Productivity

How Tech Solves Managerial Problems In Small Business

January 31, 2022

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Before the digitalization of the business sector, it was impossible to comprehend how easily you can perform business tasks today.

Every business industry is drastically changing by integrating new and advanced tech tools. The way you communicate with clients and other employees is different from how it used to be. This is possible because we now have tools capable of solving our problems in a better way. Here are some ways in which technology is solving managerial problems in small businesses:

Resource Planning

Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, you will agree that managing your resources is a challenge. Especially when you are a start-up, you need to visualize your business process and create effective resource plans. Integrating an Enterprise Resource Planning tool into your business infrastructure is an efficient way to solve departmental problems including finance, sales, marketing, and accounting.

Reduce Workplace Stress Using Technology

January 31, 2022

Many business owners focus on reducing work-related stress to keep their employees active and healthy. This way, they can focus more on their work instead of taking leave.

Your employees should feel motivated while they are in the workspace. This way, they can evaluate and organize their life in a better way to ensure optimal work and life balance.

Why Should You Reduce Stress?

You should reduce workspace stress for numerous reasons. To know the importance of reducing stress, you must understand how it affects your employees’ physical and mental health. Consequently, it will impact business activities, hindering any progress towards long-term goals.

Reduce Stress with Technology

The main reason for workspace stress is a lack of productivity and focus. However, you can utilize technology for good, thereby reducing stressful work routines. Numerous applications are available to help your employees focus and manage their routine. Here, we will discuss some of those tools:

Project Management

Managing projects without any tools is a hectic task. Planning, prioritizing, and tracking tasks will take up a lot of your time. However, you can rely on different tools to perform these activities.

Integrate those tools, so your employees don’t feel burdened. You can choose between popular tools such as Asana and Trello.

Time Management

When your employees are unable to focus and perform tasks due to stress, they can’t practice effective time management. Eventually, this will add to their stress and pressure.

Tools such as Pomodoro are an amazing option to manage time in your workplace. When your employees meet deadlines, they can focus on other tasks or relax.

Collaboration

Other time-consuming activities involve collaborating and communicating with colleagues. You can streamline internal communication by integrating tools such as Slack, Google Drive, and Basecamp.

These tools will not only help your employees communicate with each other, but they can also share and receive files and track their tasks. Furthermore, these tools will keep your tasks and conversations organized for future reference.

Stress Relief Apps

You can introduce various stress reducing applications among employees. For instance, applications that reduce anxiety will keep your employees calm and happy.

You can share these applications that make it mandatory to relax for five minutes after working for an hour. Applications such as Mindwell and The Breathing App are popular for reducing stress.

Increasing workload and giving your employees a tough time will have a negative effect on your business. With excessive stress, your tasks will become counterproductive, and employees will lose their focus. If you want to improve employees’ productivity, start by reducing workspace stress with some of the suggestions above.

Using Technology To Maximize Your Business’ Efficiency and Communication

November 24, 2021

In today’s world, we have so much technology that we barely know what half of it does, let alone how to use it. We tend to stick to what we know and forgo the rest. However, once you understand how you can optimize the relevant tech in your business, you can radically improve efficiency and communication.

One easy way to increase your business’ efficiency and keep everyone on the same page is by using a group-based calendar.

Staff can see what the plans are for the day, who’s going to be out of the office, schedule meetings and appointments, and more. Everyone can plan their day around each other’s availabilities and come in every day knowing what to expect.

Shared drives, either on a network or through a hosting service like OneDrive for Business, can also save time and increase work efficiency.

Shared folders and drives can be divided by department (like Marketing) or use (like Scanned Documents), ensuring files can be accessed instantly in their current version by all allowed parties. You can also filter out who has access to certain folders.

If it would be a right fit for your business, it might be worth looking into a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

A CRM system does what it sounds like: it tracks your relationships with your clients. It does much more than digitize your client files; these are a powerful tool that can do a lot of heavy lifting in organizing your business, managing your clients and workload, marketing, collaboration between employees, and client satisfaction.

