management Archives - Page 3 of 34

What’s The Deal With ISO Certifications?

September 28, 2017 by Guest Author

By Kayla Matthews

In the business world, there are a variety of conflicting opinions about International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications.

Some consider ISO as only suitable for big businesses, while offering smaller businesses little more than a marketing tool.

In reality, many ISO standards are generic by design to accommodate any type or size of business. The flexibility of ISOs can contribute to improved customer service, reduced operational costs and increased international market access for businesses of all sizes.

Due to significant up-front cost and gradual impact, the topic of ISO certifications can be polarizing in business.

However, in many cases, ISO certification is worth the time and cost. Core Business Solutions points out on its website that ISO certifications have had a bad reputation with small business owners for some time, yet the organization has seen literally hundreds of small businesses benefit from taking the plunge.

Here are some ways in which ISO certifications can be genuinely helpful for a business’ overall growth and reputation.

Demonstration of a Quality Management System

Before customers decide to do business with a company, it’s prudent to analyze that company’s management system. A cluttered and disorganized management system can indicate perpetual missed deadlines and lack of communication. ISO standards provide consumers confidence that the products they’re using are safe.

ISO certification provides customers peace of mind regarding the management protocols, confirming there is an effective quality management system set up and active, with its processes and procedures under control. Businesses can take time to educate customers about the misconception that ISO is simply an effective marketing tool, and emphasize how ISO certification provides the basis to develop, manage and grow a business.

Especially in a business landscape where many competitors have ISO certifications, being certified is also an important way to keep pace with the competition, as well as improving customer service by providing additional consumer confidence.

Reduced Operational Costs

A great aspect of ISO certification is its tendency to uncover processes that can be further optimized, helping eliminate waste and cut costs.

Advanced checkups or certain management systems and protocols can be comparable to the ISO registrar price, so many businesses consider the rigorous certification process highly beneficial to spotting inadequacies within their daily operations.

Increased International Market Access

Small businesses typically don’t have the resources to focus on international markets. An ISO 9001 certification can help immensely with international exposure, since ISO is recognized throughout the world. With more than 1 million organizations in 175 countries using ISO certifications, the process provides recognition and trust within markets not typically associated with small businesses. ISO certification allows international consumers to verify the quality of partners and suppliers, making international partnerships and cross-consumer interest a reality.

Despite some stigma among small businesses that ISO certification is overly expensive, difficult and time-consuming, the resources and time will result in a positive reputation with an evident quality management system and reduced operational costs.

The result is increased access to international markets, as well as providing consumers with added confidence when doing business with your organization.

ISOs are here to stay, so businesses would be prudent to take advantage of their plethora of benefits.

About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.

3 Reasons Why Proper Project Management Can’t Be Overlooked

August 11, 2017 by Thomas

No matter your business size, you know that managing various aspects is crucial.

With that being the case, how would you assess your company’s project management skills?

If you’re running a one-person show, you know that the project decisions fall on your shoulders. While you may get a few wrong, it is imperative the bulk of project management decisions you make come out on top.

When you have many employees, finding the right one to direct project management is key. By having the right minds in the right places, you can make the right decisions time and time again.

So, is proper project management a staple in your business world?

Review Your Project Management Efforts Going Forward

So that your project management efforts are always moving forward, remember these keys:

Knowing who to pass responsibilities to

Whether you make the final call or a manager does, make sure the right person or persons end up with the projects.

For instance, you have a big customer service initiative coming up that you’ve been waiting to unveil. The one catch is that the project is going to need some heavy marketing, especially in the area of social media. While the individual you’d like to head the campaign is great at many facets, he or she is not strong with social media.

So, do you still give them the keys to the project despite the social media shortcomings? Or, better yet, do you trust them to find the person who gets social media to collaborate on the initiative?

The answer depends on if you trust that lead person to do whatever it takes to promote the project. If you do, there should be no worries moving ahead. If you don’t, you may need to intervene at some point.

The bottom line is to know the strengths and weaknesses of those you put in charge to execute any project.

Some people can think on their own two feet and will not need guidance. Others, meantime, may need some extra nurturing to get the job done that you’ve entrusted them with. This can at times include finding the best product support.

Prioritizing the Right Projects

Depending on the number of projects your business has on its plate at any given time, things can get quite busy. That said a busy company tends to be a healthy one.

