5 Tips for Managing Small Business Finances

Professional financial management is essential for the success of any business that is just getting on its feet. Money matters are very crucial since the entire basis of the business is to generate an income. Many small business owners often fail to invest in this crucial part of their business and tend to make losses or end up shutting down altogether. The following are some of the essentials of money management in business:

Open a commercial bank account

Every business should have recognition as an entity on its own. Therefore, you need to open a commercial bank account with the registered name of your business. Do not mix business money with personal money. Choose a small business friendly bank to bank with. You should deposit all the money from the business to this account. This creates a line of credit whereby you can use this bank account to get loans and other forms of financing if need be.

Bookkeeping

Proper bookkeeping is also very essential. You can either do the bookkeeping or hire an accountant. Even if you choose to do the book keeping by yourself, you still need professional help- when it comes to making tax forms and end year financial statements. You can keep your own books using convenient computer software that makes your work much easier, simply filling in the figures and letting the software do the rest. You can use this software to create invoices, keep track of payable and receivable accounts and track spending as well.

Create and track different payment options

Nowadays, customers can pay for goods and services through so many different ways. They can use checks, debit cards, credit cards or even electronic cash transfer. As a matter of convenience to your clients, you need to avail these different means of payment and track these payments as well. Cash payments are easy because there is no processing time, but when it comes to cards and electronic transfer methods, you need to develop a working system that enables continuous flow of business considering the processing time.

start up

Establish payment terms

You need to have a clear payment terms policy that all your customers and adhere to. One of the crippling challenges that most small businesses face is the friendliness that comes from dealing with a small market and this leads to extending credit to customers who are not worth it.  You need to standardize the way customers pay while still offering some form of flexibility to customers who cannot front the full payment. Have written payment terms describing deposits, instalment payments and credit extensions.

Debt collection

One of the necessary evils of running a business is debt collection. When you extend lines of credit to customers, there is always the risk that you will receive late payment or not receive any at all. It is essential to chase these payments because they are a part of the business cash flow. Debt collection is a legal process and you can hire a debt collection professional to help you collect payments from delinquent clients.  It is advisable to keep the lines of communication with the customer open. Have a specific set of days after which to call a debt collector. For most businesses, 90 days is an acceptable grace period.

To know more about small business finances, visit – http://leasequit.com/.

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How to Create Quality SEO Friendly Content

Content marketing is an invaluable tool to any business with an online presence, thanks to its cost-effectiveness, wide potential reach and long-term benefits. When it comes to search engine optimisation, the focus is on creating content that is highly visible on websites like Google, in order to generate traffic and leads.

In terms of creating solid, SEO friendly content, you need to consider the way search engine algorithms work, as well as the target audience of your content, and then balance these two aspects. This article presents some useful tips to make sure you strike that balance and create quality content, which works for your company.

Use SEO Tools to Steer Content

A business or SEO company has a range of tools available to them, which can steer them in the right direction when it comes to creating highly visible content. Sites like Soovle will help you to pinpoint popular search terms, while Portent’s Content Idea Generator can help you to think of interesting subjects. Then, of course, search engines like Google have a number of their own tools to make use of.

“We have used Google’s Keyword Planner to identify a list of valuable terms and phrases,” says Graham Charlton from Econsultancy. “Having identified these terms, our content team then brainstormed article ideas to target [them]. This kind of planning exercise ensures that the content we create does as much work for us as possible.”

Make Content Evergreen

An experienced search agency will often reference the importance of evergreen content – that is, content which retains its relevance for a long period of time. For example, news pieces may not be ideal for SEO, because they can become dated quickly, but advice pieces stay useful for months or even years.

In relation to search engine optimisation, the primary benefits of evergreen content are its ability to continue to generate traffic, leads and shares on social media sites long after its publication date. As a result, this enables content to occupy valuable positions in search results for much longer than current affairs articles.

