Category: Marketing

Get Ahead With Tech

Must-Have Software Tools for Small Businesses to Outpace the Competition in 2023

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead of the competition is crucial for small businesses. Fortunately, a plethora of powerful software tools can empower you to streamline operations, boost productivity, and unlock growth opportunities. So, let’s dive into the nine software tools that your small business should consider incorporating into its arsenal in 2023.

1. Communication & Collaboration

Google Workspace offers a suite of collaboration tools including Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and more. It enables seamless communication, file sharing, and real-time collaboration, allowing your team to work efficiently and stay connected regardless of their location. Efficient collaboration and communication are vital for remote and hybrid work environments. In addition, platforms like Slack, Skype, or Microsoft Teams can further facilitate seamless teamwork and enhance productivity. It is always a good thing to have at least two depending on what your customers or stakeholders use as well.

2. Accounting/Banking

Efficient financial management is essential for your small business. This helps you monitor every expenditure and keep good records for easy tax filings. Utilize accounting and banking software like QuickBooks or Xero to streamline invoicing, expense tracking, and financial reporting. These tools simplify bookkeeping tasks, helping you make informed decisions and ensure financial stability. Bigger companies can use Microsoft Dynamics 365’s financial packages to manage their larger turnovers.

3. Cybersecurity

Don’t think just because you are a small business, you do not need adequate online security. One security breach can do a lot of (financial and reputational) damage and stop you from growing. Remember, bigger companies can afford to repair damaged brands/images. Protecting your business from online threats is, therefore, paramount. Acunetix by Invicti, a web protection software, offers robust security features, including vulnerability scanning and web application testing. Safeguard your business’s digital assets and customer data to gain trust among your clients.

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4. Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Enhance customer support and streamline communication with ChatGPT. This well-spoken-about AI-powered platform provides multiple language-based automated solutions like a chatbot that provides instant responses to common queries. This frees up your team’s time and delivers quick solutions to your customers’ questions. They even offer personalized assistance 24/7, ensuring customer satisfaction. Setting Chatbots up properly with the right prompts can help you automate almost anything else that requires not much ‘human interaction’.

5. Project/Task Management

They say failure to plan is planning to fail. To keep projects on track and teams aligned, project management software like Asana, Notion, or Trello is therefore indispensable. These tools help you organize tasks, assign responsibilities, track progress, and collaborate effectively, ensuring timely project completion. Depending on the level of technicality of the team you can even use more agile tools. Tools such as ClickUp, Miro, or Jira, are more suited for software development teams.

6. Customer-Oriented

Without them, your business ceases to exist so you need the best tools to engage with your customers, suppliers, and partners at all times. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, such as Pipedrive, Zoho, Freshworks or HubSpot, enable you to nurture leads, track customer interactions, and manage sales pipelines. With CRM tools, you can enhance customer engagement, improve conversion rates, and foster long-term customer relationships.

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7. Social Media Management

Most of your existing and potential customers spend a significant amount of hours online – sometimes just browsing aimlessly through TikTok or watching cat videos on Youtube. Twitter has recently even started ‘rationalizing’ the amount of engagement people can have on its platform in a bid to allow its servers to ‘cool off’ and prevent AI bots from running amok. A strong online presence is, therefore, crucial in today’s digital landscape. Utilize social media management tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts, monitor mentions, and analyze engagement. These tools simplify social media marketing, enabling you to reach a wider audience and drive your brand awareness.

8. Email Marketing

Despite the power of the above-mentioned social media ‘movement’, Email marketing still remains a powerful tool for nurturing your leads and driving conversions. Tools like Mailchimp or Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) provide user-friendly interfaces, automated campaigns, and in-depth analytics, helping you create targeted email campaigns and measure their effectiveness. Naturally you have to do a little work to find the right prospect, or else all these will end up in a spam folder never to be seen.

9. Data Analytics

Thanks to two of the world’s software giants, you can now easily harness the power of data with analytics tools like Google Analytics or Microsoft Power BI. These tools will help you to gain insights into customer behavior, and website performance, and create better-targeted marketing campaigns. Data-driven decision-making will enable you to optimize strategies, identify growth opportunities, and therefore gain a competitive edge. You can even further feed the data into AI tools (like ChatGPT) to further analyze and decipher the data in simpler ways to quickly understand. Naturally, you should only input ‘non-private’ or generic data for the “open-source” program to crunch.

As a small business owner, leveraging the right software tools can be a game-changer in for you 2023. From streamlining operations to enhancing customer experiences, these top software tools will most certainly empower you to stay ahead of the competition. Embrace the digital revolution and equip your business with the tools necessary to drive efficiency, productivity, and growth.

For more about some of the tools mentioned – get in touch for a free consultation!

3 July 2023
Smoother Online Shopping

As a small online business, it makes sense to ensure that what you are selling is very easy to access. This is especially important when offering something that is common. The purchasing process should be practical and aesthetically pleasing to your clients.

Your online shopping cart software creates that important connection between you and your customers. It must therefore help you achieve three goals:

-Deliver the best and most secure experience for your users;

-Make it simple and desirable for them to complete transactions;

–Minimize common ecommerce hurdles (such as shopping cart abandonment).

Customers expect consistency, reliability, and speed. Most users are now accustomed to the speeds facilitated by broadband Wi-Fi and omnipresent LTE mobile networks.

Research indicates that 78 percent of ecommerce consumers completed a purchase on their mobile device in 2016.

This percentage has probably increased since then. Therefore, delivering experiences that embrace mobile best practices has to be one of your primary concerns as you choose a solution.

Some other salient things a good online shopping cart solution should pay attention to:

TRUSTis obviously a huge part of establishing a valuable relationship. Your shopping cart software is an extension of your brand, and your buyers must trust it with their personal and financial information.

As buyers avoid using direct credit card purchases (due to increasing fraud and data breaches) in favour of more secure methods. Your company must be prepared to offer new payment options.

Customers appreciate the SECURITY and ease of mobile wallet payments, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. This is because they can complete purchases using a single-use virtual credit card number.

Give them the ability to use these alternative payments and if possible, do not exclude Cryptocurrency!

It would also need to link up to your MARKETING and customer service platforms to provide a holistic customer experience.