With that in mind, always do your best to review each project and where it falls on the importance totem pole. To do otherwise is putting your company in a dicey position. Without the right project structure, you can end up with a free-for-all on your hands before you know it.

In prioritizing those projects, look at the following:

Customer needs and expectations
Which projects have the greatest potential for financial return?
Those projects your team can handle with nary a concern

The better you do at prioritizing projects, the faster you become a consumer favorite.

Getting Customer Feedback

Although you make the final decisions, taking customer input is important.

For example, a new project you unveiled recently was a huge hit with the bulk of customers. In not resting on your laurels, get some feedback from customers on why they liked it and how it benefited them.

On the other end of the spectrum, another project you recently put in motion met with muted applause. Customer feedback is essential on why this project did not work as others have.

Once you have all your feedback, both positive and negative that is, be sure to meet with your staff and discuss it. In doing this, you are better prepared when you move on to upcoming projects.

Often, top business owners and project managers learn from yesterday and act today.

In dealing with many projects and people at once, you have your hands full as the company owner.

Step back for a few moments and assess how things are going.

If you’ve for the most part made the right hires and the correct decisions, your company should be doing fine.

So, does that sound like you and your business?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas writes about business topics on the web.

Run Your Small Business without Interruptions

July 21, 2017 by Thomas

In running your small business operation, you have a lot on your plate. That said the last thing you want to deal with on an on-going basis is interruptions.

While some of those interruptions are all but unavoidable, others are preventable.

Take for instance when you are being bombarded with phone calls on a daily basis. Yes, many of those can be customer calls ranging from questions to comments on your brand. Others, meantime, can be nothing short of a nuisance.

If you’re wondering how to find out who’s calling you on a regular basis, it is actually easier than you may think.

There are services out there that allow you to track down where the call is coming from. In doing so, you can determine if it is worthy of your time or not.

In the event you continue to receive calls from the same number or numbers, you can end up blocking them. By doing so, you remove one more obstacle to avoiding daily interruptions

Calls Are Not the Only Issue

While unwanted phone calls can put a crimp in your daily plans, they are not the only issue you must deal with.

Whether in business for years or getting started in the small business world, keep it moving.

Among some of the interruptions to best try and avoid:

Email overload – Have you ever stopped to count how many emails fill your inbox on a daily basis? If you did, there’s a good chance you would be quite surprised by the volume. It is best when you have some down time to go through and sort those that you need to receive on a regular basis.

Customers coming in – In a business where customers come in on a regular basis, you have a fine line to balance. On one hand, you want to make sure customers feel welcome when they enter your business. On the other side, you can’t afford to have disruptions that keep you from doing your duties as head of the business. Make sure you find that happy medium.
Employee distractions – Though you don’t want to babysit, some workers need more direction. In such cases, stress to those individuals the importance of time management. It only takes one or two employees to throw off the production schedule for a small business. If this occurs, some customers may become upset that they’re not getting what they want on time.

Keeping Your Focus Too

In owning a company, you have to make sure your time management skills are exemplary for others under you.

This means making sure you delegate responsibility when necessary.

For some small business owners, they try and do everything under the sun on their own. As a result, they can end up dropping the ball more times than not.

Your best bet is to hire the right people, responsible individuals that is. When you do, you will feel better about assigning tasks that you can’t do or have time for.

Last, don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Remember, some of the best small business leaders out there have made their share of gaffes over time. What separates them from the losers is they learned from their mistakes.

So, are you ready to become an even better small business owner today?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

Is Your Small Business on Solid Financial Ground?

April 28, 2017 by Thomas

Does anything scare you when it comes to managing your small business?

If you are like many other small business owners, you know all too well how things can change in a heartbeat.

At one point and time, things are humming along. Take a look a couple of months down the road and you’re nearing or in the red.

So, how do you go about doing all you can to keep your small business on solid financial ground?

While there are many ways to approach this, some work better than others.

Are You on Top of Your Business Needs?

To do your best to keep your small business running along, file away these tips:

Expenditures

One area of major importance is of course your office expenditures.

Are you spending too much money, money that can be saved with some ingenuity on your part?

Always look to see where you can cut costs without cutting performance.

Areas to scale back on include supplies, transportation, and how many hours the office is open.

With that last one, letting employees work from home one day a week can lessen your need to be open five days a week. How much could you save with an extra day a week having the office closed?

Also, go back and review what you spend for office supplies.

In many instances, you are not doing needed things like recycling or buying supplies in bulk.

