Preview environments exist to help a development team holistically review code changes in a feature branch before merging it. It’s like getting a full review of your code changes without having to worry about all the changes everyone else on your team is actively making. Each feature can progress in its own isolated test channel unimpeded by conflicts!

Monumental, right? The implications are enormous for productivity and efficiency. Think about what it means. The same group of people is able to accomplish 50% more in any given time frame. Below are the top three benefits of establishing a preview environment capability for your development team.

1. Preview environments act as quality gates.

One of the best things about preview environments is that they help you maintain a stable code base. Rather than merging code with potential regressions or breaking changes, the preview environment lets you check over your hours of tedious labor in an isolated, production-like environment. It’s 10x easier to fix a bug before merging—and that’s exactly what preview environments enable.

The preview environment enables you to make adjustments before the new code is merged. And because of their ephemeral nature—you can have one for every feature branch/pull request.

Due to its temporary nature and automated creation/deletion, teams can provision as many full-stack preview environments as they need, when they need them, and for as long as they need them. This means the speed of your feedback loops—develop, test, develop, test, develop, test—dramatically increases.

2. Previews synergize your cross-functional team.

Another dynamic role that preview environments play is in enhancing the synergy among your whole team—from developers to testers to product and beyond. The earlier that the product team and other key stakeholders can review a new feature, the faster changes can be made, and the faster changes can be made the faster the feature can be rolled out to end users.

Preview environments enable near real-time review of in progress feature development. Developers don’t have to worry about code freezes, managing merge conflicts, or the impacts of their code on all the other changes when they spin up a preview environment. Your teammate doing peer review doesn’t have to pull a branch to run locally and your product manager doesn’t have to ask “Can I see it yet?” because the answer is “Yes!” Everyone is working off the same “sheet of music” which in this case means the preview environment.

With preview environments you’ve freed up your developers to make the necessary changes to get the feature approved without having to worry about all the second order effects. They lead to a better review method, quicker turnaround times, and a boss that’s a bit more content than yesterday.

3. Preview environments save money.

The final thing to hold onto as you think about using preview environments for your development team is that it will save your company money on your cloud bills. Given the economic downturn and incredibly competitive business world we live in today, cutting costs is absolutely necessary.

The implementation of previews save money for many reasons. If you’re producing more work with the same team in a given period of time that is one way to look at the savings. While the productivity increase is the main benefit, teams will also literally save money on their cloud bills.

When you have persistent test environments they run 24/7/365 at an average cost of around $1,000/month (that’s for small projects). Preview environments only run when they are needed—which it turns out is usually less than a day or less than 3% of the month. You can run several for short periods before you reach the cost of a traditional persistent test environment.

How does your team save money with the efficiency and synergy that preview environments provide? The following progression makes it incredibly clear.

• Code Quality: Pre-Merge Testing vs. Post-Merge Testing
• Testing in Isolation vs. Batch Testing
• Bringing Your Cross-Functional Team into the Development Process
• Giving Environments a Life-Cycle that Matches Your Feature Branch Life-Cycle

One example and industry leader that exists to help companies advance workflows and the overall process of development is Uffizzi. The continuous preview environments they provide are the preferred choice. They work for many of the world’s most popular open source projects and teams seeking high performance development.

Preview environments provide a competitive edge.

Almost every team today has version control, CI/CD, and cloud-native infrastructure. Once you’ve got these basic building blocks in place, make the next game-changing move. Upgrade your test environment strategy by implementing an ephemeral preview environment solution.

There will be a learning curve. You will have to make process changes. However, the transformation will be more than worth it. With a preview environment capability you’ll never look back at how you did it before. Your team will enjoy the mental and tactical freedom that preview environments create.

The post Top Three Benefits of Implementing Preview Environments for Software Development Teams appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This isn’t surprising. Freelancers like to think of themselves as their own bosses.

However, in reality, they have as many bosses (at least) as they have clients. Each of those mini-bosses works on a different schedule, has a different management style, and communicates in different ways. (If they communicate at all…experienced freelancers know this is not always a strong suit for clients.) Juggling all this is exhausting. More than that, it’s discouraging.

Frustrated with the grind, many freelancers burn out. As a result, many seek the relative predictability of traditional employment, even if it means giving up some earning potential. They want to keep freelancing but are having a hard time envisioning a happy path forward in balancing it all.

Others would love to grow their freelance business. However, many either don’t know where to start or can’t find the time and mental energy to scale. So they pull back, content to work with a manageable, comfortable set of core clients.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Maybe you sense burnout creeping in, extinguishing whatever joy you once found in your work.

Worse, it’s diminishing the quality of your output. Or perhaps you remain perfectly content as a freelancer, but unfulfilled. You’re always beating back that nagging sense you’re capable of doing (and earning) more.

The problem isn’t that you live off 1099s instead of W-2s. Nor that you’ve fallen out of love with your specialty and need to find a new line of work. More likely, it’s that you’re not managing your freelance business as efficiently as you could — and that inefficiency is preventing your business from becoming something more.

You need a tool that automates and streamlines the nitty-gritty details of freelancing, freeing you to focus on the creative work you do best and work toward the growth or income goals you’ve put off because you’re so busy with everything else.

Harlow is that tool. No, it can’t work miracles. However, it can significantly improve your efficiency and strategic discipline. Both of these are critical if you’re serious about scaling. Here’s how.

Proposal Templates (And Contracts) You Can Take Pride In

Feel like you barely have time to prospect for new clients, let alone put together thoughtful, attention-grabbing proposals to win them over? Harlow’s professionally designed proposal and contract templates make this time-consuming part of freelancing that much easier.

Find a template you like, customize it with your logo and brand colors, and save it for easy access whenever a new opportunity presents itself. No more time spent building branded proposals and contracts from scratch — or, worse, using plain text documents that scream “boring” and “anonymous.”

Harlow gives you the option to add e-signatures to your proposals as well. Whatever nostalgia you might feel for the old-fashioned “print, sign, scan, email” process, you have to admit e-signatures are faster and less error-prone.

Legalese, Done

You know that what your proposals and contracts say is just as important as how they look.

Especially your contracts. If a client relationship goes south — they delay or refuse payment, or threaten legal action over something you did or didn’t do — you need a contract that’s actually legitimate (and legally binding).

Harlow takes care of that for you. While they don’t provide legal representation, their contracts are written by legal professionals. No need to write your own legalese, which you have no business doing anyway unless you’re a freelance lawyer.

No need to worry, either, about whether the random freelance contract template you found online for free will actually protect you.

Fast, Organized Invoicing

One of the many advantages of freelancing is being able to dictate your payment terms. Not only how much you charge — if a client doesn’t want to pay your going rate, they can negotiate or end the relationship — but how frequently you get paid and by what method.

Maybe you’re a Stripe fan. Or a PayPal enthusiast. Perhaps you’re a credit card die-hard. Or, inexplicably, you prefer the crisp thwack of a paper check, mailed monthly to your P.O. box.

Whatever the case, you know it takes work to get paid. You have to generate a new invoice, fill it out with the client’s information and a description of services rendered and dollar values and all the rest, and send it off by email or snail mail or text.

Multiply this by however many clients you have and however many times you invoice per year and you’ve got what’s practically a part-time job as an invoice manager — an unpaid one at that.

Harlow’s invoicing suite uses pre-built invoices that you can custom-finish rather than start from scratch. You choose the frequency — one-off or recurring on your preferred schedule. You build in your preferred payment method. If you have clients in different countries, you can accept currencies other than U.S. dollars. And Harlow automates follow-up and payment logging, so you can focus on the next project while awaiting payment for the last.

Seamless Integration With the Rest of Your Digital Work Life

Calendar management (or lack thereof) holds countless freelancers back. Add in the multitude of apps the typical freelancer relies on to get work done and the whole thing can feel unworkable at times. Taking on more complex projects under these conditions is a nonstarter.

Harlow can’t make you better at managing your time; that’s still on you. But it does integrate with Google Workspace (the former GSuite) so you can spend less time toggling between your calendar, your client contact list, your invoices, and your to-do list.

The less time you spend running down this or that detail of your finances or meeting schedule, the more time you have to focus on finding new clients or expanding your relationship with existing ones.

Project and Task Management to Keep You on Track

Do you use a project or task management app to stay on top of your assignments and strategic objectives? Or do you just wing it, maybe updating handwritten or Google Doc-based to-do lists when you have a free second?

Either way — and especially in the second case — you’re probably spending too much time thinking about what you should be doing and not enough time actually doing it.

Harlow’s built-in project and task management tool is appropriate for simple, small-scale personal tasks (say, paying estimated taxes) and more complicated professional needs (mapping out milestones for a six-month project, for example). You can track time against any task right in the interface. This means you won’t lose out on billable work or fail to compute exactly how long you spent on essential non-billable stuff, like prospecting for new clients or onboarding your own contractors.

Get Serious About Scaling

If you’re a freelancer, that means you’re a business owner, even if you don’t feel like it. Which also means you’re already walking a path that only a small fraction of your peers dare to follow.

Yes, it’s risky, and it can be lonely and thankless. But it’s exhilarating and full of potential. With a few tweaks to your routine and the right tools to support your operation, you can turn that potential into reality, all the while growing the success of what you so bravely started.

The post The Tool That Will Help Scale Your Freelance Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In the end, your customer service personnel is the face of your organization, and their skills and quality will define their experiences. A powerful company already has amazing customers. Good customer service is about being attentive to your clients’  needs and wants. Furthermore, your connections will stagnate if you don’t always look for ways to improve customer service.

Here are some customer service tips to help your team improve:

Tip #1. Improve customer service abilities.

First, make sure your customer care crew has the capabilities to handle consumer requests. No amount of CRM software can make up for this. But what abilities should a customer service rep have?

• A sense of humor. Customers may be enraged. Others will be perplexed. Others will simply chatter. Your team must be able to handle them all and deliver the same level of service.
• Adaptability. Every consumer is unique, and some appear to change from week to week. Therefore, you should be able to handle the unexpected and adjust to the customer’s mood. Good customer service requires a constant learning process.
• Excellent Communication Skills Make sure you say exactly what you mean. No one wants to think they’re getting 50% off when they’re actually getting 50% more merchandise. Furthermore, never finish a conversation without confirming that the customer is satisfied.
• Work Ethic. Customers appreciate a rep that will follow up on their issue. At the same time, you must be able to manage your time well and not waste it on one customer while others wait. Therefore, focus is necessary in order to strike the correct balance.
• Knowledge. In the end, your customers rely on your product knowledge. Therefore, know enough to answer most questions and know where to go if the questions are too difficult or technical. However, don’t be afraid to say that you don’t know. Your customers will appreciate both your diligence and your candor.
• Thick Skin. Accepting blame or negative feedback is vital. Customer satisfaction is paramount, whether your team interacts directly with clients or solicits input via social media.

2. Examine each touchpoint.

A poor customer experience at any point in the lifecycle of your relationship can be damaging. Therefore, you must have the right skills available at the right time. In addition, focus on critical touchpoints. However, also ensure that you have a complete picture of the client experience in order to avoid costly service gaps.

3. Improve customer interactions.

It helps if your personnel has the right skills. However, they must still relate to your customers. Here are some customer service tips for providing the best service:

• Ask salespeople to find common ground with the people they assist. This knowledge helps resolve conflicts by humanizing the relationship and endears clients to your rep and ultimately to your company.
• Actively listen to your customers. Ask questions to clarify and restate what customers say. Encourage them by saying things such as, “I understand how you feel” or “I understand your frustration.”
• Admit your faults, even if you find them first. This restores confidence and trust.
  It also allows you to regain control of the situation and fix the issue.
• After-problem follow-up. Make sure there is resolution and that your consumers are happy. Sending a follow-up email or feedback survey shows the customer you are still on their side.

4. Expand your customer service strategy.

Your employees may be able to interact with your clients. However, how do you please customers as an organization? Therefore, make your customers happy with you before they have a chance to complain. How do you do this?

• Be Persuasive. Your customers want to talk to real people, not bots or FAQs.
  Therefore, make use of social media and make comments to your consumers’ posts. In addition, publish images and bios online. This demonstrates to your clients that you are human.
• Show up. Providing a personal touch includes being accessible. Always be flexible, especially if your clients are in different time zones.
• Cater to your clients. Ensure you thoroughly satisfy your customers. Therefore, consider assigning salespeople to individual clients to foster relationships. In addition, show your appreciation by giving your finest customers VIP treatment.
• Form groups. Treat your consumers like valuable members of a community. You can connect customers via webinars, social media, interactive websites, trade exhibits, or conferences.

5. Reps who are engaged are more effective.

The best customer service skills and training in the world won’t matter if your reps are less than enthusiastic. Improving employee engagement also benefits customers. Employees that are unhappy are unlikely to speak up. Therefore, consider an anonymous tip box or an employee engagement survey.

A supportive staff is one of the best customer service tips. Sometimes that means huddling up and encouraging yourselves before a long day of work.