Naturally, you also want a system that tracks product sales and customer activity with as much detail as possible, and that can also sort transaction data across a multitude of categories.

So, where does one get such software?

Read more about how to get a good shopping cart software here.

7 May 2019
Sell easily with the aid of smart tech
Practical online software can – without a shadow of a doubt – help your business (large enterprise or Start-up) get on top of its operations.

The most common operational tasks most of us use are sales and customer support. Though very important they cannot, however, be used in isolation to other business processes.

There are also other ‘bits’ and ‘bobs’ that can be built-in or integrated to ensure that your business processes are fully automated. And automation saves you time and therefore, money!

Core operations that a good ERP can manage for your business are not limited to the following:
- Sales (the lifeblood of your business)
- Customer Support (now extended to Customer Engagement)
- Accounting and Finance (all your banking, invoicing, payments and taxation)
- Supply chain and logistics management (Cataloguing, Inventory, stock management, warehousing, storage and deliveries)
- Retail (B2B, eCommerce, Point of Sales)
- Human Resources (Staffing, holiday bookings, Salaries and wages, recruitment).
- Marketing (Branding, campaign management, targeted ads etc.)
Can you imagine these have been in use since the industrial revolution and the introduction of chain stores?

Trade with IQOption

ERP is the abbreviation for Enterprise Resource Planning and is basically the software your business uses on PCs/cashier systems, scanners, and all points of sale devices.

One of a kind

We identified and reviewed a specialized ERP called SmartSaleERP. It is an integrated tech platform targeted for retail business owners to help you get in control of your business.

Granted, there are hundreds of ERP solutions out there including those from known brands such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zoho etc.

A distinguishing feature on SmartSaleERP however, is the kind of technology they use over and above the traditional features and user interfaces (UI).

This ‘edge’ comes from the use of biometric and smartcard tech to provide you with a better customer/user experience. The sales experience can be derived from both the customer and the business side.

Read the full feature to find out more about this distinct ERP here.
2 April 2019
Get a vault for your data!

It’s not often that we readily endorse a product or company. However, when the nature of work they engage in is considered ground-breaking and has a positive impact on our lives – it most certainly warrants a mention.

The rationale for considering such tech-driven projects as highly significant is neither due to ‘gut feeling’. Nor that it is simply because it is fascinating and therefore must be an excellent product. This project actually has a value proposition for you!

We are indeed well into the information age and while we have written extensively about data, its importance to marketers, and its fragility when used and abused by unscrupulous third-parties for their financial gain.

The issue of data security is, however, quite a serious one. You just need to pay attention to the news to become even more aware.

Data breach incidents

In Europe, where security is supposedly more advanced, we have seen the likes of renowned airline British Airways, being hacked. Several hundreds of thousands of customers’ personal data compromised.

These were followed by hacks on other major airlines such as Cathay Pacific. Aside from airlines, other business outfits have suffered a similar fate.

The perpetrators are getting a lot more brazen and very recently, a cable car, used as public transport in Moscow was hacked. This left vulnerable passengers terrified and stuck high up in the air. And all this happened probably to the amusement of the pranksters (hackers).

Can you imagine the chaos and commotion that would be caused if their control systems of driverless cars were to be hacked?

The digital intrusion gets even more sophisticated...

This time affecting the very wealthy: private yachts are now being hacked and taken into the pirate waters, all via uniquely coded signals, reading data from their antennas!

Data security

On the issue of data security, you often hear about extra protection but not just anti-virus and anti-phishing software. The more secure and heavily encrypted Blockchain technology is, however, making waves in the digital sphere.

It is mainly for the escalation of its once shining star by-product designed for discreet transacting – Bitcoin.

Blockchain technology has also triggered several other technologies based on its digital cryptology technology. The aim is to ensure that your information is kept safe from prying eyes while stored, used, or transferred online.

Blockchain products such as cryptocurrencies, however, are not completely safe from hackers.

A solution

The company we chose to highlight uses a unique vault system and is called Zortrex. It has adopted one of such Blockchain technologies dubbed tokenization. It will be using it to ensure that your highly sensitive data online is kept safe.

“Our tokenised solution would have protected their customers’ personal identification information (PII) details. Instead the hackers ran off with the date of birth; passport numbers; financial data etc,” says Susan Brown, Chairperson of Zortrex – relating to the British Airways incident.

Tokenization is the process of converting rights to real-world assets into a digital token on a blockchain.

Brown’s background in data privacy systems as well as her devoted passion for the protection of PII, financial and healthcare data led her to start up and chair Zortrex.

The law on data

Thanks to new laws like the European GDPR law, which enforces the protection of data, breaches are now met with hefty financial penalties.

“Companies have disrespected your data for over 25 years, and if left unattended, there will be nothing left to protect,” Browns says.

Companies now have to think twice about getting your consent and how to use and share your data digitally. But is it enough? The simple answer is no.

The authorities just do not have the resources to investigate every complaint nor to actively enforce all data breaches.

We have ingeniously invented systems that automatically align with financial messaging, payments and securing information. All of which require data.

“However, we need to go a step further to secure all the PII details with tokenization. This is so that in the event of a hack, the cookies and trackers will only be following a ‘useless’ token will be no real identification on it,” Brown explains.

Zortrex would naturally like to tokenize all healthcare data. This way, vulnerable those of you living outside of major cities can also feel assured that your privacy is protected.

Using Blockchain

The application of the all-powerful blockchain is not limited to use in the financial sector and will be applied via the supply chain to all industries that deal with your data – especially the most sensitive ones.

A business angel or any investor for that matter looking to get onto the next best thing since Amazon would therefore be unwise to pass up the opportunity to back the Zortrex venture given its scope.

Furthermore, regulations are currently being implemented primarily in the pharmaceutical sector.

A tokenized supply chain such as what Zortrex offers would be ideal for this new law which is planned to be implemented by 2023. A judiciary blockchain, for instance, would allow the police to “talk” to the prison service. They, in turn, will communicate with the legal sector or public health institutions (NHS).

Forensic evidence would in such instances be tokenized and kept secure (away from tampering) during legal hearings. In another practical scenario, Smart Contracts (which could replace some lawyers) can spark off legal aid assistance to you.

