Many business owners start companies because they like to ask difficult questions, such as, "Why is it done that way?" and are not satisfied with answers like, "Because that is the way it has always been done." However, they are often guilty of drinking their own Kool-Aid. They believe that they are smart, capable and "can do that in an Excel spreadsheet." The sooner they welcome change, which includes technological advancements, the easier their business process will be.

In the hit movie "Jerry Maguire," Tom Cruise's character declares, "Show me the money!" Well, if Jerry wanted to be a successful entrepreneur, he should have been shouting, "Show me the metrics!" One of my last programming jobs - before I created my own company - was for a company who had the catch phrase, "You can't manage what you can't measure." Without the ability to quantify your business through metrics, sometimes called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), the business is totally reliant on the instinct of the owner.

AT&T once had a slogan: "The System is the Solution." They recognized that repeatability and consistency brought value to the customer and reduced risks to the enterprise. The power of software is that you can buy or build a system that fits your business. It's a lot like buying a suit. The most precise fit will be the system that's built specifically for your business, but sometimes "buying off the rack" and having a good tailor brings the best combination of fit and affordability.

In his bestselling book, "The E-Myth Revisited," Michael Gerber states, "Once you innovate a process and quantify its impact on your business, once you find something that works better than what preceded it, once you discover how to increase the 'yeses' from your customers ... it's time to orchestrate the whole thing."

Automation for you may mean connecting your order entry system directly to your accounting system so that you get bills out faster and without error. It may mean creating a website on which customers can track the status of their projects to replace the multiplicity of spreadsheets on your engineer's laptops.

Without systems, all the knowledge needed to solve a problem must be reinvented with each new challenge.

Many business owners, if asked to cite key factors of our success, would include our legal counsel, bankers and CPAs. These are the trusted advisors from whom we seek counsel on issues that are key to our businesses and outside our core competencies. Finding a trusted software advisor is a key challenge, because without an experienced guide other challenges may prove daunting.

All business owners face the challenge of scaling a basic business concept or strategy. These days, our growth is accelerated by technology, bringing with it certain hurdles we are forced to jump. My business has faced many of these issues, and I've learned how to evolve with the technological times as a result. In the following days I will post some IT-related challenges that are likely to come up in any business and my thoughts on dealing with them.