Tag: Business Management

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Technology

Tip of the Week: Technology Has Your Business Covered

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Technology is an easy thing to take for granted, especially in an office that has countless solutions that are utilized on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small retail establishment, a large organization with multiple offices, or a factory to produce consumer items. Today, we’ll look at the various ways your business is changed for the better thanks to the use of technology.

Customer Service
Your customers are one of your most valuable assets, so it’s natural that you want to build a powerful bond with them. If you can’t support the products you sell to them, you’ll have a difficult time keeping your business in good standing with both current and prospective clients. Technology can help you maintain this positive relationship through the use of a ticketing system to handle customer complaints and concerns, and it also makes it easy to handle support for various services you might offer.

Social media and social networking in general provides businesses with more direct ways of interacting with consumers. Sites like Facebook and Twitter essentially offer a platform to promote a brand and knowledge base. Of course, this advantage can quickly become a detriment if it’s not managed properly, as you’re (again) dealing directly with customers–if they aren’t satisfied by your interaction, they’re more likely to share it and complicate public relations.

Productivity
To be successful as a business, you have to accrue money somehow. This is where productivity comes in–technology helps by enabling workers to get more done throughout the workday, building more value for your organization in the long run. For example, time-tracking software can help with task scheduling, giving employees the opportunity to accomplish more during the time they spend in the office. Moreover, you’ll be able to assign a monetary value to the time your employees spend on various tasks and streamline their work processes.

Many of today’s most helpful technology solutions come with built-in productivity solutions that allow for collaboration through the cloud. These cloud-hosted applications provide flexibility to workers so they can communicate in the way most efficient for them. Since these solutions are flexible and scalable, your business can adjust them as needed.

Finance
Money is a big part of why you’re in business, but you can’t do anything without funding of your own. You have a bottom line to keep in mind, after all. Technology can help businesses better manage their finances through online invoicing services to collect payments and reduce paper expenses. If you use software to manage payroll and other accounts, you’ll be able to handle them easily and more efficiently. If you can streamline these processes at all, your business can run much better and you’ll be better off in the long run.

Security
Security plays a critical role in the sustainability of your business, both on your network and in your physical office. You can’t let workers or other entities waltz around your network and your office uninhibited, as the opportunity to cause major damage is practically omnipresent in today’s business world. You need to implement not only network security solutions such as antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and spam blocking technology, but physical security solutions like security cameras, biometric security locks, and other measures as well. Doing so ensures the protection of all your business’ assets, whether it’s from a hacker or a careless employee.

A lot goes into making a business successful, and technology plays a large role in doing so. How does your business use technology? COMPANYNAME can help you get started thinking about the future for your organization. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

What Star Wars can Teach About Mentorship

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The Star Wars saga has many recurring themes – the struggle between desire and destiny, good and evil, impulse and discipline. However, a theme that particularly stands out throughout the series is the examination of the relationship between student and teacher. This theme is similar to the relationship that an IT provider should strive to have with their clients.

For today’s Star Wars Day blog, we’ll review some of the lessons that a professional can learn from the Star Wars films, as well as what the insights that the relationships shared by the characters can reveal about being a mentor, as well as the mentored. To do so, we’ll examine some moments and characters from the complete series thus far – Episodes I through VIII – and the stand-alone Rogue One.

WARNING: this article may spoil a few key moments from the series, so continue at your own caution.

How to Be a Mentor, According to Star Wars
There is no shortage of those who could be considered mentors throughout the series. From Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan/Old Ben Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, and finally, Yoda, many characters accept the mantle of mentor… albeit begrudgingly, at times.

In order to be a mentor, there are two requirements that each of these characters present during the series. Likewise, many characters also exhibit just one or the other characteristic. Yet, as they do not exemplify both qualities, they don’t quite qualify as a true mentor. We will explore these characters in more detail later.

