It is an odd question, but it is one that you are not asked enough. Let’s say you are walking down the street and you realize your money clip is missing. Thankfully your id and credit cards are all in your wallet, but you have lost about $400 (not including the value of your money clip). Are you upset? Of course you are! Question is, what are you upset about? Are you mad about losing the 6 or 7 sheets of green paper in that we define as currency? Probably not. You are most likely mad because you had made plans for that money to make your life better in some way.

Now here is another scenario; there is a hole in your pocket and you are continually losing about 2 dollars a day. You wear these pants every day (because apparently you don’t like to shop) and you never figure out that there is a hole. Does this cause the same reaction? I am sure many of you were upset but far less than in the first scenario. However, when you look at the numbers, you would lose $730 a year in the second scenario which is twice as much as that random large amount of money you dropped on your way to work in the first.

The negative reaction we have from quickly losing a large amount of money and slowly losing a small amount of money is human nature. We tend to notice large impacts and grow complacent to small losses. I argue, however, that we tend to lose more money on continual small losses because we ignore them. When we lose big, we tend to investigate and resolve the problem.

Why do we do this? Let’s go back to the scenarios listed above. Why did we not care about the pants having a hole in them? There are two reasons:

1.       People generally don’t pay attention to what they wear or use everyday

2.       Because we don’t think the money was enough to worry about it.

In many business scenarios, professionals let money go down the drain because they don’t understand or recognize there is a problem.  They simply let money filter out of their pockets because they figure the problem is not large enough to worry about. In the long run, some businesses let these scenarios get so bad that they end up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars! So please, for your business, go to a seamstress. Find an expert that can fix your issues and stop your from losing money. That way you can work confidently knowing that you are doing everything that you can for your company.

Limitless Technology ~ CRS

www.limitlesstechnology.com

407-330-4466

Nassau County ComptrollerGeorge Maragosreleased his Information Technology Telecommunications audit which found thousands of more telephone lines than employees, some of which are no longer working for the County. In response to the Comptroller’s audit, IT stated they identified “4,600 suspect or unverified lines” during a survey conducted last year. The audit found the excess lines cost the County up to$1.2 millionduring a twenty month period fromJanuary 2010toAugust 2011.

“There must be greater oversight and control of theVerizontelephone billing,” Comptroller Maragos said. “The IT Departmentwill need to double its efforts to review theVerizonbills to bring telephone service charges under control and save millions for the taxpayers.”

The excess and unauthorized phone lines are the result of inadequate review of the monthlyVerizonbills and an oversight to request for unused telephone lines to be disconnected.

Below are illustrations of some departments with a significantly greater number of phone lines when compared to number of employees:

The Planning Departmentwith 136 lines for 37 employees;

The Department of Social Serviceswith 1,558 lines for 968 employees;

The Treasurer’s Office with 75 lines for 38 employees.

The IT reclamation initiative intended to eliminate unneeded lines was a good first step, but more needs to be done to find and eliminated unnecessary telephone lines. The monthly service charges actually increased fromDecember 2009throughNovember 2011and more lines were added than deleted.

The County IT Departmentagrees that the excessiveVerizonlines need to be eliminated and they must develop a more comprehensive telecommunication policy to control telephone services provided to employees. IT indicated that they may be hampered in implementing the audit findings recommendations due to lack of staff.

“There should be no reason that unnecessary lines are not being disconnected immediately. The necessary resources should be dedicated to verify the accuracy ofVerizonbilling,” Comptroller Maragos concluded.

Limited Review of the Nassau County Department of Information Technology Telecommunications Management(http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/Comptroller/documents/IT_Telecommunication_FINALReport