Your court cases will be heard quicker and be more efficient. Protection registers can also be guarded using tokenization – rendering them more secure.
Blockchain technology offers quality assurance making sure that no shortcuts are taken.
This will enable the monitoring and tracking if any of your data is shared with third parties once tokenized. The third-party apps would only gain access to your data once the trigger has been activated.

Like other pioneers and visionaries, Brown’s futuristic hope that every child being born will have their name, date of birth, blood type data being tokenized, might seem far-fetched.

Zortrex wants to use its technology to put the hackers out of business!

Tokenisation cannot be mathematically reversed and thus it will least it will keep the hackers busy for a while.

Scalability

For such high ambitions, the creators of Zortrex’s software have adequately ensured that the technology used is fully scalable. One stumbling block many Blockchain projects now face is what is referred to as scalability. This is the ability of a network or software to grow and manage increased usage.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum specifically – which is used to build a lot of Distributed Applications, however, have massive scalability issues.

The growth in demand for DApps is also crippling (slowing down) those systems. They need to investigate the incorporation of alternative technologies, upgrade or split their platforms to cope with such high demand.

Someone must take the first step in securing this data forever. You should be able to purchase what you want without being harassed by trackers and cookies.

The need for tokenization is endless and further, down the line, celebrities and government official’s PII can be secured by it to protect them from damaging schemes, ‘bad press’, and scandals.

In a previous blog, we “prophesized” that data is the new commodity – like gold or oil. However, the actual value with that data will lie in its privacy, the ability to store it securely and unlock it only with legal permission by its rightful owner.

19 March 2019
Get a vault for your data!

It’s not often that we readily endorse a product or company. However, when the type of work they engage in is considered groundbreaking – and one with the potential to have a massively, positive impact on our livelihoods, it most certainly warrants a mention.
The rationale for considering such tech-driven projects as highly significant is neither due to ‘gut feeling’ nor that it is cutting-edge/fascinating and therefore must be an excellent product – it actually has a value proposition for everyday people!
We are indeed well into the information age and while we have written extensively about data, its importance to marketers and its fragility when used and abused by unscrupulous third-parties for their financial gain, the issue of data security is quite a serious issue – we must just pay attention to the news to become even more aware.
In Europe, the where security is supposedly more advanced, we have seen the likes of renowned airline British Airways, being hacked – with several hundreds of thousands of customers’ personal data compromised. This was followed by hacks on other major airlines such as Cathay Pacific. Aside from airlines, other business outfits have suffered a similar fate.
The perpetrators are getting a lot more brazen and very recently, a cable car, used as public transport in Moscow was hacked, leaving vulnerable passengers terrified and stuck high up in the air – probably to the amusement of the pranksters (hackers). We all know about driverless buses and cars coming to the market soon.
Can you imagine the chaos and commotion that would be caused if their control systems were to be hacked? The hacks get even more sophisticated: this time, affecting the very wealthy – private yachts are being hacked and taken into the pirate waters, all via uniquely coded signals, reading data from their antennas!
On the issue of data security (with almost full anonymity); we have also heard about extra protection (and not just anti-virus and anti-phishing software) but the more secure and heavily encrypted Blockchain technology that is making waves in the digital sphere. Mainly for the escalation of its once shining star by-product designed for discreet transacting – the Bitcoin.
It has also triggered several other technologies based on its digital cryptology technology to ensure that information is kept safe from prying eyes while stored, used or transferred online.
The company we chose to highlight uses a unique vault system and is called Zortrex. It has adopted one of such Blockchain technologies dubbed tokenization – and will be using it to initially ensure that highly sensitive data online is kept safe.
“Our tokenised solution would have protected their customers’ personal identification information (PII) details, instead the hackers ran off with the date of birth, passport numbers, financial data etc,” says Susan Brown, Chairperson of Zortrex – relating to the British Airways incident.
“Tokenization is the process of converting rights to real-world assets into a digital token on a blockchain.”
The establishment of this start-up company was due to Brown’s background in data privacy systems as well as her devoted passion for the protection of PII and financial/healthcare data. In her view, companies have disrespected their customer data for over 25 years, and if left unattended, there will be nothing left to protect.
Thanks to new laws like the European GDPR law which is now imposing the data protection; data breaches and abuse of customer data is now met with hefty financial penalties. Companies now think twice about consent and how to use and share customer’s data digitally – but is it enough? The simple answer is a no. The authorities just do not have the resources to investigate every complaint nor to actively enforce all data breaches – yet.
“We have ingeniously invented systems that automatically align with financial messaging, payments and securing information, all of which require data. However, we should and need to go a step further to secure all the PII details with tokenisation so that in the event of a hack, the cookies and trackers will only be following a useless token as there is no real identification on it,” Brown explains.
Zortrex would naturally like to tokenise all healthcare data so that vulnerable people living outside of major cities can also feel assured that their privacy is protected. In a previous blog, we wrote about the new Internet of things (IoT). For all those devices being built for it, their IP addresses and the serial numbers can be tokenised to avoid the terrifying thought of the whole Internet being compromised.

The application of the all-powerful Blockchain is not limited to use in the financial sector and will be applied via the supply chain to all industries that deal with customer data – especially the most sensitive ones.

An angel investor or any investor for that matter looking to get onto the next best thing since Amazon would therefore be unwise to pass up the opportunity to back the Zortrex venture given its scope!

Furthermore, regulations are currently being implemented primarily in the pharmaceutical sector and a tokenised supply chain such as what Zortrex offers would be ideal for this new law which is planned to be implemented by 2023. A judiciary blockchain, for instance, would enable the police to “talk” to the prison service, who in turn, will communicate with the legal sector and public health institutions such as the UK’s NHS.

Forensic evidence would in such instances be tokenised and kept secure (away from tampering) during legal hearings. In another practical scenario, Smart Contracts (which are touted to replace lawyers) can spark off legal aid assistance, so that court cases can be heard quicker, more efficient than currently pertains. Protection registers can also be protected with tokenisation rendering it more secure.

Blockchain technology offers quality assurance with every process being undertaken making sure that no shortcuts happen; as the smart contracts trigger any possible malfeasance. This will enable the monitoring/tracking of any data sharing to third parties once it is tokenised. The third party apps would only gain access to the data once the trigger has been activated.