These two requirements are to be a committed educator, as well as an equally committed leader. Each of the mentors listed above have had the opportunity to be both, and rose to the occasion. Qui-Gon took the initiative to take a young slave into his care, campaigning to the Jedi Council for the ability to teach him. When Qui-Gon was dispatched by Darth Maul, Obi-Wan rose to the occasion and took up Anakin Skywalker as his padawan learner.

Years after Anakin succumbed to his fear and hubris to be reborn as Darth Vader, Obi-Wan continued to be a mentor under the name Ben Kenobi, teaching the Skywalker of the next generation how to embody the principles of the Jedi. Once this Skywalker, Luke, had learned to be a leader, he teamed up with his long lost sister, Princess Leia Organa, to defeat the Empire. While Leia continued to lead an underground organization committed to fighting the Empire’s last remnants, Luke retreated to a sanctuary to ensure he was able to train the next worthy Jedi.

Finally, we would be amiss if we neglected to mention Yoda’s involvement as a leader throughout the saga. From the very beginning of the story, Yoda was a respected leader of the Jedi Order, proving his worth on the battlefield and in the Senate. When the Empire rose, he retreated to his home planet in wait of the next generation of Jedi to train. He then passed on, but returned as a Force ghost to impart his wisdom again, later in the series’ timeline.

Lining Up Star Wars Mentorship with Our Own (and with The Odyssey)
As one might imagine, the concept of mentorship has been around for much longer than Star Wars has been. In fact, we get the word “mentor” from a character in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. Mentor was entrusted by the protagonist, Odysseus, to care for his son in his absence, and later assisted the young prince Telemachus in reuniting with his long-lost father by serving as his guide and, well, mentor.

In this way, Mentor serves a very similar purpose as many of the characters from Star Wars. By teaching another character and acting as a leader, he allows the protagonists to succeed in their quest – or, in the terminology more likely to be used in Star Wars, their mission. Furthermore, like the mentors to be found in Star Wars, Mentor shares a few characteristics with the mentors we see in the business world.

What Makes a Mentor, a Mentor
We’ve already established that a mentor should be a sort of amalgamation of a teacher, and a leader. This is admittedly a tricky balance to find, until you describe what kind of leader and teacher makes a mentor.

First, as a leader, you have to be able to be supportive as you take charge. As you work with a mentee, commit the time that the mentee needs to grow and devote your full attention to them. Just as Ben Kenobi understood Luke’s rage and bitterness after his aunt and uncle were slaughtered by the Empire’s stormtroopers, you need to be able to emphasize with your acolyte and guide them towards the higher purpose you can see them achieving.

As a teacher, it is important to also challenge those who you mentor. Not only should you assign tasks for your student to complete, these tasks should test the limits of their ability and set a standard that you expect them to meet. As Yoda challenged Luke to lift his X-wing fighter out of the swamps of Dagobah, he wasn’t coddling his student. Neither should you.

It is also important that, as their teacher, you review the lessons that have been imparted. These discussions will not only help ensure the information is retained, it will also encourage your mentee to draw their own conclusions. Remember, teachable moments happen all the time – it’s up to you to embrace them.

Finding Poor Examples in Rogue One
Alternatively, Rogue One offers a few examples of how to very much not be a positive leader. At the very beginning of the film, protagonist Jyn Urso’s father, Galen, is pressured into returning into the Empire’s service and designing the ultimate superweapon: the planet-destroying Death Star. In addition to being forced to work on a project he detests, he is stuck in a thoroughly unpleasant work environment. Oh, and did we mention that his wife was murdered and his daughter lost to him during the attack?

It should be no wonder, then, that instead of being loyal to his ‘employers,’ Galen instead decides to sabotage their operation from the inside. Hiding a critical weakness in the Death Star and sending word of it to the Rebel Alliance, Galen embodies the corporate espionage that a disgruntled employee could leverage against your business. A good leader sees the value in keeping an employee happy in two ways – first, it helps to keep that employee engaged and productive, and secondly, it reduces, if not eliminates, any ill will toward the organization.

