Mobile Consumers and Responsive Designs: Online, Smart & Friendly

Social media is changing the world of marketing on a tremendous scale. According to ZenithOptimedia forecast, we will witness a constant 15% growth on an annual scale between 2014 and 2017. Let’s take a look at how it applies to mobile consumers…

This assumption is more than reasonable. We are witnessing applied actions of smart algorithms that are interacting with us on a daily basis. They are persistent in following profiles and are sorting and delivering information according to our search results in a matter of a few nanoseconds. Our Facebook profiles, Google search, everything is monitored and evaluated, for the purpose to serve us, the consumers, or annoy us.

That is the very core of our issue, because in the year 2015 there are a few actions that should be considered a standard, nevertheless we are still witnessing poor implementations of even major global companies.

Online

A seamlessly never-ending debate about Conversion Rate Optimization vs. Search Engine Optimization for Return On Investment only confirms that we are yet to comprehend the power of Data. The obvious fact is that constant analysis through applied implementation will eventually deliver a positive result.

You’ve certainly stumbled upon opening windows that are trying to convince you to stay on the website and continue with your read. That is a part of the CRO strategy. The fact that you’ve actually managed to find the initial website is the result of the SEO strategy. They are both well proven methods, and we are all aware that the psychology of marketing is based on the firm but almost incomprehensible grounds, and there is one factor that will always be easily misread: the human factor.

Never leave out that tricky unknown from the equation, and always add at least something that you know to that part, so you can be sure that you will gain positive results. Consumers love being respected, cared for, they will probably refer their friends to you if you insist on providing a good service and you should count on that fact. Make their online experience pleasant, provide them a great product, trusted delivery, and safe and simple method of payment. Scratch beneath that surface of design, and focus on being responsive.

Smart & Friendly

All of our target audiences, no matter the industry that you are dealing with, have one thing in common: they are all computer literate. Pushing a product where it shouldn’t be pushed, missing your core audience, and counting on the fact that you will simply filter large numbers and get a certain percentage that you will convert to clients – that’s an utterly outdated technique.

Always count on the first rule of social media: it is social. People will share ideas, experiences, reviews, and etc. If you insist on spamming million people with your offer for no particular reason, the only thing that you will get is a lot of bad rep. There is a famous case of LiveNation poorly scheduled tweets that should serve in favor of this module, as an example of how not to execute a campaign.

With the help of search engines and our smart phones, we, the consumers, have become a lot smarter. Well, in manner of speaking. Retweeting your embarrassing marketing failure is a matter of one flick of a finger, so think again who you are targeting. If you are targeting me, as a computer literate consumer, I can tell you two things that I’m expecting from your business – be smart, and be friendly.

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HR Tech Advances for the New Millennium

Human Resources is an evolving environment that has changed dramatically over the years. In the Industrial Era, HR professionals were around to resolve wage-related issues and to deal directly with unions for labor-dispute problems and compliance requirements. In the 21st Century, the new era of Human Resources brought new challenges for specialists.

Instead of personnel management focusing their attention to unions, they become actively involved in an organization’s decision-making for recruiting and litigation issues. HR professionals of the 21st century have helped with direction and focused on employee management.

Today, in the Information Age, technologies and innovations have changed the way organizations do business and changed business processes. Instead of dedicating manpower to all processes, companies have focused on automating some processes so that their skilled HR professionals can keep up with changes in regards to organizational development by acting as a strategic partner. With new systems, streamlining is possible in many different HR processes.

Here are some of the processes that can be automated for greater efficiency.

Automated Employee Information Systems for Streamlined Workflows

Keeping an up-to-date information system complete with employee profiles and personal details can be a time-consuming process without some form of automation. When you have to manually enter every bit of information or you are updating physical files, it does not only take time, there is also a huge margin for error.

With a comprehensive and automated employee information system, you can streamline information updates and workflows within the organization. According to BambooHR, modern HRIS systems make it easier for both HR departments and employees to access current information, including employment status, personal data, PTO, benefits, hiring checklists, and a multitude of other info.

Track Time Sheets and Paid Time Off Without Relying on Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets take a great deal of time to create and can be extremely difficult to read and analyze. Instead of tracking and validating the time sheets that are submitted by your employees manually, a process which can be inefficient and mundane, you should focus on the benefits of automating submission and approvals.