And when it comes to transportation needs, think how you use any office vehicles.

For instance, if you have to make deliveries to and/or meet with customers, think about how you schedule them.

Try and get with several customers all in a period of time the same day, avoiding running in and out of the office.

Growth

Understanding when to grow your small business is important.

While you might be timid, know that increasing your company’s capacity can be what the doctor ordered.

In doing this, you might need some fast cash for your small business.

If you do need some cash infusion, be sure to research the options available to you.

Knowing where that money will be coming from, what to expect in return etc. are both quite important.

Take the time to think about any growth plans.

The worst thing you could do is rush into an expansion. This would be one in which you were not prepared on many fronts.

Security

Even if wanting to grow moving forward, don’t fall asleep on your company’s security.

As an example, has your company ever faced a security breach? If not, consider yourself lucky.

Too many companies over the last decade have in fact suffered security breaches. They can be even more impactful when it is the small business owner taking the hit.

To keep on solid financial ground, be sure to invest in whatever security needs are necessary.

From your online efforts to what you do as a small business owner offline, never think it can’t happen to you.

So, as you move forward this year, do you consider your small business to be on solid financial ground?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

4 Tips to Attract the Best Employees

December 16, 2016 by Thomas

In running your business, are you doing everything conceivable in order to attract the best employees?

As the New Year draws ever closer, now would be a good time to assess how you are going about bringing in new talent.

Keep in mind that hiring such talent is not simply the result of placing a help wanted advertisement online and/or in the newspaper.

Not only do you have to get qualified candidates through the door for the interview process, but you then have to determine which one or ones are best positioned to help your business moving forward. As you might imagine, there are no 100 percent guarantees when you hire someone. They could be one of the best workers ever to come through your doors or one of the biggest mistakes you will end up making.

That said do you know how best to go about attracting the top employees?

Incentives Can Go a Long Way

So that you are able to have the best odds of bringing in and keeping to-flight employees, remember these four tips:

Workplace – First and foremost, do you have a workplace environment that is second-to-none? For many workers in today’s workplace, having a place to call home for many years is not the norm. In many cases, employees will use one job to eventually get to another one. In doing so, they may turn out to be great workers in their time at a place, though they could also turn out to be real duds. By offering a workplace environment that is inclusive and makes people feel welcome, you stand a better chance of getting solid employees, employees willing to go the extra mile for you and ultimately stick around;
Incentives – Offering your employees incentives will be a great means to keep them around, not to mention make sure they are happy during their time with you. For example, solid group benefits for employees are a great place to start. Given how expensive medical insurance is becoming for many individuals these days, paying for a sizable portion of their medical needs oftentimes proves a big help for both you and the employee. If you’re worried about the costs becoming too astronomical for you, shop around for the best medical plans out there. In doing so, you can oftentimes find a plan that is financially cost-effective for you when all is said and done. Other incentives include not only increases in salary over time, but also the ability to grow within the company (see more below).

Don’t Overlook Growth Importance

Growth – When it comes to growth, many workers will state that having a chance to climb up the corporate ladder is important to them. Without those opportunities for growth, some employees will feel like they are simply going through the motions each day, something that is a problem for you and your customers. Be sure to make growth opportunities one of your key offerings when sitting down and interviewing candidates;
Honesty – Lastly, don’t you like it when employees are honest with you? Assuming the answer is yes, you need to return that ounce of respect. If you don’t, you can lose people (both figuratively and literally) before you know it. Be honest with workers when there are problems, be they with the individuals themselves or the company in general. If you see cutbacks coming down the road, don’t wait until the last minute to inform those impacted by them. Also speak honestly in grading one’s performance level. If you’re not honest with them, you hurt both them and your business overall.

As a business owner, how do you go about attracting the best employees to keep your company churning along?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

10 Mac Apps for Blogging Productivity

April 6, 2016 by Jessy Troy

Running a blog is so much more work than people assume. The assumption is the bigger it gets, the more work is involved. But that isn’t close to being true; building it to a point where people are regularly visiting is just as much work as maintaining it once it gets there.

For some people it becomes a full time job, and one that doesn’t pay nearly enough for the first couple of years.

You have to squeeze everything you can out of every single moment spent working on your blog. Not just on the content, but general management such as social, reader engagement, research, outreach, SEO, marketing, hosting issues, backups, and more. For Mac users, these tools can help make the process of running a blog infinitely easier to handle, and save a lot of time.