In another example of the Empire’s failings in Rogue One, the antagonists of the film also leverage shady office politics to get a leg up on their superiors. For instance, Director Krennic elects to go over his commander’s head and out of the traditional chain of command, reporting directly to Darth Vader. As a commanding officer himself, Krennic serves as an example of what happens when office politics supersede the typical chain of command – and winds up being Force-choked into oblivion for his troubles. While it is highly unlikely that deviating from the chain of command will get you strangled like Krennic, it certainly doesn’t reflect well on you and shows a distinct lack of leadership and respect for the chain of command.

All this only goes to show that lessons in leadership can be found anywhere you look – even in a galaxy far, far away. Do you have any Jedi masters or mentors in your life? What have you learned from them? Share your thoughts in the comments, and may the Fourth be with you!

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Unpaid Invoices Were a $825 Billion Problem Last Year

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Businesses exist to make money. Regardless of what that money is intended for, be it to sustain someone’s lifestyle or to bankroll a cause, a business will cease to be without an incoming cash flow. Unfortunately, unpaid invoices can make that cash flow stutter and slow to a trickle, and many businesses experience this problem as billed money doesn’t come in.

This presents those who rely on a small-to-medium-sized business to make a living, from the CEO to the employees, with another problem. How can they be paid if the business isn’t receiving its payment for services rendered until 30, 60, or even 90 days later? Many industries have begun to make these their typical payment terms.
Resultantly, businesses have found it difficult to continue their operations without the financial inundation from their current clients. You may have encountered this kind of issue yourself.

If so, you are not alone by any stretch. Estimates attribute 5% of the entire national gross domestic product to unpaid invoices, with the average small business waiting to be paid around $84,000. 81% of these invoices are past due by 30 days, which is especially bad when one considers that the average small business only has 27 days of capital saved up and available to them.

All in all, estimates put the total amount owed to small businesses due to unpaid invoices at $825 billion.

Even without taking that sum into consideration, this is a clear issue that many businesses face whenever their invoices are not answered in a timely fashion. If these businesses don’t have any funds to spare beyond what is needed to stay in business (assuming they have even that), how will they ever make the improvements they will need to stay competitive? How many projects have you abandoned halfway because it caused too much financial drain?

While it may seem to make no sense to invest your much-needed capital after we’ve just announced that your company may fail without it, there is a simple way to save your business money as you work to get what you’re due. With managed services from COMPANYNAME, your capital spending on your technology management can be transferred into a predictable, and budgetable, consistent schedule. We can also provide you with the solutions to help you track who is repaying their debt to you, and who isn’t.

Call PHONENUMBER for more information.

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Business

What it Looks Like When an IT Provider Goes Above and Beyond

b2ap3_thumbnail_care_for_your_business_400.jpg Modern businesses have a lot more to worry about than organizations did over 100 years ago. Chances are that your organization has its hands full with operations, and the last thing that you want to worry about is securing data and hoping that your technology solutions work as intended. Thankfully, you can easily outsource the management of these systems to a managed IT services provider.

Of course, you can’t just leave the task of managing your IT to just any organization. You want to outsource to only the most reliable and trustworthy managed IT company–one that can provide only the best care that you would expect an in-house team to deliver. You can rest assured that COMPANYNAME handles our clients’ technology as if it were our very own, and provides solutions that keep your organizational downtime to a minimum.

The reason why you can trust our word? We are putting our reputation on the line. It’s just good business to take proper care of your technology, and by showing you that we care, we can develop a great relationship with your staff by keeping your technology working properly.