You can collect data electronically, validate it, store the data, and then submit this information to payroll so that specialists never have to manually enter data that could lead to payroll errors. In this way, HR programs can significantly simplify your time sheets and payroll processes.

Automating the Hiring Process

When managers feel like they are understaffed, they will go to the HR department and request that they hire new employees so that the organization can lighten the workload on their personnel. Unfortunately, it can cost about $8 an hour per employee to complete the entire recruitment process.

Human Resources Information Systems can now automate much of the process so that specialists and managers are always in the loop. Managers can review job listings, see where they are posted, and know where they are at in the process as well.

Managing Time Off Requests

Most HR managers know just how much time it can take to process a time-off request. As heaps of papers fill their desks, they must review available hours and then see what staffing issues exist. By automating time off, employees can electronically send their request and see if the time is available. This process also makes it much easier to track and manage whenever an employee is on leave.

The purpose of automating processes in HR with current technology is to minimize the chance of error while maximizing the efficiency in the department. With the right systems, HR professionals will have the time to focus on areas of organizational development that they normally would have to put off.

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Debunking the Over-Hype of BYOD

BYOD: A movement that streamlined communications and empowered employees. Well, perhaps not.

We believe that Bring Your Own Device may well go down in history as one of the most overused and overhyped terms in business jargon history. And here we explain why, and beyond this… what may be next for the workplace that is truly forward-thinking and harnessing the innovations of tomorrow.

Getting to the surprisingly simple nitty gritty of most BYOD schemes

Let’s not talk in corporate-filled jargon, and let’s define what most BYOD schemes really are and the (rather few, and rather basic) tasks that they are used for. To this end, for the most part, the majority of BOYD schemes simply consist of: always on-the-go and accessible emails, the use of and sharing of documents (wherever and whenever), the partaking in the odd conference call or two and communication that is made lightning fast (with the help of an IM program).

When all’s said and done this isn’t the technology harnessing of the next century. This is business as usual. Only always on the go. This is why it’s time to debunk the hype of BYOD and recognize it for what it is.

Goodbye BYOB. Hello CYOD slash EOD hybrid

It’s predicted by trusted industry insight body, Gartner, that by 2020 there’ll be in excess of 60% of the workforce (across the world, no less) that use their own device for at least some work tasks. However this isn’t the same as saying that 60% of people will be part of a fully-fledged BYOD scheme. And what’s more it seems that from the very start that BOYD neglected to truly fulfil its promise. Most specifically it was a movement that appeared to completely neglect key enterprise examples and industry segments: from defence based bodies through to construction companies, BYOD offered little and delivered even less, with specialist applications and capabilities by such industries seriously lacking on what were, after all, just personal devices.

Specialized enterprise devices

A further complication to the traditional BYOD scene is the range of devices that any one enterprise can support. And with new models coming from Apple, Samsung and every brand in-between on an ever more frequent basis companies are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with a list of allowed devices that is even half way up-to-date.

The future: CYOD: Choose your own device / EOD: Enterprise Owned Device

CYOD / EOD schemes promise to overcome many of the limitations of the standard BYOD scheme, and what’s more specialist enterprise devices are also promising much in the way of improved security. Contrary to BYOD schemes in which, amongst other security holes, defy email security best practices to no end.

For the industry where specialist devices are required (such as upon the average construction site, where workers could benefit from specialist wireless communication provided through robust devices) CYOD / EOD seems set to truly meet their needs in a way that BYOD never could.

Stop focusing upon the over-hyped BYOD scene, and concentrate on what CYOD and EOD can bring to the workplace of tomorrow.

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Entrepreneurship: Go Bold

An asteroid killed off the dinosaurs in a blink of an eye.

You will be extinct

If you are a large company, you are likely to get killed off the same way the dinosaurs went. Killed by exponential change in robotics, ICT, sensors, AI, synthetic biology, genomics, nanotechnology, 3D, infinite computing, to name but a few of the asteroids. Some of these trends going 5X as fast (biology).

Entrepreneurs will survive

The same way the mammals survived the dinosaurs, so will the entrepreneurs survive the next wave of destruction. In fact they will thrive.