Take Care With Keywords

Once you have decided upon the content you want to produce and the keywords you want to include within it, you need to consider how they are used. Many readers are familiar with the concept of SEO and while that can be a positive, it means that any jarring use of keywords will stand out like a sore thumb. For this reason, keywords need to make sense within the context of the sentences and paragraphs they are in, and relate to the heading.

In addition to context of keywords, it is also crucial to think about placement. It can be beneficial, for instance, to include popular SEO keywords in the title itself, but it can be counter-productive to place your keywords in close proximity of one another.

Remember to Include Images

Finally, it is worth remembering that graphics can also play a valuable role in your SEO strategy, helping your content to show up in image searches, like Google Images. The most important steps are to include an alt tag (the ‘label’ of your image) so that search engine crawlers know what it is about and are able to index it. Also ensure the file name is descriptive and appropriate for the image.

“If you spend hours crafting the perfect post, don’t miss out on the chance to optimise your images for maximum search engine benefit,” says Derek Halpern, a marketing expert and the founder of Social Triggers. As a further tip, due to the fact that page load times can impact SEO, smaller images are generally better, where possible.

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Online Business Data Tools for Small Business

Growth and traction are among the primary goals of any startup, along with raising brand awareness and loyalty. For any business to take a sustainable path to growth, entrepreneurs will need to make decisions that will affect various factors like product lifecycle, human resources, marketing, and others. To ensure positive impact, these decisions will need to be based on data.

Why Make Decisions Based on Data

Data driven decisions help your business by ensuring you’re working toward continuous improvement, meeting accountability requirements, focusing your efforts and monitoring progress, and developing a sense of community through your organization.

Every business has to start with a plan. And no matter how well thought out and executed that plan may be, it will likely deviate from what you expected. You’ll need to use the data you’ve collected from your operations or customers to make educated changes to the plan, to make sure your business stays on the right track to growth and success.

The data will help you see how well you’re meeting goals, keeping you accountable. You’ll be able to use it to set new goals once you’ve reached the first ones you established. And when everyone works together as a team to use the data to move the business forward, you’ll foster community with the staff.

How to Incorporate Data in Your Decision Making

First, determine what it is you want to know. Data can be used to determine a lot of information about a business, for instance:

  • How are customers responding to our sales and marketing campaigns?
  • Which employee is bringing in the most sales?
  • Which customers are giving the most value?

Next, determine which data you’ll need to get the answers you’re looking for. This can be anything from web analytics to CRM data.

From there, collect the data. The more sources of data you have at your disposal, the better informed your decisions can be.

Gather insights. Look at the data to determine answers to your questions. Look at all the data you have available to discover what other information it provides, and keep it in mind for making other decisions as they arise. For example, your web analytics data can tell you how long people are spending on your website, where they spend most of the time, and the path they take through your site. If bounce rates are high, or if conversions are less than ideal, it could mean you need to further optimize your web copy, navigation, layout or other elements.

The final step is to use the data to make recommendations/decisions. Once you determine which employee brings in the most sales, for instance, you could decide to reward his or her efforts. Once you find out who your most valuable customers are, you could reward them with a special discount or promotion to encourage more sales, or to encourage word-of-mouth marketing from them.

Tools for Acquiring Data

Many tools for data acquisition are now available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, which means these are accessible enough for small businesses, but scalable enough to accommodate growth. Here are a few notable examples.

Cyfe is a social media analytics tool and business dashboard that allows you to examine your audience from a variety of channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to see what’s going on with your outreach and engagement activities. With the available data, you can then determine whether or not changes need to be made to your strategy and campaigns.

NetBiscuits is an analytics platform designed to help marketers and web developers improve their channels for multi-screen devices. It detects the device, and then displays analytics data for each – so marketers can see how well their website is performing on a desktop/laptop compared to a smartphone or even a smart-TV. The platform also allows marketers to ensure the right content is delivered to the right device to improve the user experience.

Google Analytics is a free, robust web analytics tool that allows you to track a variety of metrics. Find out where people are coming to your website from (so you can spend your marketing budget wisely), what page they’re leaving your website from, how long they’re staying on each page, how many people are converting (you can set custom conversion goals), and how well your AdWords campaigns are working (analytics for that can be integrated), and more.