6. Allow customers to submit feedback.

No matter how proactive you are, you can never anticipate every client’s concerns. Therefore, create an easy mechanism for customers to provide feedback. That way, you can learn about their experiences.

Furthermore, having a way for customers to provide feedback makes it easier to learn what needs improving. Additionally, it keeps angry consumers from venting on public forums like your social media platforms. Your customers will always notice your commitment to offering top-notch, proactive customer service.

Image Credit: Andrea Piacquadio; Pexels; Thank you!

The post 6 Ways to Help Your Team Improve on Their Customer Service appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Tracking internet usage, desktops, and the times your workforce is at their desk are obsolete methods. Instead, transparency, empathy, and teamwork are essential for remote employees’ productivity and creativity.

1. Remote Work Monitoring Means Setting Task Deadlines

Definitely set deadlines. However, we suggest going one step farther. Consider your work as a process and a structure, not merely a series of tasks. Unless your team understands the complete scope of their actions, every monitoring activity will focus on one single outcome rather than directing your entire team towards a common goal. Therefore, a decent framework is the objective. Tasks with deadlines are the means.

2. Remote Work Monitoring Means Following Team Activity

You need transparency when working remotely. However, transparent workflow and goals are only the beginning. After you’ve put your end together, it’s time to include your team and show them the broader picture. That way, everyone on your team understands their role, what you expect of them, and what their deliverables are.

A team effort is a group of people working together striving to achieve a common goal. Including everyone in the evaluation process will elevate your team effort to a new level. If you actually want your team to work together, we recommend periodically checking in with everyone.

3. Do NOT Monitor Employee Internet Use

No. We won’t urge you to invade your team’s personal space when we’re seeing thousands upon thousands of teams go entirely remote, most often working from home. That’s not the way to go.

Crossing the line between transparency and Big Brother demotivates your staff and adds more strain and anxiety to an already stressful situation, https://neurofitnessfoundation.org/xanax-alprazolam/. Therefore, what else can you do? Achieve total transparency.

This means including your staff in every step of the planning process. Further, it means being available for questions, offering advice, and demonstrating your trust. It’s easier to avoid procrastinating or slacking off when every step of the process is out in the open.

4. Do NOT Monitor Employees at Their Desk

No way! Instead of stalking your employees, create a system of rules and processes that will help them better manage their time outside of factory hours. If all else fails, you can check to see if your remote crew is all seated. Objectively, it shouldn’t come to that.

For example, you may always plan for your team to be online at the same time to do multi-person tasks. This can include things like meetings, reviews, seminars, refinements, and brainstorming. Therefore, organise these events in the team time slot, and allow your team members to plan their own activities.

If your team isn’t meeting their daily targets, it’s time to consider a stricter work schedule. Before do that, however, chat with your team about their challenges and why they aren’t achieving their goals. There are clearly more compassionate approaches to reaching monitoring goals. We can thank transparency for that.
Bravo, transparency!

5. Supervising Remote Employees

Again, openness is the best form of monitoring. However, we’re not talking about the kind that requires a screenshot every thirty seconds. Or, heaven forbid, invasive tracking technology.

Again, this is a great opportunity to show your leadership skills. You do lead a team, right? Here’s how to make supervision more human: involve your whole team. Define a method that allows everyone on your team to validate and provide feedback.

A common aim is one of the cornerstones of every team. Therefore, after incorporating everyone in planning and tracking, why not involve them in the validation phase?

This is especially useful when your team is interdisciplinary and members may provide valuable input and analysis of other people’s work. If they can’t, it’s a terrific method to honor and spotlight each team member. Making concerns visible makes it much more satisfying when the results receive widespread recognition.

6. Daily Report Summary

Your team may lose sight of daily completion or goals when focusing on several assignments. However, your daily summary shouldn’t just be a list of the completion of tasks. It can be so much more.

Your daily report can also help you identify areas for improvement and prospective challenges. In addition, it can highlight the activities your team needs to take to achieve or overcome them.

Your daily summary can take any shape you like. However, a regular team meeting is a great method to ensure everyone is on track and every task is verified. That way, there are no misunderstandings.

Help Your Remote Employees: Simplify Productivity

The bottom line is that remote employees will focus on work better if they know what you expect of them, and they know you have their back. You can’t possibly supervise them personally every few minutes. The intrusiveness would be unbearable!

The greatest solution is to engage your staff transparently. In addition, hold them accountable for their work regardless of when or where it is done. So long as it’s done on time, it should be acceptable. This method saves money, time, and keeps your employees productive and happy.

Image Credit: Olia Danilevich; Pexels; Thank you!

The post 6 Ways to Handle Remote Work Monitoring appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Understand Business Growth

A growing business is one that is experiencing growth in one or more areas at the same time. A business does not measure growth on a single metric. Instead, we might highlight a number of data indicators to demonstrate that a company is expanding.

These are some examples:

• Calculate profits from revenue and sales using the company’s valuation.
• Calculate the number of staff and the number of clients.

Companies can increase in some of these criteria and not in others, according to the research. For example, revenue might increase even if there is no increase in the number of consumers. This can happen if the gains are the result of existing customers purchasing more.

If one data point increases while another declines, it is conceivable for a business’s entire revenue to decrease as well. For example, if sales growth comes because of a decrease in product pricing, a company’s overall revenue could decrease as well.

This means that defining growth might be challenging. Therefore, those wishing to expand their businesses should examine their business objectives. They must do this in order to determine the growth metrics that are essential to them.

In the case of certain ambitious start-ups, this may entail doing everything they can to expand the total number of clients. This should be the objective even if this means incurring a significant financial loss during the early stages of growth. Other businesses, on the other hand, will benefit by gradually expanding income and sales. This may do this in order to ensure that enough money is brought in to cover costs.

Factors that Contribute to a Small Business’s Expansion

It is critical for all businesses to see growth in their operations. The type of growth necessary, on the other hand, will be determined by the stage of development in which the company is currently operating.

For start-ups to be successful, they must expand in order to solidify their position in the market. Furthermore, they must quickly grow to a scale that generates enough income to cover expenditures and begin to generate a profit.

Companies in the maturity stage do not need to expand as quickly. They may, however, wish to check their metrics to make sure they are moving in the right direction, however. Revenue and sales may remain the same. Nevertheless, a rise in profitability as a result of better sales process efficiencies could help a steady organization build cash to defend against future risk.

The Primary Drivers

Businesses do not expand of their own accord. If a firm wants to achieve organic growth, it must put in place mechanisms that will help it achieve that growth. Here are some of the aspects that can aid in the expansion of a company.

A. Individuals who are driven by a desire to see their organization succeed

The most critical component is having people who are committed to the growth of the company at the helm of the organization. A business owner who is focusing on growth might be the driving force behind the company’s success. In addition, a company’s other managers and employees will also require both drive and expertise in order to push it forward with its expansion.

B. A plan that places a high priority on expansion

It’s true that people are the driving force behind growth. However, a strategy must be in place to ensure that the business continues to grow in the right direction. There are several possibilities here, like offering new items, bringing in new clients, or entering new markets.

C. The processes and infrastructure that are necessary

It’s important for a company to have employees that are eager to expand. In addition, it’s helpful to have a growth strategy that prioritizes expansion. However, it also must put processes in place to make the expansion a smoother process. Among these measures include the implementation of automation software. This will make operations more effective. In addition, the construction of warehouses is key. Furthermore, they must be large enough to accommodate the increase in stock that will be necessary as a firm grows.

D. Sufficient funding

Every one of the issues above has one thing in common: they all require funds for implementation. Therefore, if a business owner lacks financial resources, there may be nothing that can be done about growth. In order to invest in the product, make the necessary recruits, and adopt processes, adequate financial means must be in place.

Image Credit: Jopwell; Pexels; Thank you!

The post Understand Business Growth – Then Achieve It appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Let’s talk about lighting’s influence on small businesses and how you can choose the right technology for your company.

Light as a Functional Business Tool

Proper lighting assists with two essential business functions: employee productivity and energy efficiency.

LED lights work best because they consume less energy and have longer lives than other light bulbs, making them more efficient and cost-effective.

As a general rule, LED light sources with cool temperatures that shine softly over the office space will bode better for employees than bright, hot, overbearing fluorescent lights.

However, the recommended lighting “temperature” to maximize productivity varies by task.

We measure light temperature through Kelvin (K), which is the standard symbol for thermodynamics. Use this guide as a reference:

• 3,000K or less: Warm lights with red to yellow tones.
• 3,100 to 4,600K: Medium lights with pale yellow to white tones.
• 4,600K or more: Cool lights with blue-white tones, also known as “daylight colors.”

Warm lights create a relaxing atmosphere, which benefits break rooms and other intimate social settings.

The middle range isn’t quite as relaxing, but it has a welcoming mood and promotes alertness. This combination works best in conference rooms, lobbies, and other open areas.

The coldest lights lower melatonin and thus boost productivity, which makes them the best options for employees’ individual workspaces.

Fixtures and Bulbs: An Investment in Your Employees

Small businesses should incorporate all light varieties and fixtures into rooms throughout the office to get the most out of each setting.

This widespread change won’t be easy and will cost more than a standard lighting setup, but the long-term return on investment will pay off.

You can also offset LEDs’ high buying price with a free light source that businesses often forget about: natural light.

Natural lighting falls into the cool category. Natural light boosts serotonin, which gives you more energy and keeps you focused. Moderate exposure also has numerous benefits to your physical health. It’s a perfect solution for your business’s main workspace.

Open up your windows and let the sunlight shine through. Angle the office furniture to get sufficient exposure.

If possible, you could also renovate your building to have wider, longer windows and mix in a few skylights. Any way to maximize natural light in your workspace is a worthwhile endeavor.

Lighting as a Design Tool for Small Businesses

An LED-sunlight combination won’t just benefit your day-to-day business operations. It will also improve your office’s design, make your building more aesthetically pleasing and improve the client/customer experience. Proper lighting positively influences their behavior and helps make your interactions with them more productive.

When visitors enter your building, they should feel welcomed and get an immediate sense of the office’s ambiance. To establish the ambiance, you must layer your lighting effectively. There are four types of layering you can integrate:

• Diffused: Subtle lights that allow people to move around the space without restriction.
  • This function creates a sense of comfort and well-being that guests will appreciate.
• Perimeter: Lights that shine vertically make the room appear more spacious and make occupants feel more aware of the scope of their surroundings.
• Task: These lights shine on a specific area, but they’re most effective when working in unison with diffused lighting to illuminate workspaces.
• Accent: Small fixtures that highlight shapes, textures, and colors throughout the building.
  • Their dispersion is more concentrated and intense, cutting through the other layers to create visual contrast.

The feelings these layers create — comfort, awareness, and intensity — clash with each other. Still, this complexity establishes ambiance in a building. Employees and guests will notice the different layers and feel more immersed in the office setting.

To pull off all four layering techniques, install various light fixtures — lamps, pendants, recessed lighting, etc. — to add new dimensions to rooms. Use the different types of LED bulbs to illuminate your building with multiple sources of light dispersion. Highlight product samples, signs, artwork, and other design details throughout the building.

Make Your Small Business Shine With a Range of Technologies

Effective lighting is both a functional and aesthetic tool. It’s scientifically proven to boost employee productivity and improve the customer experience.

A greater reliance on LED and natural lighting will also take a significant chunk out of your energy bill. However, you must incorporate a variety of temperatures and design elements to make it work. Test all of the details we discussed to find the perfect lighting and make your small business shine!

The post Small Business Lighting Technology: Your Subtle Productivity Tool appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Changes spurred by new technologies, such as improved customer experience and more revenue, are of interest to everyone. We facilitate rapid expansion by adapting our company to meet the current demands and expectations of customers. If you don’t adjust to the changing times, you risk losing clients to the competition.

Although enterprise-level organizations are at the forefront of technology adoption and spend heavily in its acquisition, small businesses benefit by investing their limited resources in marketing.

Technology plays a critical role in increasing operational efficiency. Given how things have evolved in recent years, the following technological trends may be able to assist you in improving the experience of both your staff and consumers.

Put Up Signposts Along the Internet

Digital signage entails displaying marketing messages for your company on display technologies such as LCD monitors, video walls, and projections. It’s one of the most efficient ways to publicize your small company.

The interactive LOOK DS infrastructure is appealing and has a significant impact on a customer’s decision. Digital signage enables you to communicate with customers in addition to promoting your business actively. We accomplish this by including some well-known and inspiring phrases on your display.

Using digital signage to promote your company can save you money on conventional marketing initiatives while increasing impulsive purchases.

“AI” Stands for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a method of simulating human mental capacities such as decision-making and problem-solving via computer systems. AI can help your small company become more productive and efficient.

Of course, machines, in contrast to human beings, work quickly and consistently generate high-quality output.

AI helps your employees to concentrate on higher-level activities. Automated systems handle repetitive duties. AI also saves you a lot of time and allows you to complete your tasks more quickly. Because you’re using less human fallible labor, your operations will be of higher quality and have fewer faults.

