Tag: Productivity

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Tip of the Week

Tip of the Week: Using Templates in Evernote

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The note-taking application Evernote is a favorite of many users, as it allows them to keep extensive notes in an organized fashion. Its true utility goes beyond that of a digital scratch pad, however, as it has additional features that offer much more. For this week’s tip, we’ll review one particularly useful feature: templates.

What Are Templates?
Evernote’s templates are handy, pre-built structures for notes that provide users with a simpler means of organizing specific types of information. Instead of taking time struggling with your formatting each time you start a new note, you can apply one of the templates that Evernote offers on their website. Those with a subscription to Evernote Plus, Premium, or Business can even use formatting they’ve created in past notes to generate their own templates for repeated use.

Applying Templates in Evernote
Once you’ve acquired a few templates, either from the Evernote website’s collection or from a past note, applying one of your choosing is relatively simple.

  • In Evernote, start a new note.
  • In the body of the note, click Templates to view the ones you have saved.
  • From there, you can search for any templates you have, delete ones you no longer want or need, edit their names, and of course, apply them to notes.
  • If you want to edit a template, follow the same process, and once you’ve made the changes that you want, save it as a new template. Note: only those with Plus, Premium, or Business accounts are able to do this.
  • Plus, Premium, and Business users are also able to create their own templates this way.

So, what do you think? Is this a welcome change to Evernote? What other improvements would you like to see them make down the line? Let us know in the comments!

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Miscellaneous

Which Browser is Best for Your Needs?

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There are a variety of web browsers out there, and that variety is much larger than most people think. While most can list off the main ones: Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox, there are many more to consider. However, the real question remains: which one is best for you?

In a Nutshell: Probably Chrome…
The most used browser today is Chrome, with about 60 percent of the market share going to it. This isn’t an accident, as Chrome has historically prioritized the two things that Internet users want most – options and speed.

Chrome has always been fast, and despite some other browsers reaching comparable speeds, they just can’t match Chrome’s consistency in that arena. It also doesn’t hurt that Chrome has a remarkably simple interface that hides a massive amount of functionality, only supplemented by a huge extensions list.

However, Mozilla’s Firefox option has also exploded in popularity with its release of Quantum, which allows it to give Chrome a run for its money where speed is concerned. With additional security features and other useful elements, Mozilla is another tempting option.

Microsoft’s Edge browser is another option for many, especially if they prioritize the ability to easily share web pages through either email or assorted social networks, or to take notes on web pages and save them. Furthermore, as it was developed by Microsoft, the same company that develops Windows itself, Edge and Windows integrate quite well with each other.

…But It Depends
Of course, if your browsing tends to have a specific purpose or need, there are other browsers that may lend themselves better to your given objective. For instance, Opera has a feature called Opera Turbo, which can help make slow broadband speeds less of an issue.

Another option is Vivaldi, which would be ideal for those who want a customizable browsing experience. This browser lets a user create their own keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, as well as provides far more options that effectively allow the user to customize their own browser. Those who are particularly concerned about their online privacy might prefer the inherent features found in the Brave Browser or in the Tor Browser, and those who frequently download things from torrents might prefer Torch Browser.

At the end of the day, your choice will depend on your preferences. COMPANYNAME can help you weigh your options and make the best choice for you and your business. Give us a call at PHONENUMBER today.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Your Office Deserves a Good Cleaning

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In keeping with the freshly rejuvenated feel that springtime brings, many people take advantage of this energy by doing some much-needed spring cleaning after the long winter months. Why shouldn’t the workplace join in the fun? In this blog, we’ll explain how a fresh and clean office can benefit your employees and your business as a whole – and just as importantly, how to go about tidying up properly.

Why Your Office Needs to Be Kept Clean
Regardless of the industry you operate in, chances are that your business relies on technology solutions in order to function properly. From this conclusion, it can be inferred that if your solutions were to go on the fritz or even break down entirely, you would find yourself experiencing downtime and the associated lack of productivity.

Keeping your solutions and the environment they are stored in clean and organized is key to maintaining their functionality. Without the proper care and maintenance, your technology doesn’t stand a chance for very long, which can (and will) cause no small harm to your business.

To combat these effects, there are plenty of solutions you can deploy to assist you, along with some traditional cleaning methods and basic organizational strategies.

Digital Methods
There are plenty of ways to improve your organizational functionality, starting with your document organization solution. What is the current state of your retained files? Are they well-organized into a hierarchy, such that everyone in the business who needs access can gain it by following the system? Are they fully digitized and backed up, or are they squirreled away in metal boxes that take up valuable real estate? Going paperless is an environmentally conscious and admirable strategy, not to mention a good way to save some capital.