The company will be providing numerous business blockchain platforms; Asset Chain, Supply Chain, Accountancy Chain, Debt Chain, Life Cycle Management Chain, Outsourced Worker Chain; the list is endless, and all will be adequately secured.

Like other pioneers and visionaries, Brown’s futuristic hope that every child being born will have their name, date of birth, blood type data being tokenised, might seem farfetched – but may we remind you of the need for data protection taking into consideration the growth rate of massive data breaches.

Zortrex is aiming high and wants to use their technology to put the hackers out of business! Tokenisation cannot be mathematically reversed and thus it will least it will stop the hackers for a while.

Brown explains further that as they move with their education; other information can be added on to the token, as with all their healthcare; any allergies tokenised; what injections they have had right through their life cycle until the day no more data can be tokenised.

For such high ambitions, the creators of Zortrex’s software have adequately ensured that the technology used is fully scalable. One stumbling block many Blockchain projects now face is what is referred to as scalability – which in tech terms, is the ability of a network or software to grow and manage increased demand.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum specifically – which is used to build a lot of Distributed Applications, has massive scalability issues. The growth in demand for DApps is crippling those systems and they are having to investigate the incorporation of alternative technologies, upgrade or split their platforms and accompanying cryptocurrencies to cope with such high demand.

Someone must take the first step in securing this data forever. Citizens should be able to purchase what they want without being harassed by trackers and cookies. The need for tokenisation is endless and further, down the line, celebrities and government official’s PII can also be secured to protect them from damaging schemes, ‘bad press’ and scandals.

In another previous blog, we “prophesized” that data is the new commodity – like gold or oil. However, the actual value with that data will lie in its privacy, the ability to store it securely and unlock it only with legal permission by its rightful owner.

19 December 2018
Anonymous Surfing
You don’t have to be an online arsonist, hacker, or international cyber-terrorist to hide your online identity. Likewise, concealing your PC’s web address or your Internet Protocol address (IP address), making it unknown to the public, does not necessarily mean you are up to no good online.

We will, therefore, build a case for why it is important at times to conceal your private online location using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks).

A VPN is a connection method used to add security and privacy to your private and public networks. This includes your Wi-fi Hotspots and access to the Internet. They are most often used by corporations to protect sensitive data but now also by people like yourselves for the same purpose.

Click on the image to view a quick video

Let’s get back to the importance of your IP address. It is probably something you rarely think about but is crucial to your online lifestyle even as an individual. How so? You might still ask.

Well, without an IP address, you wouldn’t be able to get the current weather, check the latest news, or view videos (streaming) online for instance.

The uses of VPNs

Your IP is also used to access every online service you partake in including very private things like your internet/mobile banking or online trading activity. Think of it as your physical address and how important it is when getting things delivered by post or using it when you need to make applications for loans, jobs, etc.

“Without a public IP address, online service providers like Netflix, BBC, or Amazon wouldn’t know where to send the information you asked for. They wouldn’t be able to get it to your computer.”

Imagine how naked you must feel if you have nothing to protect this address from the advent of a hack without adequate data encryption. Also the just the haggling by overzealous online marketers, spam, malware, and even ‘419 scammers’!

Now the argument for whether using VPNs is illegal is highly debatable for some of the valid reasons highlighted above. It should, however, be a given right to be able to use it. And even though it is commonly used by cyber-thugs to mask their clandestine and often dark activities, it should not be outlawed altogether.

The case for VPN

The legitimacy of VPNs debate, therefore, carries on into a grey area.
We will, however, investigate a few VPN providers that are ‘paid for services’ and even offered by established companies such as AVG (which primarily offers Antivirus protection).

The directive is to help the everyday consumer surf the web without ‘virtual’ salespeople bombarding them with offers based on personal information gathered in an ‘unsolicited’ manner.

Policies like the European-based GDPR law were put in place to protect consumers from the non-consensus use of their data. Even your Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can track your online activities via your IP and sell your browsing habits.

Some forward-thinking people and companies, however, have long been shielding themselves manually using VPNs.

One direct benefit for you as a consumer is the ability to access content (information, products, and services) from different servers. A good VPN service can enable you to obtain access to other geo-locational content despite being on a different continent.

It is perfectly legal provided you are paying for the service. The burden falls on the provider of the service and not you if it came down to a legal “scrap”.

Rationale for using them

If you perform these tasks frequently, you need a VPN:
- Hide your IP address (to enable anonymity from marketers and hackers)
- Change your IP address (to avoid identity theft)
- Encrypt data transfers (private and financial data)
- Mask your location (to access other services)
- Access blocked websites
A word of caution when navigating websites blocked by governments with a VPN. Unless you are a high-profile journalist working on a case and backed by good legal aid – it’s not a wise thing to do.
Do some research if you are not sure because accessing such sites could land you in some hot water. Rather use a known privacy service like Tor to ensure full anonymity to gain access to restricted sites if you really must.

Top Virtual Private Network Protocols

VPN protocols and available security features are numerous. The most common (best) protocols are:
ExpressVPN – the acclaimed best offshore VPN for privacy and unblocking.
IPVanish – great for P2P and Torrenting.
VyprVPN – the best choice for those looking for security.
NordVPN – security is its middle name.
TunnelBear – dubbed the easiest VPN to use.
Windscribe – a VPN which gives you unlimited connections.
Hotspot Shield – an awesome solution for online browsing.
KeepSolid VPN Unlimited – the jack of all trades of VPNs.
CyberGhost – rich clients and ease of reconfiguring.
ZenMate – user-friendly VPN that caters to the newbies to VPN.
PureVPN – take advantage of easy to use apps and access to many servers.

Source: www.itproportal.com, PureVpn

Making the choice

Picking a VPN service can be a daunting task as there are now literally hundreds of them to choose from. Landing the right one means striking the right balance between what you are offered, the ease of use, and naturally, the price.

Some providers offer free you VPN services while some like AVG charges for their VPN service. Paid VPN providers, however, are preferred to the free service providers as they offer robust gateways, proven security, additional free software, and unmatched speed.

The key is to find the best VPN that meets your immediate needs while matching your budget.
24 September 2018
Accountable Supervision

Leadership values are not only confined to the running of a political campaign, party, or country for that matter, however, like in any venture that has an objective and deals with human beings – it forms the backbone of a successful business.

