Tag: collaboration

The Future Office Worker

Aside from essential services personnel, millions of people are now working from home. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted the growth of products to help the home office worker of today and tomorrow.

Debunqed breaks down which cloud solutions to pay attention to and which to avoid while you adjust to a changing world of commerce.

During the pandemic, one video conferencing service has exploded in popularity after years of trying on the wayside. This is the service operated by the NASDAQ-listed American group, Zoom.

Zoom has become a service of choice especially for companies and staff which may have not used online conferencing before. This popularity has made the service a target and there are concerns around security and privacy issues.

Before Zoom’s burst in interest, the most popular applications include Google’s Gsuite which offers online conferencing solution Meet, Microsoft 365 which includes competing conferencing solution Teams, and Slack.

Slack which was formed in 2013 also offers chat services that multiple people can use at once in private groups and persistent chat rooms or channels, which are organized by topic as well as direct messaging.

Zoom being hacked during quarantine might have made news headlines but it’s not the first time that technology services like these have been infiltrated by the wrong people.

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Slack was hacked back in 2015. The data included email addresses, usernames, hashed passwords, and in some cases, phone numbers, and Skype IDs users had associated with their accounts. As a result, Slack added two-factor authentication to protect data in the future.

Gsuite is the ‘OG’ of cloud-based business

How does Gsuite work? G Suite which was founded in 2006 and was formerly known as Google Apps for Work is a suite of web applications created by Google for businesses. It’s still a decent offering 14 years later. A basic G Suite account gives you access to Gmail and 30GB of Google Drive storage per user.

There are obviously Enterprise-level packages with beefed up security to match that offered by highly secured ‘on-premise‘ setups.

The suite’s Meet service is a video conferencing app. It is the business-oriented version of Google’s Hangouts platform and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. The solution enables users to make video calls with up to 30 users per high-definition video meeting.

Compared to other software, and due to familiarity and affiliation to Android Smartphones, G Suite is quick and easy to set up and use from the time you subscribe to it. It literally takes up to 15mins to start receiving emails and make video-calls!

Still in the game

Microsoft offers 365 which includes Teams. Teams is quickly becoming Zoom’s big competition. Several companies are using Teams for internal meetings and Zoom for external meetings. Microsoft gains its competitive edge from is strong data protection, GDPR, and comprehensive security measures. But others are slowly and sometimes painfully also having to jack theirs up.

The crucial factor to Teams is that it is part of the Office 365 ecosystem. In this way, it can collaborate with different services offered by Office 365. Users gain access to several functions separated into four categories:

Firstly, they have access to the main Teams application which lets them find and create channels to hold “on-the-spot meetings, have conversations and share files”. Secondly, they have access to a function called Meetings. You can plan, schedule, and track meetings. This calendar syncs with Outlook, as an example of the deep Office 365 integration.

Thirdly users have access to calls which includes VoIP calling as well as fourth, they have access to the Activity application. This application lets one access @mentions, unread messages, and replies.

Other secure apps

Then we have Signal, a very new addition to the saturated video calling and voice messaging application world. The non-profit organization, the Signal Foundation launched a stable version of Signal last month.

Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging service. It’s an impressive entrant and it’s opensource too.

It uses the Internet to send one-to-one and group messages. These may include text and audio files, voice notes, images and videos.

It is also available through a mobile application that can also make one-to-one voice and video calls. We expect the Android version to become well-loved soon. It can operate as a replacement for the SMS app.

Signal’s emphasis on messages being protected and voice and video calls being stable because of the push by hackers to infiltrate the plethora of online messaging and video applications coming online over the past few months since Covid-19 broke out.

This will become more and more important in 2020 and beyond as working from home becomes more common.

The German government has encouraged people to work from home offices beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. This call is gaining impetus after the country saw a rise in Covid-19 infections after it started to ease it is locked in marked ways.

With so much choice around cloud-based solutions, it’s best to try a few for yourself and see what works for you. But don’t waste too much time. Many of them are free and you’d really want to just get on with whatever your business is.

A key is to use strong passwords which you change regularly as well as other measures to protect yourself from hackers.

Read more about how to make your online accounts safer.

Find out more about online office collaboration tools on our resources page

12 May 2020
Get more organised digitally!

We often hear the phrase “technology is your friend” To what extent this friendliness is, to help you to cope with your daily activities or business plans depends on how you embrace it.

Life can be chaotic. Which so much to do it is easy to frequently miss important appointments. Delays often come from having to wait till you get to a PC to respond or not remembering contact details. The worst is having to ask someone repeatedly for their number or business cards.

If you often experience that, you are getting it all wrong and definitely need this friend!

The need for emails

Emails are on a progressive, disruptive path to eliminate postal services. They even facilitate and encourage the acceptance of digitally signed documents.
Most financial companies and legal institutions in many developed countries already accept digitally signed documents.

Your digital signature confirms that the information originated from you and has not been altered through encryption. This makes it legally binding.

Naturally, you need special software or Adobe Sign, to digitally sign and attach as a PDF to an email.

Thanks to emails, we can now also easily store and get in touch with our contacts. It could be in the office, lounging around a park, watching your children play; even onboard/at the underground train station.

Additional email tools

Calendar and contacts syncing is a simple tool which is not offered entirely by all domain host providers. It works wonders along with your calendar and scheduler.

If you need a simple CRM tool to just help with email contacts and plug into an existing sales app, you can do so with a useful add-on like Outlook Customer Manager.

There are certainly advantages of decluttering your emails. This helps to alleviate the frustration of unimportant mails getting in the way of the ones you need to access frequently. For that, there is a clutter service offered by Office 365.