How We Protect Your Business
It’s extremely important to protect your business’s assets, including the most valuable one of all: your data. Cyberattacks have grown extremely sophisticated over the past few decades, and as much as we hate to say it, even protected businesses are at considerable risk. This is why enterprise-level security solutions are needed, as consumer-level security is inadequate for protecting something as important as your business. Furthermore, we compound this by providing comprehensive remote monitoring and management, as well as complete preventative measures to mitigate issues before they become large-scale problems.

You also have to worry about the risk of user error. Since your business is made up of employees–none of which are perfect–you need to plan for the day that a user will accidentally download the wrong attachment or click on the wrong link, allowing malicious entities access to your network. Granted, it’s impossible to take the time out of your workday to monitor each and every user while they work, which is why outsourcing this responsibility is often the ideal solution. COMPANYNAME can monitor your network so that you don’t have to.

How We Manage Your Technology
What if you were to experience technology trouble that completely takes down operations? If this happens, you need someone with experience leveraging continuity-minded technology to get you back on track. In situations like these, you can’t wait for a technician to arrive on site, so it’s more reliable and efficient to have the work done remotely by an IT provider.

The main benefit of outsourced IT is that you don’t have to worry about your technology any longer, and you’ll be able to spend more time focusing on running your business. Besides, the many benefits of managed IT eventually pay for themselves in the long run in the form of improved productivity, enhanced efficiency, and reduced downtime.

For more information about what COMPANYNAME can do for your business, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Business

How Consolidating Your Technology Vendors Will Save You a Ton of Time

b2ap3_thumbnail_vendor_management_services_400.jpg Who manages the relationships that your organization has with its various vendors? Do you have someone who specifically handles this role, or is it pushed onto your already-full schedule? If this is something that takes up a significant portion of your day, vendor management (though necessary) can become a detriment. Thankfully, there is a better way to handle your vendor relationships, and it doesn’t involve stretching yourself thin.

With COMPANYNAME’s vendor management strategy, an outsourced provider directly handles all vendor relationships so that your organization doesn’t have to. Vendor management solutions have the potential to save your organization a large amount of time and capital.

Basically, how this works is that you no longer have to deal with the frustrating and time-consuming process of reaching out to each and every one of your vendors, and the outsourced provider handles this responsibility for you. In a sense, a service provider like COMPANYNAME can be your single point of contact for your technology vendors.

There should be no question whether you have time to deal with the emails and phone calls required to keep up with your technology. We can handle all of this for you, plus some, reaching out to your vendors as your business encounters issues. If you have questions about your products, you don’t have to worry about being put on hold or finding the right technician. We’ll deal with all of that for you so that you don’t have to waste your time.

Consolidating Your Vendors Into a Single Phone Number
Without vendor management, your business would be wasting countless hours that would be better spent on profitable initiatives. Furthermore, relying on vendors to resolve issues can quickly put a time-sensitive project behind schedule. With outsourced vendor management, you achieve all of the goals that you want to get to without sacrificing the time that you would spend making sure that your technology solutions are working as intended. This single point of contact allows you to take the unpredictability out of your tech support.

If your business wants to improve operations and take technology management to the next level, consider our vendor management services. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Technology

Tip of the Week: Easy Ways to Train Your Staff About IT

b2ap3_thumbnail_business_it_training_400.jpg You might wish that your employees know more about IT and its inner workings, and you’re not alone. SMBs often suffer from a lack of IT talent, and they might try to supplement this lack of proficiency by training employees on how to do basic computer tasks required to work effectively. Thankfully, you don’t have to rely on just your knowledge and that of your employees when it comes to maintaining your technology.

You can augment your employees’ IT knowledge with the following services offered by IT providers.

An IT Help Desk
One of the best ways to supplement your organization’s in-house knowledge of technology troubles is by taking advantage of an outsourced IT help desk. Basically, this is a phone number or live chat system that your employees can utilize when they need help with specific technology problems. This strikes a unique balance between allowing your employees to get their own support, and giving them access to help when it’s needed most; allowing them to learn more about IT without letting them perform advanced procedures on their own.

