Tag Archives: technology

Essential Technologies for Every Small-Medium Sized Businesses

Technology has significant effects on business operations. It encompasses a wide range of hardware, software and services that keep companies running and enhance business operations. Technology has both tangible and intangible benefits that will help you make money and produce the results your customers demand. So what are the key essential technologies MUST-HAVEs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)?

1. Hardware

The three key hardware required are:

  1. Computers – Laptops will be a better option as compared to a desktop due to its mobility. It may also be a good thing that built-in camera is becoming a standard feature in all laptops as it will be easier for “face-to-face” web-conferencing and video chat. This will also help reduce travel costs because businesses can set up virtual meetings and distribute data without the need to be in the same room.
  2. Mobile Phones – Smart mobile phones will also help to get communication and information on the go. There are also a lot of mobile apps which allow you to do almost just as much as you can in front of a laptop.
  3. Printer / Scanner – Unfortunately, we have yet to become a ‘paperless’ office and still require some documents to be printed. So a multi-function printer / scanner / copier will do just fine. A fax feature will soon be no longer required. In fact, it will be good if your multi-function printer has Bluetooth so that you can print directly from your laptop and mobile phones. No more messy cables.

You may wish to add a media tablet to your list, especially those who are always on the go and/or need to do make a lot of presentations to clients.

2. Cloud Technology

The cloud computing means programs are “rented” or “borrowed” and are not directly installed on computers, instead, these are accessed via the internet. Take for example Gmail or Yahoo mail services. You will not be confined to your office computer and you will be able to edit files on any smartphone, tablet or computer with web connectivity. SMEs can save money by switching over to cloud systems as you do not need any regular IT support staff but just the occasional contract support to ensure that your hardware is maintained. In addition, the entire businesses and employees can run their computer tools as online “rented” products and plug into that cloud every day to do their computer work. You also do not have to worry about backups as the cloud service does it for you.

Cloud computing involves these major premises:

  1. Online File Storage (e.g. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox) – No more walking around with USB or having different versions of the same file on different computers
  2. Software as a Service (SaaS) – More detailed below
  3. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – Refers to the on-demand delivery of tools and services that allow SaaS applications to be coded and deployed
  4. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – Covers the on-demand delivery of virtualised servers, storage, networking and operating systems

Given the productivity, speed to deploy and cost savings as well as the demand for anytime, anywhere, any-device mobile access to applications, it had been predicted that in five years time, 95% of businesses will be operating in the cloud.

3. Software (including SaaS)

Software is the program that runs in your hardware. Software as a Service (SaaS), is a delivery model in which applications are hosted and managed in a service provider’s data centre, paid for on a subscription basis and accessed via a browser over an internet connection. SaaS solutions offer a number of advantages over on-premises deployments, including minimal administration and maintenance, anywhere access, and in many cases improved communication and collaboration.

There are SaaS solutions built specifically for business functions and these SaaS providers specializes in everything from productivity and project management, to security, application monitoring, network monitoring, customer service, help desk and more.

Depending upon the nature of your business and industry, there will be software that will be of higher priority than others. You will need to determine what they are, compare them and find the best solution for your business.

Some of the key software / SaaS that every SMEs should have:

  1. Email – Gmail is one famous example of a SaaS mail provider
  2. Accounting* – Unless you are running a charity, the sole aim of any business is to create profit. Hence, it is important that you have a good accounting system to manage your business’s financial transactions
  3. Customer Relationship Management* – a tool to manage your customers and leads
  4. Project Management – a productivity tool that allows you to manage all your tasks and collaborate with your team members
  5. People Management – If people are indeed your assets, you should have some form of system to better manage them, even if this means outsourcing this support function out. This is more than just payroll – it should also include employee details, training records, performance levels, skills, etc.

*Depending upon how sophisticated you need it to be, there are ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) accounting software which may also help you to manage your customer billings too. You can also consider having some Business Intelligence & Analytics software to help you understand your data.

4. Mobile Apps

Similar to software, this depends on your industry as to whether mobile apps/functionality are important. In fact, due to the high mobility demand, it is not surprising that there is a mobile app version of the above mentioned software.