Marketing via Influencers

Influencer marketing is a sort of social media marketing that utilizes large-scale platforms to promote and mention your items to their audiences. Social media influencers often establish trust with their following, making it simpler for them to recommend your business. Influencer marketing is a good option for small companies to expand their brand on a tight budget.

Use influencer marketing alone or in conjunction with other marketing strategies. Its cost-effectiveness makes it a preferable option for small enterprises. The size of your audience and the topic you’re targeting determines the price you pay.

Shopping with the Help of Technology

Customer expectations have changed as a result of technological improvements, with the majority of consumers preferring speed and ease.

Consumers may buy a product or arrange a service from the comfort of their own homes when they shop online. The majority of individuals choose to get their goods online rather than wait in huge lines at shopping malls. This saves time while also enhancing client satisfaction.

In today’s world, mobile payments are frequently employed by both small and big organizations. As a result of lockdowns and COVID-19 measures in most states, this has grown increasingly common. Using online purchasing and payment to grow your company is a smart move.

Automation

The word “automation” refers to a variety of technological applications that eliminate human involvement. Employees at small firms and companies spend a lot of time on basic, low-level yet necessary jobs. Customer experience, data entry, and appointment scheduling are examples of these tasks, which vary based on the type of your organization.

Although these duties have a big impact on how the firm operates, they may be time-consuming and labor-intensive in the long term. However, with today’s automation systems and solutions, you can save expenses, enhance production, save time, and improve the efficiency of your small company.

It’s essential to take advantage of existing technologies improvements for your small business’s growth and profitability. You can take your small company to new heights with the correct techniques, including digital signage technology. You may employ systems, applications, and programs to affect your rankings and total visibility, depending on the type of your firm. Using the techniques above in your organization will result in a shift in your daily operations.

Accounting Technologies

We all know that CPAs are expensive. Even if they’re automated, nothing more than an app and an algorithm! And yet, you must keep your finances in order.

This is one area where small businesses must bite the bullet. You get what you pay for. So invest in your accounting services, whatever route you choose.

The post New Technologies for Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The Steady Rise of SMBs

In the beginning, there was apparently no such thing as SMBs, an acronym for “small to midsize businesses.” Some said it was a concept only dimly dreamed of by technical advisors, financial finaglers, and wild-eyed college professors.

So what happened? In all likelihood, someone in an MBA program got the bright idea to initialize a concept. They then took that concept to a thesis advisor, at which point the academic world was turned on its ears as the idea became more solidified.

This may sound like a lot of gibberish to those who do not own or operate a small business, but it should still ring true to anyone who has ever attempted to implement an ill-defined goal only to find that castles in the clouds do not translate well to ROI.

No Small Controversy

The whole matter descended into an embarrassing broil of controversy several years ago.

Social media can be thanked for opening up that particular SMBS can of worms. First Facebook and then Twitter began posting content that questioned the authenticity of SMBs. In fact, the whole thrust of this trolling campaign was that the category of “SMBs” as such didn’t exist at all. Amazingly, there are many groups who still believe that today.

So where do SMBs go when they need practical help and support? How can they obtain the advice and counsel they’re looking for to make a decent living?

How Can SMBs Get the Help They Need?

When the pandemic hit small businesses so hard last year, there was a flood of information on how to survive and even thrive during a disaster. Remember Chernobyl? It’s the same principle. For the small business owner, it simply meant keeping your head down and not giving up. This has always been the strength of the modest American business enterpriser.

For starters, SMBs need help in not seeming out of place when someone mentions the most recent craze. (You don’t want to be the one who responds with the statement that your “data fabric” is cotton, do you?)

Gartner has released its list of the 12 most important strategic technology trends for 2022, divided into three categories: growth, change, and trust. Let’s take a look at some of the ones you might want to pay particular attention to. Here are five technological small business trends that will be important in the New Year.

1. TX Stands for “Total Experience” in Business

This merges all of the Xs into one. The customer experience, the staff experience, and the end-user experience are all merged into a single entity. In Total Experience, each experience’s leader is held equally accountable for the demands of both consumers and staff while working together. The goal is to boost consumer and staff confidence, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

2. GAN, a.k.a. Generative Artificial Intelligence

GAN is a machine learning technique that uses machine learning to discover new insights about information or objects without training the model. Additionally, it may generate code, target marketing, identify new goods, and perform other tasks.

3. Hyper-Automation in SMBs

This includes defining tasks that can be computerized and doing them as quickly as feasible, allowing your team to concentrate on more significant challenges or problems you never believed they would be able to handle. According to Gartner, hyper-automation teams should focus on strengthening quality, speeding up decision-making, and objectives for the organization.

4. It’s All About the Data Fabric

The term “fabric” refers to the way we integrate data across platforms and business users. The goal is to make it simple to use the data you already have while also reducing data management requirements.

5. Mesh Network for Cybersecurity

There is no longer such thing as a perimeter, people. Anyone can find your business information anywhere. A cybersecurity mesh architecture, also known as a CSMA, understands this and tries to protect data no matter where it is stored.

Wrapping Up

The list of five above is necessarily incomplete. For example, we could draw at least some attention to the fact that there are other options, such as composable programs and distributed enterprise. Are you interested in learning what they mean for your business? You should be!

Set aside at least an hour or two every business week to study new technologies even if you don’t think they’re immediately applicable to your business. Make notes as you go. You never know when your research might help you gain a competitive edge.

The post Critical Strategic Tech for SMBs in the New Year appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With business flourishing and not enough time in the day to get everything done, every weekday hour is valuable. (Okay, so talking about the newest “Game of Thrones” episode with coworkers isn’t the worst thing.)

Time To Go Mobile With Your Business!

Keep your business running…anywhere.

Imagine being on your way to a meeting with a possible client but not hearing that the meeting was shifted from the coffee shop to a restaurant across town. You’re not only late for the meeting, but you’ve also wasted time traveling across town, which is plainly counterproductive.

On the other hand, a cloud-based phone system, such as a managed hosted PBX, allows enterprises to simplify workplace communications. Access your office from anywhere with a smartphone. With hosted PBX, you can redirect calls from your office phone to your mobile phone, allowing you to take your office phone with you.

A secure web gateway enhances basic phone capabilities. It allows users to operate and customize their PBX phones to meet their specific needs. This not only improves productivity but also allows clients to reach you wherever you are. Streamlining office communications saves time for small firms with three or more phones, let alone locations.

Save On Internal Resources

Working outside the workplace can boost productivity, but what about inside? It can be difficult for a new company to scare up the funds to hire a full-time receptionist.

When you don’t have people accessible to answer calls, hosted PBX’s integrated auto-attendant function takes over. The system may also be set to welcome callers with personalized messages, such as holiday closings, bad weather alerts, and just about any other message you want them to hear. These capabilities, paired with dependable call forwarding, can help your small business increase efficiency.

Millennials and Your Business

Millennials are often criticized, although they make up almost half of the U.S. workforce. However, these young folks have a lot to give. They tend to be creative, tech-savvy, and driven to succeed. Working with these young people is as simple as allowing them to work from home.

With a hosted PBX, your staff can work from anywhere and produce their best work.

Video conferencing can link you to global business contacts. Face-time is vital. Nearly everyone feels that face-to-face encounters are crucial to doing business.

Sadly, not every meeting can be attended in person. Instead, use video conferencing. There are many apps to pick from when conferencing someone into a meeting or video conferencing many individuals. Video conferencing also allows for computer monitor sharing, adding landline callers, and recording and saving sessions.

Online Sharing Tech

Using remote access technology ensures that everybody in your conference is on the same page.

For example, if you’re doing a PowerPoint presentation, let everyone around the room see it on their personal device. Instead of emailing modifications back and forth, create an editable document that everyone can work on simultaneously. Sharing data has never been easier!

Calling a Meeting

Video contact isn’t always feasible. Phone conferences are another reliable option. Most video conferencing programs allow just audio. We can’t constantly be in front of a computer, so phone conferencing is a great alternative.

Hosted phones make audio conferencing easy. Join a phone conference from anywhere, just like being in the office. Forward all calls to your cell phone for conference calls on the move. Use Office365 integration to obtain everyone’s contact details and arrange calls. You can then put your phone in “Do Not Disturb” mode and invite only those you wish to join the call.

UC Technology

UC tech simply means the “unification” of all “communication” platforms in your company. You might want to easily move between applications and devices with your UC Client. With the UC Client, your employees may work independently while maintaining a single company identity and number.

Most smaller companies can handle the one-time expense of bringing in a communications bundling consultant. This is a much better solution to tying everything together than relying on staff to do it “as best they’re able.” The consultant usually starts by reviewing the current communications infrastructure and technology. Then he or she will test each channel, such as email, phones, and texting, for speed and viability.

It’s surprising how inefficient communications can become, even in a small organization, in just a few years. Even after the installation of the latest technology and software! A bundling expert will be able to quickly point out where faulty communications are slowing down sales and confusing staff.

The post Small Business Tech Tips for Growth appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Trends move our world. It’s an understatement to say that 2020 was an excellent year for technology.

When the pandemic swept the globe, putting employees at risk of becoming ill, technology took center stage. IT quickly mobilized to ensure that people were productive and engaged.

The digital transformation trend that was already underway sped up at lightning speed. It kept business moving.

In the coming year, we can expect more radical changes in how we work. What are our expectations?

It will be quieter at work.

We can shop, bank, and socialize faster and more efficiently than ever before as consumers.

However, things are getting more complicated when it comes to working. Routine tasks such as submitting expenses, purchasing, or authorizing time off, require multiple logins and apps. This means we have to switch contexts constantly.

According to Dovico (via Inc.) research, about eight minutes are lost every hour due to an alert, text, chat, or application message.

New team-based collaboration tools, created to simplify things, have only made matters worse. Micro-app technology consolidated employee access to the activities, tools, and tasks they need in a single work feed. Companies can also use these micro-apps to reduce noise.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence will make your work easier.

Robots aren’t out to get you. They are there to assist us in many ways.

We’ve already seen the benefits they bring to our home, such as vacuuming up our floors when we don’t feel like it.

They can also help us be more productive and efficient at work. They do this by leveraging the technology that underpins them. IT is putting the wheels in motion by leveraging digital workplaces infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This allows employees to be freed from repetitive tasks. It allows them to concentrate on what’s important.

Robots and IoT trends will make work safer.

Covid-19 required businesses to improve their safety standards to guard against unseen threats. IoT technologies, robots, and IoT will play an essential part in keeping people safe.

Already, robots are capable of taking over hazardous tasks. Remote-hand technologies will further enhance human-machine interaction.

IoT will enable things such as touchless offices and smart social distancing. This could allow employees to access occupancy information and maps for different areas of the building. They can confirm that spaces are clean, and even reserve conference rooms or hot desks from their own devices.

IT is always-on.

Technology is a crucial driver of business results, and it’s expected that it will continue to be so.

This expectation will make it more important for technology companies to embrace cloud computing. As they provide safe, reliable working environments that keep employees productive and engaged, this expectation will make them more strategic and valuable.

CIOs trends are expected to be more security-focused.

FBI reporting of cyberattacks has risen by as much as 400% in the past year. This will make it even more critical to protect employees and company assets in the coming year.

Experience and security are not mutually exclusive. They are two sides of the same coin. Deposits must be baked into all IT activities.

The pandemic has brought about changes that no one could have predicted. It taught us a lot about how to prepare for the unexpected.

No one can know what the future will bring, but one thing is sure. The world will change rapidly and continue to change. Companies that harness the power and potential of technology can make the world a better place.

Trends are not laws.

Please remember that trends are not laws. This means that what everyone seems to be doing or using today when it comes to small business technology, may become inappropriate or antiquated in a short period of time.

Some technologies are engineered to remain basic building blocks. Other technologies will soon become nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Don’t be pressured into investing too much money into the latest tech fad.

Keep yourself up to date, but also watch and wait.

One of the best ways to do this is to keep an eye on your competitors. Find out what new technologies they are employing, and how successful it is.

Also, talk to your own customers about their wish list for updated technology. You may be surprised at what you hear from them. Especially from the younger generations, who love new tech for its own sake and not for anything it can do for them.

The post Trends That Change How Things Are Done appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Minor Illnesses

Minor illnesses have the potential to sneak up on employees when they least expect it. This can include everything from the cold to the flu (and that’s just the start).

Protect against employee absence by helping your employees maintain their health. For example, you can hold health fairs throughout the year to give them access to the testing they need. Or if they suspect an illness, you could take steps to help them get checked.

Some seemingly minor illnesses are much more serious than they appear on the surface. Maybe an employee takes a Lyme disease test with expectations that the result will be negative. However, they soon find that they have this illness and that it’s prohibiting them from working as expected.

2. Mental Health (Stress and Anxiety)

You can’t tell if someone is struggling with a mental health issue, so it’s best that you don’t jump to conclusions (either way). Stress, anxiety, depression, and a variety of other mental health concerns can result in time away from the job.

Here’s a statistic from the National Alliance on Mental Illness that will open your eyes: 20.6% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2019 (51.5 million people). This represents 1 in 5 adults.

