For the business owner, when deciding what type of technology to invest in, one of the major considerations has to be when you are going to recoup the expense of that investment. No two technology investments are the same, and if you can’t get your money out of it (and then some), why even bother making the investment in the first place?
Looking back at the past few years, it’s little wonder that many people have become more concerned about their health—particularly when it comes to the workplace and spending extended amounts of time in the vicinity of other people. This makes it important that you do everything you can to make your workplace a healthier and safer-feeling place to work… but how?
While it can be too easy to assume that specialized software, like customer relationship management (CRM) software is reserved exclusively for massive companies, there are a lot of benefits that small businesses can see from using it. Let’s take a look at some of these benefits now.
Whether you are in the office or working remotely, there are many distractions that can derail your productivity. To set yourself up for success, we recommend that you follow the tips outlined in this blog. You might be surprised by how just a few simple adjustments can make a world of difference for your productivity.
The pandemic has brought about a change in the way that businesses operate. While companies may have once been limited to getting work done in the workplace, there has been a shift in the opposite direction with many companies retaining remote employees or keeping certain remote workplace policies in place even now. What is the difference between remote and hybrid options, and how do you determine which is best for your company?
Productivity is at the heart of running a successful business, but it’s not always apparent to employees how their effort translates into value for the company. Is there a way to use technology to help fuel productivity and ensure employees understand the value that their productivity provides to your organization? The right tools can eliminate barriers to productivity and allow your employees to reach their full potential.
In order to produce the results that your business’ customers demand, it is essential that your team work together. This collaboration comes in several forms, but if one person struggles, it can be a dire development for any project or service delivery. This month we thought it would be useful to outline what effective collaboration looks like and give you some insights into how technology fuels most of your business’ collaborative efforts.
Customer relationships are at the heart of any business that sells a service or goods, making a technology solution like a CRM a powerful way to jumpstart operations. Let’s review what some of the benefits of using a CRM are and how your organization might use one to the best of its ability.
Business is a collaborative effort, and no one individual putting in all the work will create the same results as a well-oiled group fueled by cooperative collaboration. To help your organization build this type of productive collaboration, we’ve put together three tips you can implement to maximize your team’s willingness and capabilities to work together.
Instant messaging can solve a lot of problems for small businesses, and it can make for a much more dynamic work environment compared to the passive one created by sending endless emails. However, this is only true if you are using instant messaging correctly. How does one go about doing that?
Automation as a concept is on the rise, and so too is its practice. Even before COVID-19 created considerable problems for several businesses, it was in use, and there is no reason for it to fall out of fashion now. There are plenty of ways your organization can implement automation to improve operations moving forward.
It can be difficult to stay focused in the workplace, especially with a litany of distractions at our fingertips at just about any point in the workday. What are some strategies you can use to keep your distractions to a minimum? We’ve outlined three great tips you can utilize to stay focused on the tasks at hand and be more productive with your time in the office.
Businesses have always attempted to optimize productivity for their employees in a variety of ways, but there are certain distractions that will always persist–especially in today’s incredibly connected world. One of these distractions is social media, and it creates the illusion of productivity when, in reality, it’s really not helping much.
Of any operational strategy, collaboration is both the simplest to set up and the most difficult to master. The organizations that do, stand to benefit greatly from the massive amount of efficiency that is created, and the productivity that results from it. The organizations that struggle with it,won’t be as efficient and that typically means costs will rise. Let’s take a look at some of the ways businesses can work toward collaborative mastery.
Productivity can be a challenging thing to measure and maintain, especially in a world full of distractions. Sometimes the distractions come from the nature of the work itself, and understanding this can become the key to overcoming them. Here are five tips you can use to overcome any workplace distractions and become more productive in the workplace.
You don’t need us to tell you that business owners have a lot of work to do, so you should make it a priority to streamline as much of this work as possible. You can use an easy four-step process to make your day-to-day tasks easier and more efficient, and who knows? You might even be able to free up some of that time by asking others to pitch in every now and then. Here are four tips you can use to get the most out of your productivity routine throughout the day.