Additionally, to avoid retaining important attachments, and clogging up space on your mailbox, you can with a click, save large file attachments directly to your cloud storage.

With all that relevance of emails, it is critical that you source the best one – even if it costs a bit more than the (free) webmail services provided by Outlook (Hotmail), Gmail and Yahoo.

Naturally, with a paid service, you will almost be freed from the scourge of spam and malicious items embedded in documents. In some cases, they are screened even before landing in your mailbox.

More advanced features

Other perks like a ‘catch-all service’, data loss prevention, in place-hold (compliance features), and advanced threat protection. You can add them as essential services to give you an even more peaceful emailing experience.

You can, for instance, use In-Place Hold (Litigation Hold) to place user mailboxes ‘on hold’ and preserve mailbox items permanently.

This feature is especially crucial for those in the financial and legal sectors – requiring emails and its contents to be preserved for a minimum of seven years typically. Security is the central factor that has kept the postal service in business – well at least for now.

Your checklist when shopping for a good email solution:

• A decent-sized mailbox – with archiving ability – 50GB is the new standard size (don’t get short-changed!).

• Should allow you to sync emails, calendars, and contacts onto multiple devices – and it must always work!

• SMTP is now the standard and preferred Email protocol. If you are still on POP3 or even IMAP – run away!

• Customizable domain (a .com or .net or any other you have bought), with the option to add more domains and email aliases. (info@ …sales@ etc).

• Sync to an active directory – to keep your user-profile and allow for ease of single sign-on or extra security features like two-factor authentication. (Prevents unauthorized people from accessing your emails by pairing to your phone via an SMS code).

• Your mailbox (since you are storing contact details or using it along with a CRM or ERP solution) must be GDPR-compatible.

Final thoughts

Finally, a good email hosting service should provide the ability to add innovative features in the future. These include extra archiving space, advanced threat protection, and enterprise voicemail. These are characteristics of a good email solution.

Preparing to use an email solution can be effortless if you have the time. Most software suppliers like Microsoft (Office 365), have support sites with primary training material and “how-tos”.

Check out Microsoft’s Support page to upskill your Office, email, and overall cloud-software aptitude.

24 October 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
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
Stop, collaborate and listen!

Working in a service industry environment can come with its operational challenges. When you are dealing with customers, it is easy to get overwhelmed with contacts, referrals, emails, and appointments.

There are, however, solutions designed for small to medium-sized businesses, that will help you keep track of processes through well-coordinated business automation.

Traditionally, business (process) automation is the task of an individual or team overseeing the digital transformation of your company. This role has been refined into what is now formally recognized as a business analyst. It involves a highly detailed audit of your business’s processes and workflows.

This is priced as an input (operational) cost or some form of revenue. The business analyst is a role like that of a quantity surveyor – but essentially with operational software.

The aim is to minimize your operational costs while expanding revenue via the tools and processes used to run your business.

The online tools

A collaboration tool like Skype for Business can help you avoid unnecessary inter-departmental meetings. This would save you loads in travel, hotel, food, and other expenses.

A quick assessment or analysis can help you shift the focus and costs away from a non-responsive product to one that will drive profits.

If a potential product required more attention from a quality or marketing point of view, you can pick up trends using a good business intelligence (BI) tool.

The application would pool all your numbers (prices, product-related interactions) usually stored in your Excel sheets. You could then present in real-time to reflect sales, revenues, staff retention, product demand, elasticity, and return on investment.

These useful actions and reports can be performed with a few clicks of the mouse using the right BI software. Again. this saves you time in meetings and limits the unnecessary requests for data from your colleagues.

File-sharing made easy

That brings us to the next tool that helps you to collate data into central repositories for quick access. File-servers have existed for several decades but are outdated as they can crash. They can also slow down when overloaded or just not hold compatible data.

Secure online file-sharing solutions can help you resolve this. By “online”, we mean the data can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the world on any device with a broadband connection.

But what is the point of having data centrally stored when you cannot access it once you leave a certain parameter/network?

When it comes to security concerns (people outside the organization or worse yet – a competitor, accessing your data), you can rest assured!

File-sharing providers have long thought about it. After all, none of them want to get sued for losing your data!

Today several banks and even public institutions consume utilize cloud services for this very reason. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Google are making their services more secure as well as compliant to data storage regulations nationally or globally.

They are, however, forced to charge you a small fortune for that added service!

There several examples of how automation helps you streamline or improve operations. For more practical examples and a cost-effective and easy-to-use online tool that you can use, check out Messegely.

Consider social media integration (to where most of your targetable markets are). “Social engagement” is progressively becoming a buzzword.

Having applications that link to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram used to be ‘nice-to-haves’. They are now a necessity if you want to stay in touch with your audience or market.

Recognize the need & act!

The onus is on your business analyst to source the right (most effective) SaaS tools to help channel the digitalization of your company’s social and business operations.

Not doing this may leave you at the mercy of creative destruction. Consider companies like Yahoo, Nokia, and Blackberry.

Failing to adapt to a changing landscape or being rigid with the innovation. Nokia and Blackberry allowed Apple and Samsung to snatch their market share with touchscreen tech.

Failing to streamline how you operate can cloud your judgment. This will lead to you failing to even grasp what the customer needed in the first place!

Automation can help you pay more attention to the client’s needs because you spend less time taking notes. Instead, you will be able to perform the most important task when dealing with customers – listen!

Visit the resources page for an array of top-ranked automation tools you can use. These tools will ensure that you are being as productive as you can – saving you time and of course money in the long run.

16 January 2018

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