Consequently, what leaders such as CEO of Tesla Elon Musk, for example, say or does, have a positive or, in the recent unfortunate case, a negative impact on the shareholdings of his business.

The share price can decline sharply and worse yet, it can lead to the exit of senior staff members and thus undermining the business, its leadership values, and objectives.

This why it is critical for companies to adopt the right practices and responsible leadership to enable them to address both internal and external issues affecting them.

This is even most relevant when dealing with a company that has a multinational operational facet such as the Murray and Roberts Group – a South African company that operates in a global setting.

This specific multinational company was used in a case study for a research paper because it is firmly entrenched in the construction and engineering industry.

More specifically, they service the global natural resources market sectors of underground mining; Oil & Gas; Power & Energy.
Such a diverse set of operations requires a varied set of objectives spearheaded by a solid leadership path.

A new model of leadership

We have covered the topic of Emotional Intelligence before. It now surfaces again within a brand-new leadership model known as the ARCHES model.
The name derives from a key characteristic of the physical structure of an arch and its durability.

Coupled with its diversity in models and materials and its depiction as symbols of triumph, it represents an apt analogy of what responsible and effective leadership should be.

The model was especially derived by an academic* for a syndicate group assignment and is based on six key characteristics that should be imparted in a leader.

An effective and responsible leader is one who is attuned to their followers, responsive, possesses the necessary competencies, serves with humility, is ethical and adopts a sustainable approach to leadership.

A leader who possesses all these attributes is one who can rise above adversity and lead their followers in a way that promotes innovation, motivates, develops skills, promotes personal growth, and encourages improved performance.
B.Moyo

Application of the model

The model defines attuned leadership as the act of being self-aware, informed, and aware of the environment in which you exist – servant leadership.

Employees should be encouraged to take responsibility for their actions because responsibility and effectiveness are complimentary. The demise of US energy company Enron, for example, was due to a failure of management to execute communication-based responsibility, internally and externally.

A volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment in which a business operates can result in many potential projects not coming to fruition.

In such an environment, leaders that are attuned, responsive, and possess the right competencies can expert power as their way to influence followers to exhibit the same traits.

Referent power develops out of admiration of another and a desire to be like them. Expert power, on the other hand, is a person’s ability to influence others’ behaviour because of recognized knowledge, skills, or abilities.
This requires the leader to have a tolerable level of humility.

This is defined as a personal quality reflecting the willingness to understand the self (identities, strengths, and limitations). That combined with a purpose in the self’s relationship with others.

Once again, the emphasis on Emotional Intelligence coupled with traditional leadership competencies is needed to steer multifaceted companies.

Even more so when dealing with diverse cultures and work ethics across borders and continents.

Direct consequences

Being the largest employer in the locality directly implied that Murray and Roberts had to be consistent with the idiomatic Zulu expression of “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”. This means: I am because you are, you are because we are.
Good leadership in the Ubuntu philosophy is based on the engagement with communities and defines a well-led organization.

Not paying attention to ethical issues surrounding a community or the environment can have an adverse effect on your values. This would also affect your staff and the image of the company you steer.

A bitter consequence of the failure of ethics was evident in the $4.2m (64.1 million ZAR) fine to the said company. This was for its involvement in sector collusion related to construction projects for the 2010 World Cup.

Concluding remarks

Finally, a practical leader will also consider any upcoming projects with the lens of understanding the environment that surrounds them to incorporate the concept of sustainability.

These traits might sound like they need to be learned but most should be already ingrained or come naturally to you or your leaders.

If not this is not the case, you need to quickly install the right personnel with such to help steer your business enterprise or economy for that matter, to success.

*This blog post contains excerpts and is derived from a master’s research paper. It was conducted by Bonnie Moyo for the Rhodes University Business School.

9 September 2018
The Impact of AI, Machine Learning & Automation on Businesses
We are living in exciting and innovative times with futuristic technology literally at our fingertips. But for the longest time, small to medium-sized businesses were not serviced by the latest tech trends enterprises have been able to benefit from. That is, until now. This piece explores these technology trends and how they will impact business in 2018 and beyond.

So, what kind of things can this ‘smart’ tech do? Just 4 months ago, an AI machine managed to complete a University level math exam 12 times faster than it normally takes the average human. How? Through the art of machine learning; where computers learn and adapt through the experience without explicitly being programmed.

Furthermore, Facebook made headlines earlier this year when their chatbots created their own language. Some Fake News stories claim that the engineer’s pulled the plugin a panic as they were getting too smart. However, the truth is that for Facebook’s purposes the chatbots needed to stick to English rather than developing their own shorthand. Their machine learning chatbots did nevertheless, create their own language outside their explicit programming.

This evolving area of computer science is the future for service businesses, and it’s already affecting the way we live and work today. In fact, research firm Markets and Markets estimates that the machine learning market will grow from $1.41 billion in 2017 to $8.81 billion by 2022!

So buckle up because these technology trends will affect every part of your business, from marketing to operations all the way through to payroll and here’s how.

Marketing Gets Smarter with AI and Machine Learning

AI and Social Media Marketing

In April 2017, CRM software provider, Salesforce conducted a study of marketing leaders worldwide, and the results were mind-blowing. Respondents said they expect to see improvements in efficiency and advancements in personalization over the next five years. More than 60 percent of marketers also envision leveraging AI to create dynamic landing pages, websites, programmatic advertising and media buying.

The main way AI will affect marketing is through nurturing leads through social media. But how? Through personalized, real-time content targeting that produces 20 percent more sales opportunities. With behavioural targeting methods, AI will be able to locate and start the nurture process, for example, a marketing stack that employs AI algorithms might learn that a specific buyer who checks into LinkedIn on Monday mornings has recently started looking for a new CRM tool. The software can then suggest (or even create) targeted posts to be published on the days and times that they’ll see them: one that asks their requirements of the software and another follow up piece with a comparison of the CRM ecosystem.

Currently, savvy marketers that are using social listening as way to nurture leads don’t have the necessary enhancement of AI and is, therefore, time-consuming, manual and not in real-time. So how do you start to get ready for this type of future content marketing distribution?