As time passes and your business accomplishes great things, you might find yourself in positions where your network cannot handle its normal everyday workload. When there is so much network traffic and data transference, it can be difficult to identify where and why this slowdown occurs. What is a network bottleneck, and how can you resolve this issue?
As cliche as it sounds, one of the best ways to create a more positive workplace is to simply put more positivity into it. Let’s exercise this for a moment by setting the often-talked-about worst-case scenario to the side, and focus on what the optimal experience could be with the right technology management in place.
Remote work has become more legitimate than ever before to the point that people can now work effectively anywhere and not just their homes. This brings up an interesting question, however, as this trend means that one could effectively work while they’re on a vacation.
Have you ever wondered how it is that people can build up bad habits over time, yet break them and establish better ones? Have you also noticed how difficult it can be to break habits that have been ingrained into the very fibers of our being over an extended period of time? Believe it or not, people can change, and the science behind it—neuroplasticity—can provide some valuable insights into how to make it happen.
In order to get the most value out of your business technology, it’s important to understand best practices and how they can figure into your business operations. Let’s examine some of the most effective practices that you should include in your day-to-day operations and how they can benefit your organization.
The Internet is a wondrous place filled with countless resources and tools to be more effective in your day-to-day routine or business practices, but it is also home to a plethora of dangers that threaten the very existence of your organization. As an executive and business professional, it is your responsibility to identify opportunities to protect your company. One such way you can do so is by implementing a content filter.
Businesses are always trying to be as productive as possible, but the truth of the matter is that productivity is not a constant state of getting things done. It is perfectly natural to have ups and downs throughout the week that ultimately contribute to any progress made on tasks. The question then becomes one of how can you make progress toward goals for the workday. Here are four tips that might help you get more done throughout your day-to-day duties.
There is a misconception going around that the absolute only way you can possibly take care of your organization’s technology is to hire dedicated professionals to monitor and maintain every aspect of it. There is considerable benefit to doing this, we won’t lie, but there is value in applying specific mantras from everyday life to your IT infrastructure. With these small, common-sense practices, you might see some long-term success in IT management even without professionals at the helm.
Many critics of a shorter work week believe that cutting the number of hours worked throughout the workday or work week could potentially lead to a decrease in productivity, but a new study from Iceland suggests that this simply is not reality. This study suggests that productivity should no longer be a cause for concern when it comes to a shorter work week, as its astounding results show what really happens when you reduce the number of hours worked without reducing pay.
Computers are supposed to make life easier, and in a lot of ways, they do. However, using a computer can get complicated at times, especially when you are working with tons of files, applications, and resources on a daily basis. This can lead to a ton of digital clutter, which can be counterproductive and time-wasting. Let’s learn about how you can reduce digital clutter on your work PC.
For all the time we spend promoting productivity-enhancing technologies, we’d be remiss if we didn’t address the source of quite a bit of inefficiency: the user. People get distracted from their tasks all the time and the bounceback rates from these distractions aren’t great. Let’s go over a few tips that you and your team can use to help identify and avoid distractions throughout the workday.
The fact that many of their workers never see each other has led to some interesting shifts in the way that businesses approach communications. They used to just walk across the room and have a conversation, but as people try to make sense of the hybrid work environment, communications will continue to be a key. Let’s take a look at how your internal and external communications strategies will change to meet the needs of your roving workforce.
It can be said that most of 2020 and the first couple of months of 2021 have been difficult for most people. Not billionaires, of course, but most other people have found the past year difficult on some level. That’s why it isn’t surprising to hear people talk about workplace burnout. Today, we’ll define burnout and what is being said about it.
Today’s business is always searching for a leg up, and this often means doing what it can to improve their operational efficiency. Companies can approach this in several ways. They can try to cut out redundancies, they can invest in training, or for many businesses, it means leveraging innovative new technological tools that are designed specifically for this purpose.
While no email platform is immune to mismanagement, Microsoft Outlook can quickly become filled with outdated and redundant messages that detract from the communication that it is meant to provide. Fortunately, there is a bit of a hack that you can use in Outlook to help prioritize your most pressing messages. Let’s dive into it.
