This month’s National Geographic magazine (October 2006) focuses on a topic that is of interest to most business owner.. Asset Preservation.

National Geographic doesn’t call it that. They talk about “Places we Must Save”. The assets they are writing about include Arizona’s Glen Canyon National Recreation area, Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida and even Yellowstone National Park, our country’s first park. The problem is that the people assigned to preserve the parks, the National Park Service Rangers, are now doing more visitor services and less protection of the resources they were supposed to preserve for future generations.

What are the assets that you need to save in your company? Are you putting too much into customer service programs and skimping on investing on employees? Can employees who are not happy provide great customer service? Most world class organizations have figured out that they need happy and motivated employees to offer the world class customer service their customers (allies) demand.

At Friendly Systems our most important assets are the people who work here. We help our people improve their skills and reduce their stress levels by creating a workplace where each of us has a home office. Friendly doesn’t just help others use technology to improve productivity, we practice what we preach. So our servers are accessed via the internet and we communicate via e-mail and phones. Face to face meetings are kept to a minimum.

This means that we spend less time in traffic and more time learning about the products we represent and the industries we serve. This makes our people, (our assets) more valuable to our allies. Working at home also allows Friendly’s staff to be part of their children’s lives as they are usually there when they come back from school. This reduces stress on the family which helps preserve them, too.