Firstly, you will need to have your buyer personas (using the consumer black box theory ) well defined. Taking a solid look at your CRM will give you tons of hints for content that will get qualified leads to respond. By taking a step back and analyzing your channel’s content (like emails, phone calls and social media messages) you will start to get the right kind of insights that will prompt a lead to take the next step into the second phase of your sales funnel. For instance, a C-Suite executive might respond best to data-driven whitepapers and infographics to peak their interests, whereas a fellow marketer might be more suited for an interactive case-study or video.

The only way to get these kinds of insights is to do a deep dive into your CRM platform and conduct a thorough review of customer details – using semantic analysis to understand the level of buying intent behind the words your qualified prospects use.

Hot tip: Starting to run your analysis now and developing strong personas will be key to implementing AI algorithms to your social media in 2018 and beyond.

Marketing and Machine Learning

Put simply, machine learning is about understanding data and statistics. It’s a technical process where computer algorithms find patterns in data, then predict probable outcomes – like when your email determines whether a particular message is spam or not depending on words in the subject line, links included in the message, or patterns identified in a list of recipients. This is a perfect example of how machine learning can be applied in marketing to optimize for successful campaigns.

Businesses can also use machine learning to up-sell the right product, to the right customer, at the right time. In 2018, marketers will continue to rely on machine learning to understand open rates when it comes to email – so you know exactly when to send your next campaign to increase click-through rates and ROI. The next big thing? It might sound small but ticket tagging and re-routing can be a massive expense for small businesses – costs that can be saved with machine learning.

Having a sales inquiry automatically end up with the sales team, or a complaint end up instantly in the customer service department’s queue, is going to save companies a lot of time and money, and this is all being made possible with modern technology.

And while solving issues in record time and delivering successful email campaigns is great, this is just the beginning.

Here’s what else to expect in 2018:

E-Commerce Reaches New Heights

You’ve been shopping for a new pair sunglasses on Amazon, then before you know it, your Facebook feed is filled with multiple eyewear ads and related trends for summer: this is machine learning. In fact, this example of analyzing data based on a user’s purchase history or online shopping behaviour is the future for e-commerce.

Retail companies are also tracking what ads or images you’re most likely to stop scrolling on, in order to target you with specific content. For example, if you always click on ads that contain happy women and some text, then a machine will log this as preferred content so that you are only targeted with ads that fit this description. Machines can also track what time of day you are most active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and/or Pinterest, in order to present these ads to you at an optimal buying time.

Then when it’s time to purchase, machine learning is applied to reduce the risk of credit fraud in small businesses. How? Machines learn from historical datasets that contain fraudulent transactions and can identify patterns that represent a typical fraudulent transaction – similar to the way spam emails are detected and deterred. Machine learning will start to affect other parts of your business funnel as well, just take a look at the rise of Chatbots.

Integrating Chatbots

There was a time in which chatbots were only thought of as manmade pests on the Internet, but through machine learning, they are getting smarter and businesses are embracing them en mass.

In 2018 and beyond, chatbots will play a key role in the future of customer service. Why? Chatbots can help achieve a faster customer service resolution, as well as provide quick histories of each customer for impeccable customer service. There are some key benefits that chatbots have over solely human interactions:
- Giving 24/7 customer service: The great things about machines? They don’t sleep! Coupled with the fact that chatbots are getting sophisticated enough to recognize human emotions such as anger, confusion, fear and joy. So should a chatbot encounter negative sentiments from the customer, they can seamlessly transfer to a human to take over and finish assisting the customer.
- The era of being ‘on hold’ is gone: A huge barrier to providing excellence in customer service is long wait times. How many times have you tried to get customer service from Comcast (or any TV/Internet provider) and you are getting progressively more frustrated with the wait times? This can all be eliminated with chatbots!
- Quick access to customer data makes service more personal: One thing that humans will never be better at than chatbots is quickly digesting customer data and history to provide context to customer questions. Chatbots excel at collecting customer data from support interactions. They can serve as virtual assistants that can feed customer data to your customer service officers so they have a full history of each account quickly.
This emerging tool for businesses already has significant buy-in from thought leaders around the globe. In fact, Larry Kim, Founder of Wordstream, is all in on chatbots as he has started his own company where his bots are currently in beta. With this move, it will be interesting to see how businesses will leverage robots throughout other aspects of their business. The final trend we’ll explore is Automation and how it affects businesses today.

Automation now and beyond 2018

Though Machine Learning and AI are hot topics in the tech world, it is not to a point that small to medium size businesses can leverage it in the immediate future. But there is still hope for them with automation. Powered by the Cloud, this type of technology has already revolutionized Marketing and Sales workflows and interactions but it is also starting to touch the various other parts of a business. For example:

Operations Automation

Once you win an important sale, you’ve got to deliver the product or service you’ve promised to the client. What does that process look like for most businesses now? You all will have a kick-off meeting and hope to cover all the promises that marketing and sales have given to your client.

However, with the use of operations automation and a powerful CRM, you will be able to read the interactions and see all the various touch points a client had with your company before that kick off call even happens. This will give all service businesses a head start in providing great client relations and managing expectations. This category of SaaS products is called Service Operations Automation, or ServOps for short.

Accounting Automation

If there is one data-entry heavy department it would be Accounting. The problem is that as humans, we are fallible and much slower at data entry than a machine. Innovations with bank feeds, rules-based categorization and integrated payments have dramatically reduced the workload of clerical and bookkeeping staff and given business owners more timely access to accurate financial information for their businesses.

Research, done by Xero, (a popular financial software provider) suggests that by 2020, automation will be commonplace in accounting, and a significant number of finance professionals will be using the next level of analytical tools to help them add value to business models across the globe.

Payroll/HR Automation

Finally, the Cloud and Automation have come to the Payroll and Human Resources sector. These important areas of a business too often suffer because small businesses aren’t big enough to afford a full-time HR department. What’s the alternative? Having only part-time efforts of founders and principals which can often lead to serious risk to the business.

For instance, Zenefits will automatically submit forms to the national tax authorities on the behalf of companies. With new automation technology, compliance is automated by platforms and the effort of keeping time-off approvals in sync with PTO balances and payslips becomes a thing of the past.

