For business managers, it can sometimes be difficult to create policies and procedures that allow for the efficiency that they’d like to see from their business. Business growth leads to more complex situations which in turn demand more complex procedures. This enhanced complexity can not only get constant in that you need to alter the way things are done, you also could fall into the trap of mistakenly putting productivity roadblocks up that can alter the way your business operates.

Lots of businesses are facing a financial crunch as the margins they operate under continue to shrink. This unfortunate trend has led a lot of businesses to outsource elements of their operations to try and cut costs. One part of the business that is either outsourced or cut out entirely has been the human resources department. 

All successful businesses want to grow and better themselves, as growth is a direct indicator that you are doing something right, from providing better services to your customers or servicing more customers. If you’re not ready to adapt to this growth, you’re in for a difficult time. Here are three ways you can keep your business operating even when you’re experiencing unprecedented growth.

Businesses can now capture and use more data to help them run an efficient business than ever before. That’s not to say a lot of businesses actually do. In this month’s newsletter, we thought we’d discuss the use of data and how it can be used to improve your business.

Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, largely because there’s a lot that can pop up and cause problems that need to be addressed. Let’s discuss how successful business owners rally through tough times to help attain this kind of success.

The point is, there comes a point when it is time to buckle down and get things organized. This can cover nearly all facets of your business (and possibly your life in general), such as:

• Organizing/revamping your workspace
• Reviewing and improving processes
• Establishing better habits
• Writing content to automate touchpoints with clients and prospects
• Scheduling regular training sessions with staff to hone in production
• Trimming the fat when it comes to vendors, software licenses, hardware, etc. 

What is Project Management?

This may seem pretty self-explanatory, but project management is the planning and systematic organization of a project’s tasks. Unfortunately, anything that ends up going wrong in a project is immediately the result of bad project management. That’s why it is essential to have tools that allow for efficient and effective project management. 

Project managers typically oversee the creation, delegation, and completion of tasks that are coordinated in a way where the tasks result in a finished product. Therefore, a lot of what a project manager does “quarterbacking” a team of resources. Solid communications, time and resource management, and constant and diligent assessment are the staples of a successful project manager.

Parts of Solid Project Management

Every project is different, but there are some of the elements that the PM has to manage. 

• Planning- It’s the PM’s job to plan out each task and assign it to the resources that are available for it. Being able to properly schedule resources is a core responsibility of the project manager mainly because most projects not only have multiple people that work on them, but also because tracking the time that the project takes is how organizations measure the profitability of the project.
• Time tracking - Typically integrated with the scheduler to streamline operations, time tracking is essential to manage resource involvement and be able to properly assign tasks. 
• Collaboration - Today, businesses have collaboration options that fuel efficient project work. It is the PM’s responsibility to ensure every resource not only has access to a collaboration tool, but also uses the tool provided to complete their tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible. 
• Documentation - In order to have a complete and thorough assessment of any finished project, you’ll need to have complete and thorough documentation to go through. Many of today’s productivity options have integrated a great set of tools that help PMs analyze contributor value.
• Assessment - At the end of a project, after the delivery of the product to the customer/client, a complete audit of the project will provide all the successes and failures that took place in the duration of the project, helping a business know what it needs to improve on and, ultimately, if their project is bringing a large enough return (or a return at all). 

With the success of an individual project tied to the management of the resources it takes to complete it, proper coordination, documentation, and assessment are especially important. 

Project Management Tools

Most of the actual tools needed to fuel your organization’s projects have now been integrated into one or two pieces of software. They provide PMs with all of the information they need to place resources, assign tasks, and oversee the whole project. A few of these tools include:

• Gantt chart - A Gantt chart is a visual representation of the project. The Gantt chart is used to illustrate how a project will run. It makes recalculating the timeline of a chart and shuffling resources around to meet demand much easier. 
• PERT chart - PERT stands for Program Evaluation, and Review Technique. It’s essentially a chart that shows where each task assigned in a project is connected to other tasks in a project. Also represented through what is called the Critical Path method, this allows project managers and their teams to get a clear representation of how all the tasks in a project end up creating the end product. 
• Moscow analysis - An analytic technique that stands for: must, should, could, won’t it allows PMs to work with project stakeholders to create the scope of the project. Obviously there are things you must do in the scope of a project, those need to be planned for and scheduled first. Then the things that should be done, followed by things that could be done to improve value, and finally eliminate things that simply don’t need to be done. 
• WBS chart - WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure, and is a common tool to help people visualize the entire scope of a project. This provides a comprehensive list of individual tasks. 
• The Cone of Uncertainty - This is a visual tool that shows the measures of uncertainty vs. time. As the project goes forward uncertainty decreases. As risk is mitigated and governance is solid, confidence will increase. By managing risks properly, any project’s cone of uncertainty will show static improvement, ultimately leading to a successful finale.  

There are several other tools that a project manager can use, and many of them are incorporated in today’s powerful collaboration software. Many Customer Relationship Management software titles provide project management tools. If yours doesn’t, you can get stand-alone project management tools for your email client that provides PMs a set of useful options.

What is happening more today, however is that PMs are beginning to use collaboration apps like Microsoft Teams and Slack that come with dozens of software integrations strategically designed to make project management--which is, of course, a traditionally messy endeavor--easier. These titles alone do a lot of good mitigating risks and fueling collaboration.

IT projects can often be difficult to implement, but the knowledgeable professionals at Coleman Technologies have a great track record of improving our client’s businesses through strategic project success. Call us today at (604) 513-9428 to see how we can help. 

Which seems a little ridiculous to me, if I’m being honest. Your staff is one of your biggest investments. On top of that, it is important to remember that, since your employees are human beings, pushing them to do more might actually result in them accomplishing less.