Organizing and Optimizing Your Computer
While you’re occupied with dealing with your file storage and organization, it also doesn’t hurt to take a look at some of your other technology solutions to ensure that everything is as it should be where they are involved. Take, for example, your email solution and its inbox.

It’s no secret that email messages have a tendency to pile up and become unmanageable if left unorganized for too long. By auditing the messages you receive and setting up filters to automate their organization, you can make your inbox largely independent.

As for your desktop and the files found on it, treat the files there as you would the files in your document organization system. Are there any being stored on your individual device that should actually be stored in the company’s shared files? A hierarchy of folders can help you organize any files that are left after those that can be moved to shared resources have been migrated.

Keeping Things Tidy
Of course, what’s a good office cleaning without taking a few workstations and getting rid of any accumulated dust and grime? Have a trusted IT resource open up the devices and give them a thorough cleaning with some canned air, and clean out some of the exterior in the same way. You should also give your network infrastructure the same treatment with duster. Once your computers and servers are cleaned out, it never hurts to rethink your cable management to minimize dust collection and reduce the very real tripping hazard these cables can create.

Finally, you should also participate in some more traditional spring cleaning. Clean your floors and bathrooms, and get rid of any “science experiments” left in the break room refrigerator. This will all make your office environment more comfortable, healthier, and thereby more productive.

What are some of your best cleaning tips? Share them with us in the comments!

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Business

Looking for Outside-the-Box Ideas? Give Your Intrapreneurs a Voice

b2ap3_thumbnail_intrapreneur_400.jpg Entrepreneurs are the heroes of today, making great strides in the business world by introducing new ideas to their industries. However, the intrapreneur is a bit more of an enigma; they create commendable ideas within their own organization. In fact, your organization probably has its own intrapreneurs. How do you take advantage of their skills to your business’s benefit?

Simply put, the intrapreneur is an employee that can see past the short-term and look at what must be done in the long-term. They understand that their ingenuity can help your organization achieve its goals, and they go out of their way to make sure that their ideas are used for the benefit of the entire organization.

Tim Beerman, CTO of Ensono, describes to CIO what exactly makes a good intrapreneur, and why organizations should look to individuals like them for helpful insight: “These are the employees who want to get their hands dirty and are often the first people to volunteer for a job. Intrapreneurs are not content with the status quo. They often see how things could be part of a bigger picture and come up with ideas to realize this new vision.” Who in your office fits this profile?

Here are a few more characteristics that business owners should look for when identifying their own intrapreneurs.

  • Intrapreneurs are capable of motivating those around them, especially with challenging their perspectives with new thoughts and ideas.
  • Intrapreneurs stick to their loyalties and are always willing to go above and beyond to create positive change for your organization.
  • Intrapreneurs have plenty of skill to be successful outside of your business, but they insist on staying employed by your organization.
  • Intrapreneurs are always challenging the way that your business functions, inviting disruption not to mess with operations, but to improve them.
  • Intrapreneurs can identify where your workplace needs to improve and provide ways to resolve these problems. Moreover, they are willing to take risks to resolve issues.

It’s clear that any intrapreneur will be easy to spot. They are naught but your most loyal, motivated, and thoughtful employees. The real question from a business owner’s point of view is what to do with them. They’ll challenge you to the best of your ability, whether they mean to or not. Will you step up and embrace this challenge, or will you feel threatened by their contributions?

The best way to take advantage of intrapreneurs is to encourage them to step up and communicate their ideas. In particular, you need to make sure that there are various ways that they can communicate their ideas to management. If they don’t, you’ll simply crush the spirit and nobody will be benefitting from their good ideas anymore–certainly not your business. These employees will just put in the minimal effort, get paid, and go home at the end of the day, rather than use their intuition to help your business improve. In a worst-case scenario, they may even leave and find another company that’s more willing to hear them out.

IT professionals can make it much easier for your intrapreneurs to express themselves. Beerman explains: “An intrapreneur might see inefficiencies within his or her company’s workflow, but may not necessarily have the experience to fully develop a solution. The IT department can then act as a partner to find the right recommendation. When intrapreneurs and IT teams are communicating regularly, there are more windows of opportunity for collaboration. Innovation and collaboration will eventually become business as usual, once initial bridges are crossed.”