Your time to make a dent

For the first time in history a committed individual can have access to the technology, the capital and the minds to make a dent in the universe. But to make a dent in the universe, you need to understand how exponential works.

Exponential

Exponential has become the new buzz word. The trend that makes everything possible. The trend that will change the world. Probably best described in “The second machine age”, but that books comes with a huge health warning. Exponential also means winners take all.

You can do it too

And now the winners have decided to jump on the band wagon and help others to win as well. It started with “From zero to one” and then “Exponential organisations” and now “Bold”. You can do it too.

6 Ds

There is no doubt that digitisation leads to disruption, to demonetisation, to dematerialisation and eventually to democratisation when it becomes available to everyone for nearly free (as predicted by Chris Anderson in his book with the same title). In between these 5 Ds is deception. You don’t see it coming and suddenly it is there. And that is the phase where most of the large companies like to stay in. For large companies the 6 Ds are the six horseman of the apocalypse.

The 6 horseman of the apocalypse

They are also the 6 horseman of the apocalypse for your job too. 80% of the jobs can be done better by computers. So you might as well accept it, poke the box and become an entrepreneur or in case of a large company, disrupt yourself out of a job.

BOLD

What do you need to do according to BOLD:

Learn from the old skunk works set up
Focus on business as unusual
Set high hard goals and create a higher purpose
Belief in what you do
Create a siege mentality
Isolate your team
Built for speed and for rapid iteration (if you are not embarrassed you launched too late)
Focus on at least 10X better (that why Google has a “captain of moonshots”) so normal assumptions are not applicable and you need to shift perspective
Cut ties between you and expert assumptions
Vocally commit so there is no way back
Create a family
Built a reputation
Always say yes, and……

Flow

When you strive for truly high goals you are tapping into the collective creative accelerant. If you are lucky it will result in flow, the moments of total absorption. Flow follows focus and follows clarity of goals. When goals are clear the mind does not need to wander. Entrepreneurs are more likely to achieve flow for those reasons. Novelty, unpredictability and complexity all add to this as well. So does passion. And finally a high challenge/skill ratio. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate computer game. And flow, particularly collectively becomes a critical success factor.

Golden rules

The authors then shares some of their gold rules. I am sure they mean well, but here they are and they are as glib as the “Create your own monopoly” from “Zero to one” by Peter Thiel.

If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!)
When given a choice—take both!
Multiple projects lead to multiple successes
Start at the top, then work your way up.
Do it by the book . . . but be the author!
When forced to compromise, ask for more.
If you can’t win, change the rules.
If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
Perfection is not optional.
When faced without a challenge—make one.
No simply means begin one level higher.
Don’t walk when you can run.
When in doubt: THINK!.
Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!
The ratio of something to nothing is infinite.
You get what you incentivise.
If you think it is impossible, then it is for you.
An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can’t be done.
The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
If it was easy, it would have been done already.
Without a target you’ll miss it every time.
Fail early, fail often, fail forward!
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
The world’s most precious resource is the persistent and passionate human mind.
Bureaucracy is an obstacle to be conquered with persistence, confidence, and a bulldozer when necessary

Musk, Bezos, Branson, Page

It then takes some further lessons from Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page. Passion, first principles, having fun, experiment, protect the downside, don’t leave it on the table, you need to go all in and radical customer centrism. Disregard the impossible. Being negative is not a way to make progress. Experiment. Fail.

Ask the question “What is NOT going to change?” Ask whether you are missionary or a mercenary? Ask “Why not?” and “Why not bigger?” Apply the tooth brush test.

Are you wasting your time

Are you working on something that is changing the world? If you are not, according to BOLD, you are wasting your life. 99.99999% of us are in that mode at the moment. Are you making a dent in the universe?

All building blocks are there

Once you have established that as a principle, the authors argue that all the building blocks are in place to allow you to do it. You have 5 billion people to have a collective conversation with, access to trillions of free hours and access to the best minds. The crowds are there (fiverr, Freelancer, Tongal, 99designs, Gigwalk, Topsider, uTest, Topcoder) the funding is there (Kiva, Kickstarter) and the technology platforms (Amazon, Google, Techshop, Etsy) are there for you to do anything you want. There are even the competitions to point you in the right direction (Xchallenge, Netflix, Qualcomm).

