So I gave my son a challenge today...

He's 20 years old, home from college and working for the Parks Dept @ $ 8 and hour running the local Mini-Golf concession in the Park. And he's bored stiff. All he does is collect the money and hand people a putter and a golf ball. He only works there about 20 hours a week and asked me if there was anything he could do around the store. So today I had him dust, clean, run the carpet cleaner, do some filing, clean out the delivery truck, take out the trash, etc. Basic busy work. Necessary, but lame. I have been so busy in the store that I can't get price tags on furniture so I have many pieces in the store that are un-tagged, and have no inventory or tracking system in place. The one I did have collapsed from a hard drive failure 2 years ago and I've been running without one since. It's ridiculous that I can't even get price tags on the pieces because I'm on the phone constantly or out on the sales floor. One person can easily take 3 hours of my time in a day and walk out without buying a thing - but that's the nature of the business.

He's a smart kid and self-starter. So today I said, "I have a project for you if you are up to the task. I want you to research, recommend and then institute a turn-key bar code inventory system for the store and get it 100 % up and running with everything tagged in the store by August 15th, before you go back to school. I want it Cloud-based but data also on the local hard drive we have on the store computer. It also cannot cost too much, no expensive software and nothing any more complex than what we need."

He said " Great, I'd like to do that".

So I continued with "I think this will take you about 80 hours to develop, make the barcodes and tag everything. You can work when you want without interference. Now, you make $ 10 an hour at the store when you work for me, yes? So 80 hours x 10 = $ 800, but instead what I am going to do is contract with you and pay you double that - $ 1,600 for a 100% operational system with everything in the store tagged. Do the job in 80 hours and you made $ 20 an hour. Do it in 40 hours and you just doubled your money again. Don't get it completed by August 15th and you get nothing. This is a performance contract, I pay for a finished product and nothing else, OK?"

He loved it. I saw his eyes light up because this was a grown-up job, not the Putt-Putt. It comes with total responsibility and independence, do it quick and well and make a lot of money. Fail and get nothing. Just like the real world. He will learn a system and how to implement it, and like I told him as well "Do this well and you will have a new skill set that is marketable, and then perhaps you can do this next Spring when you are out of college for another store and make that same $ 1,600 for 80 hours work instead of sitting in the mini-golf shack for eight bucks an hour in a no-brainer job."

So now i will be curious to see what he does.....should be interesting!

That is a great "challenge" and one that is bound to pay dividends to both your son and your business. Such a system will undoubtedly have a monthly-use software license, an ongoing supplies cost and implementation investment but these costs will be offset by profit-increasing efficiencies. While he is accomplishing his new challenge, you might want to spend a little time thinking through how you will measure the true value impact of the new system.

That's awesome.. I also have a 20-yr-old college student. He got a job this summer at the local BMW dealer. Cashier in the service department. $9/hr, and he spends all day dreaming up ways for me to spend my money on a new BMW, so he can have mine.

Duane,

I'm curious as to how he (and you) made out and what's the name of the program you ended up with?

Here at work we use the ancient but reliable IBM AS/400 system.

Spreadsheet. Excel. Simple!