WriteRoom

Writing is easy. Writing without distractions if you are like me is next to impossible without help. There is so much waiting just in a browser window to pull our attention away, and before long a post that should have taken thirty minutes is verging on ninety. WriteRoom creates a fullscreen writing page that is sparse, simple, and made to force your brain to behave.

It has a black screen with green text to reduce eye strain, and nothing else that might cause you to look away from the words you are writing. It costs $9.99, but it practically pays for itself with the time you save. And time is money, as they say.

First Site Guide lists more writing tools you can find handy! That list is pretty impressive!

Writer

Want something a bit more thorough? Writer is another MacOS application that is also compatible with Apple and Android mobile and tablet devices.

It creates a clean, white page with black text, and has additional features like Night Mode and an integrated document library. It costs more as a consequence, at $19.99. But if you want Swipe Preview controls and device syncing on their own cloud, it is a great deal.

Blogo

If you have WordPress and want to knock a few bucks off the price, Blogo is $14.99 and has many of the same features. You can moderate, reply to and delete comments, create shortcuts, and manage multiple blogs at once.

Plus the post scheduling, and image resizing/editing that could give it a real edge over other apps. It might still be a little too basic for some, but if you want a clean blogging platform that has plenty of functions, this should fit the bill nicely.

Todoist

Todoist is the tool I use most in both my personal and professional life. At first sight it is a basic to do list. But if you look deeper, it is a whole organizational system. Create projects and build task lists, giving them deadline, recurring dates, and priority. Set reminders, and sync across all devices.

I have a project set for content ideas, and build my editorial calendar right in the app so I can keep it organized with all other tasks. It is a real lifesaver, and the premium cost annually is peanuts.

SnagIt

This is one of my new favorite tools, even if it comes with a bit more of a price tag than I am used to paying. SnagIt is a screenshot and screencast capture app that lets you effortlessly create visual content to share with your readers. I make screencaps, infographics and tutorial videos, which can be edited and enhanced right there in the app.

It costs $49.95, with additional S&H if you choose to get a boxed copy as well as the digital download. But it is more advanced than free to cheaper screencapture tools, and more appropriate if you want to keep content at a pro level.

You can backup all your screenshots and screencasts either locally or in the cloud. The latter option is recommended by me personally because I am a fan of storing all my work in the cloud and access the database from my business trips, home, work, etc. You can learn more about cloud storage here.

Canva

Infographics are amazing, and they to this day provide me with the greatest traffic and social engagement of any other form of visual content I use. But man are they time consuming to create! I can spend literally weeks trying to create a thorough and high quality infographic with a lot of information, especially when presenting case studies alongside statistics.

At least it used to take that long, until I gave in and tried Canva. Originally I had thought all generator tools were pointless because they made cookie cutter content that would be less effective. But I was wrong; Canva is a fantastic tool that makes infographic creation faster and the results even higher quality.

You can even use it to create posters to decorate your workplace for more motivation and inspiration.

Toggl

Finally, the most important way to remain productive is to properly manage your time. That means managing your breaks, as well. Toggl is a super simple time tracking tool that works on the Pomodoro technique.

You work for a stretch, then take a break. Work for another stretch, then take another break. It will make you more productive, and keep you from burning out.

Leechblock

If you need to write in a browser but want to block distracting websites, Leechblock is a pretty good option. It provides customizable controls that let you either block sites like Facebook and YouTube during times you should be working, or blocks them after you have spent a certain amount of time there.

As a self confessed addict who can get lost down the Reddit and YouTube rabbit holes on a daily basis, this has been an important productivity tool in my own life. It is available as a Firefox addon

StayFocusd

Similar to Leechblock, this is an extension for Chrome that works in much the same way. What makes it handy on its own is the ability to set the “Nuclear Option”. This will block all sites you have listed as restricted for a period of one or more hours, depending on your preferences.

You can also set it to not allow you to switch it off until the end of the block time, by not letting you access the extensions menu in your settings.

Desk PM

Desk PM won the Best App of 2014 award, and for good reason. You can write from the first note taking process to the publishing and monitoring step right from the app, with compatibility with several blogging platforms.

They have basic tools like word and character count that you would expect from any word processing tool, but with greater features such as post scheduling. At $19.99 it is a really impressive blogging tool. Especially given the high price tag for platforms dealing with high volume blogs.

Any tools to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!