This type of collaboration doesn’t have to be difficult, but can, as expected, require a major change in your company’s culture. If you want quality communications solutions that can help your organization benefit from each and every great mind behind your operations, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Technology

Productivity Suffers Without a Cohesive IT Plan

b2ap3_thumbnail_outsource_your_it_management_400.jpg There are right ways and wrong ways to do many things, and managing IT is no exception. Many businesses, especially small ones, are left susceptible to issues and vulnerabilities in their network. What’s worse, these are often networks that are supported by an IT “expert.”

Whether it’s due to budget constraints, a lack of workable time, or any other reason, companies frequently settle for substandard solutions when it comes to making changes to their IT. Oftentimes, they’ll try to bury their issues underneath a relatively updated infrastructure without doing anything to resolve the underlying problem. Either that, or they decide that they can fix the problem themselves, piecing together an unstable solution that almost works.

Observing this has only made us at COMPANYNAME more dedicated to providing a real solution for businesses that resort to these DIY implementations.

Many business, most often small ones, have a few things in common. First, they all experience similar issues with their IT, and secondly, they are usually ill-prepared to deal with the repercussions of these issues. Furthermore, these businesses will frequently neglect their need for standard operating procedures for their employees to follow.

This only opens the business up to greater issues as the employees will resort to processes that they’re personally comfortable with to complete their responsibilities. In the end, the workforce is left in the uncomfortable position of desperately needing change, with the unwillingness to make any changes.

As a result, the already tricky business of running an SMB is only made more difficult. When issues persistently prevent your technology from serving its intended purpose, your employees will be rendered incapable of meeting their responsibilities by a situation that is out of their control.

COMPANYNAME can help put control back into your hands with our variety of IT solutions. From our proactive monitoring and maintenance practices to our ability to block many distractions, we can apply a consistent solution to your entire network, unifying your IT so it will better serve your needs. Call us at PHONENUMBER for more information.

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Business

Pair Up the Right Workers to Increase Productivity By 10%

b2ap3_thumbnail_action_leads_to_productivity_400.jpg Keeping your workers as productive as possible is a challenge for every employer. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, there is one easy that you can increase productivity: By keeping a productive worker in close proximity to other workers.

Such a profound discovery could be enough to shake the foundations of how you form your departments and how the interior of your office looks. Theoretically, you could simply arrange your office in a way which takes advantage of this “productivity by proximity” rule, keeping those who get the most work done at the center of the action. This could inspire your less-dutiful employees to better themselves and improve how they work.

What’s interesting is just how the study describes this phenomenon: “We saw that neighbors have a significant impact on an employee’s performance, and it can be either positive or negative. In terms of magnitude, we found that approximately ten percent of a worker’s performance spills over to her neighbors. Replacing an average performer with one who is twice as productive results in his or her neighboring workers increasing their own productivity by about ten percent, on average.”

Maybe you’re feeling that you should reevaluate how your organization is approaching the office setup, but before you go and make drastic changes, keep in mind that doing this haphazardly could actually make things worse. This study highlights the benefits of productivity by proximity, but keep in mind that it also warns of how the exact opposite can happen too. For example, an employee who wants to get the most done, for example, could be held back by a slacker that’s nearby.

You need to also consider other factors that influence worker productivity, like motivation. If you have a worker who wants to learn how to do a better job, putting them next to someone who is highly motivated and willing to go the extra mile could help dramatically. On the other hand, a worker who doesn’t care about doing a good job won’t be impressed by the positive attitude of their peers.

This is a negativity that your business can do without. In this situation, it might seem tempting to just isolate workers so they don’t influence each other. You can do this by either providing them with their own office, giving them the freedom to work remotely, or removing the problem employee from the equation completely.

As you can see, motivation is a crucial when it comes to worker productivity. It’s logical to assume that if you can provide powerful motivators, your team will be more likely to do their best work. Allowing workers to improve themselves by learning from motivated employees can be a spectacular way of improving productivity.

One last thing to consider is the technology that your organization uses. Implementing cloud-based collaboration software and communication solutions like VoIP and instant messaging can be a great way to help employees stay in touch and be more productive, regardless of where they are working. This helps your staff (especially those who might need help) stay in constant contact with those who can help them, allowing your team to be productive at all times.

To take advantage of the latest and greatest technology solutions, reach out to COMPANYNAME at PHONENUMBER.

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Security

Let the 80/20 Rule Be Your Guide for IT Security

b2ap3_thumbnail_eighty_twenty_rule_for_it_400.jpg IT security is something that businesses of all shapes, sizes, and varieties have to be concerned about. You’ll be faced with the question of whether you have adequate security practices on a daily basis. For help with understanding why the smallest vulnerabilities often result in the most data loss, look no further than the 80/20 rule.

