Throughout 2010 I have gotten involved in many conversations where professionals from various industries discuss the obstacles that they find while building the road to success.

It is frustrating to know that business executives are not exploring new ways to solve bottlenecks. The other day I was talking to a very good friend of mine who owns a small candy factory (let’s call him Mr. Wonka). I have always looked up to him because to me, having a candy factory sounds like living in a cotton cloud surrounded by oompa loompas who feed you delicious and decadent chocolates that don’t even give you headaches or make you fat.

I love sweets, and that is why I could not stop day dreaming about Mr. Wonka’s fantastic life as a candy factory owner; surrounded by chocolate fountains, marshmallows and cotton candy. As I was going back to my childhood dreams, my dear friend started telling me he was sleep deprived because he could not stop thinking about the million tasks that were getting out of his hands. One day they ran out of cocoa and could not deliver one of their biggest orders of chocolate bars. Once they received the cocoa, the machine that cuts the chocolate bars broke because the blades were not replaced on time and they had to wait 2 weeks to receive the damaged parts. Unfortunately, they ended up delivering the order a month later, the unhappy customer did not take it, and they obviously lost the client.

When you are a business owner, you know how painful and hard it is to lose one of your clients. As a SAP partner, I strongly believe on the benefits that our solutions bring to small and medium enterprises, and that is why I suggested Mr. Wonka to study the possibilities of implementing a solution like SAP Business One to gain control over his business. I explained how the cocoa issue would never be an issue anymore; with the alerts system from SAP Business One nobody forgets simple tasks like ordering cocoa before you completely run out of it. With one simple and affordable application like SAP Business One, it is easier to run any business in complete harmony.

Nowadays we need to be able to formulate quick solutions to any minor and major issues that arise. As business executives, we make decisions every day that are crucial to our company’s success. In order to make timely and smart decisions, we need to be able to collect data from all areas of our organization and place it in context to fulfill our business goals and strategic plans.

I invite you to make better choices in 2011. Don’t let minor issues interfere with your daily operations. Create an action plan and invest in solutions that allow you to grow a healthy business. We can all have a dream business; we just need a little business intelligence to create it.