In the near future, we will see the rise of great technology, powered by the Cloud, Automation, AI and Machine Learning. This truly is the start of the Golden Age of Information Technology and it is time for businesses to take a hard look at their organizations and find ways to start integrating these tech trends.

This is a slightly shortened re-blog from a marketing post on Tenfold.com *

*This post was guest-authored by Tara Callinan and Jenneva Vargas from Accelo
23 July 2018
Impact of Automation on Business
We are living in exciting and innovative times with futuristic technology literally at our fingertips. But for the longest time, small to medium-sized businesses were not serviced by the latest tech trends enterprises have been able to benefit from.

That is, until now. This piece explores these technology trends and how they will impact business in 2018 and beyond.

So, what kind of things can this ‘smart’ tech do? Just 4 months ago, an AI machine managed to complete a University level math exam 12 times faster than it normally takes the average human.

How? Through the art of machine learning; where computers learn and adapt through the experience without explicitly being programmed.
Furthermore, Facebook made headlines earlier this year when their chatbots created their own language. Some ‘fake news’ stories claim that the engineer’s pulled the plugin a panic as they were getting too smart.

However, the truth is that for Facebook’s purposes the chatbots needed to stick to English rather than developing their own shorthand. Their machine learning chatbots did nevertheless, create their own language outside their explicit programming.

This evolving area of computer science is the future for service businesses, and it’s already affecting the way we live and work today. In fact, research firm

Markets and Markets estimate that the machine learning market will grow from $1.41 billion in 2017 to $8.81 billion by 2022!

So buckle up because these technology trends will affect every part of your business, from marketing to operations all the way through to payroll, and here’s how.

AI and Social Media Marketing

In April 2017, CRM software provider, Salesforce conducted a study of marketing leaders worldwide, and the results were mind-blowing. Respondents said they expect to see improvements in efficiency and advancements in personalization over the next five years.
More than 60 percent of marketers envision leveraging AI to create dynamic landing pages, websites, programmatic advertising and media buying.

AI will affect marketing by nurturing leads through social media. But how? Through personalized, real-time content targeting that produces 20 percent more sales opportunities.

With behavioural targeting methods, AI will be able to locate and start the nurturing process. For example, a marketing stack that employs AI algorithms might learn that a specific buyer who checks into LinkedIn on Monday mornings has recently started looking for a new CRM tool.

The software can then suggest (or even create) targeted posts to be published on the days and times that they’ll see them.

Currently, savvy marketers that are using social listening as a way to nurture leads don’t have the necessary enhancement of AI. This is, however, time-consuming, manual, and not in real-time.
So how do you start to get ready for this type of future content marketing distribution?

Firstly, you will need to have your buyer personas (using the consumer black box theory ) well defined. Taking a solid look at your CRM will give you tons of hints for content that will get qualified leads to respond.

By taking a step back and analyzing your channel’s content (like emails, phone calls, and social media messages) you will start to get the right kind of insights. The ones that will prompt a lead to take the next step into the second phase of your sales funnel.

For instance, a C-Suite executive might respond best to data-driven whitepapers and infographics to peak their interests, whereas a fellow marketer might be more suited for an interactive case-study or video.
The only way to get these kinds of insights is to do a deep dive into your CRM platform and conduct a thorough review of customer details – using semantic analysis to understand the level of buying intent behind the words your qualified prospects use.

Hot tip: Starting to run your analysis now and developing strong personas will be key to implementing AI algorithms to your social media in 2018 and beyond.

Marketing and Machine Learning

Put simply, machine learning is about understanding data and statistics. It’s a technical process where computer algorithms find patterns in data, then predict probable outcomes. An example is when your email determines whether a particular message is spam or not depending on words in the subject line, links included in the message, or patterns identified in a list of recipients.

It’s the perfect example of how machine learning can be applied in marketing to optimize for successful campaigns.

Businesses can also use machine learning to up-sell the right product, to the right customer, at the right time. In 2018, marketers will continue to rely on machine learning to understand open rates when it comes to email. This way, you know exactly when to send your next campaign to increase click-through rates and ROI.

The next big thing? It might sound small but ticket tagging and re-routing can be a massive expense for small businesses – costs that can be saved with machine learning.

Having a sales inquiry automatically end up with the sales team, or a complaint end up instantly in the customer service department’s queue, is going to save companies a lot of time and money, and this is all being made possible with modern technology.

Here’s what else to expect in 2018:

E-Commerce Reaches New Heights

You’ve been shopping for a new pair sunglasses on Amazon, then before you know it, your Facebook feed is filled with multiple eyewear ads and related trends for summer.
This is machine learning.
In fact, this example of analyzing data based on a user’s purchase history or online shopping behaviour is the future for e-commerce.

Retail companies are also tracking what ads or images you’re most likely to stop scrolling on, in order to target you with specific content. For example, if you always click on ads that contain happy women and some text, then a machine will log this as preferred content so that you are only targeted with ads that fit this description.

Machines can also track what time of day you are most active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or Pinterest, in order to present these ads to you at an optimal buying time.

Then when it’s time to purchase, machine learning is applied to reduce the risk of credit fraud in small businesses.

How? Machines learn from historical datasets that contain fraudulent transactions and can identify patterns that represent a typical fraudulent transaction.
Similar to the way spam emails are detected and deterred. Machine learning will start to affect other parts of your business funnel as well, just take a look at the rise of Chatbots.

Integrating Chatbots

There was a time in which chatbots were only thought of as manmade pests on the Internet. Through machine learning, they are getting smarter and businesses are embracing them en mass.
In 2018 and beyond, chatbots will play a key role in the future of customer service. Why? Chatbots can help achieve a faster customer service resolution, as well as provide quick histories of each customer for impeccable customer service.

There are some key benefits that chatbots have over solely human interactions:
- Giving 24/7 customer service: The great things about machines? They don’t sleep! Coupled with the fact that chatbots are getting sophisticated enough to recognize human emotions such as anger, confusion, fear and joy. So should a chatbot encounter negative sentiments from the customer, they can seamlessly transfer to a human to take over and finish assisting the customer.
- The era of being ‘on hold’ is gone: A huge barrier to providing excellence in customer service is long wait times. How many times have you tried to get customer service from Comcast (or any TV/Internet provider) and you are getting progressively more frustrated with the wait times? This can all be eliminated with chatbots!
- Quick access to customer data makes service more personal: One thing that humans will never be better at than chatbots is quickly digesting customer data and history to provide context to customer questions.
- Chatbots excel at collecting customer data from support interactions. They can serve as virtual assistants that can feed customer data to your customer service officers so they have a full history of each account quickly.
The final trend we’ll explore is Automation and how it affects businesses today.