This rule, often called the Pareto Principle , is defined as such by Investopedia: “[the Pareto Principle] specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. The principle states that 20 percent of the invested input is responsible for 80 percent of the results obtained. Put another way, 80 percent of consequences stem from 20 percent of the causes.”

In other words, the Pareto Principle is a strategy that attempts to explain how you should delegate your organization’s security resources in order to maximize the security you get. In this case, you are using your assets to protect your network from online threats. However, you might realize that even if you search and search for network vulnerabilities, you won’t find all of them. There are simply too many threats out there to identify. Instead, you use the Pareto Principle to identify where you can do the most good for your organization’s network security.

This principle can also work in reverse; only 20 percent of the vulnerabilities on the Internet lead to 80 percent of the data loss. When you think about it, this makes sense. How often do you hear about major data breaches in which multiple vulnerabilities were exploited? Instead, it’s usually just one major hack that led to many compromised accounts.

Yet, the biggest part of effectively using the 80/20 rule is determining what your priorities should be, and which threats are the most dangerous. After all, if everything is a priority, then nothing can get done. This results in all-around subpar security that leaves large threats unchecked.

A penetration test can help COMPANYNAME  to find where your organization’s most important security flaws lie. We can locate and resolve your most critical security flaws through a process called Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM), which allows us to connect to your office’s technology solutions and issue the required patches and security updates without an on-site visit. In fact, most situations will only call for remote access, so you can save both time and money with an RMM tool.

In fact, there’s one solution that is capable of protecting the majority of your network without much effort at all. It’s called a Unified Threat Management solution, and it includes all of the major components of network security in one convenient package. With an enterprise-level firewall, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filter, you can know with certainty that one solution covers the majority of the challenges presented by network security.

With COMPANYNAME’s managed IT services, you’re creating many opportunities for enhanced network security, improved network performance, and optimized operations. To learn more about how we make technology work for you, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Business

Tip of the Week: Maximize Workflow By Rethinking Your Office Layout

b2ap3_thumbnail_office_setup_design_400.jpg Of all the potential causes for a deficit within the office environment, the physical office itself isn’t likely to first come to mind. Even so, the value of establishing certain practical design and organization strategies have shown to improve employee morale, collaboration, and productivity. While these solutions may not be for every office, if your company is experiencing hindrances in productivity, these tactics may be beneficial implementations to incorporate within your business.

Keep it Clear
Are the desks in your office cluttered with papers, equipment, and other items that are keeping employees from completing their work? If so, it may be time to distribute more storage solutions to encourage your employees to keep their desk clear and relatively distraction free. Otherwise, you could institute the many solutions available to help your business go paperless. Document management solutions can allow many employees to access, edit, and collaborate on the same document without the expense and mess of multiple paper copies.

If office clutter is caused more by the equipment your employees use, there are a variety of solutions that can assist in reducing the amount of real estate this equipment takes up. Office telephony is clunky and expensive and may easily be replaced by a space- and cost-efficient, hosted VoIP solution. As far as wires are concerned, if not properly managed, they can quickly become a distracting waste of space. Fortunately, there is a trend in manufacturing to assist in managing and concealing wires at the workstation. If data storage, whether it’s incorporated into each employee’s workstation or housed in a large on-premises drive, is creating a space deficit, a cloud solution can reduce the amount of in-house storage needed to maintain operations.

Provide Spaces to Collaborate
If your business needs to keep its lines clear to contact clients, limiting the availability of VoIP communication, or if a face-to-face conversation is simply the more effective option when it comes to collaborating on a project, it is best to have a space dedicated to communal work. This can be as simple as a large table set aside for groups to utilize, or as complex as mobile workstations and adjustable equipment. A highly effective approach to encouraging positive, organized group work is a concept known as a war room.

A war room is simply a dedicated space designed to engage the spatial memory of those using it. By putting a certain piece of information in a certain space, it becomes easier to remember. By filling a room with whiteboards (or even rolling whiteboards) and movable furniture, you create the ideal space for a group to meet and create a plan that can be referenced and adjusted as needed.

Prepare for the Worst
If disaster struck your office, be it fire, flood, or failure of some essential equipment, would you still have a way to safely access your data in order to continue your operations? These circumstances, along with any others that would qualify as a disaster, are why one of your most important office setup considerations should be completely removed from the office. To fully protect your data, the most advisable course of action is to use an off-premises, isolated backup solution that can restore your data, should it ever be lost.

While many considerations are totally yours to act upon when setting up a workspace, COMPANYNAME can provide the expertise to be sure any of your technical systems will meet the very high standards you need them to reach. Give us a call at PHONENUMBER for help with any of your technology needs.