In other words, if you have 100 employees, roughly 20 of them will suffer from some type of mental illness. That’s a big number.

Just the same as physical illnesses and injuries, mental health is a big reason for employee absence. There are steps you can take to help your employees help themselves:

• Encourage them to take time off if they need to recharge their batteries
• Help them eat healthier and exercise regularly
• Promote a good work/personal life balance

It’s often the small changes that have the biggest impact on your organization. You never know when you’ll make a decision that helps an employee (or employees) overcome a serious mental concern, visit https://ryderclinic.com/ambien-zolpidem/.

3. Employee Absence From Burnout

This goes along with point #2, mentioned above. Hard work is a good thing, but constant rumination about workloads, harrowing work schedules, and ever-accumulating deadlines is a fast-track to employee burnout. All employees need to take time away from the office every now and again. In fact, this is so important that you need to encourage employees to do so. Let them know that there’s nothing wrong with taking a break.

Keep your eyes open for signs of employee burnout, such as a decrease in productivity or subpar work. If you suspect this, talk to the employee about what’s happening and make suggestions for them to get back on track.

Note: Some employees will find it difficult to realize that they’re burning out. They can’t see that they’re heading down a dangerous path, so you need to step in and show them the way.

4. Personal Life Responsibilities

This is where a good work/personal life balance comes into play. If you work your employees to the bone and don’t allow them to spend time on things they enjoy outside of their jobs — such as their family and hobbies — it’ll eventually backfire.

Not only can personal life responsibilities result in employee absence, but they can also take a toll on their mental health. And when that happens, you can also expect to see an uptick in absences.

Make it clear to your workers that it’s encouraged to have a good work/personal life balance. Taking this one step further, help them achieve this, such as by offering a flexible work schedule.

5. Non-Work Related Injuries

There is no shortage of circumstances that can result in a non-work related injury. For example, you could suffer multiple injuries in a motor vehicle accident. Or you could slip and fall in your home, thus requiring medical attention.

As frustrating as it may be, keep in mind that an employee could suffer an injury outside the workplace that results in them missing a day or more of work. It’s important to be both sympathetic and understanding of these circumstances, should they occur.

What Can You Do About It?

It’s one thing to realize that employee absenteeism is a problem. It’s another thing entirely to take steps to curb this concern once and for all.

There is no one size fits all solution, but there are definite steps you can take. Try the following:

• Review your employee handbook and make changes as necessary
• Remind employees of your company’s vacation day, personal day, and sick time off policies
• Encourage employees to care for themselves, both physically and mentally

By taking these steps, you’re doing two things. First off, you show employees that you’re aware that some people are taking too many days off. Secondly, you provide guidance on what they can do to get back on track.

You hope that you never have to do it, but there may come a time when you have to sit down and explain to an employee that their absentee record is a concern. Don’t wait to have this conversation, as you may find that they have a good reason for missing work.

Final Thoughts About Employee Absence

There are times when employees need a day off for one reason or the next, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, what you need to be careful about is employees taking advantage of the system.

If absenteeism is a problem within your company, you’ll soon come to find that it’s having a negative impact on productivity. Subsequently, it can drag down everything from customer service scores to revenue.

By recognizing these common causes of employee absence, you can address them before they escalate to an even bigger issue. And the sooner you take action, the better it can be for you and your business’s bottom line.

The post Top Reasons for Employee Absence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What Is a Ghost Kitchen?

A ghost kitchen is an alternative to a brick-and-mortar or traditional restaurant. It is also a name for commercial kitchens that are built for delivery. Since the space is designed for reaching online customers, it needs less staff to maintain operations.

What Are The Advantages?

It allows food creators to run their entire restaurant, without having the full expenses of staff, real estate, and storefronts. This type of “dark kitchen” enables entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, and local chains to offer their food without the expense of maintaining a public dining area.

What Are The Financial Advantages?

This is an operation built for profitability. A ghost kitchen helps entrepreneurs cut costs on labor and overhead. In addition, it uses a single-point tablet to monitor costs and profits.

Owners can see all the financial data from a single point, instead of sweating over physical invoices and worrying about logistics. An additional benefit is lower food wastage. By reducing food wastage, owners are able to reach more customers, manage expenses, and pass these savings on to consumers.

Understanding The Trends

This type of virtual kitchen is rising in popularity. They are less expensive and more cost-effective than running a traditional restaurant. This new form of kitchen has grown 300% faster than dine-in, since 2014.

In the wake of the global pandemic, diners are opting for delivery over dining in. Building a web presence, using a ghost kitchen, and focusing on delivery are strategies that help restaurateurs ‘future-proof’ their business.

According to industry statistics, as of 2021, every 6 in 10 adults claim that they’re more likely to order delivery than dine-in. People are increasingly relying on third-party delivery. Restaurants are organizing delivery fleets.

Food delivery direct to consumers is the name of the game. Contactless ordering and delivery are here to stay. Savvy entrepreneurs are using these trends to make informed decisions.

Getting Familiar With The Options

Whether you’re a food truck owner, a restaurant owner, or a budding entrepreneur, it helps to familiarize yourself with the options for dark kitchens. Each one has perks and challenges.

Commissary Kitchens

This is a great way to keep your overhead low and avoid the costs of owning a facility. You can open up a new kitchen with minimal expenses or commitment. Most often, you’ll need to schedule a time to use the kitchen, and may need to share the space.

You’ll be using a shared space with basic equipment. If you need more space to prepare orders or store ingredients, you can access these. This kind of flexibility makes a commissary kitchen an attractive way to get up and running.

Commercial Kitchens

In a commercial kitchen, you have your own dedicated space to prepare orders. You don’t need to share the space, schedule time, or negotiate for expansion. You have your own private space to cook and prepare food.

Pop-Up Kitchens

These are temporary kitchens, attached to a traditional restaurant, food truck, or kiosk. These pop-ups are also called incubator kitchens. Instead of building an entirely new facility, these kitchens help provide space for delivery orders. This can be an attractive way to streamline delivery, maximize staff, and minimize order inefficiencies.

Kitchen Pods

This refers to transportable containers such as shipping containers. These kitchens enable restaurateurs to cook anywhere and reach customers directly. Kitchen pods often have poor ventilation, no windows, and a smaller amount of usable space. These drawbacks can make it challenging to effectively prepare large orders.

Evaluating Your Best Options For The Future

As you evaluate your options for reaching customers, consider how to leverage the trends to feature your unique strengths. If you are just starting out, future-proof your business by focusing on delivery, data, and subscription delivery.

You may want to offer special occasion dining, individual tasting menus, or diet-specific options to appeal to your target market. Here are a few of the top considerations:

• Technology Insights

  With delivery efficiency as your primary aim, work with a ghost kitchen that is fully equipped with proprietary software. Instead of relying on apps or hard-copy invoices, you’ll have all the insights in one place. With better data, you will be able to streamline operations for maximum efficiency.

• Rapid Delivery

  What do you really want to do? You want to focus on your food creativity and production. You do not want to spend your weekends and nights focused on logistics and delivery. Working with a logistics partner makes it possible to get each order to the right delivery driver. Faster delivery means happier customers.

• Facility Management

  When you make great food, you need to know that cleaning, maintenance, and security is handled. With all the worries and concerns about food safety, it helps to work with a facility management team. They handle all the basics, so you can focus on what you love doing.

• Slash Labor Costs

  By starting with a delivery-first approach, you’ll spend a lot less on labor. According to industry statistics, a typical physical location spends about 30% of sales revenue on labor costs. When you run your food business with a fully functional ghost kitchen, you won’t need staff at the front, servers, or receptionists. Many chefs and entrepreneurs find that they can run their restaurant operations with minimal staff, such as 3-5 people.

• Maximize Profits

  A ghost kitchen enables creative people to get started with much lower capital. Instead of needing $1M to open, you may be able to get things up and running with as little as $30K.

Restaurants are notoriously a low-margin industry. However, with these exciting developments, it’s easier for entrepreneurs to get started, slash labor costs, and deliver top-quality food to customers.

Wrapping It Up

If you’ve been dreaming about expanding your food truck to multiple locations, opening a new restaurant, or creating a hot new food trend — ghost kitchens will help you achieve your culinary dreams.

The post Ghost Kitchens: The Best Way to Reach Your Customers appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Outsourcing specific business needs has become increasingly popular among small business owners. Many are even choosing to optimize how they take care of their HR requirements. This in turn has seen a corresponding rise in the demand for professional employer organizations (PEOs). However, as you might expect, these organizations often come bundled with a thick amount of details and paperwork. That might just be the very thing you are trying to run away from!

Thankfully, a PEO broker can help you decide how to best outsource several aspects of your small business. This saves you time and ensures that your business keeps running smoothly. The outsourcing trend can include health services, payroll, retirement accounts, tax administration services, and long-term savings accounts.

sSix Advantages of Working with a Professional Employer Organizations Broker

Choosing a suitable PEO should be weighed very carefully. To help you decide, hiring a PEO broker is a great option. A professional employer organizations broker can help find you the best deal on the market. If you’re thinking about hiring a PEO broker, here are six good reasons to move forward.

1. A PEO broker helps create a buyer’s market.

Partnering with PEO brokers allows you to create a buyer’s market. Brokers achieve this by creating a mini-market where they can get the attention of PEOs. They’re also in a position to hire locally, regionally, or nationally. Leveraging these expanded options, you’re now in a position to choose a PEO that promises to deliver quality results. The PEO broker also improves your bargaining power. You don’t have to spend nearly as much money paying the PEO as you’d have to if you hadn’t hired a broker.

2. It’s much easier to compare PEOs.

Whenever you’re out shopping, you spend most of your time closely examining prices. You want to be sure you’re getting the best value possible.

The same principle applies when scouring the market for a potential PEO. When conducting your search, the primary factor that’ll be guiding your decision-making process is pricing.

You’ll need to set aside a considerable chunk of your time reading over quotes issued by different companies. The entire process involves dealing with endless paperwork and uses up a lot of your energy. It’s no surprise since PEO proposals are usually not only long but also fairly complex. Because of this, you’ll need to take your time. You need to carefully read through all details to avoid making a costly mistake.

All this sounds hectic and difficult because it is. Hiring a PEO broker helps you outsource these issues. Your PEO broker will give you numerous quotes for review. This makes it a lot easier to pick a PEO suitable for your needs while still offering you great value.

3. Your business gets competitive pricing.

While hiring a PEO broker will cost you money, you end up saving more. A PEO broker eventually helps you save by cutting down how much you’d have to pay the PEO. The PEO consultant can do this as they have the experience and knowledge to negotiate for better rates. Also, they can use connections established over the years to help you get a cheaper deal.

The opportunity to save money should be a sufficient motivation to hire a broker, assuming you still had some skepticism about this practice. After all, your goal as a small business owner revolves around saving money by trying to cut down business costs as much as possible.

4. Your paperwork load is greatly simplified.

Piling up the paperwork can make you feel like giving up prior to searching for an ideal PEO. To get an exact quote from the PEO, you’re required to collect a vast amount of company data. This includes healthcare requirements, worker’s compensation history, insurance policies, and staff salaries, to mention a few. Because you’ll be seeking to get quotes from various PEOs, you’ll need to repeat this entire process every time you’re searching for different needs.

To save yourself from dealing with this hectic process, multiple times, a PEO broker might be the right call for your small business. Working with a PEO broker, you’ll only be required to provide the appropriate data once. The broker will then assess your company data and recommend the right PEO depending on your needs. This helps you make an informed decision without having to deal with lots of paperwork.

5. You get greater peace of mind.

Running a small business is stressful. You need to make sure everything’s running according to plan. The search for a PEO only adds to this level of pressure. You’re expected to make sure the business remains on track to achieve its goals.

When evaluating different PEOs, you’ll want to compare how much they charge for their services and interview each of them. All of this added work quickly becomes overwhelming. It might even impact productivity or prevent you from making the right decision as to which PEO to hire.

PEO brokers reduce the work on your end. Your consultant will deal with all of the heavy lifting involved in the search for the right PEO. Since the broker has years of experience establishing a relationship with many PEOs locally, regionally, and nationally, they’ll know which matches your needs. As a result, you get to focus on more important matters, the ones your small business was established to handle. You’re making a good choice but not adversely affecting overall productivity.

6. A professional employer organizations broker looks out for your best interests.

If you’re out shopping for a product you don’t know much about, it’s all too easy to be misled by sales representatives.

To get the best advice, it’s far better to talk to a neutral party when seeking reliable information. PEO brokers are neutral parties. Their main goal is to help you get a PEO who’s the perfect match. Their integrity can be trusted as they don’t have anything to gain financially if you choose to pick one PEO over another.

However, if you consult a PEO directly, they will do their best to convince you that they’re the best pick. That might not always be the case, so hiring a broker would be a safer route.

Takeaway

Hiring a professional employer organization allows you to focus on matters more important to your business. Any good PEO can help maintain smooth operations as you no longer need to worry about compliance issues and complex HR paperwork. However, knowing which PEO to hire can a challenge. There are many options available. To help you out, hiring a PEO broker might be your best bet for wading through all the choices.