Automation now and beyond 2018

Though Machine Learning and AI are hot topics in the tech world, it is not to a point that small to medium-sized businesses can leverage them in the immediate future. But there is still hope for them with automation.
Powered by the Cloud, this type of technology has already revolutionized Marketing and Sales workflows and interactions but it is also starting to touch the various other parts of a business. For example:

Operations Automation

Once you win an important sale, you’ve got to deliver the product or service you’ve promised to the client. What does that process look like for most businesses now? You all will have a kick-off meeting and hope to cover all the promises that marketing and sales have given to your client.

However, with the use of operations automation and a powerful CRM, you will be able to read the interactions and see all the various touch points a client had with your company before that kick off call even happens.

This will give your service businesses a head start in providing great client relations and managing expectations. This category of SaaS products is called Service Operations Automation, or ServOps for short.

Accounting Automation

If there is one data-entry heavy department it would be Accounting. The problem is that as humans, we are fallible and much slower at data entry than a machine. Innovations with bank feeds, rules-based categorization and integrated payments have dramatically reduced the workload of clerical and bookkeeping staff.

This gives business owners more timely access to accurate financial information for their businesses.

Research, done by Xero, (a popular financial software provider) suggests that by 2020, automation will be commonplace in accounting. A significant number of finance professionals will be using the next level of analytical tools to help them add value to business models across the globe.

Payroll/HR Automation

Finally, the Cloud and Automation have come to the Payroll and Human Resources sector. These important areas of a business too often suffer because small businesses aren’t big enough to afford a full-time HR department.

What’s the alternative? Having only part-time efforts of founders and principals which can often lead to serious risk to the business.

With new automation technology, compliance is automated by platforms. The effort of keeping time-off approvals in sync with PTO balances and payslips becomes a thing of the past.

In the near future, we will see the rise of great technology, powered by the Cloud, Automation, AI, and Machine Learning.

This truly is the start of the Golden Age of Information Technology and it is time for businesses to take a hard look at their organizations and find ways to start integrating these tech trends.

This is a slightly shortened re-blog from a marketing post on Tenfold.com *

*This post was guest-authored by Tara Callinan and Jenneva Vargas from Accelo
23 July 2018
Can’t Get No Satisfaction

In economic terminology, the term “utility” has not much to do with multifunctionality nor completing specific useful tasks.

It does in context, relate to the level of satisfaction or “completeness” one derives from the consumption of a product or service. For example, there is only so much pizza you can eat before feeling ill from satiety.

On a broader and more macroeconomics spectrum, our utility levels will also help determine how resources are allocated and consumed.

Definition

The concept, a brainchild of Daniel Bernoulli, has so many relevant connotations. As humans, we individually have a maximum biological boundary which when reached, signals absolute satisfaction. This in economic terms is called maximum (total) utility.

Total utility is the complete satisfaction that you can get from consuming all units of a specific item.

Economists are more interested in the changes in levels of utility or what is referred to as the marginal utility.

We will return to its application to the economy.

Applying utility

Incidentally, the utility has no formal unit of measurement – though we coined the term “utils”. These so-called utils equate a number to utility levels in a controlled sample experiment.

Understandably it can be quite a feat to quantify utility as it is based on human behavioural preferences. The closest we got to quantifying such was via the marketing concept of the consumer black box.

As an illustration, the concept can be applied to something as basic as eating a delicious meal.

Depending on how hungry you were, you would derive the highest utility from the first few bites of your meal.

As you progressed and depending on your appetite, each additional fork/ spoon, or handful would provide fewer levels of satisfaction. As you reach your stomach’s capacity (towards satiety) your utility diminishes.

This can be applied to the taste of the meal. It specifically explains why we tend to eat something sweet after a main (savoury) meal.

The appreciation of ice cream when you are starving would diminish quickly as you concentrate on filling up your stomach. This as opposed to enjoying the taste.

When compared to the running of an economy, governments and policymakers can determine which goods and services yield the most utility.

This helps them to consequently direct expenditure to identified priority areas (products/services).

It is a long term concept

Education, for instance, may not provide immediate utility (gratification) for scholars and pupils. However, when appropriately harnessed, could yield higher levels of satisfaction. This is when you enter the job market with better remuneration packages.

Tweaking education curricula, taking into consideration levels of utility to whip up your interest for the good or service. This should, therefore, be a prime focus for legislators.

Inputs such as maximum times you can concentrate and the length of study for a course should be offered without compromising the substance.

Without a doubt, there would be considerations, at a micro-level to assist in enhancing both marginal and total utility in the education sector.

Read more about fiscal policy and budgets here

More life-related uses

The concept of utility is a lot less ubiquitous as we think and relates to the unsavoury phenomenon of megalomania and why there is greed.
When levels of self-gratification diminish quickly, it takes longer for those with lower levels of marginal utility to reach a plateau of pleasure.

Drug addiction, sexual appetites, and fetishes would then kick-in. In such cases, people upgrade the “product or service” that they have already maximized utility in. At that stage, another level of fulfillment would be sought.

The utility applied to finances

It also explains why you lose a lot of money gambling or investing in stocks. The satisfaction of gaining more for a little outlay will often drive you to take more risk until a level of risk aversion kicks in.

High-risk investors “called whales” are now delving into the Crypto market to maximize their utility. They are diverting their funds from property and stocks into digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The saying too much of a good thing is inevitably bad for you applies. It can be countered by diversifying the things that deliver pleasure or satisfaction to you.

This is to ensure that you do not maximize utility on them too quickly and lose interest. Worse case, you end up delving into the dangerous territories of addiction.

Economists need to be relevant, more than ever before. They also need to formulate a means to measure and quantify utility or provide “utils” for at least, the most common goods and services.

With such a strategy, policy-making, product pricing, and the efficient allocation of resources would be more effortless.

11 July 2018

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