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THE GOOD NEWS IS, YOUR HOME-BASED BUSINESS IS GROWING. The bad news is--your home isn't. It's a common dilemma, but not an insoluble one. All it takes is creative thinking.

"Too often, people sit there in their muddled mess of a home office and wonder why they're not happy," says Bruce Wentworth, vice president of Wentworth-Levine Architect-Builder Inc. (www.wentworthlevine.com), a Silver Springs, Md.-based architect and general contractor that specializes in residential remodeling. "They'd be surprised at some of the solutions they can come up with," he adds.

Perhaps the most obvious solution is to find ways to do more with your home's existing space. You can convert a spare bedroom into an office or find niches that can be used to store space-eaters like files or supplies. But while remodeling is a good possibility, it's not the only one. You can outsource space-hungry tasks or turn to technology--a vast array of options stand ready to help you make the most out of the space you have.

Technology is probably the answer that presents the most flexibility. John Girard, vice president and research director with Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based research firm, cites the growing wealth of Web-based application service providers (ASPs--see related story), which offer free or fee-based services like accounting, collaboration, and calendar tools.

Home-based business owners can conduct research using Hoovers , a business network site, examine clients or companies with Stockmaster (www.stockmaster.com), or have topical information pushed to their PC or wireless device with products like Alerts.com. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. "You can troll the Internet or the phone book for services that are freebies or value-adds to make yourself more efficient and come off as bigger than you really are," Girard says.

Another way to save space--and time--is to outsource repetitive tasks you might delegate to inside staff. Kerry Gleeson, president of the Institute for Business Technology (www.ibt-pep.com), a Boca Raton, Fla.-based organizational and effectiveness training firm, and author of The High-Tech Personal Efficiency Program ($17; Wiley & Sons), notes that it isn't easy to let go of some of those tasks. "Many people are perfectionists. They've been used to doing these things themselves," Gleeson says. "That's one set of skills, and another is getting other people to do things for you."

# posted by Medical Information : 3:43 AM