The post 6 Benefits to Hiring a Professional Employer Organizations Broker appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

However, even before the pandemic began, many companies had started accepting remote work as the future of the workplace. While some may disagree about the method being efficient, there’s no doubt that the overall trend has been on the rise.

The reason is simple. Allowing employees to work from home has several advantages for both individuals and employers. Employers can save money by reducing office space and covering more time zones. Employees can save money and time by reducing commute costs and stress, They can also apply for positions outside of their geographic area and improve work/life balance.

That being said, remote working can quickly turn into an employer’s worst nightmare if proper measures are not adopted. If your staff has never worked remotely before, the transition period may be difficult. Even when you’re not dealing with a pandemic, running a remote workplace can be challenging and time-consuming.

It’s one thing to adopt remote working in your workplace. It’s something else entirely to put the practice to good use for your team. One of the most efficient methods to work remotely is to automate tasks so that you can handle the daily turmoil, keep in touch with your team, and save time rather than waste hours on manual labor.

How Automating Your Business Procedures Enhances the Work from Home Experience

The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing almost every industry to permit working from home. It really doesn’t matter if we believe in the concept or not. The workplace is going to change and you need to be prepared.

This is where automation comes in handy. Listed below are some of the common problems you might face if your staff works from home more frequently and how automation can help.

Productivity

One of the biggest challenges for any business when it comes to working from home is productivity. As employees aren’t physically present in the workplace, it becomes difficult to monitor their productivity, what they’re working on, and when. 

According to a study published by Stanford, team members who work remotely tend to be 13% more productive compared to employees working in an office setting. This is mainly due to fewer distractions. However, not everyone has the self-discipline that is crucial for remote working. By automating mundane tasks, employees can reduce distractions that might cause them to deviate from their work.

For example, emerging technologies such as Intelligent Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are making remote work more productive. These technologies act as a virtual assistant alongside the remote working employee. They can sense when the employee may require assistance with a rule-based, repetitive task.

Stability

Transitioning from an office job to remote work can cause anxiety over job security. It can be challenging to keep the daily tasks running while everything in your environment is changing rapidly. This often results in making the entire work from home experience more difficult for employees and can yield chaotic results.

When you automate mundane or repetitive tasks, you can ensure that these tasks keep running smoothly, regardless of whether you’re in the office or not. 

Ensuring Every Department Functions Smoothly When Automating your Business

When you move to remote work, you’re sure to face challenges specific to certain departments.

But that’s what makes automating your business the perfect solution. You can tailor technology to match your requirements, ensuring it can help any team you need. Here are a few examples based on some of the most prominent teams.

Marketing, Finance, and HR

When your marketing team performs their daily work-related activities from home, the biggest concern is likely to be the impact on current and future campaigns. However, campaigns, lifecycle communications, and triggered emails can all flow out automatically with automation.

Simultaneously, this holds for other teams as well. For example, accounts payable automation helps send out billing alerts, payment confirmations, and other communications without hassles. Essentially, when your team goes into the work-from-home mode, your processes shouldn’t suffer as long as they’re automated.

Customer Service

Automating customer service activities can pose the biggest challenge as there tends to be a lot of ambiguity and moving parts involved. Keeping track of various customer tickets and which team member is looking after that issue can be difficult.

However, automation doesn’t fail to deliver here. Automation technology can decode tickets and prioritize them based on specific terminologies, which can then be routed to the right team member.

Information Technology

IT teams face a challenge when it comes to working from home and preserving security. It’s obviously much easier to retain strict control of internet security in an office setting. There are fewer ways to control security settings when your staff works from home.

However, your IT employees can ensure that adequate security measures are put into place via automation. One example would be automating an email system to ensure that any document that is sent is first converted to PDF.

Factors to Consider When Choosing Automation Tools

Now that you have a better understanding of how automation can help improve your teams’ performance when it comes to working from home, it’s crucial to choose the right automation tools that allow you to implement the best practices for working from home.

When Automating Your Business, Keep It Affordable

One essential criterion that influences any tool’s usefulness is its price. Top-notch work-from-home tools are available at reasonable prices. The trick is to not jump at the first solution and conduct your due diligence or put your needs out for bid.

Make Sure Your Solutions Are Effective

Another feature that all of the top work-from-home automation tools have in common is their capacity to perform their function efficiently. It may be highly frustrating for users to use tools that aren’t up to the task at hand. Make sure the solution you invest in won’t max out on capacity anytime soon.

Are the New Tools Accessible?

The only way to ensure employees can work remotely is to enable their access to necessary tools and documents from anywhere.

Any decent automation tool will ensure that you don’t need to go to an extraordinary effort to install and maintain. It will also ensure that employees can access whatever they need at any time. Additionally, remote workers may utilize these products on the go by downloading mobile applications.

Keep It Simple 

Quality work-from-home programs feature user interfaces that are simple to use. A tool with a clear and easy-to-understand UI design makes it easier for people to utilize. Confusion when trying to demo a new product should serve as a red flag.

Automating Your Business Procedures Makes Financial Sense, Regardless of Work Location

For many, transitioning to remote working or working from home may be difficult. The change will require a bit of planning and good automation tools. However, your employees are sure to get right back into the swing of things if you help automate mundane tasks.

The post Automating Your Business to Make Working from Home Easier appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Is this just the way of the work world? Some people think so, but that’s not true. To be sure, you can’t get around the need for back office work. And you can’t ignore it, either. But that doesn’t mean your internal systems can’t be improved. By implementing at least one of the following solutions, you could see substantial and immediate benefits. 

1. Integrate your workflows.

These days, most back-end workflows leverage several platforms from MS Office to Slack. In fact, the tech stack of any back office can end up growing a mile high. This can be a productivity nightmare in the making, especially when workers have to move from one system to another. 

What’s the answer to avoiding the need to constantly log in and out of platforms and screens? Rely on a cloud-based Integrated Platform as a Service, or IPaaS. The role of any IPaaS is to foster communications between the systems your people use everyday. That way, employees can avoid cutting and pasting the same data, which can lead to unintended errors. They can also start creating shortcuts to help them do their jobs faster without losing accuracy.

Ideally, the IPaaS provider you choose as a partner needs to be plug-in ready. After all, your employees shouldn’t need to understand how to code to make integrations work. (Let’s face it: Few back office team members possess coding backgrounds.) Once your IPaaS is up and running, your back office personnel can work more effectively and confidently within all their systems. 

2. Automate whenever possible.

Repetitive tasks aren’t just annoying for your back office crew. They’re also eating up around 10% of your employees’ at-work time. During a 40-hour week, that’s a whopping four hours of waste per person. But you can chip away at all that waste pretty quickly with automation.

Any job that’s done repeatedly can and should be automated. Which redundancies exist in your back office? You don’t need to guess. Just ask your employees to think of activities that they duplicate on a regular basis. Then, review their feedback and look for opportunities to automate. For instance, you may discover that some of your administrative staffers are hand-entering sales lead information. Could the lead information be scanned into a system, evaluated with AI software, and uploaded more conveniently? You’ll never know until you think outside the (repetition) box.

Of course, automation may require equipment upgrades. So be ready to put some funds behind automation. Just remember: Investing in the right type of technology will pay for itself.

3. Modernize your payroll and benefits systems.

Do your back office employees complain that they’re always working on payroll or answering benefits questions? While you want to give your employees great service—and on-time pay—you can still streamline these workflows and functions.

Let’s say your team members are handling payroll on their own. Would working with a cloud-based payroll provider make sense? It does for a lot of businesses. Payroll partners can take a lot of “grunt work” off your employees’ shoulders. At the same time, many payroll systems enable employees to log in, see information, and download tax forms. Plus, the systems may be outfitted with self-service chatbots to solve workers’ common finance-related questions.

In the digital era, there’s really no reason to accept a clunky payroll interface or experience. Explore the wide world of payroll systems providers ideal for your company size.

4. Move everything into the cloud.

Did your business model move to remote work in 2020? Plenty of organizations had no choice but to make telecommuting their main way of working, even for back office personnel. At this point, your back office team still may work from home. Or, some may work hybrid schedules. Either way, you’ll want to move as many processes into the cloud as you can.

Having all your information and knowledge in the cloud solves several back office problems. Foremost, it enables remote access anytime, from anywhere, and with nearly any device. That means your employees can easily log in, even if they can’t get to the office. Secondly, cloud-based systems remove worries about backing up your data. Why? Reputable cloud-based providers have backups in place. Plus, they encrypt data to keep your back office data secure.

Best of all, if you’re looking for an economical solution to untangle your back office spaghetti, trust the cloud. Many cloud-based partners allow you to pay for subscriptions monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, and annually. That means you can fold the cost of cloud computing into your fixed costs. Additionally, you may be able to get added savings if you pay upfront for several years.

5. Go paperless like you mean it.

Walk into any back office and you’re bound to see it: loads of paper. While some paper may be necessary, not all of it is probably relevant. Quite honestly, your back office is likely overflowing with more paper than anyone needs.

From an environmental perspective, all that paper isn’t exactly eco-friendly. But that’s hardly the only issue with a paper-laden back office. Papers can easily be misplaced, destroyed, or even stolen. It’s much harder for that to happen to digital items that exist on a cloud-based, protected server.

Moving to a paper-reduced back office model won’t happen overnight. It might take months to figure out how to make a (practically) paperless workflow part and parcel for your company. Arrange a time to talk with your back office staff members about your desire to get rid of unnecessary paper. Their insights will help you understand exactly how to make this goal a reality.

Will every worker automatically jump on board with changes? Maybe not. It can take a while for people to become comfortable with different ways of working. Give the process time—but be clear that you intend to unravel all the knots in your back office functions. 

The post 5 Ways to Untangle Your Back-Office Spaghetti appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Society is already beginning to see some of the negative aspects of tech overflow, and some are taking action. The next generation is already being raised to be more tech-conscious, with the introduction of scaled-back kid phones and tech-free childhoods. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late for their parents.

The first step to developing a healthy relationship with your workplace tech is by being intentional with it. If you’re not careful, technology will creep into every corner of your life.

Here are a few ways to prevent that:

1. Disconnect at the end of the day.

Before anything else, you need to draw a firm line between your professional day and your personal evening. A 2018 study found that working outside regular business hours seriously hindered workers’ ability to sleep, recover, and maintain the necessary levels of energy to work the next day. For your own health, disconnecting is a must.

Set clear, firm guidelines for yourself on when you’re allowed to work and when you aren’t. Once the workday is over, take a break from all electronics entirely for a while. This time can give you the space you need to decompress and shift into a less professional mindset. Preventing work from bleeding into your free time allows you to appreciate both more.

2. Take mini-breaks.

When you’re on the job, don’t get sucked into endless tech usage. Regular breaks from technology on the job ensure you’re more purposeful when you do use tech — actively completing tasks instead of mindlessly browsing.

One of the best ways of doing this is with a modified version of the Pomodoro technique. The technique involves 25 minutes of work, followed by a five-minute break. Following this schedule has been shown to boost productivity, but reworking it for tech can have benefits as well. Take five minutes out of every half-hour to put down all devices entirely. When you pick them back up, you’ll notice the difference.

3. Use website blockers.

Nearly 60 percent of employees admit to spending an hour or more surfing the web at work every day. Most office workers know the real number is likely much higher. If other disconnecting techniques aren’t working for you, it’s probably time to shut down your access to time-wasting sites entirely. A number of great apps block certain sites; doing so can keep you from getting sucked down a rabbit hole while working.

4. Establish “techless” times.

Even the most tech-focused workers have duties and tasks they can do without their devices. Rather than constantly switch between your laptop and notepad, develop a schedule to separate one from the other.

Businesses are increasingly opting to host off-the-grid hours. Employees take advantage of their liberation from devices to collaborate, talk, and problem solve. Having a tech-free hour early or in the middle of the day can give workers the opportunity to take a step back and think outside of the box. Then, they can get back to their devices and put their ideas into practice.

5. Use one device at a time.

At work, you’re rarely just on your desktop. You might also be on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, smartwatch, or any number of other devices. While it’s tempting to take full advantage of the connectivity at your fingertips, doing so is almost never to your benefit.

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Context switching — frequently changing the platforms you work on — can slash your productivity by up to 80 percent and cut your mental state in the process. One of the best ways to stamp out device switching is by scheduling which devices you use when. Keeping tools siloed off ensures you don’t lose your mind juggling all at the same time.

Intentional tech use is the first step toward maximizing your productivity and well-being on the job. By assessing exactly what your regular tech usage looks like, you can develop an understanding of what’s wrong — and what you can do to make it right.

The post 5 Tips for More Intentional Tech Use at Work appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

According to a September 2018 World Economic Forum study, more than half of the work done worldwide by 2025 will be completed by some form of automation technology. In some fields, that tipping point will come even sooner: Information technology and data processing, for instance, is on track to reach the more-automated-than-human mark by 2022. 