Do it

The only thing stopping you is you. Instigation capital. The just DO IT. If the purpose is transformative and interesting enough, others will follow and you will become a movement. Together you will start solving the big problems in the world. You will be expressing your creativity and passion and you will access the (collective flow). You will be happy. You will make a difference.

Taleb, Godin, Priestly, Robinson, Gratton, Kelly

And although it is highly unlikely you will become the next Elon Musk, it does confirm everything that Ken Robinson (The Element), Seth Godin (Poke the box), Nicolas Taleb (Antifragile), Jason Priestly (The entrepreneur revolution), Linda Gratton (The Shift), Kevin Kelly (Do it!) and many others are saying.

Entrepreneurship is the future. Tell us what you think. Tweet @smallBC, use #gobold

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5 Recruiting Trends Of 2015

The way companies recruit is constantly changing depending on the technology available and the state of the economy. Furthermore finding good talent can be very time consuming and expensive. Understandably improving your recruiting process is often an overlooked area of concern as business owners often have “bigger fish to fry” so to speak.

But recruiting may be eating up more time and money than you realize. By leveraging new platforms, websites and tools you can find better leads on better recruits faster and cheaper. Since generally this is what all recruiters want, most trends in 2015 are focused on just that.

Also most recent trends address the need of companies to have a more human connection with candidates that could potentially live all over the world. The ironic thing is that they are doing this through social media and other forms of technology.

Whether you believe these trends are leading recruiters in the right direction or not, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the competition

Improved Applicant Tracking Software

Those fill-in-the blank forms can get annoying, but large companies need a computerized system to keep the application process organized. However, companies are seeking to improve the software they use to make it more convenient for applicants, and are expanding these tools to manage the entire recruiting process from start to finish and help improve the candidate experience.

There are many Saas companies that focus specifically on platforms that improve the recruiting process. Investing in research about these companies may result in a platform that is a perfect for your business. However, you don’t have to look only at recruitment specific software to find a solution. Many companies are utilizing one of the top CRM’s they may already have in use or are looking at using and using it to double as an internal relationship manager as well. Surprisingly many companies are finding that the functionality to manage sales leads naturally works just as well for recruiting. If you have a sales department, you can kill two birds with one stone with a CRM solution.

A Positive Candidate Experience

Making it incredibly difficult to apply for a job, failing to respond to queries, not sticking to promised deadlines and treating candidates with disrespect during the interview process damages a company’s brand. Not only that, but it prevents the top candidates that they are trying to attract from seeking a job with the company, and could even offend potential customers or allies further down the road. Companies need to constantly reevaluate the hiring process to see how the candidate’s experience can be improved.

Sourcing through Social

Social media is no longer new, especially when it comes to using LinkedIn. And lets be real, LinkedIn is heavily spammed and not near as effective as it once was.

However, new tools have started to come out to help companies refine their social media searches. These tools include Entelo, TalentBin and Gild, among others. Entelo helps recruiters to discover top talent that may be considering a move but hasn’t popped up on the regular radar yet. It also contains a huge database of profiles and contact information along with a filtering tool.

Most have free offerings with the option of premium pricing plans if you are a heavy recruiter.

Social Talent Networks

Of course, social media is useful for much more than just finding email addresses. Many companies have started creating talent networks that include everything from potential job candidates and clients, to fans of the company. These networks are great way to promote a company’s employment brand, so more talent comes to the company, rather than forcing the company to go out and find it. Businesses have even sprung up to help companies create these networks.

You can buy lists from existing networks, or simply begin creating your own internal database of people in networks you recruit from.

New Assessment Science

Personality and other assessment tests have been around for ages, but there has been a recent surge in assessment software. Many newer companies use cloud computing and big data to offer something new to this space.

Evolv offers tools that utilize big data to scour through huge databases of potential hires, and analyze the employee life-cycle to help reduce employee turnover rates.

Logi-Serve is another company entering this arena that offers analytics to predict a candidate’s performance in key business areas. There are literally hundreds of these services popping up, so businesses would do well to take a good look at this growing market.

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Word of Mouth on Steroids, an Opportunity

Tomorrow morning one of our Bookbuzz clients, Graham Fagan of BT, will review “Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine” by Jeanne Bliss on Newstalk.