A business that has workers that are above average at maintaining productivity is typically a successful business. There are an endless number of suggestions on how to be and remain productive, and how to sustain that productivity. One thing that isn’t typically mentioned in all of that self-help advice is the role that patience plays in productivity. This month we thought we would do just that.
Productivity improves as time management improves. It seems like a simple notion, but if you aren’t deliberate about managing your time, there isn’t much positive movement that is going to be had in the productivity meter. This month, we thought we would help you by giving you a few strategies that will work to improve your employees’ productivity.
Running a business is hard. There are a million-and-six things that have to be done each day just to keep the doors open. For this reason, it is crucial that a business’ employees want to be there. In today’s competitive marketplace, there simply isn’t time to waste on workers that don’t pull their weight. So, how do you get them to want to be there? This month, we will take a look at that very issue.
Automation does nothing but help businesses, but can the same be said for the people that work at these businesses? With more systems relying on some semblance of artificial intelligence, smart automation could replace up to a quarter of the current workforce over the next ten years. Today, we will take a look at the importance of profitability and how AI is likely going to usher in a whole new era of human existence.
Business leadership is an important trait for more than just a business’ leader by title. It is something that should be present at every level, encouraged by the individual at the top. To do so, it helps to ask your team the right questions to put them in a mindset of responsibility for the business’ well-being. Here, we’ve shared some of these questions to get you started.
Not many Android users are aware of the Google Lens application, and the supplemented utility that it can bring to your device’s camera. Let’s fix that by going over what Google Lens is, and how you can use it to your advantage.
Wi-Fi can be found in many homes and businesses alike, as it is perhaps the simplest means of connecting your various computers and mobile devices to the Internet without installing networking cables or risking going over any data caps you may deal with. Of course, some devices may take priority in such a setup, so it could be very useful for you to partition your Wi-Fi.
A schedule has long been the tool of choice for businesses to uphold their productivity, despite the challenges that managing everyone’s schedule can often present. Fortunately, today’s cloud solutions provide a means to overcome these challenges. Let’s explore the idea of smart scheduling and how it can make your entire process so much simpler.
For a lot of businesses, 2020 has seen some major challenges. Many SMBs feel like they are in a snow globe attached to a paint mixer that is always switched on. With all the problems laid out in front of them, many businesses have decided that in order to protect their business that they would subscribe to a strategy of proactivity. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways managed services help keep you ahead.
In business, the more time your operations stutter, the more it costs. If downtime is extended, it can cause some serious problems for your business. This is true from the one-man band to the largest enterprise. This month we thought we would outline a couple ways that downtime can have a negative effect on your business aside from the obvious.
When most people think “spreadsheet,” they’re thinking about Microsoft Excel. Yet, for how well-known it is, many people are unaware of many of its capabilities. This is particularly true of the shortcuts available to properly format these spreadsheets. For this week’s tip, we’re sharing a few of these formatting tips.
Productivity is always an important consideration when it comes to your business’ processes. That’s why, for this week’s tip, we’re going over how to boost your productivity by adding some of your G Suite documents into your bookmarks bar.
With working from home becoming all but normal, a lot of workers are hoping that their foray into remote work isn’t going to come to an end anytime soon. Business owners who never would have considered letting their staff work from home are now finding that they are saving money and getting comparable (or more) productivity from their staff remotely. We thought we would just remind you that there are benefits to working in a dedicated office.
There is a lot that needs to be done in the typical business each day, and with so many steps involved in each process, it can be difficult to stay on track. Without the right information, it is basically impossible to remain productive. To help keep up your productivity and morale, we’ve put together a guide to help you task out your objectives for this week’s tip.
Working from home isn’t new, but with the COVID-19 pandemic sparking public health fears many businesses decided to move their operations offsite. For much of the past decade remote work was an available strategy for business, but many business owners feared it would give them a lack of control over their workforce, and therefore was largely ignored. This was despite remote work being a strategy people have embraced for a long, long time. Today, we take a look at the history and progression of working from home.
In the workplace, projects are used to push operations forward. This makes your ability to manage your business’ projects truly important as the global economy turns back on. To help, we’re sharing three tips that will help you most effectively do so.
