our hours and days once the laptops close and emails are answered. We are the ones who let the “always on” mentality persist and become the rule as opposed to the exception.

And it’s times of the year like this where we, as business owners, can say “enough” and send this behavior that’s become the rule back to being an exception. Which frankly, is where it belongs for those who help us do what we love doing each and every day.

So to you, we wish you a happy holiday. We’ll see you on Tuesday, rest assured, with news that matters to our industry brought to you by people who love plugging in because we remind them that unplugging is just as important an exercise.

The “Green” Blog from the New York Times – More of an environmental blog on the whole, the NYT Green blog is a must-have for any follower of corporate sustainability. Not only is the writing top-notch, but you’ll find efforts reported from around the globe and across a wide array of industries. You can use the RSS icon in the top right corner of your screen to add to your RSS reader.

GreenBiz - One of the leading news sources offering the latest in corporate sustainability, GreenBiz offers fresh content multiple times per day. Topics will range from efforts of Fortune-rated firms to environmental regulations outside of the United States. We like that the articles are always easy to read, even if you haven’t attained “geek status” in sustainability issues.

Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability – Perhaps the leaders behind research that goes to shape corporate sustainability efforts, ARCS is also the host of one of the major annual conferences in the US on the subject. While their site is currently under a redesign, we’d be remiss to not put it on your radar so you can subscribe for future updates.

The Global 100 - Want to track the world’s most sustainable companies? Follow The Global 100 for their annual list ranking companies across the globe for their green business practices. Additional upside? They’re incredibly forthcoming about their metrics and how they determine the companies to be included on their annual list.

Bloomberg’s Corporate Sustainability Queue - News from Business and Finance sector leader Bloomberg on the latest in global corporate sustainability issues.