This is what we made of the book

The landscape of customer service has fundamentally shifted. 80% of all buying decisions are now researched online, with customer reviews as the main source. It is truly word of mouth on steroids.

Other authors

One of our favourite authors, Brian Solis has written about this extensively in “WTF” and “The end of business as usual” . So has Guy Vaynerchuk in “The thank you economy”.

Social customer service

Our favourite book on CRM is “Social Customer Service”

Jeanne Bliss

And now there is “Chief Customer Service 2.0” by Jeanne Bliss. Jeanne Bliss is the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association.

She is one of the foremost experts on customer-centric leadership and the role of the Chief Customer Officer. A consultant and thought leader, Jeanne Bliss guides C-Suite and Chief Customer Officer clients around the world toward earning the right to business growth and prosperity, by improving customers’ lives.

Jeanne Bliss pioneered the role of the Chief Customer Officer, holding the first ever CCO role at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations.

She takes a corporate perspective to the issue of particular large corporations becoming truly customer centric, instead of just playing lip service.

Five core competencies

She has identified 5 core competencies

Treat customers as the most precious asset
Focus on providing an experience that is most desirable to the customer
Listen to customers to learn how to improve that experience
Make customer experience development as important as product development
Sustain proactive customer leadership at all levels and in all areas

When these five competencies are embedded into the organisation with leadership behaviour, they are so clear that they become the work of the organisation.

Stating the obvious

In her view a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is successful when he or she can simplify how the organisation works together, to achieve customer-driven growth, engage the leadership team, and connect the work to a return on investment, grounded in caring about customers. To me that sounds like stating the obvious

Not obvious for the big boys

However in large corporations it is not that obvious and she gives the full road map to what she calls a customer driven growth engine where you do achieve the word of mouth on steroids.

Large companies are defined by project plan movement rather than customer life improvement. CEOs and boards want to be customer focused, but without an explicit connection to growth. Many consider the work to be:

A leap of faith
Expensive.
Deterrents to the “real” work.

Understanding the real numbers

They do not know how many new customers did you bring in this quarter, by volume and value (power of your acquisition engine); how many customers were lost this quarter, by volume and value (power of the experience and value perceived); how many increased their purchases; and how many reduced their level of engagement with you?

The key here is to express these outcomes in whole numbers, not retention rates, so the full impact is understood—these numbers represent the lives of customers joining or leaving your company.

Why?

They do not know “WHY?” Why did customers stay or leave, buy more or less, or actively use your productsRead more at location 452

The customer journey

To be customer centric you nee to understand the entire customer journey, Which is why you need a customer journey framework that will provide a disciplined one-company diagnosis into the reasons behind customer asset growth or loss.

The story of the client

You need to be able tell the story of your customers’ experience based on feedback volunteered from customers as they interact with you, survey and social feedback, ethnography, and other sources of gathered input are assembled into one complete picture, presenting customer perception and value, stage by stage. Using as many sources you can, including social media. Creating a customer’s listening path, mapping all the touch points. Ultimately the job of a CCO is to be the company storyteller of your customers’ live. And the trick is to make it human.

Implementation

And belief it or not, it is very difficult to get that implemented. Silos, wrong metrics, wrong emphasis, wrong culture, wrong leadership.

Silos is a big thing

For example, billing is a challenging customer experience not just because of what the billing department does. Communications, sales, marketing, operations, IT, and billing all play a role in what the customer ultimately experiences. Customers experience a company across the operation, not down the silos.

Did we earn the right to customer growth?

What would change in your company if every executive meeting started with “Did we earn the right to customer growth?” Embracing customers as assets shifts the attitude of leaders and ultimately the organisation, because the purpose is to earn the right to growth by improving the lives of customers. When you improve their lives, the high scores will follow.

It starts with the metrics (and assets)

Customer Asset Metric 1: New Customers—Volume and Value
Customer Asset Metric 2: Lost Customers—Volume and Value and Reasons WhyAdd a note
Customer Asset Metric 3: Do the Math—Net Growth or Loss of Your Customer
Customer Asset Metric 4: A Simple Set of Customer Behaviours Indicating Growth or Loss of Relationship

Customer asset metrics are needed to engage executive leadership in a customer-centric transformation. They become engaged in the conversation because of the simplicity of the metrics and their connection to earning the right to growth.