Google Chrome is adding a cool feature over the next week or so (it may already have been released for you). The next feature is sure to make a big difference for some and will be non-descript for others. Let’s unpack colorful tabs in Google Chrome.
Saving on capital expenditures is the successful business owner’s superpower. Today, a lot of the strategic cost cutting that is being done is through collaboration. When you increase the productivity of your staff, you can do more with less. Let’s look at some of the tools being used by successful organizations to enhance their productivity.
If you are like millions of other non-essential workers, you’ve probably spent the better part of the past two months working from home. As a result, you may have considered repurposing an area of your living space to be a dedicated work area (assuming you didn’t have one already). If so, we have a few recommendations you should consider as you do so.
Email is a great tool for businesses to use, but if mismanaged, it can quickly become a major time sink. That’s why we wanted to go over a few ways that you can use your email solution to boost your overall productivity (rather than squander it) in the form of some handy tips.
“So, where have you been working?”
This isn’t an uncommon greeting when you haven’t seen someone in a while. With COVID-19’s influence, many people would answer that they have been working from home, if possible. While business owners may be resistant to the idea of remote work, the potential benefits make it possible that remote work is the silver lining to the coronavirus cloud hanging over us.
The COVID-19 pandemic has most of the world at home. It has completely disrupted everyday life and has businesses scrapping their normal strategies for work-at-home policies that will at least allow them to maintain some productivity. These strategies, while highly effective, carry with them additional risk. Today, we take a look at some of the risks associated with relying on remote workers.
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, and keeping hundreds of millions at home, the beginnings of recessionary fear have begun to hit small businesses. Today, we will go through a few elements that will help you get your business through this (and many other) anxious times.
There are a variety of reasons that you may find yourself working from home at some point or another. Whether there’s something going on at the office, you’re mindfully practicing social isolation, you’re home sick, or it is just an option you want to exercise, you need to be sure that you and the rest of your team are doing so in the best way. Here, we’re sharing a few tips to help you do so.
It is never a good situation when a widespread illness strikes. Not only does it impact many individuals on a personal level, the impacts reach to the businesses that employ them as well. As we deal with the current outbreak, it helps to keep in mind that there are various means out there to allow for a business’ productivity to continue… even if its employees shouldn’t be near one another.
Microsoft Word is an excellent tool for businesses to use for a great assortment of their word processing needs… especially due to the assortment of editable templates available to users. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over how you can customize a Microsoft Word template to meet your preferences.
Collaboration: it is the gold standard of teamwork that so many businesses seek. If your employees aren’t naturally drawn to the idea, however, there are some ways that you can help to sell the concept. Let’s discuss a few of the ways that you can coax your users into collaborative behaviors.
In most workspaces and offices, “productivity” is always present on the list of goals. Why settle for one task completed in a set time, when multiple tasks can be completed in the same amount of time without sacrificing the quality of the result? This goal is popular enough for many experts and consultants to have weighed in on. This week, our tip will involve a basic overview of some such strategies so you may consider them.
There is a major problem that the owners of most small-to-medium-sized businesses run into: impatience. Their business might not be growing at the rate they like, or they may just have too much work to accomplish in order to grow. Whatever the problem is, outsourcing parts of a business can really bring a whole lot of benefits. Let’s take a look at how outsourcing can help the modern business.
Workplace engagement has long been a conundrum--how do you maximize the productivity of your business without alienating your team through quotas and ironclad policies? Many businesses have been finding that an effective way to do just that has been to use a concept known as ‘gamification.’ Let’s explore gamification and how it might be useful to you.
When you look at cloud services, it can be easy to wonder how it is so beneficial for businesses. After all, the monthly service charges are attractive, but how do they provide the value outside of cost? To understand how the cloud brings rapid and sustainable ROI, it may help to look at an analogy.
Much is made about collaboration. It’s not just a buzzword, it is extremely important in many parts of business. Collaboration is simply getting people to cooperate in their work to a successful end. While collaboration can be found in every business to some degree, it can be more of a challenge for the small business. Today, we’ll take a look at what constitutes successful collaboration, and how your organization can go about improving your collaborative capabilities.