While 2022 might sound a long way off, the truth is that workflow automation software is already taking on remarkably human roles. Today, automation conducts one-fifth of business decision-making as measured by task hours, the World Economic Forum report claims. By 2022, that ratio will be close to one-third.

The report also notes, however, that there are broad disparities in automation’s applications. While some enterprises use it for everything from data entry to recruiting to content creation, others have yet to touch it at all.

Automation for All

Fortunately, no matter where your company lies on that spectrum, there are four ways in which it can start or strengthen its application of automation:

1. Kick busywork to the curb.

Every industry, company, and role involves a certain amount of rote work. Although some, like data entry, are obvious targets for what’s called robotic process automation, others may not be so clear-cut. Government agencies like NASA, for instance, use RPA to “read” budgets and distribute funds between offices. In the next five to seven years, a Deloitte report found, such RPA applications could save the federal government 1.1 billion working hours per year — or around $37 billion annually.

But it’s not just the public sector that sees the sense in RPA. Email automation provider Mixmax’s latest suite of tools, known as “Mixmax 2.0,” features Beast Mode, a task automator that customer-facing roles at enterprise companies use to efficiently complete batches of tasks. In a press release, Mixmax CEO and co-founder Olof Mathé described Mixmax 2.0 as a broadside against busywork: “Our goal with Beast Mode, Dialer, and Auto Create is singular: empower business users to focus on their jobs.”

2. Do more with data visualization.

To focus on their jobs, however, business users need a clear picture of where opportunities lie. Again, automation has an answer, or at least a partner: exploratory data analysis. In a nutshell, EDA is the process of using algorithms to point out patterns, identify anomalies, and check assumptions through graphical representations. Although EDA can visualize “fun” issues, like who’s actually the main character in the television show “Friends,” its business applications are almost endless.

“At the very least,” argues Dino Fire, president of market research and analytics at datadecisions Group, “the EDA may reveal aspects of your company’s performance that others may not have seen.” For newer users, Fire suggests using a logistic model for a new take on customer segmentation. By ingesting customer data like net promoter score, purchasing behavior, and demographic variables, logistic models can show similarities between the company’s most satisfied customers and predict whether unscored customers are satisfied.

3. Create an automation center.

Data analysis, however, is one small area in the vast landscape of business automation. To keep up with the ballooning number of types and tools, four in 10 enterprises will have created automation centers by the end of this year, according to Forrester’s Predictions 2019 report. The point of these platforms, Forrester vice president and principal analyst J. P. Gownder explains in his report analysis, is to align the right automation solution with the right use case.

Although choosing a tool to complete a task might seem simple enough, Deloitte’s “Automate This” report makes clear it’s not. Two types of automation the report explores, for example, sound awfully similar: robotic process automation and intelligent automation. In fact, their use cases are practically opposites; RPA tools can tackle methodical, routine tasks at a relatively low implementation cost. IA ones, on the other hand, are for narrow, non-routine tasks that require thoughtful consideration and involve steep startup costs.

4. Integrate AI with other technologies.

Enterprises don’t use RPA, IA, or any other AI tool in a vacuum. As companies become more comfortable with AI, digital transformation expert Daniel Newman predicts, they’ll combine AI technologies with others in increasingly complex and valuable ways. “Convergence should be a top priority for leaders across industries everywhere,” Newman stresses.

Take, for example, how the oil and gas industry has paired AI with Internet of Things technology. By using machine learning to analyze data gathered by IoT sensors, operators can diagnose malfunctions, predict part failures, and optimize pump performance. Not only does the system reduce downtime and increase output, but it improves worker safety and decreases the possibility of environmental disaster.

Artificial intelligence might seem like it’s years away from its professional prime, and it certainly may be. But while automatons aren’t walking around most workplaces yet, AI is making its mark in more subtle, software-centric ways. By freeing workers from routine work, identifying hidden opportunities, and optimizing existing processes, AI is charging toward a tipping point that employees and employers alike should welcome.

The post The Tipping Point of Automation Is Coming. Here’s How to Stay on the Leading Edge appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The best and brightest don’t let themselves get bogged down in admin tasks like reading and answering emails or scheduling meetings. They put technology to work for them and automate the tasks that eat away at precious minutes that could be better spent.

What’s their secret? Having the right tools.

By using software to automate tedious tasks that don’t directly impact their bottom line, they can focus more on closing more deals.

Here are five tools you can use to help you be more productive and become a sales superstar.

  Automation Apps to Increase Productivity

  1. Docusign

Getting everyone together to sign a contract can be difficult. When multiple people need to review and sign documents to start work, Docusign makes it easy. Simply create and upload your documents, then send to everyone that needs to review and sign. Esignatures are legally binding, and everyone gets a signed copy when the process is complete. Integrates with popular software including Salesforce and Google.

  2. Calendly

Tired of the back-and-forth when trying to schedule meetings with a prospect? Calendly lets you provide a link to make scheduling a breeze. Your potential client or client can pick a time from the open slots and include relevant details. Integrates with various calendar apps so no one misses an appointment.

  3. Mixmax

Email makes it easy to stay in touch, but keeping up with it can be impossible. Mixmax is a Gmail-based productivity tool that allows you to outsmart your quota by enhancing, automating, personalizing the email communications required to build your sales pipeline.

Features include:

• Email Tracking: Check and see when and who opens your emails.

• One-Click Scheduling: Share availability instantly.

• Automated Follow-ups: Create templates and automated drip campaigns.

• CRM Integrations: Update information instantly in Salesforce and LinkedIn SalesNavigator.

• Workflow: Automate manual tasks that take away your focus from engaging customers.

  4. IFTTT

IFTTT is automation software on steroids. The best part? It’s free! Your imagination is the only limit to what IFTTT can do. The software uses “recipes” to automate tasks and connect your apps and devices.

Though the learning curve is steep, once you understand how to create your own recipes you can automate everything from work to pizza delivery.

Sample recipes for sales pros include:

• Add new Google Contacts to a Google Sheet to track sales leads

• Get a text when an opportunity is closed and won in Salesforce

• Mute your android phone ringtone at a certain time of the day

  5. RescueTime

We all have the same amount of hours in the day. It’s how we use them that makes the difference. While not technically an automation tool, RescueTime automatically tracks how you spend your time on your phone and computer throughout the day. Once you know where your day is going, you can make a plan to cut out those tasks which are eating into your productivity.

  Take Back Your Time With These Tools

Your productivity (or lack of) is on you. By using the tools mentioned above, you’ll be able to save time on email, paperwork, and everything in between.

Start by learning where you’re wasting the most time. Then give these tools a spin and you’ll find out just how easy it is to squeeze value out of every moment of the day.

The post 5 Automation Tools That Will Improve Office Productivity appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Grammarly

If you spend any time writing on your computer, you need Grammarly. Whether it’s daily emails, a monthly newsletter, content for your blog, or writing your next bestseller, you have a need to communicate clearly. Grammarly can help you spend less time proofreading, and proofreading again. This isn’t just your basic spell checker. It will automatically underline spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and punctuation mistakes. Grammarly is a browser plugin and can make you look like a literary genius on Facebook, WordPress, Gmail, and pretty much anywhere else. You’ll never have to be embarrassed by using the wrong “their,” “there,” or “they’re” again and you’ll up your productivity to have some more free time to spend doing the stuff you love.

Google Keep

It happens to the best of us—you’re at a meeting, having lunch with a client, dropping your kids off at school—and remember something you need to do later that day. With no pen or paper in sight, that thought might as well just grow some wings and fly away. With a note-taking app like Google Keep, you can jot down all of those random thoughts that come up throughout your day. Google Keep syncs across the cloud so you can view them on any of your devices. Productivity-1, short term memory loss-0.

Buffer

Social media can be a productivity black hole. But, if you’re running a business, you know just how important social media is to your overall marketing strategy. Buffer is a social media management service that can help you reign in some of that time you’re spending on social. The free version of the app lets you manage 3 accounts and allows you to have a schedule queue of up to 10 posts. If your business is extra active on social media, the app’s premium features include the ability to manage more accounts, schedule more posts, and access to analytics, content creation tools, and link shortening.

Freedom

You need this app if…oh look, a squirrel! Ok, focus here! You need this app if you are easily distracted and tempted to stray from the task at hand. Freedom allows you to block websites or apps on any device that are detracting from your productivity. It can even sync what you block across all of your devices, saving you even more time. For less than $2.50/month, it’s probably worth the investment.

Any.do

Need a little help getting your schedule organized? Any.do will do. This free app will help keep your productivity game strong by keeping you on track with to-do lists, reminders, and notes. You can even share lists and assign tasks from the app. Any.do syncs between all of your devices so you won’t have to sacrifice your productivity when switching from your computer to your phones when you’re on the go. Any.do also includes voice entry so you can add things to your to-do lists without breaking out the keyboard.

CamScanner

Finding a scanner these days is getting increasingly difficult, especially if you don’t work in a traditional office setting. CamScanner solves this problem by turning your mobile device into a scanner on-the-go. Turn photos, document, receipts—you name it—into JPG and PDF files. There is a free version that’s ad-supported and leaves a watermark on your documents. But, for only $1.99 to install, the premium version is the way to go.   

Otter Voice Notes

If you’re a speak-to-text kind of guy or gal, you’re going to love Otter Voice Notes. The app can record your voice from your phone’s mic or a Bluetooth device. Then, (this is where the magic happens) Otter transcribes your work almost in real-time. It’s got you covered on punctuation, searchable playback, and speaker ID too. You can edit transcripts, you know, in case you mumbled something or had to yell at your kids while you were recording something important. Transcripts can be exported to text, to other apps, or shared. Never mind paying for this app, the free version offers 600 minutes of transcribed audio a month. If you really need the extra talk-time, $9.99 a month will buy you 6,000 minutes.

If you love these productivity apps as much as we do, check out 5 more here!

The post Productivity Apps We LOVE appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

There are only 24 hours in a day. You can’t buy more time, but you can make better use of the time you have. Being more productive isn’t hard, but it does take effort and the right tools. Here are 5 apps we love to help you fire up your productivity as you charge into 2019:

Asana

Asana is a popular and easy to use project management tool. The app was created to “help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.” The tool was designed by two former Facebook executives to improve internal productivity by streamlining how an organization tracks a project’s status and updates, allowing small business owners to manage important tasks and goals in one place. Asana sends users automated emails when new tasks are assigned, when the task is due, as well as daily or weekly task tracker updates. It’s free for teams of up to 15 people. Their only paid plan runs at under $10/month and allows for unlimited team members, unlimited dashboards, priority support, data export, and admin controls. Asana also integrates well with other applications such as Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Email Automation

Email is a black hole. The thought of opening your inbox in the morning to 2,000 unread emails is daunting. But, email doesn’t have to take up so much time in your day! You can use the features already built into your email service provider to give yourself back some precious time. Nearly all email clients like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook have filters and rules that can make your inbox so much more manageable.

• Set a rule to automatically flag or star all client emails so they stand out.
• Add a rule that labels and archives all notification emails from marketing platforms, social media, and online business tools.
• Create a rule based on subject line keywords to identify new clients or prospective customers so you can reply to those emails first.

Upwork (Outsourcing)

Productive people know that time is money. If you’re spending time doing tasks you’re either not good at or don’t enjoy, maybe it’s time to consider outsourcing some of those tasks so you can focus on what you do best and why you started your business in the first place—to do what you love. A great place to get started is hiring freelancers through an app like Upwork. Your first step could be hiring a freelance virtual assistant to cope with the growing needs of your business. Don’t spend hours doing something you aren’t qualified for when you could hire someone to do it for you in half the time.

LastPass

How much time have you wasted at work because you couldn’t remember a password to a site that requires 18 characters, an upper- and lower-case letter, 3 numbers, the blood of your firstborn, and a special character?  Let the password reset process begin…again. You are wasting precious minutes that add up with reattempt after reattempt to no avail and it’s killing your productivity. In 2019, it’s time for an upgrade. If you’re looking to increase productivity this year, give an app like LastPass a try. It keeps track of hundreds of strong, unique passwords without breaking the bank. Unlike other pay-for products in the same market, LastPass allows you to sync an unlimited number of passwords across your devices for free. This simple browser extension could be saving you so much time.

EverNote

Getting organized can tremendously increase your productivity. With EverNote, you can do just that. Sync your notes across all of your devices and share even whole notebooks with coworkers and colleagues. You’ll never have to lose time searching for a dropped sticky note or lost notebook. Your desk will thank you too because you will finally be able to finally clear off the stacks of notes and folders.  Evernote has a ton of helpful features to help you keep track of everything you could possibly need to write down or remember for later. You can add photos, voice notes, attach files, create a to-do list, set reminders. EverNote does offer a free version, but it’s pretty bare bones and you’d be much better served by signing up for one of their pay-for plans. They offer individual plans starting at $34.99/year and Business plans at $12 per person/month.

Looking for other ways to stay productive in 2019? Check this, out.