SMEs can also consider creating mobile apps for their business as an extension to their website. Mobile apps can be a cool marketing tool that will allow you to engage with your customers in a whole new way. Some of the biggest benefits of mobile apps for businesses include:

  • Brand reinforcement
  • Increase loyalty and visibility
  • Increase accessibility
  • Increase exposure across mobile devices
  • Connect with on-the-go consumers who now can:
  • Access easily to your product and services information
  • Get notifications of your business’ special events, launches, etc.
  • Have one-touch access to your contact information
  • Get directions to your location from wherever they are

Overall, mobile technologies improve communication between field and office employees, as well as with customers. Mobility delivers greater productivity and better customer service. This can potentially translate into significantly higher revenue and profits for mobile-savvy enterprises.

5. Social Media

Social media is an important part of growing your business, whether you are promoting a new product release, making valuable connections and/or engaging your customers. These include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and Foursquare / Swarm. Before you dive into social media, think about what you want to get out of it – Who are your target audience?; Is this an appropriate channel to reach them?; What content do they care about?; How much time and resources can you dedicate this to?; How do you track success?; etc.

Once you are clear with your marketing strategy and that social media is part of it, consider using a social media dashboard (e.g. Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialFlow, SproutSocial, IFTTT, etc.) as you can use one interface to post a single message across multiple platforms at once. Some of these will also allow you to view messages and comments from your customers, allowing you to engage and interact in real time. This is an effective way of providing additional customer service and letting your customers know that you care about what they have to say. As you move through your day, you can access your dashboard from your mobile devices to easily respond to any comments.

6. Website and SEO

Telephone directories are obsolete and people tend to search the internet for information as part of their buying process. Hence, it is important that your website gives your customers and potential customers the first right impression. Ensure that your website looks great on mobile devices and that SEO is set up in your website. SEO (search engine optimization) will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

To remain competitive, SMEs must remain constantly connected. With mobile devices containing the best productivity software and apps, professionals can move from the office, to home, to a client’s conference room, without clients and colleagues ever realizing they are not seated behind a desk. It is also imperative to ensure your providers (both for Internet and cloud) are reliable so that you can focus more on building your business, working with your customers and less worrying about whether your data is secure and updated or your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn pages are running properly.

Article republished from LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140818001947-5398941-essential-technologies-for-every-small-medium-sized-businesses

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Just add Tech – Include Technology into your Learning Strategy

Just add Tech – Include Technology into your Learning Strategy – The key trends that everyone is talking about these days are cloud technology, data analytics and mobile technology. There are many factors pushing towards these trends such as availability and accessibility of mobile phones; the increased mobility of workforce; the increased skills and education of the workforce; the move away from spreadsheets; more HR getting into the strategic role; skills shortages; the need for staff retention, engagement and development and so on.

So what do you need to do now in order not fall behind the competition? Where do you even begin to include technology into your learning strategy?

For a start, we need to look at both the present & future states of your organisation. Where is your organisation at now and where does it want to go in the future? What are its future business goals? Your learning strategy should be aligned to it. You will also need to consider the current and future states of the following:


Technology Infrastructure

The first step is to examine your organization’s existing technology infrastructure. To put it plainly, some organizations may not have the technology to offer the most advanced technology. You may know what your organization is capable of, but even if this is the case, you should always get your IT department involved in the planning stages of your learning strategy to avoid any nasty surprises later. For an example in this organisation of about 1,200 employees, it was a rude surprise to find out later after the e-learning programs had been rolled out that Flash updates need to be requested by employees calling into Helpdesk individually! Or you will need to write a business case to have Flash updated for the whole organisation! In another example, training records and e-learning courses need to be sent to the vendor for an initial mass upload but sharing documents through Dropbox or any cloud file hosting service to an external party is against IT policy. In other words, to make your life a little easier, you will need to find out your IT department’s security, infrastructure, IT support levels and availability, business objectives, future directions, etc. that may impact on your learning strategy.

Employees

While you’re looking at the organization’s current technology, take the time to also take a realistic look at your employees. The question you want to answer is not whether your employees are ready for technological advances in learning, but rather what kind of technological advances are they ready for.