Portable Document Format files (better known as PDFs) have become incredibly common as a means to save documents in a constant and consistent format that can be viewed on just about any device. They also allow users to make some simple changes to make it even easier to review the data they contain. Here, we’ll go over a few options for this year’s first tips.
When many businesses look to add to their roster, they typically have a series of qualifications they need each applicant to meet before they grant interviews. They make their selection, do their entrance training, and then expect that the new hire will settle in and be as productive as possible as soon as possible.
You have to establish your organization as a contender. To do so, you’re going to need to use at least the caliber of tools that your competition is using. According to the 2020 State of IT report that Spiceworks has released, the majority of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have plans to adopt new technology solutions.
The value of productivity cannot be understated, especially in the workplace. While there are many methods people use to increase theirs, we wanted to share a specific approach with you for our tip: sprinting.
Downtime can be devastating for your business if you allow it to persist. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t have the mindset needed to keep downtime from influencing operations, and it’s most telling when a disaster strikes. We’re here to help you understand downtime, its effects, and what you can do to prevent it.
Business can be tricky, especially if you’re good at it. It’s important to know when to be comfortable with your position without starting to feel complacent. If you fall into this trap, you’ll be running the risk of hindering your organization’s growth, potentially blocking any future successes.
One of the biggest buzzwords in business these days is BYOD - Bring Your Own Device - and for good reason. There are plenty of operational benefits that an organization can enjoy by adopting a BYOD policy; but, BYOD isn’t an inherently perfect solution, which means that businesses that leverage it need to do so mindfully.
Consider the following question: is your business’ Internet connection feeling a bit sluggish lately? If you haven’t examined your bandwidth since you started your business, then there’s a chance that you aren’t being as productive as you could be if you took a closer look at it. We’ll discuss some ways you can make the most of your IT solutions with proper bandwidth.
The popularity of Microsoft Word is undeniable, in part because it features preconfigured settings to make it easier for its users. While these settings are useful for most of these users, they might not reflect your business’ use of Word. Fortunately, you can make adjustments to these settings to increase the value that Word can offer your business. Here, we’ve put together some tips to help you make these changes, if you so choose.
Many people can find it challenging to constantly remain productive, which is only understandable. Nobody can be firing on all cylinders all the time. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways that you can optimize your productivity. Here, we’ll review three general approaches to improve your productivity, with examples describing how to enact each.
Time always seems to escape so many of us. What should be easily accomplishable in a morning can easily stretch to the afternoon, for what seems like no reason. The hard truth is, it isn’t time’s fault… it’s our own bad practices. For today’s tip, we’re going over how you can fight these tendencies to optimize your use of the time that is available.
Business owners; ever sit down and run through all of your expenses and ask yourself (or your accountant) what you are actually paying for? We’ve been there. Technology expenses like hardware, software licensing, cloud hosting, management and maintenance, support, and service agreements all add up quickly and it makes it easy to question what you can trim to save money without sinking the ship, especially when you rarely need to call your current IT provider.
Productivity is a key facet to our success. However, many offices seem to have an environment that focuses more on keeping busy than it does being productive. While they often intersect, these two statuses are very different. Here’s why.
When someone tells you to recharge your battery, how do you interpret it? In today’s increasingly digital office, you might misinterpret this statement as charging your laptop or smartphone, but in reality, we’re talking about your internal battery. If you constantly find yourself exhausted from your work, perhaps you should take some time to reevaluate priorities and destress a little bit.
Technology can go a long way toward helping businesses be more productive with their time, but only if the solutions implemented are right and proper for your organization. We’ll discuss three services that you can provide for your business that can maximize productivity with technology solutions.
The holiday season is upon us, and with it comes the spirit of gift giving. Your IT department would certainly appreciate receiving a few gifts of their own to dabble with over the next business year. We’ve compiled a list of the best technology you can get your IT department to save them both time and resources.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
Streaming in the office is a topic of hot debate amongst business owners, and for good reason. Depending on the type of media being streamed, it can either enhance or hinder office productivity. What does your company need to know about streaming, and what you can do about employees who can’t resist the urge?