The post 5 Apps to Fire Up Your Productivity in 2019 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Big data is key to competing successfully in today’s market. While it’s true that small businesses may not have the same resources as larger enterprises such as researchers, data scientists, and analysts, they do have access to a broad range of data collection and analysis tools that can help level the playing field. You don’t even need expensive or fancy software to do the job. Le Wagon can teach you data science completely and you will able to work in data science as per the industry standard.

Understand Your Customers

Small businesses can leverage big data to better understand customer behavior, propensities, and preferences but for this it is necessary to use business intelligence tools like the ones found at https://www.microstrategy.com/us/resources/introductory-guides/data-visualization-what-it-is-and-why-we-use-it. Equipped with this information, businesses can customize the customer interactions more than ever. This is increasingly valuable as consumers demand a more personalized experience. Knowing your customers’ wants and needs will also help you better develop your products to suit their needs. Analytics can also prove valuable in targeting new customers and help you understand how and where you are losing engagement on your website.

Refine Your Marketing Strategy

Big data can help you make better marketing decisions for your company. Big data makes it possible to know the demographic details of who is buying from your business. You can see trends related to certain age groups, ethnicities, geographic locations, or income brackets. This information can allow you to target certain groups with marking strategies that are website design specifically with customers who live in a certain region, for example, in mind. Getting the right message to your customers is essential to getting them to buy from you.

Social media is another marketing bubble that big data is bursting. Nearly all of the major social media outlets, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…etc., provide their own version of data analysis. See which ad campaigns are reaching your customers and if they are working well for your business. New features, like Facebook Stories, are a fantastic way to gain free insight into who is engaging with your brand online. Leveraging big data in marketing is changing the game and you don’t want to get left behind.

Quality Over Quantity

Leveraging big data is about more than having access to unlimited information. It’s about receiving quality information in a timely manner and being able to understand and apply it to make your business better.

Big Data Doesn’t Have to Cost You

Big data has a lot to offer, which must mean it comes with a hefty price tag. But, luckily for small business owners, that isn’t true. There are plenty of free tools to help you gain insight into your customers’ behavior on your website as well as social media. AI has made it possible for big data to be accessible to businesses of all sizes.

• Google Analytics offers a free service that is easy to install and requires very little maintenance. It provides insight on website traffic and source, session duration, bounce rates, and conversions.
• MixPanel is another great analytics tool that tells you things like at what point site visitors are dropping off or if they are filling up their shopping carts but abandoning them at checkout.

If your small business isn’t taking advantage of all that big data has to offer, now is the time to jump in. Big data provides valuable insight and takes out the guess work—you know what customers respond to and what’s not getting their attention–allowing businesses to make more informed decisions.

The post How to Leverage Big Data in Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Here is how you can use schedule chunking to shake up your workflow strategy:

First, what is Schedule Chunking?

Schedule chunking is when you break up your day into manageable chunks where you focus solely on one task instead of constantly reacting to interruptions. You can implement schedule chunking by applying it to the hours in a day, or the days in a week. The former allows you to break down your tasks and get them done piece by piece. The latter lets you see the big picture. Both work hand in hand to help you get more accomplished. Another way to think of schedule chunking is that you are creating a budget for your time, just like you would for your finances.

How to Get Started

• Sit down with a pen and paper and write down your long and short-term goals.
• Decide which tasks are a priority, the ones that you need to accomplish contribute to your goals.
• Group tasks into categories of related items. Career, family, education, chores…etc.
• Determine which categories and tasks are a priority and start plugging those into your schedule first.

Just Say No

An important part of schedule chunking and productivity, in general, is learning to say ‘no.’ Saying no to things that don’t align with your goals. The idea behind schedule chunking is to put a specific task, or group of tasks, on your calendar and give it 100% of your attention. If you dedicate a chunk to working on a certain project, that means saying ‘no’ to checking emails for that hour or anything else that could distract you from accomplishing the task you scheduled. You might know this more commonly as multitasking. Each time you move from one task to another and then back to the one again, your brain has to reset and refocus your attention. If you use schedule chunking and only focus on one task or goal at a time, your productivity will increase simply because you aren’t constantly refocusing your attention. All of those little moments add up, which means you’ve now given yourself more time which, in turn, means you can get more done.

If You Put It on the Schedule—Do It!

If you don’t add it to the schedule it more than likely won’t get done. But, if you do put it on the schedule, hold yourself to it! You’ve already budgeted the time for it. Things like

• exercising,
• dedicated family time, and
• a good night’s rest,

are all important to achieving your goals and should be scheduled first. Don’t steal time from other chunks. If you scheduled an hour for a morning workout, don’t use that time to check emails—checking email has its own block. It’s ok to make revisions or make occasional exceptions, but in general, you should stick to your schedule.

Schedule in Chunks

You are essentially making appointments with your tasks, so get out your calendar and start scheduling. Try starting with something small. Give yourself 30 minutes to write a report.

Set your mind to focus and work only on that report.

• Don’t answer the phone.
• Don’t check your emails (they’ll still be there when you’re done).
• Stay off social media.
• Write the report.

Once you’ve got the feeling down, start adding other chunks to your schedule. If possible, group all of the phone calls you need to make together in an hour block, allotting 10-15 minutes per call. If you have multiple meetings, try and schedule them back to back so you don’t have 15 wasted minutes in between, because let’s be honest, you’re not getting anything done in 15 minutes.  The more you integrate schedule chunking into your routine, the more comfortable it will feel and the more you will start noticing the extra time you have on your hands.

The post How to Increase Your Productivity with Schedule Chunking appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

To top it off, you’re using multiple tools to manage this bombardment of pings and project updates. And these collaboration and communication tools, like Slack, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Teams, are actually hindering your productivity. You spend hours switching between tools to get work done and communicate with your team and customers. You are searching for documents (was it sent in Slack? Is it on the Google Drive?), and probably banging your head against the keyboard before finally finding the information.

So how are these workplace tools hindering your productivity?

First, they operate like closed silos, a members-only club. This means you need to download the app then invite people to communicate and collaborate with them.

Traditional email formatting is clunky and cluttered. Email never evolved to support the look and feel of 1:1 human communication. That’s why messaging apps became so popular in the workplace, equivalent to mailchimp that can offer a great interface and fantastic features, all the while having better prices and giving your brand a better chance to grow, without charging too much.

Personal or private email servers live in your own space, unlike the usual Apple, Google and Microsoft server farms. This way, you can set up your own disk drive and fully control how your emails are accessed, managed and stored.

For small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that want to cut costs, administrating mails may seem expensive. Similarly, running their mail servers seems difficult because of the incessant spamming. They probably also don’t have the in-house tech personnel or tools to properly configure and run one, while managing the threats.

Thankfully, you can run a secure, spam-filtered mail server for your personal or small-business use, check this out servermania.com/kb/articles/setup-your-own-email-server/ if you want to use the popular, free, and open-source Mailcow software. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to create and set up your own email server right on your PC.

Third, and finally, you spend a lot of time switching between tasks and tools every day. Most professionals spend an average of one minute and fifteen seconds on a task before some kind of interruption. So this constant task switching results in reduced productivity and a ton of wasted time.

But this is all changing now thanks to conversational email.  

Kick Your Work Days Into High Gear

Instead of adding another tool to the mix (and more stress to your life), get your favorite workplace app features right where you are — your inbox.

Meet Spike. It’s the world’s first conversational email platform. It puts the clutter aside and brings in your favorite features of messaging and productivity apps into one place. It’s the less is more approach — simplifying your tools so you and your team can excel and save time.

Spike only requires the use of an email address. That means no more time-consuming account set-up or cumbersome training on how to use a particular tool. Spike is intuitive, fun, and resembles the natural flow of conversation.

Best of all — you and your team can use Spike and all its superpower features but your client can use any other email client. The magic: you can collaborate and communicate no matter which email tool everyone is using. It’s the truest form of open communication.

Traditional email is cluttered and messy thanks to threads, headers, signatures, and other unnecessary details. Spike transforms your emails into real conversations with instant, short, and simple messages, so you can focus more on the people you’re working with instead of the mess in your inbox.

As a small business owner, you probably want to get as far away from your email inbox as possible. But email actually transforms the way you work for the better. It’s a surprising hero to the productivity and collaboration world — Spike is here to save you from those hours of inefficient work and the endless search for important information (so you can finally stop asking yourself which Slack channel you put that quarterly presentation in).

There are plenty of features that will transform you into productivity powerhouse, but Spike revolutionizes your workday by saving you tons of wasted productivity hours:

• It’s a truly open form of communication. It seamlessly integrates with your current email addresses (works on top of Gmail, Outlook, any IMAP) and is multi-platform, so you can use Spike everywhere: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Web!
• Removes the unnecessary noise from your email inbox and threads so you can focus your time on the deep work that moves mountains in your business.
• Consolidates your favorite features of workplace apps into one tool so you can stop that productivity-killing habit of context switching and get more done in less time during your workdays.

The Power Of Productivity Is At Your Fingertips

Spike was built with one thing in mind—to improve team collaboration and boost personal productivity so you can spend less time in the weed and more time enjoying your life.

Kiss messy inboxes and inefficiency goodbye and say hello to the new way to firing up your work days.

Authored by:

Dvir Ben-Aroya
Dvir is Co-Founder and CEO of Spike and has over 20 years executive experience leading technology and internet companies. As an entrepreneur, he is passionate about creating SaaS businesses and nurturing them throughout their entire lifecycle.
When he’s not talking about how to improve modern communication, you can find him surfing with friends or running after his 3 boys.

The post Boost Productivity With This New Email Service – Spike appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Drag is a Chrome Extension that works with Gmail. When you add this extension to Chrome, it turns your Gmail into a “Trello-like” board or a Kanban board where you can add tasks for teams to manage. When you use Drag, you and your team does not have to leave the Inbox to work on activities. You can invite people to projects and boards so you can be productive together.

What are productivity boards?

Kanban boards are productivity boards that were first used by developers with Toyota. These visual boards have categories with tasks placed on cards. When someone begins working on a task or accomplishes the task, the card is moved to the appropriate category. Drag is an easy-to-use extension that takes the kanban board to Gmail. Like Kanban boards, Drag can have several categories, customized by the users. The extension can also have as many tasks and columns as needed.

Does it have a low price?

Drag is an affordable option for Gmail users. Drag offers low prices for individuals and for teams. The prices are significantly lower than Trello, which requires businesses to pay for every team member that uses the app. Drag has one low price – well under $1 per day – for the entire team.

What features come with the app?

Drag is still being developed, but the current features are useful. The solo and team versions all come with unlimited boards and columns with both a list and Kanban view. Drag uses a drag-n-drop tool that lets users sort emails and tasks efficiently. The team version includes shared versions of the tools that the solo version has, including an inbox, checklists, notes (so you don’t need a separate notes app), and due dates. Both versions integrate with Google Calendar. Upcoming features include color coding, column automation, centralized billing, and email filters, just to name a few.

Is it intuitive and does it integrate?

Drag’s intuitive design makes it incredibly easy to learn. It only takes seconds for Gmail to convert into boards, but it does not take away any of the features that make Gmail the most popular email service on the planet. The boards are easy to create and they are easy to assign to shared users. The best part is that when you use Drag with your Gmail app, you do not have to move in and cheap viagra 100mg tablets out of Gmail to get work done. Many Drag users create boards that satisfy CRM tasks, Help Desk tasks, and project management tasks. Just imagine how useful it is to stay in one app and not have to have several tabs open at one time.

Drag has over 30,000 users who rave about how easy it is to organize their inboxes. As it is a new app, there will be bugs, but the developers pay attention to users’ requests and feedback to better the app. The app has been featured on several websites as a top Google extension. You can try Drag with a 14-day trial. We think you will love it as much as we do.

The post Drag: Google Chrome Email Extension Aids In Task Productivity appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Asana 

We use the platform Asana to track employee productivity. We have a system of projects and tasks set up and, if needed, we can check in on any given day what tasks and projects have been completed, what is being worked on, upcoming to-dos and outstanding work to be done.

– Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR 

2. Company Wiki 

We use a company wiki to document all of our ideas, processes and product specs. It’s great because it keeps everyone up-to-date on what needs to be done. You can tag team members on projects they are needed on and you can get email notifications of changes made in the wiki. This allows you to passively stay up-to-date on the team’s progress on the tasks at hand.

– Brian David Crane, CallerSmart Inc. 

3. Compass 

Compass is an incredible app for regular check-ins with remote team members and ensuring they are working toward their larger goals. It walks your team through a daily check-in that gives complete visibility into what they are working on and accomplishing and helps you keep them accountable.

– Zach Obront, Book in a Box

4. Dapulse 

The Dapulse app allows everyone on the team to see what is happening and who is in charge of which projects, as well as the status of these projects. Once a task is assigned to an individual, a due date is set. This helps me track an employee’s productivity, especially remote team members, because I can track each stage they are working on in each of their projects without having to check in with them.

– Stanley Meytin, True Film Production 

5. Due 

I use Due’s time tracker software that tracks my own time and reports everyone else’s down to the minute, so I know how long is being spent on each project in order to see where improvements can be made.