There are many, many webpages written on the topic and many CRM options to choose from at all different price points, so some independent research will benefit you here.

We use a CRM program at Tech Experts to track all of our clients’ service tickets, manage invoicing, build marketing campaigns, monitor statistics, and more.

Back to the tech that’s easier to implement. If you use a fax line, you may be able to switch to an email-to-fax/fax-to-email service or an online fax service.

These solutions function just like a regular fax line (make sure the provider you’re considering is HIPAA compliant, if needed) and are often cheaper than a traditional fax machine when compared. These faxes can be sent from anywhere, to multiple parties at once, and save on paper and equipment costs.

Many companies, including ours, use an online library (also known as a knowledge base) to store employee training and reference materials.

This makes it easy for both new and established employees to check procedures without having to interrupt another employee; they simply log in and find the article they need to complete their task.

Additionally, if someone does need to ask for help, they can be directly linked to detailed processes, saving time for everybody involved.

These also allow you to control who has access to what spaces. Services like this are typically browser-based, but something similar could be set up on shared network drives as well.

With the amount of people that are currently working remotely or people who will be working remotely in the future, communication is key.

Not only can these help with communication inside of your business, but also assist in communication with your customers.

Modern Utilization Of Tech In Schools & Workplaces

October 29, 2021

Everywhere you look now, there is some type of technology in use and nearly every industry takes advantage of it. Between food delivery apps, the capability to review your accounts online, or the self-scan check-out lanes at the grocery store, we use technology every day and it’s all part of our common experience.

While we may overlook a lot of it in our daily lives, the right tech can make your professional life much easier and efficient. Convenience is one of the main reasons we innovate, right?

One way you can bring helpful tech into the work setting is by using a company-wide chat. You can have a group messaging system like Discord or Slack, but even a group chat over text messages can be a helpful addition in the right workplace.

A company-wide chat allows you to have conversations as needed and communicate with minimal interruptions. Questions, updates, and requests can be reviewed, then responded to a timely matter or addressed right away. It creates a “paper trail” as well, so past messages can be referenced easily.

With chat, you are able to touch base with your peers, employees, or bosses anywhere and anytime. Instead of having ten people trying to reach the same person all at once, they can send them a message and have a reply almost instantly. Unlike email, chat is less likely to be buried in conversation chains, coupons, and other mail.

Another good way to use modern technology is by utilizing remote access. Being able to work remotely is a huge time-saver and a great help for online collaboration, in both schools and the workplace. It allows us to work from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Remote learning is also a very good use of new technology because it allows students to work from home and have all of the same access to resources as if they were sitting in the classroom in front of a teacher. For working professionals, it’s the same – they can complete their work from anywhere as if they were sitting at their desk in the office.

Another great way that technology has influenced the workplace for the better is automation in repetitive tasks. Some examples are network monitoring, notifications, emails, file-sharing, and time management.

Automation allows employees to focus on critical tasks instead of repetitive, time-consuming ones that aren’t necessarily as important. It also prevents some things from falling through the cracks by sending reminders or by entirely handling a task without human intervention.

Automation can also take on many forms, and you may already be benefiting from it. One example of automation that we use at Tech Experts is that our incoming service tickets, sent via email, are automatically disseminated to the right team. If this was not set-up, someone would have to manually sort every ticket that came in. The programs and apps that you already use in your business may have options to make your life easier through automation, such as email rules in Outlook.

Current technology has come a long way. Copiers, calculators, and faxes used to be amazing, and now, some of us can work entirely off of the phone in our pocket. Sometimes, it may seem overwhelming, but even small tweaks – like email rules – can have a big impact. Embracing the efficiency of tech can give you freedom and time back so you can make the most of your work hours.

Did You Know… Alexa Doubles Up As A PA?