Cooladata is a data powerhouse. It allows you to see data for nearly any business question you want to ask, giving you the power to really harness the data. Keep a close eye on key performance indicators (KPIs), segment your audience, analyze your sales funnel, and more.

Where to Apply Data Driven Decisions

Social media can tell you a lot about how customers are responding to your business. You can gather data about who’s talking about your products and services, who’s interested in what you have for sale, who’s not interested, who’s had a positive experience with your company, who has had a negative experience with your company, and more.

Email marketing is a wonderful way to reach current and new customers. Data about how many subscribers you have, how many people unsubscribe, how many people open your messages and click through to the websites you link in them is critical to learning how to adjust your campaigns. With data, you can determine the best day of the week or time of the day to send your messages. Data can also help you optimize email subject lines to attract more opens or clicks. You can also optimize frequency and the types of messaging, in order to improve conversions.

Customer service is key to the success of your business. After all, 86% of customers will leave a business, based on bad customer service experience, and 54% will share a bad customer service experience, compared to 33% who share a good one. Data about the customer service experience will help you see what’s working, and what’s not, so you can find ways to improve your customer service.

Conclusion

In the end, data-driven decisions have the power to propel your business. Ignoring the data – or failing to collect it in the first place – has the potential to sink your business. Why not use data to your advantage? If the big corporations do it, small businesses can, too.

(Image Credit: 1,2)

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A Small Business’s Guide to PPC

The core principles behind PPC are really quite simple. Your advert will appear during a relevant consumer search on keywords that you define and you pay a fee, based on the amount of competition around those keywords, if the consumer clicks on your ad. In this way PPC advertising is one of the most efficient and trackable marketing strategies for any small business looking to drive potential customers onto their website. When it comes to generating a successful PPC campaign however, a quality advert and relevant keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.

PPC advertising gets results but the competition can be fierce and the search engine results pages (SERPs) can at times feel like a battlefield, with thousands of businesses vying to get their advert on the first page for a whole range of competitive industry keywords and keyphrases. In addition to this fierce competition, search engines are constantly changing their PPC algorithms, requiring any effective campaign to have the knowledge and ability to keep track of it all.

Before even launching a PPC campaign then, there are a few steps every business needs to take.

Establish your Goals

The goals you choose will dictate the type of PPC account you need and the direction it takes. Consider carefully, and decide if you want your campaign to create a surge of traffic to your site, generate leads, establish brand awareness, or be a direct sales effort. Although it’s tempting to want to drive as much traffic to your site as possible, with a view to converting them all to sales, sometimes it might be more beneficial in the long run to generate some genuine brand awareness and get people talking about your company, your content and ultimately your products.

Determine your Advertising Budget

How much is each customer worth to your business and how much you are willing to spend to bring them in. Let’s say the average customer is worth $200 to your business and you are willing to spend $100 to get that customer. The next thing to work out is how many people you need to direct towards your landing page in order to get that customer (conversion rate). If you have a conversion rate of 10% then in order to insure an acceptable ROI you would want to pay no more than $5 a lead. (This calculation gets a lot more complicated when you consider how conversion rates can fluctuate based on all sorts of factors, from landing page to advertising text and things like AdWords Quality Score).

Find a good PPC Management Company

You could attempt running the campaign yourself, but unless you are an expert in PPC management, it is far more time and cost efficient to hire a professional company than to try managing it yourself.

Do you know your CPM from your CPC and CPA? Do you know the differences between impressions, hits, and views? Knowing what these things are is only half the battle, it’s understanding how they all individually affect your campaign and can influence each other.

What about your campaign settings? Should you have different ad groups for each region? Is it better to target different regions or a select area? Is your campaign losing money because of a poorly designed ad? Or is it due to poor choice in keywords and that your landing pages are completely off message?