– Drew Hendricks, Buttercup

6. JIRA 

Being in a software development business, it’s mostly a given that you’re working with teammates spread across the globe. We measure velocity using JIRA and agile process by assigning points to different tasks. At the end of a two-week sprint, you can tell which engineers performed better or worse in a simple report. You can also see which agile team is more productive and which one needs some TLC.

– Andrey Kudievskiy, Distillery

7. Podio 

We use a project management service called Podio. Everyone from our team has their own tasks on there every single day, so it’s pretty easy to monitor reports and the progress of the team. We also do weekly one-on-one calls to discuss issues, come up with new ideas and improve workflows.

– Evan Varsamis, Gadget Flow

8. Teamwork, Slack and Trello 

We use Teamwork to track our remote workers. They’re able to log their work hours and check off task completion. It’s a great tool for our project managers, as well, so they can keep a close eye on things. We also invite all new remote workers to our Slack channels. Trello is good for setting clear deadlines, project milestones and tracking.

– Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

9. Upwork’s Time Tracker 

Upwork has some great built-in features. You can even monitor what a remote worker’s screen looks like when they’re working on a project for you, so you can assess whether they’re spending too much or too little time on certain steps. The milestone setup also allows you to compensate based on delivered results, which aligns incentives and sets clear expectations upfront.

– Roger Lee, Captain401

10. Wrike and HubStaff 

Tools such as Wrike or Hubstaff are great for keeping track of time and productivity for remote employees. For example, Hubstaff tracks activity levels based on the user’s cursor movement and keyboard strokes. It even takes screenshots of their screen! With these tools, you’re able to get productivity reports on tasks and projects without having to spend a lot of time monitoring them yourself.

– Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS 

11. Time Doctor 

Time Doctor is a great technology for tracking remote worker productivity. It’s simple and easy to use and is designed rather specifically for tracking remote workers.

– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance 

The post 11 Ways to Track Remote Workers’ Productivity appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

2017 Small Business Marketing Forecast

The days are getting shorter, the temperatures are growing colder, and although we may not want to acknowledge it, 2016 will soon be drawing to a close. In this article, we’re sharing a little of what 2017 holds in the way of small business marketing. It covers 10 of the trends you should look out for – and enough forewarning that you can get ahead of the game today.

Become a Super Boss

A recent Gallup poll found that only 32 percent of American workers are actively engaged at work, while the remaining workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged. You can break the trend in your business by becoming the best boss you can be – one that inspires, leads, and manages workers to be their best. This article explores several things you can do to be a better boss and encourage accountability in the workplace.

Get Going on your Mobile App Startup

The growth of mobile shows no signs of stopping, and research finds that consumers spend 85 percent of their time on smartphones in apps. Could YOU be the next big app developer? If you immediately said no because you don’t know programming and coding, we have news for you: you can indeed follow your dreams into the world of app development – just follow the tips in this article.

An End to Procrastination

It’s the beginning of the week, but if you are like most people, you have already worked a bit of procrastination into your schedule. Whether you’re actively avoiding a task or simply bombarded with other things that seem more important, procrastination can hurt your productivity and your business’s success. In this article, productivity expert Hugh Culver explains how you can lower your procrastination by blocking your time. It’s a simple time management hack that you are sure to love.

The post Smart Hustle Recap: Small Business Marketing, Operations, Technology & Lifestyle appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

a) how they treat their employees

b) how they treat their customers

c)When it comes to cleaning, indoor and outdoor cleaning both are important aspects to consider. Here are some factors to consider for both cleaning:-

1. Outdoor:- According to a commercial cleaning company, buildings that are made from materials like plastic, brick, glass, wood, rubber waterproof membranes, and cladding require religious cleaning to stop any decay of substrates. Well when it is about cleaning garden then blower from thebestleafblowers.com should be used.  For people that don’t know, the main explanation for decay is carbon emissions. If not cleaned regularly they reduce the lifetime of the building’s facade. Even natural elements like rain, snow, and wind continuously affect the building’s exterior. Wind staining is pretty evident on buildings round the walls and corners and one can see rainwater stains wherever there’s heavy flow underneath the roof and windows. It is, therefore, necessary to rent facade cleaning services forgevelreiniging.

2. Outdoor:- how good their product is :If quality products are used, then work will be done quickly and efficiently. With the hеlр оf professional vacuum cleaner the wоrk саn bе dоnе еаѕіlу. A vacuum сlеаnеr саn сlеаn mаnу ѕоfаѕ, соuсhеѕ, bеdѕ, аnd flооrѕ аt a ѕіnglе gо. Thе tесhnоlоgу оf thіѕ еrа hаѕ designed vасuum cleaners thаt аrе completely nоіѕеlеѕѕ, соnvеnіеnt, аnd mоѕt іmроrtаntlу, сlеаn рlасе lіkе a rоbоt! But, рісkіng the rіght оnе іѕ vеrу іmроrtаnt аѕ іt соmеѕ wіth a lоt оf еxреnѕеѕ. Yоu саn gеt help frоm All Great Vacuums .

d) how they’re using data to be more efficient.

WHAT you sell is important, but what’s more important is HOW you sell it.

The article reads, “His company is unusually high-tech for the industry. It collects more than 700 points of data, like the time it takes to mop a square foot, and uses the information to improve and refine its cleaning methods, and to set prices.”

The post How A Cleaning Company Uses Data To Boost Productivity. Lesson for All Small Biz. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

10 Biz Expert Tips on Video Marketing

Video marketing is a hot topic right now, and we know that many small business owners are eager to hop aboard the trend but are not sure how to get started. In this article, marketing expert Roberto Blake shares some of his best tips. His advice will answer all of your most frequently asked questions, including what sort of video content should you create, how to tie it in with your website and blog, and how to use video to generate leads and grow your list.

 Click to read 10 Simple and Effective Tips to Grow Your Business Using Video Marketing

Biz Expert Tips for Time Management

Do you ever feel like there are never enough hours in the day? That distractions are eating into your productivity, and you’re always a few steps behind where you’d like to be? In this article, productivity expert Hugh Culver argues that how you manage your time is tied to the stories you tell yourself about time. In a three-step process, he’ll walk you through admitting that you make up stories, changing those stories, and then making them stick so you can get more out of every workday.

Click to read Why You Need to Change Your Story About Time

Biz Expert Tips for Small Business Blogs

A blog can be the key to getting more business, closing more deals, and generating more leads. However, as a busy small business owner, you might wonder if it’s a good area to focus your efforts. In this article, biz expert Megan Totka shares three important ways that a blog can help your small business. Before you officially say “no” to blogging, you definitely need to read this article.

Click to read 3 Ways Your Small Business Can Benefit from a Business Blog

If you like biz expert articles like the ones you see above, stay tuned because Smart Hustle has been reaching out to more biz experts for contributions and we are going to start sharing at least one each week on SmartHustle.com!

The post Smart Hustle Recap: Biz Expert Tips on Video Marketing, Time Management & More appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The Reasons Behind the Deal

The purchase of LinkedIn was the first acquisition for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. In an email, he explained the move, saying:

“With the new growth in our Office commercial and Dynamics businesses, this deal is key to our bold ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes. Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market, and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world. It requires a vibrant network that brings together a professional’s information in LinkedIn’s public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics.”

Others say that Microsoft sees LinkedIn as a way to access a professional network of over 433 million members, and if they can leverage that platform then they can drive usage for their many business apps and programs. Some say that this is part of a broader shift that has been taking place for a while but had gone relatively unnoticed by consumers – a shift away from PC software to online services for business owners.

The Future of LinkedIn and Microsoft

Although LinkedIn will operate as “a full independent entity within Microsoft” we are sure to see integrations in the months and years to come. However, experts say that these integrations will likely roll out slowly, for fear of alienating LinkedIn users.

Many of the possible integrations were outlined in a presentation to investors. This includes:

• Gathering data to create complete professional profiles, which you can call up using Microsoft products like Outlook or Cortana.
• Creating a more intelligent newsfeed so professionals can stay connected with what is happening in their network, industry, and profession – and integrating the LinkedIn newsfeed with Office 365.
• Connecting the LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM to improve social selling.
• Providing insights about your employees and team members to better understand their capability and productivity.
• Integrating LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) with Office to provide educational experiences and on-demand courses.

What The Microsoft LinkedIn Deal Means for Businesses

First and foremost, the acquisition demonstrates Microsoft’s shift away from the consumer market and toward business customers. It reaffirms that Microsoft is putting businesses first in product creation, so we should see even more online and cloud-based services that improve productivity, efficiency, and connection.

While those who don’t like Microsoft products may find the acquisition annoying, many experts say that the move will be good for businesses. For example, Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank, says,

“I think the combination of Microsoft, especially Office 365 and Dynamics, with LinkedIn’s network will create opportunities for companies and marketers on several levels. Empowering individuals with customized news, learning and access to relevant professionals, to increased advertising options and sales through Dynamics CRM and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, are a great start.”

The Wall Street Journal echoes this sentiment, saying, “We now work by toggling between our productivity software and our social networks. But why should the two be separate?”

When announcing the acquisition, the presentation to investors pointed out that Microsoft and LinkedIn share a common mission of empowering people and organizations. If the acquisition plays out correctly, it should create several products, services and features that empower small businesses and improve business operations.

The post What the Microsoft LinkedIn Deal Means for Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Standing desks are a current fad sweeping offices and schools across the country. However, surprisingly enough, standing desks aren’t new at all. The history of standing desks dates back to the 1400s and in the 18^th and 19^th century they became especially popular among the rich. Several famous people throughout history have used standing desks, including Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Hemingway and Donald Rumsfeld.

Today there are several companies that make standing desks, including Varidesk, Ergo Depot and others. These desks are designed to be used while standing up or while sitting on a high stool. While designs vary, these desks are purported to have several health benefits – but others say they offer health consequences too. In modern working condition mostly traditional or sitting desks are used this leads to gaining more weight as there is no metabolism or activity and even only doing exercise with proper diet is not the perfect solution so if you want to avoid this obesity take a safe fat burner like Ultra Omega Burn. There are many fat burner available in market, checkout the Fat Burner list here.

High Quality Educational Furniture are getting the spotlight once again this year because of a recent study about the effects that standing desks can have when used at school. The study measured high school students on a number of neurocognitive tests – both before and after they had used standing desks for an entire semester. The study found that using standing desks changed the students’ brain activation patterns and boosted their cognitive skills such as memory, concentration and problem solving.

That study aside, there are some people who claim that standing desks can do more harm than good. To present you with a fair and balanced discussion of the topic, we’d like to share the benefits of standing desk to help you decide if a standing desk is right for you.

Pros of Standing Desks

According to the recent study we mentioned earlier, standing desks can possibly help your cognitive functioning. Having better concentration, problem-solving skills, and memory are certainly pluses no matter what industry you work in. If the study results are also applicable to adults in working situations (not just students in school), then a standing desk could improve your productivity and efficiency on a daily basis.

Chiropractor in Baton Rouge, LA is leading healthcare chiropractic practice that employs the best natural treatment plan and corrective chiropractic techniques to give you the best experience when it comes to healthcare and your complete wellness. Chiropractic therapy does not involve any intrusive procedures or medications and it focuses primarily on the central nervous system, providing long-term relief from a variety of health issues such as anxiety and depression, persistent sleeplessness, muscle pain, and more.

The other benefits of standing desks have to do with physical health. It has been found that the average worker spends 5 hours and 41 minutes per day sitting at their desk, and another 7 hours sleeping at night. That’s a whole lot of sitting and laying around, which can have negative health consequences. Therefore, a standing desk can help to:

• Improve your metabolism (thereby lowering your risk of obesity)
• Reduce your risk of metabolic problems including Type 2 Diabetes
• Reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease
• Reduce your risk of cancer
• Lower your long-term mortality risk (the risk of dying within a given period of time)

Cons of Standing Desks

The pros of standing desks demonstrate that they can help your physical and cognitive health, but that doesn’t mean the issue is a closed case. Some people say that standing desks can also have harmful effects on your health. This includes:

• Pain including sore feet and lower back problems.
• Health risks such as increased risk for cardiovascular problems like carotid arteries, varicose veins and deep vein thrombosis (because the heart has to work against gravity to keep blood flowing from the toes up).
• Some tasks are better performed when sitting down, such as those that require fine motor skills, so a standing desk may impact your work on some tasks.
• Standing burns 20 percent more calories which means you will likely tire more quickly during the day.

So is a standing desk right for you? We asked this question to Austin Chiropractic services and according to them, only a user can decide based on the pros and cons listed above as well as your job and individual preferences. The one thing that can be certain is that no matter what desk you choose – a traditional desk or a standing desk – you need to switch it up throughout the day. You shouldn’t be sitting all day and you shouldn’t be standing all day either. Try to work both into your daily routine so you can enjoy more health benefits and avoid the consequences.

The post Should You Switch to a Standing Desk? A Look at the Pros and Cons to Help You Decide appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.