The map

Leaders who use the journey map to diagnose the experience and its impact on the growth or shrinkage of the customer asset are most successful. Ultimately your customer journey map becomes your business decision blueprint. And again stating the obvious, for this work to be successful, it must connect to leadership language and accountability and communication. Clarity of purpose is helpful too (duh!).

And here is the kicker

It is about social media and experience reliability. You create customer growth when you deliver a reliable experience and you will start earning the right to your customers’ story through word of mouth. There is a 300 percent revenue gain to be had by focusing on reliability versus the wow moments.

The moment of clarity

Chief Customer Officer 2.0 reminds me of “The moment of clarity”. Give me that book any time over this one. In my view the book is full of repetition (repeating the 5 principles over and over again), stating the obvious. Hated it.

Other reviews

I am obviously wrong as the book has gotten fantastic reviews. I guess, that if you are inside these large organisations, a road map like Jeanne Bliss gives in this book, is very useful. As an entrepreneur this screams opportunity, as I am presuming that you are much closer to your customers, that you do use the right metrics, have the map and that your culture is truly customer centric. If not, you need to read this book.

Unless Graham comes up with some compelling arguments, this is not a book we will be featuring at our Bookbuzz MBA in day. The other books mentioned will be. You can still book your place.

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Small Biz, High Tech: 4 IT Hacks for Small Businesses

Running a small business is a constant dance between producing a product or service for people at a cost that compares to or beats your competition. One of the costs is information technology or IT. A small business that can find inexpensive and powerful options in this area can create an advantage for their business in their marketplace. Here are 4 IT hacks that can help your small business be more profitable.

IT Hacks: Organize Better Meetings

Increasing a client base can be a challenge for a small business. Meeting with potential clients face-to-face is limited by geography. With technology today, there are simple ways that a business can organize a meeting on teleconference that will allow for face-to-face interaction. There are individual video conferencing tools like Skype that allow for individuals to connect face-to-face across the world. There are also online meeting programs that allow presentations and ideas to be shared over an unlimited number of locations. Low cost products like Go To Meeting or Any Meeting are two meeting software suites that allow for powerful presentations.

Keep Your Office Running Smoothly

Organization is the key to success in any business. Fortunately today there are software suits that can help manage your schedules. For example AdvancedMD is a medical software suite that allows a small office to organize the scheduling of patients, their records, issue bills, manage patient care and measure the performance of your business. The best part is that once this type of system is set up, it runs with very little maintenance. A small office staff can all access the vital information and provide adequate care for all patients. There are similar management software products for almost any type of office as well.

Take Control of Your Web Properties

Managing and developing your own websites may seem like a daunting task but with the technology available today it shouldn’t be. Developing a functional and well-designed site can be done through the use of WordPress with a minimum of training. Having this skill available opens you up to make changes to a website quickly and at a low cost. It will require paying a hosting fee, but this cost is very minimal compared to paying someone to manage your website. HostGator is a great hosting program that is safe and responsive to questions. The investment in this area can save thousands of dollars over the long term and provide your small business with a website that is more representative of your products and/or services.

Build Relationships through Email

Connecting with you customers is vital for any small business. There are many different options available to help manage your email list depending on price and types of communication you desire. Constant Contact is one of the easiest email marketing suites to use although it has some limitations in function. Get Response and Aweber are high-functioning software suits that make it easy to create and run complex chains of marketing emails. The best part about these products is that once you have it set up, it runs on autopilot. Email lists provide a great opportunity to directly contact your customer base and a business can get their product or service in front of the customers.

Running a small business is an exciting endeavor that can become very profitable. Learning to decrease the IT challenges a company faces will clearly make things run more smoothly. All four of these IT solutions can be managed in house with inexpensive and powerful software programs. Allowing a small business to perform big is the goal of these 4 IT hacks for small business.

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Starting a design led business?

Bolton Trust is seeking applicants for a 30 week #Springboard Enterprise Development Programme free to Jobseekers and based in Docklands Innovation Park.

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Starting a Design Led Business? Bolton Trust is Seeking Applicants

Bolton Trust is seeking applicants for a 30 week #Springboard Enterprise Development Programme free to Jobseekers and based in Docklands Innovation Park.