Whilst it’s not beyond the wit of any small business owner to get to grips with these things, a good PPC management company will know how to set up an efficient and profitable campaign from the outset, a fact that will likely save you a lot of wasted money on a poorly optimised campaign. Moreover, managing a successful PPC campaign is a huge drain on time and can end up amounting to a full time job with the constant analysis and tweaking required; a job you probably don’t have time for. As with any business decision however, do your research and make sure the company you choose is reputable and is the right fit for your company.

Budgeting for a PPC Campaign

There are four primary ways a PPC management agency might charge you:

  • The most common form of payment is based on a percentage of the total monthly amount you spend on advertising, generally between 10% to 20%.
  • Other companies, however, may prefer to bill you at an hourly rate. Initial charges are high when you pay by the hour (as the agency invests time in building the campaign), but costs will be greatly reduced once the account is up and running.
  • The third option, perhaps the fairest of all, is that you pay for the quality of your account’s performance based upon pre-agreed metrics. Unfortunately, this method only works if the agency is able to track your entire system for conversions (which is complicated), or they trusts you to be completely honest with them regarding conversion (which is rare).
  • The fourth option relies on a fixed fee for each service offered by the management company. The result is generally clear-cut, as each management option you select for your account is simply added to your monthly bill.

Although it can require a bit of research to find the right PPC agency for your account, your efforts will be well rewarded. In the hands of a professional management agency, a pay per click advertising is one of the best ways of increasing online traffic for your business and meeting your online marketing goals.

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7 Must Have Online Tools for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, maintaining a smooth communication and boosting employee performance are your primary goals. Most companies today, rely on a variety of online applications and utilities that help them manage their day to day activities. But for small businesses, it is often the question of where to start from. To solve this confusion, listed below are some of the best applications that small businesses must use.

1. Google Business Apps

Google Business Apps

Google Business Apps is a combined bundle of various must haves for your small business that includes important utilities such as Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Google calendar and Google Docs. According to Google Inc., the business apps are being used by a large no. of companies (upto 5 million), which also include a majority of fortune 500 companies. The Gmail feature also allows you to set up your personalized domain (@yourwebsitename.com) and offers various plans for storage space on Google drive. The Google docs are a convenient web version of Microsoft office utilities and allow you to create and edit documents, spreadsheets and slideshows online. With Google business apps, you are sure to form a congestion free network between the employees, management and the clients.

2. Google Drive

Google Drive

Google Drive App is a cloud sync service, which allows the users to upload all type of files on the Google servers. Google drive app is available for a variety of platforms such as Windows (XP and higher), Windows Phones, Android and iOS. Once you install the app, it creates a separate folder on your system where you can simply drop the files that you wish you upload to the Cloud. It includes an office suite and allows editing and creation of spreadsheets, documents and presentations. The integration with Gmail also allows a variety of functions while using the office suite. Launched in 2012, Google Drive is said to be used by more than 200 million active users in the world. Truly, Google drive is one of the best free pro business tools for business owners.

3. Skype Chat

Skype

Despite of its criticism due to its slow performance, Skype is one of the best free chat servers you can use for office communication. The application is available for free and can be installed on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, iOS, Blackberry, Android and Windows Phone etc. While the application is mainly used to make free voice calls, its chat server also allows you to share a variety of files online with ease. With more than 600 million users online, Skype is one of the best chat and video calling apps in the world.

4. Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting

As a small business owner, hiring a personalized accountant is something that you cannot afford. To make things easier, you can use a variety of accounting apps available for PCs and smartphones. Launched in 2010, Wave provides a double entry accounting utility, which is able to directly import data from the bank accounts, track expenses and also generate invoices. Upon registration, you also get a card swiping tool and a receipt scanning tool, which can be integrated with your Smartphone. The utilities are entirely free of charge and the organization generates its revenues through the card processing fees when the card swiping tool is used.

5. Evernote

Evenote

Evernote is like a digital version of the post it notes, which allows note-taking and archiving of various files and folders. The notes can be either, text, webpage excerpts, photographs, images, voice reminders or an old fashioned handwritten note. The service is available for a freemium price that requires the user to pay a price to access features that are more advanced. Evernote is compatible with a variety of operating platforms such as Windows, Android, Blackberry and Windows phone etc.

