Top Tech Moves for 2008

When I get going about the best small business tech gadgets for the New Year, my friend Chris will have none of it.

Running a small business takes every minute of every day, he says. Who has the time to figure out some new computer program?

In his early 20s, Chris ran a successful diner passed on to him by his father.

He did all he could to squeeze some coin out of the labor-intensive retail business: 18-hour days, managing a cast of semi-knucklehead employees and competing with the next Applebee's or Famous Dave's(DAVE Quote).

Finally, it all got to be too much and Chris moved on. But this year he challenged me to come up with the top tech moves any small business -- even a hectic diner -- can make to improve its life in 2008.

Chris, here's your list. Happy New Year.

1. Program your phone and fax machine.

I know it sounds nutty, but the biggest time-waster I see is a lack of phone and fax savvy.

If you've bought a phone in the last five years I can almost guarantee you're not getting full functionality out of it. Smart dialing systems are not optimized. Smart messaging and forwarding are almost universally ignored.

Remember the golden rule of business optimization: If you are going to do something more than a dozen times, like dial the number of a vendor, it's worth the time to automate it.