This Diploma in Enterprise Development Programme is for applicants from within the Greater Dublin area who are aspiring to start a business. This part-time free course will be based in Docklands Innovation Park which is owned and managed by Docklands Innovation – A Bolton Trust initiative. It is a hub for enterprise and business startups close to the city centre with easy access to public transport.

If you are interested then you can apply online here.

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Integrated Data Management is a Productivity Goldmine

Everyone’s talking about Big Data these days, but all the data in the world is useless unless it’s structured in a way that increases productivity and profitability.Fortunately, integrated data solutions can blend and unify data sources and business processes to save time and money.A professionally designed integrated data solution has the potential to integrate thousands of data sources.The ability to connect and track business data, including sales, advertising, marketing, finance and SEO, empowers decision makers and customer service representatives with the information they need to improve business performance.

Data Integration

The idea of collecting and tracking disparate streams of data to improve business performance can be difficult to grasp.The amount of data collected by an average business has literally exploded in recent years.Many businesses have attempted to employ data management solutions such as cloud-based applications , limited legacy systems and other out-of-the-box digital products to stay ahead of the data avalanche.For example, genomic testing companies having to house trillions of strands of DNA data for personalized medicine are finding their process does not run smoothly with access to complex data storage and analysis. Designing and implementing an effective data management interface is now a crucial component of business success.

Remaining competitive in the global economy requires business leaders to adapt to emerging trends.The integration of business data collection systems is no longer optional for large and even medium size businesses.Data integration reduces labor costs and improves profit margins.The cutting edge of effective data management varies from business to business.A comprehensive approach to data integration is essential.Relying on one-size-fits-all data management products is likely to yield minimal results and increase long-term costs.

Organizational Goals

When business leaders establish clear goals related to business performance, they have a much better chance of arriving at a desired destination.Data integration is an essential aspect of attaining organizational goals.It’s rare that a company IT specialist possesses the skills and experience necessary to merge data collection sources into a unified decision making tool.Establishing a long-term relationship with a professional data integration solutions company is a more reliable way to develop a customized data integration system and achieve organizational goals.

Data integration is a proven means of eliminating data handling and enhancing organizational productivity.Well designed eCommerce solutions allow company leaders and representatives to focus on product and customer development rather than data mining and archiving.The industrial age was characterized by important developments in automation.Some things never change.A revolution in digital automation promises to change the business world forever.

Business Solutions

Increasing business efficiency makes it possible to get more done without adding more employees.Investing in productivity solutions is the key to continued business success.Data flow efficiency is a fundamental aspect of business success.This requires a willingness to listen to data integration experts and adopting a long-term approach to data management.When it becomes obvious that existing data management systems are hindering productivity and business performance, it’s time to consider the available options.

Data management systems don’t last forever.That’s why it makes sense to design a flexibleintegrated data management system that meets current needs while preparing for the future. There’s nothing more frustrating than a do-it-your-self system, plug & play integration application or add-onproduct solution that is incapable of keeping up with the volume of a growing business.It doesn’t take long for an aging legacy system to break down just in time for someone to hit the panic button.It’s time consuming and expensive to catch up with the digital age after falling behind.That’s why it’s best to stay ahead of the digital game by investing in a comprehensive data integration system.

Data Touch Points

The number of data collection touch points in an average business is astounding.Designing an efficient map that allows data to flow efficiently and be made available to key organizational stakeholders is a productivity goldmine.Always remember that the purpose of a data integration system is to accomplish important business goals.Data flow is never a finished product.A data integration system must be capable of adapting to market trends and revised business goals.Developing an ongoing relationship with an experienced data integration company allows the flow of business data to evolve naturally.

The flow of data encompasses so many digital languages.Connecting the flow of transaction data in a standardized way has the potential to invigorate any business.Whether a data management system integrates applications within a business or connects with external partners, converting and standardizing file types will ensure the viability of business data.Converted files, including PDFs, XML, EDI, hadoop and excel, makes it possible for businesses to import and export data in a standardized file format.

Improving business productivity and eliminating human error are only two of the enormous benefits associated with a properly designed integrated data management system.Under-investing in integrated data management is a costly mistake.The number of data touch points necessary to operate a profitable business in the digital age will undoubtedly continue to escalate.Deciding to learn about the available strategies for integrating data streams is a sound business decision.

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