Depending on the industry, age and nature of the organization, you may find that your audience is already highly technically savvy and may expect the Learning & Developing (L&D) team to provide them with stimulating technological learning interventions. On the other hand, your employees may be resistant to blogging or watching a training course via a synchronous web conference. Either way, your job is to determine just how far you can go.

Policies & Procedures

You will also need to review your current policies and procedures. Are there anything that needs to be changed? How does your management feel about work-life balance, e-learning and m-learning? How are you going to manage when online training needs to be conducted? Will these be during office hours or after office hours? With all these new technologies and mobile phones as well as with everyone and everything accessible 24/7, how are you going to draw the line? Are you going to be like the French and put a legal ruling in place that says employees are to shut off work devices and avoid work emails after going home for the day?

The L&D team & technology

As part of the L&D role, you need to plan, organise, deliver and evaluate the learning & development activities of the organisation. There are several tools and systems available to assist and streamline your L&D processes – from authoring tools to develop your online courses to the different Learning Management System (LMS) to administer, report and evaluate your online programs.

Considering the different delivery methods of training, be it face-to-face, electronic learning (e-learning) and mobile learning (m-learning), does your L&D team have the capability to develop the materials on your own in-house or do you need to outsource this?

You will also need the right LMS to provide a great way to track and report grades, completions and performance metrics. In fact, if your organization is ready for the latest and greatest, can you have a cloud-based LMS so that your learners as well as your team are not restricted by location? Can your LMS collect the key metrics that you need as well as generate meaningful reports? Can your LMS can be a Social Learning Management System (SLMS) that provides for online interaction and social networking or, if you plan to work on rapid development, will a content management system (LCMS) work better for you? Regardless of your choice, make sure it is the right choice for the direction and technology you want to deploy.

You can also consider including technology in classroom courses. For example, blogs, discussion threads, and social networks can be used as both before and after class exercises. Trainers may be able to gain insight in the learners’ knowledge levels both before and after the intervention, as well as learn how well the training affects behavioural change.

Look for opportunities to create online applications for courses, such as quick reference guides, games, short knowledge based modules, testing, podcasts and videos that can be downloaded and viewed after or before class. Methods like blogs or social networking are also great ways to get learners involved and keep them involved. The question is determining how to begin using these applications.

Overall, as you look for ways to integrate technology into the learning strategy, you will also be able to create a culture that is open to technology and at the same time, help the organisation stay competitive as well as retain and engage with your people.

Article republished from LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140803125130-5398941-just-add-tech-include-technology-into-your-learning-strategy?trk=prof-post

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Alignment

“Alignment” is a hot topic in management circles for years, especially because of its importance to the running of an organisation. Alignment involves setting goals, strategies and processes that will support the achievement of an organisation’s mission, vision and values. Without good alignment to strategy, every bit of forward motion is a struggle. With everyone working together towards the same objectives, your company can execute strategy faster and with more flexibility. Essentially, alignment of goals strengthens your leadership, creates organisational agility and improved productivity and results.

However … alignment is easier said than done as it involves a lot of effort and coordination and it is complex, especially in this constant changing environment.


CHALLENGES
Faced with a dynamic environment of fierce competition, shrinking budgets, skills shortages, and heavy price pressures, businesses must do more with less and execute on strategy with razor-sharp focus or be left behind.

While we all know that goals and goal alignment are important – in a lot of organisations, these are just not getting executed the way it should be. There are often cases where goal alignment practices, such as talent management, are used to a point, but there is a big breakdown when it comes to execution. The effort just does not seem to stick or management may not be using it for some reason (e.g. it is too hard, it is time consuming, they do not know how to use them, there are more pressing issues to deal with, etc.). For instance in the area of talent management, has job analysis and assessment validation been completed to help enhance the predictive power of selection tools so that the right people are recruited to advance with the organisation way into the future? Are roles, specially the critical ones, clearly defined in the organisation? Or are the training employees are sent to, aligned to their roles and will help them reach their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)?