6. HootSuite

HootSuite

Social media is no fun when you’re looking for an online presence for your organization. Especially when you have to manage several different social media platforms at once, making it difficult to maintain a presence everywhere. Launched in 2008, HootSuite integrates all the popular social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and Tumbler.  It provides a dashboard which is integrated in the web browsers and allows simultaneous sharing of messages across all networks. With more than 10 million users worldwide, HootSuite is indeed the solution for all your social media troubles.

7. UserTesting


UserTesting

For web developers, it is always a challenge to create websites that are highly user friendly and free from any performance lags and slowdowns. This is a must for e-commerce website owners who must keep on improving the quality of their website to ensure sales. UserTesting provides a free 3rd party review of your website. The results are shown in a video, in which a person is shown browsing through your website and highlighting the grey areas in the website’s design and performance. Instead of simply gathering general opinions on how they feel about your website, it might be a good thing to know the anomalies in your website through a professional.

Small businesses are stepping stones that lead to the fortune-500 club. As the competition among businesses has moved to a digital environment, it has become essential for business owners to be ahead in the race. The above tools will certainly help you improve your productivity while providing that professional edge to your organization’s workflow.

Featured Image by denise carbonell, CC BY 2.0

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Are You a Potential Microfinance Ireland Client?

Michael Johnston explains what a typical microfinance Ireland client looks like. They are the mum and pap, the normal, every day life business. The core of the (rural) Irish economy. Nearly everyone really.

You can apply here for a loan http://microfinanceireland.ie/how-to-apply/

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What is Local SEO And Why Is It Important?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a marketing technique engaged by businesses to help rank their company websites in Google and other search engines. As society has become increasingly technology focused in the last decade, more businesses have decided they want to invest is an online presence and as a result SEO as a practise as grown. Due to the increase in online activity, national SEO has become a very competitive game and unless you are top of your industry, your business might struggle to make the first page of Google for the terms you want to rank for. It’s not all doom and gloom however, national results can be achieved over time but for smaller businesses who want quick results, we can introduce local SEO.

Local SEO stands for local search engine optimisation and involves the same onsite and offsite elements as national SEO, the difference being local marketing targets specific town and city locations rather than focussing on the entire country. Local SEO has grown over the last few years with the increase in smartphone usage. As more people search, on the go, on their mobiles for local services, local SEO has become increasingly important.

Local SEO is ideal for smaller businesses who want to attract local custom. For example if you are a plumber in Derby, you want to attract local, Derbyshire customers rather than get enquiries from someone based in Newcastle. Local SEO will help you rank for your business keywords on a local basis so when someone searches for ‘steakhouse Sheffield’, they will be greeted with a list of steakhouses in that area rather than the opposite end of the country.

Why is local SEO important?

  • With more and more people online, local SEO will help you stand out. Rather than your four man band trying to compete with a worldwide cooperation for national rankings, local SEO will help you be the top for your town.
  • Attract local customers. Attracting local customers can be preferable for a lot of smaller businesses who may not be able to handle large scale contracts.
  • Local SEO will help boast your brand and raises awareness of your business. It will help get your name out there and make people aware of your services/products.
  • Beat your competitors. Get online and become top dog before your competitor down the road does the same. The internet has been growing rapidly over the past couple of decades and it’s not showing any signs of stopping any time soon. Make that leap online and get ahead of your competitors.

How does local SEO work?

Local SEO involves multiple offsite and onsite techniques. Firstly marketers will look at employing location keywords in your content and title tags as well as ensuring your website includes your address. Then they will look at building local citations and listings to emphasise that connection between you and the location.

Local SEO works the same as national SEO. It involves the same onsite and offsite marketing principles however it involves targeting a specific location(s). It is a great way for smaller businesses to get their brand noticed and attract local customers.

