12/31/11 The end is near

December 31, 2011

The New computer system comes on line December 1^st. You know it might be kind of sad that I get geek out over new self storage software. Well laugh if you want but the new system is internet based and has enough bells and whistles to keep me happy for quite awhile. Since the 15^th I have been double entering everything that happens. Once in the old system then again in the new system. This is why December is the month to do something like a switch over. Decembers, in general are notoriously slow in storage. So for the first time in 20 years I had a hopping December.

It is great to have a good rush of business… But… in the middle of this level of reconstruction it has caused a few hassles. First let me say I like this kind of hassle , I just felt kind of bad for Adam ( the on line software trainer who was suppose to be training me). It seemed like every time we got into a training session a customer comes in to rent a space or they have some life changing problem that needs immediate attention. After 15 days of hit and miss training and updating I think we are ready to go live with the new program. Now lets find out in the next month or two if I am still excited about it.

A year ago we had just finished building our add-on and I went from being a 100% occupied facility of 101 units to a 33% occupied facility of 306 unit. Through the last year we have reconfigured the facility to be 284 units and we ended the year at 73% occupancy. Not bad.

The major hassle is the little things, like, the quick projects that won’t take long, or the change in procedures on the out going software that will only matter for 12 days, or the quick project that won’t take long, or the e-mail after e-mail after e-mail going over the same thing, oh yeah that quick project that won’t take long. Yeah, yeah, yeah

Oops I did not mean to get sarcastic.

2012, I see some really good growth happening at Guardian Storage. The facility has room to grow and increase in sales. And if we go to 100% or even close I will start pushing for P.O. Boxes.