If you want to use a help desk as a training tool, you’ll want to make sure that your IT service provider is remotely accessing your employees’ workstation during this process. This helps the service provider guide them through the steps one-by-one, without letting them make big mistakes that could derail operations. Once an employee knows how to do something in particular with minimal effort, they’re less likely to waste time on the same process in the future.

When this interaction is remote, it is typically more cost effective than having a technician go on site.

Focused IT Training
Training is an accepted part of the office environment, and one of the most valuable lessons that you can provide for your employees is technology best practices. Every so often, require that your employees review basic IT protocol, such as how to make secure passwords, how to handle sensitive information, troubleshooting common technology problems, and so much more. Ultimately, your goal should be for your employees to walk out of the training session with the sense that they’ve learned something new about how best to work for your organization and how to handle its technology with care.

In fact, some IT providers can provide all-you-can-eat help desk support for end users, while providing training materials, best practices, and more. We figure that the more educated and effective your staff is, the more growth you will experience. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Business

Tip of the Week: 4 Ways to Attract and Retain Top Talent

b2ap3_thumbnail_attract_talent_400.jpg The endgame for most businesses is to improve what they do and increase their profitability. While this might mean selling more products, getting more customers or clients, or a myriad of other metrics, the driving force behind your business’s operations–your employees–are crucial toward this goal.

Top talent can be difficult to come by. There are several factors that come into play, especially in a competitive industry. However, employees that go above and beyond are easily worth the struggle that it takes to find them. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to do everything you can in order to make your business attractive to them. Here are four ways that you can make your business a magnet that attracts talented workers.

Offer Benefits
One of the most effective ways to attract new employees is by offering benefits and sign-on bonuses. However, this can lead to you getting more applications than you have time to go through, with many of them possibly not being qualified for the position at all. On the other hand, this makes a particularly impressive employee stand out from the rabble.

In fact, these benefits don’t necessarily have to involve finances. Instead, something as simple as flexible work hours, career advancement, and education may be motivation enough.

Challenge Them
Hard workers appreciate challenges as they provide a valuable outlet for users to test themselves. When you’re looking for new employees, consider implementing some sort of challenge or homework assignment that you can use to gauge whether the prospective employees actually know what they’re doing. This effectively helps you cut down on unqualified applicants, while also allowing you to engage your prospects from the get-go.

Idealize the Workplace
You can hire as much talent as you want, but if you don’t provide your high-demand talent with a great work environment, they may pack their bags and look for a place that does. Be sure that you emphasize to your new onboards what the strengths of your company are, and allow the prospective employees to get a feel for your workplace. Plus, if your current employees have plenty of good to share about the company with the prospect, they’ll be more likely to seal the deal themselves.

Provide the Latest Technology
It’s a known fact that the latest technology can significantly improve the way that you do business, but did you know that it’s also great for attracting new workers? A study of millennial workers found that 42 percent of them will seriously consider leaving a job if the technology used by the company doesn’t meet their high standards. It’s important to keep in mind that they will make up the majority of the workforce as early as 2020.

One of the ways that you see millennials using their technology in the office is through the use of smartphones, which can also put your business at risk. Be sure that you implement a solid BYOD policy and ensure that they adhere to it. COMPANYNAME can provide you with the assistance needed to do so.

Basically, these four tips are meant to help you attract the best talent possible. Plus, if you manage to get some good employees, that means that they aren’t working for your competition, which is always a plus.

Bonus Tip: Outsource the Technology Upkeep and Maintenance
One of the biggest issues that SMBs might have is finding qualified technicians to take care of their office technology solutions. While this is a challenge, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Outsourcing services like IT is often preferable to hiring new employees and adding new salaries to your budget. Instead, all you have to do is make room for an IT budget, which can save you plenty of capital in the long run, and then be used to onboard talented staff. In fact, we highly recommend outsourcing as much as possible. To get started, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.