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Employees Can Now Accrue Annual Leave Whilst on Sick Leave

Minister for Business and Employment, Ged Nash, has announced that employees will be entitled to accrue annual leave while on sick leave from 01 August 2015. This is a very important update for employers and we would strongly recommend that employers review this article to ensure that they are fully aware of this key development.

What Was the Previous Rule?

Annual leave in Ireland is governed by the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997, and some subsequent regulations. The 1997 Act is very explicit as to when an employee will accrue and what counts as ‘working time’ for this purpose. As a result, it had been the case in Ireland that an employee on sick leave will not accrue annual leave during a period of sickness absence.

So Why Has this Changed?

In the European cases of Stringer and Others v H.M. Revenue & Customs [C-520/06] and Schultz-Hoff [C-350/06] it was determined that an employee should continue to accrue annual leave whilst on sick leave. It was further determined that if an employee is on sick leave for the whole or part of a leave year that any leave they accrued does not disappear when the leave year has ended, and that, as such, the employee must be allowed to carry forward their annual leave.
These key European decisions applied automatically since 2009 in the Irish public sector. This is because the Irish State is bound by such European decisions and as such anybody employed by the State benefitted from this decision for the last six years. However, the private sector was still governed solely by the 1997 Act which meant that a private sector employee would not benefit from these decisions until the legislation was amended. This amendment has now been made through the Workplace Relations Act 2015.

What Are the Changes?

The Workplace Relations Act 2015 has introduced the following changes:

  • Where an employee is absent from work then that absence will count as working time where it is covered by a medical certificate from a registered medical practitioner.
  • Where an employee is unable to take all or part of their annual leave during a leave year due to a medically certified illness then the employee will still be permitted to take that annual leave for up to 15 months after the leave year has ended.
  • If an employee’s employment is terminated during the 15 month period mentioned above the employee will be entitled to payment in lieu of any such outstanding annual leave.

When Do These Changes Take Effect?

The above changes are in force from 1 August 2015. However, these changes are not retrospective. Therefore, if an employee has been on sick leave before 1 August 2015 then they will not accrue annual leave over that time. However, employees will accrue annual leave over any period of certified sickness from 1 August 2015 onwards.

Potential Grey Areas

There are a number of potential grey areas in the wording of the legislation which might result in some key decisions and cases at tribunal down the line.

For example:

  • The legislation specifies that an employee will only accrue annual leave on a day where the employee was on ‘certified’ sick leave. The difficulty here could be a tribunal’s interpretation of this when viewed in conjunction with any internal company policies. For example, a lot of employers have a policy that an employee is not required to give a medical certificate for the first 3 days’ of absence. If so, does this mean that a tribunal will allow an employee to accrue annual leave for those first three days, even though they were uncertified, on the basis that the employer has stated that they don’t require a medical certificate?
  • What will the entitlement be where an employee goes AWOL but retrospectively provides a medical certificate to cover their absence?
  • What happens where the employer receives two conflicting medical reports, one saying the employee is certified as unfit to work and another saying that the employee is fully fit to work?

The above questions will likely only be answered should such matters be challenged before a tribunal. As such, whilst we know broadly what an employee’s entitlements are from 01 August 2015, we are as yet unclear how some of these grey areas will be interpreted by a tribunal.

Conclusion

This is an extremely important update for employers to be mindful of. As employees will now accrue annual leave whilst on sick leave, and will be permitted to take it for up to 15 months after the leave year, it could have major financial implications for a lot of employers. In general, a lot more employees will be entitled to take a lot more annual leave going forward as employees will now be able to accrue annual leave during times they never did before. It is strongly suggested that each employer carry out an internal audit to identify, over previous leave years, how many additional days annual leave would have been accrued by employees and how much, therefore, this might cost going forward. This should allow employers to reasonably identify any budget implications in addition to allowing employers to manage and coordinate workloads accordingly.

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The Basics of Business Process Management

Companies in today’s world find themselves faced with familiar challenges from years ago, and new ones that are unique to this modern “connected” world. How a company chooses to handle routine, everyday situations is what defines its business processes.