June 22, 2021

Alexa is great for many things. She always reminds us when it’s time to take the dinner out of the oven. She gives an accurate weather forecast. And she definitely has a good grasp of our music tastes.

But did you know she can be even more useful than that? She can help with your work life and make you more productive.
If you give Alexa access to your contacts and calendar, she can make it faster to call colleagues, schedule meetings, and find someone’s contact details and email address.

She can also give you reminders for appointments and meetings, which is perfect when your head is down and you’re losing track of time.
You can also use a great service called Zapier to connect your Alexa to hundreds of other apps – some of which you may use for work already.

What are you waiting for?

Whether you’re working from home or the office, making Alexa work harder for you will make your life easier.

How Much Of Your Business Can Be Automated?

May 25, 2021

Automation is transforming the way the world works.

Businesses of all sizes are embracing huge advances in technology to help them get things done on autopilot.

Implemented well, automation will help reduce your staff’s workload, increase efficiency, reduce costs, boost the quality of customer service, and help you use new data and insights to optimize performance.

The benefits will be felt by customers as well. As your competitors start to transform their businesses through automation, expectations can quickly change. If you don’t adapt, you risk falling behind and losing customers.

Here are three of the main areas that are ripe for automation in many businesses. [Read more…] about How Much Of Your Business Can Be Automated?

Goodbye 2020! Here’s How To Boost Productivity In 2021

January 29, 2021

What a year we’ve left behind. Thankfully.

Although we didn’t have control over many of the negatives, there were some positive changes we could implement, especially with our businesses.

Many businesses now have people working from home on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. We’ve seen offices downsize and change. More flexible locations and schedules are being implemented.

As much as no one asked for this, it’s been great to see how many businesses that we work closely with have adapted and become more flexible.

This flexibility often results in a more motivated, engaged workforce who really appreciate the ability to work different hours and often work from home (WFH). [Read more…] about Goodbye 2020! Here’s How To Boost Productivity In 2021

Is Your Network Stealing Your Staff’s Time?

September 30, 2020

Jason Cooley is Support Services Manager for Tech Experts.

At some point in the last six months, maybe you’ve been on a Zoom call or chatting away in Microsoft Teams and wondered what would have happened if Covid had come along in the 1980s or even 1990s.

Let’s be honest… the world would have totally shut down. Business would have completely ground to a halt. We couldn’t have done the last six months without the amazing technology that we now totally take for granted.

Depending how old you are, what we can do easily today was literally the stuff of dreams just 20 years ago.

But as much as great IT has made working from home easier and enabled many businesses to keep going, we also must remember that bad IT can still be a massive time thief.

We’ve all become so reliant on computers that we’ve forgotten how to perform simple tasks ourselves. And we go into panic mode when they stop doing what we expect of them.

Most businesses find that even the most committed staff in the world will jump at the chance for a little bit of office down time. So, when computers aren’t doing their job that’s a great opportunity to down tools and do very little.

If they’re in the office, people sit around chatting or go home early, while every second your business is losing money.

That’s not to say that all employees want to take the easy way out. There will be others who like a challenge and want to try their best to make things better, using their own limited IT knowledge or good old Google to guide them.

Unfortunately, IT set ups are complex. And if you don’t really know what you’re doing you could end up digging a far bigger hole for you and your entire organization.

Well-meaning staff, no matter how lovely and helpful they might be, can cause more problems than you could ever imagine.

Just like you wouldn’t want someone who did a biology class 20 years ago to perform open heart surgery on you, you really don’t want someone who’s just watched a couple of YouTube tutorials fixing your business’s computer system.

This is what we do, day in, day out. And we’re the local experts.

If you want to ensure that your workforce doesn’t grind to a halt when things stop running smoothly, it pays to invest in experts who can:

a) Stop most things from going wrong in the first place, and
b) When they do go wrong, get you back on track quickly and reliably

That means minimal downtime, less chatting and more getting things done.

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