Technology – Friend or foe?
Although technology is a huge assistance in the process of alignment, communication and talent management, some of the initial challenges faced will be that there are a lot of products and systems in the market to choose from and that there is also the perceived risk of letting go of legacy systems. In addition, there is also a need to align the different systems within the organisation as it is likely that each department or division may have their own system. Moreover, how often do we hear problems of systems that are not “talking” to each other; there is duplication of data; information are not consistent; there is huge set up costs; the systems no longer meet the current or future requirements of the organisation and so on.

Some other issues that may crop up include not having a technical / IT person from the start in the sourcing of vendors and products, thus, the internal IT limitations, requirements and support are not ironed out in the beginning. The project may by poorly scoped that it opens the door for misinterpretation and work falling between the cracks. The project may be spearheaded by just one department without the full buy-in from other internal stakeholders. There may be poorly drafted agreements with the third party vendor that are inflexible or inhibit change, or unreasonable vendors who are unwilling to make adjustments when circumstances call for them. There may also be changes in management that create uncertainty about the tenor of, and outlook for, the relationship with the vendor and/or IT project. Expectations may be poorly set that may lead to misunderstandings, disappointment and immediate misalignment. And finally of course, poor project and stakeholder management throughout the project implementation.


ALIGNMENT THROUGH PEOPLE
Organisations that survive in turbulent times tend to have established talent management systems for aligning their people and teams to the essential objectives of the organisation, providing continuous feedback about alignment with those objectives, and adjusting them accordingly. A study from The Hackett Group found that companies with more mature talent management capabilities reap strong bottom line benefits, including earnings that are about 20 % higher than typical Global 1000 companies. These same talent management leaders outperformed their average counterparts across a bunch of other efficiency and effectiveness metrics. Leaders demonstrated better ability to increase overall employee engagement, faster recruiting cycle time, and a tighter link between talent management and business strategy.

In other words, high performing organisations know why they exist and what they are trying to accomplish. Their mission and goals are threaded into their work from organisational level strategy down through teams and to individuals, with the means to measure performance at all these levels. People work best when they understand what their organisation is trying to accomplish, and how their role contributes to those goals. When people understand how the work they do contributes to the goals of the organisation, they can monitor and control their individual paths of success within it. This is the foundation of clear accountability and provides greater clarity and confidence in which efforts and successes will be rewarded. 

Hence, it is essential for learning initiatives, including assessment and evaluation, to align with the strategic goals of the organisation. Just as assessment is critical to the learning process of individuals, evaluation is critical to organisational learning and continuous improvement. A systemic approach to learning provides a lens to focus the organisation on its goals and allows it and the individuals within to learn continuously and adjust performance as needed.

ALIGNMENT THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Goal alignment can be used to communicate expectations, document progress, and identify employee development needs. By ensuring that your employees understand what your organisation is trying to achieve, and how his or her role – and performance – contributes to the organisation’s core mission, you can focus their efforts on your company’s mission critical goals and make strategic decisions rapidly.

Goal alignment is primarily a people and process issue, however, the implementation of measurements and visibility can be well supported by technology. Technology also helps in the speed of information and communication. For instance, in most paper-based Performance Appraisal systems, employee goal plans and reviews usually get filed away somewhere, never to be seen again. But with a good technological system, you can incorporate your existing Performance Appraisal process online as it captures the training and developmental needs for each employee. It helps you to determine competency gaps and pinpoint any missing organisational skills. You can also consolidate all employees’ needs for the year for better budget and scheduling management. There are many software products that will help streamline business processes and manage your business operations and risks. 

All in all, alignment of business goals to strategies and processes that will support the achievement of an organisation’s mission, vision and values is no easy task as you need to be focusing on both business results and people. Goal alignment is a powerful management tool that not only clarifies job roles for individual employees, but one that also demonstrates to employees their ongoing value to your organisation. When you engage employees with their work through goal alignment, they become more committed to your company and achieve higher levels of job performance. You need commitment, time, information, support and the tools to do so. Find a cost effective and efficient technological system and create a good vendor partnership, it makes the journey to alignment much easier.

Article also found here: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140707011333-5398941-alignment?trk=mp-reader-card

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