Consider a business with a large numberof employees. Eachstaff member has a different pay grade, pay schedule, and method of reporting his time. But it’s up to the company to make sure there’s a way for each employee to report his time, and for everyone to get paid accurately and when scheduled.

The way this is handled is a business process. And like any other system of tasks, there may be snags along the way that make the process inefficient. With just one or two employees, the process may be as simple as handing a timesheet to the payroll secretary, who cuts a check from the company’s checkbook on the spot. But when a company has 500 workers, things can get more complicated.

For example, a company may have a process in place that allows employees to enter their timesheets online. A supervisor has to approve the hours before the timesheets are sent to the payroll secretary. But what happens when the supervisor is out sick for a week? Or when the payroll secretary’s computer crashes on payday?

Business process management is a system of tools that help companies make sure their business processes are efficient, accurate, and failsafe. Whenever people interact with computers, there are multiple ways the situation can go awry. The communication between the two needs to be smooth, and it is best when there are workarounds in place. Managing this communication effectively is imperative.

How does business process management (BPM) work?

  1. IDENTIFY THE PROCESSES: It begins with first identifying the procedures already in place at the company. When a timesheet is entered online, where is that information routed? Does it go straight to the supervisor for approval, or does it go to multiple people in case the supervisor is unavailable? Who has access to the timesheet information when the employee realizes he made an error?

This first step may seem easy at first, but processes are usually made up of more steps and forks in the road than is obvious. And businesses don’t have just one process to identify. There are procedures for hiring new employees, for training new and existing workers, or for handling fire and other emergency situations. How workers are supposed to conduct daily business, whether participating in outside sales or manufacturing medications, requires multiple processes as well.

  1. ANALYZE THE PROCESSES: After identifying current procedures, the next step involves examining how well each process works. In the case of timesheets and paychecks, how often are paychecks sent out on time? How often are errors in timesheet entry occurring? Are supervisors approving hours in a timely fashion? When someone in the chain is absent, does the process come to a complete stop?

Understanding how well each process advances or hinders operations means that a company is now able to consider making changes. And it means the business knows exactly what needs to be focused on. If the problem in paycheck distribution is that there are too many employees flooding the computer system at the same time, then it wouldn’t make sense to focus on the payroll secretary’s end of the procedure. Similarly, if paychecks go out late every time a supervisor is absent, that step should be reevaluated.

  1. FIND SOLUTIONS: Now that the company knows where to start, the next step is to come up with feasible methods to fix the issues. Does it make sense to hire another payroll secretary? Should there be a chain of command where, if one supervisor is absent the computer sends the information to the next person in line? If the computers are flooded with employees entering data at the same time, should the network be improved?

 

  1. TEST SOLUTIONS: The testing phase of BPM involves implementing solutions to existing processes, or initiating new processes all together. Once that’s done, the steps essentially start over. The new or improved process needs to be identified and analyzed. Are paychecks being sent out on time now? When a supervisor was absent, did the new process reroute the data to a new person the way the company envisioned?

Most processes take a period of time to evaluate, which should be taken into consideration for the testing phase. And if a solution doesn’t work out, the cycle repeats again.

Managing business processes can be a time-consuming undertaking, but without it, companies may find that their business suffers. Just like maintaining a car or a person’s health, regular checkups should be part of the running the business.

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Emily Hunter has been writing about business topics for many years, and currently writes on behalf of the business process management specialists at TGO Consulting.  In her spare time, she cheers for Spirit of Atlanta, Carolina Crown and Phantom Regiment, creates her own sodas, and crushes tower defense games.Follow her on Twitter at @Emily2Zen

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Five Online Training Essentials

There’s a lot of buzz about online learning. From academic institutions embracing ‘blended learning’ to people sharing their knowledge via internet forums, online education is taking an increasingly central role in the way we train and educate people

As a small business person, it’s vital that you regularly upgrade your skills and those of your employees. Staying ahead of the competition is crucial for any business, but especially for the cash conscious small business, where tight margins make every penny count.

