Your customers—both those you currently work with and those you have yet to onboard—are the key to unlocking your company’s potential. Therefore, it stands to reason that you’ll want a solution in place to help you manage the interactions you have with potential customers. This is what a customer relationship management tool, or CRM, is all about. With the right CRM, you can fully leverage your organization’s customer base to maximize profits and attract new leads.
PDFs, or Portable Document Format files, are something many people come across in the course of doing business. Not everyone knows all the cool stuff you can do with them, like changing things in them. This week, we'll talk about some simple ways to make and edit a PDF file.
Technology can bring many dynamic benefits to an organization, but it can also derail its successful trajectory. One of the significant considerations that must be made is whether the technology your organization is implementing fits your business needs. Today, we will describe how having a knowledgeable perspective can help you avoid making investments that may not produce the rapid returns that most small businesses require.
The idea of “finding time” for particular tasks has always been a bit of an odd saying. After all, there is a finite amount of time in any given day. No matter how hard you search, you’re not going to magically find more of it. What you can do for those tough-to-schedule projects and tasks, however, is make more time by freeing up time that is already in use.
Let’s go over some strategies you can use to make more time for the projects that matter most, whether they are for business or for life.
Sometimes it can be really handy to take a screenshot of something on your computer screen. Sure, there are tons of applications you can download and install that let you do this, but with the modern version of Windows 11, you don’t need any of that if you just need to take a quick screenshot and share it with someone or put it in a document. Let’s jump right into it!
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a few years since circumstances… “encouraged”... so many businesses to suddenly adopt work from home policies. As these circumstances have gradually normalized, many businesses have elected to keep these policies in place, either maintaining fully remote operations or shifting to hybrid operations.
However, some notable businesses have taken efforts to roll back remote work capabilities, if not discontinuing them entirely.
Downtime in a business context can be considered a "business predator" because it can have detrimental effects on a company's operations, profitability, and overall success. Downtime refers to the period during which a business' critical systems, processes, or equipment are not functioning as intended. Here are some reasons why downtime is often seen as a threat to businesses.
Downtime can result in significant financial losses. When key revenue-generating systems or production processes are unavailable, businesses may lose sales, incur extra expenses, or face penalties for failing to meet contractual obligations. Downtime can also prevent a business from pursuing new opportunities or responding to market changes. In a rapidly evolving market, missing out on opportunities can have long-term consequences, and can be the difference between business growth and stagnation.
Downtime leads to decreased productivity as employees cannot perform their tasks efficiently. This results in wasted time, missed deadlines, and a drop in overall output. In cases where downtime is due to data loss or system failures, it can result in the loss of critical information, which can be difficult or impossible to recover. This can have severe consequences for businesses, especially when it comes to sensitive or irreplaceable data. Frequent downtime can demoralize employees who must deal with the frustration and stress of interrupted work. Low morale can lead to higher turnover rates and decreased employee engagement.
Prolonged or frequent downtime can do significant damage to a company's reputation. Customers and partners may perceive the business as unreliable, which can be challenging to overcome. Also, these unfortunate companies may find it challenging to compete effectively in markets with companies that show better reliability.
If you struggle with downtime, you can do better. If you don’t, you need to ensure that continues. The IT professionals at vCTO Secure can help. We can introduce you to technologies and strategies that are designed specifically to reduce downtime and improve operational efficiency. Get a professional perspective by calling (206) 895-5595 today.
Communication and collaboration tools are central to the success of any business—especially in today’s connected business landscape. More than anything else, you cannot let your collaboration tools put your company data at risk. We have some tips you can use to avoid some of the common challenges that businesses face with collaboration and data security.
One of the more challenging issues to deal with as a business owner is bridging the gap with your unhappy employees. While it’s certainly true that unhappy employees could be upset for any number of reasons, some of which are completely unrelated to work, there are others that you might have complete control over without necessarily realizing it. Let’s go over how you can help your employees be happier and more fulfilled during their time with your business and, thereby, more productive as a result.
Modern laptops are great, in principle. Not only do you have a ton of options to get a device that does everything you need, but you get the added benefit of having a portable workstation. That being said, working on a laptop all the time isn’t exactly the most comfortable way to get things done. Fortunately, most modern laptops can easily be used like a desktop PC with just a few components.
Businesses are always trying to get the tools they need to do things in the most efficient manner they can. They are under pressure to do so and therefore can have issues when they decide to implement technology that doesn’t necessarily help them meet their goals. In this week’s blog, we take a look at how having the right view of technology can set up some long-term success for your business.
The modern worker has a lot of challenges and one of them is a laundry list of tasks to accomplish. For this reason, it’s best to have a plan for tackling your to-do list. One of the most effective ways to prioritize tasks is through what is called the Eisenhower Matrix. Inspired by a speech given by the former President of the United States and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II, the Eisenhower Matrix simplifies complex task lists to make getting through them more effective. Let’s take a look at how it works.
As critical as it is to make sure your business’ IT remains in good shape, it is just as important that you and your team members are in good shape as well. Otherwise, the aches and pains that can settle in could easily have a detrimental impact on your productivity.
Projects are a big part of doing business. When we mention projects it’s typically in reference to IT projects, but for your average business, when they think of projects it means specific jobs coordinated for specific clients. In this environment it is essential to get the people on a project team on the same page and working towards a shared end. In this week's blog, we thought we’d discuss the importance of solid project management and how certain technologies can help project managers improve their turnaround times.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve always got a thought in the back of your head regarding your business and how you can make it more productive. While there are a lot of different ways you can do so, we wanted to focus on one that might not be the first to come to mind: communicate more.
Oh, the afternoon meeting, the woe of many office workers around the world. Sometimes they are fine, but other times, it’s very clear that they are not always an effective use of your time. Despite this, there is still a heavy emphasis on meetings in the workplace, to the point where some employees feel that their time is being wasted and misused as a result—a premise that is supported by surveys and research.
If we asked you to identify the one hour of your day when you get the most done, would you be able to tell us? Even more interestingly, do you know how to get the most out of your so-called “power hour?” Let’s take a look at some of the theories about how you can make the most out of your most productive time in the workplace.
Last week, we wrote about how patience plays a big role in people’s ability to be productive and efficient. This week we want to explore a few ways to help the people in your organization to become more patient. We all know people in our lives that seem like they could definitely take a chill pill. If that is you, using these four suggestions can help you be more patient in situations that demand it.
People can be very productive. They can also be pretty terrible at being productive. The staff that can find consistency in their productivity typically results in a pretty successful business. Obviously, people have all types of suggestions on how to improve staff productivity, individual productivity, and a lot of it is just hitting on the same stuff. There is one variable, however, that is found in a lot of productive people: Patience.
Productivity is the measure of how your business operates. Without a certain standard of it, any business will stagnate or fail. The overall productivity of your business comes down to a combined effort of the tools you deploy and your employees’ ability to maximize individual productivity. This week, we will take a look at how the emergence of technology built specifically for your business directly correlates to higher degrees of productivity.
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