So, how do you determine the right online training program to maximize ROI and achieve long-term benefits for you and your employees?

Flexible

Online training should be flexible. You and your staff have busy schedules; your training should work with existing priorities, not dictate them.

The need for flexibility is why, without question, one of online training’s most valuable aspects is that it’s just that, online. You can do it from home or your office or wherever else your mobile signal carries.

While the flexibility is vital, you will need to find the program that’s right for you and your team. Some people need the occasional hard deadline to stay on track, while others are better with an open-ended approach.

One way to provide structure and incentives for learners while maintaining flexibility is using badges or other signals of achievement and completion. Many institutions have begun using this method, with the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) of the Republic of Ireland providing a good example of the badge system in action.

Engaging

Online learning MUST engage the students. For that matter, of course, so must in-class education. Anyone who has ever taught a class at Uni or run a corporate seminar will know how difficult maintaining engagement can be.

Online training has especial difficulty with this element, however. Many students can have difficulty staying focused and engaged with online training over the long-term. It is essential that the course you choose offers innovative means of keeping your students interested and engaged.

Engaging online learning can employ a variety of technologies to keep students invested in the program, including chat forums, Skype sessions, discussion threads, shared screens, and shared files with multiple users.

Gamification is another exciting development in learning that is especially useful in the digital environment. E=mz2’s game-based sales training, for example, offers interactive scenarios where students can apply the skills they’ve learned in class to real world scenarios.

However they do it, an online training system must keep the attention of its students if it is to achieve long-term educational gains.

Peer-Based/Community

Real world connections and training based in a community are another essential for online training success. A healthy, active community can be a huge advantage for students.

There seems to be a boundless source of help and assistance available via the internet. For all the trolls out there, and all their nastiness, it’s truly amazing how many people are willing to help total strangers out online. Chat programs, forums, wikis, and user-generated FAQs all serve to pool knowledge and create communities around subject matter.

There are many peer-managed/reviewed training programs available that provide collaborative and interactive online training. Open-sourced training programs like Codecademy, for example, leverage online communities to supplement their training software, using P2P engagement to enhance the user experience.

Standards

One of the biggest questions is whether your training program is really worthwhile? Who sets the standards for online training programs? While colleges and universities differ in their standards and curriculum, there are plenty of reviews and standards out there to ensure you have a good idea about the quality of education you’ll receive.

Online training programs sometimes, however, do not have the same sort of official accreditation as established physical institutions. It’s important that you search out a program’s accreditations, reviews, past graduates, and other information to ensure you have found a credible institution.

Fortunately, progress on standardization is being made. The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) standardizes the functionality of online training, helping to ensure that most online training programs are interoperable.

Cost

The cost of online training varies widely. From professional designations and university courses, to industry specific training courses and online forums, you can find training at any budget.

In the case of higher education institutions, you likely won’t save much money directly. Despite the fact that online education doesn’t put the same requirements on a physical campus, course providers from colleges and universities often offer a similar rate for courses as equivalent courses at a physical campus. That said, students can save in terms of travel time and expenses. Without any need to commute, buy lunch, or move their residence, students save money and reduce the impact of their schooling on their day-to-day life.

Academic institutions are only one option. There are hundreds of courses offered through companies helping you develop anything from industry specific skills to improving organizational structures to personal development.

There are also a ton the free courses. There are a proliferation of courses offered by companies, individuals or groups who simply want to share their knowledge. These represent sharing knowledge in the best traditions of the web.

When choosing the right course for your company, the essential question is not of money, it’s of value. Will the investment in money, and in time, achieve ROI for your business?

Conclusion

Online training is a revolution in learning. It brings the potential to learn about anything to anyone, anywhere. With constant innovations in the approaches to learning and idea creation, online training will continue playing an important role in the modern learning experience.

When choosing the course that’s right for your business, take the time to review it by the factors above. It may be cheap, but is it engaging or accredited? Is it flexible, with a great community, but no standards?

Before committing your valuable time and energy, be sure to review the program to make sure it’s right for you and your budget.

 

 

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