In my experience, the best way to help an employee accomplish their best is to track their performance and evaluate their next steps. Is this always foolproof? No - but as I said, in my experience, it is the best way.

Understanding Employees

Before we go any further, it is important that I make something clear: we are proceeding with the understanding and acceptance that your employees are like any others: flawed human beings, capable of a lot and likewise distracted by a lot. Either way, holding them to the same standards as we would some automated alternative is unfair, as I am sure you would agree.

However, and somewhat unfortunately, this often isn’t the impression that employees get from management. Some common complaints from employees are:

• Their workplace lacks communication.
• They have no job security.
• They aren’t paid what they’re worth.
• Credit isn’t given for their hard work.
• Favoritism is alive and well in the workplace.
• Management constantly has them under a microscope.
• They have to deal with managers who are incompetent.
• There’s just too much work to do.

Now, put in a list like this, these don’t look too great, and you may want to shrug them off and assume that they aren’t happening in your company… they almost certainly are.

Having said that, I want you to think back to when you once worked for someone else. How did you feel going in every day? Now look at that list again - some of those line items may have helped motivate you to go into business for yourself.

Let’s face it - entrepreneurship isn’t something that people are really “born to do”...it is a decision that people make, usually after paying their dues and working for other people and seeing ways that they would do things differently (or in their minds, better). Some staff members love working for certain people, and other staff members don’t, occasionally acting on it.

The point of all this: people are people, and as such, there is no single equation for dealing with employees well.

This means that, no matter what you do and what style of management you use, not all employees are going to be a good fit at your company. This means that, along the line, someone was going to feel displeased about their work situation.

Remember, while you should still be doing everything you can to make the work environment as amiable as possible for your employees, some just aren’t going to be a good fit, and may need to be addressed in other ways.

Is It Ethical to Monitor Your Employees? Or... Legal?

At the end of the day, it is important that you realize while payroll can be your greatest investment, it can also be your worst. This means that you need to keep track of how your employees are performing and spending their time in the office, which leads you to the prospect of actually tracking your employees in the workplace.

This opens up a few more questions, starting with the data you are actually collecting. What is it that you are trying to track? Should you keep it simple, monitoring attendance or the number of hours an employee actually spends in the office? Are there different performance indicators that you like to keep updated metrics concerning? Do you want to monitor keystrokes, making sure that they are working diligently throughout the day, or their browsing histories to make sure they aren’t putting your company in jeopardy by visiting sites they shouldn’t be?

This is where things can get a little murky as far as business ethics are concerned. How much do you really need to know, and how much will you collect as collateral data?

As it stands today, employee monitoring software is in high demand, the market growing as more businesses decide to protect themselves against theft by an employee. The consensus seems to be swaying toward the opinion that you can’t trust your employees not to take advantage of you, either by stealing data and other resources, or dishonestly reporting their time.

There is also a lot of license given to businesses in terms of what can legally be done to protect their own assets, especially where an employee’s privacy is concerned. Courts have ruled in some cases that a company can track an employee’s behavior after they have left the confines of the office. Consider the permissions that a user needs to agree to in order to access work-related files on a personal device. There is little to stop the employer from also going through private messages with that access.

So yes, it is currently legal to monitor your employees, which means the decision really falls to you and your conscience. Of course, this may change, or it could just as likely stay the same. Privacy is a contentious subject these days, with no clear indication of how things will turn out when (and if) it is ever settled.

Mindfully Monitoring Employees

One of the hallmarks of employee monitoring is the fact that the monitoring itself is kept about as hidden as the behaviors it is meant to catch. Whether you’re keeping an eye on your surveillance footage, web activity, internal correspondence, or keystrokes, the person being monitored traditionally would only find out if they were told… which isn’t something that companies have traditionally done, either.

I would urge you to actually break from tradition here.

Ethics aside for a moment, it just makes more practical sense to inform your users how their activity is to be monitored. Not only will this transparency help you build and maintain trust amongst your users, but it can also help keep issues from developing in the first place. Think about it - what happens when people realize there’s a patrol car on the highway? They immediately check the speedometer and correct their speed. Transparency has a great way of acting as a deterrent in that way.

You also want to consider the kind of metrics you’re actually collecting before you evaluate your employees based on them. Do the metrics line up with how the employee provides value to the business, and/or the actual value they deliver? Look at it this way - when you’re looking to buy an appliance, like a toaster, you won’t find out how well the toast is browned by measuring the length of the power supply cord. Metrics can be useful tools, but only where they practically apply.

Finally, don’t give up on your employees too quickly. If your monitoring picks up on one of your staff members having a tough time, try addressing the situation as your first option. Sudden downturns in employee productivity are usually caused by something, and that something might be fixable. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t terminate an employee if you need to, just to consider alternatives before diving into the hiring process again and losing what may still be a valuable resource.

What are your feelings on employee monitoring, and using these kinds of solutions? Share your thoughts in the comments section, and check back in with our blog to learn more about optimizing and securing your business’ technology.

The fact of the matter is that universities have a lot of industry-specific technology that goes into making a functional institution of higher education, and that’s without mentioning secure access to student records, maintaining the productivity suites in computer labs, and providing intuitive smart technology for better lectures. We know a guy who’s well-versed in the types of solutions utilized by institutions of higher education, and we think you might find what he has to say to be interesting.

Degree Progress Management
Each student that is matriculated into a degree program has to complete a set of requisite courses. These courses will vary drastically from program to program, but the fact remains that each student must complete these requirements if they hope to graduate with a degree. Some programs have electives (any course the student wants) or selectives (any course from a selected group of classes), which complicates the process of choosing classes and opens up the door for students to take courses that don’t necessarily fulfill their degree requirements.

To minimize the risk of this happening, real-time degree progress can be viewed through programs like DegreeWorks. This program can show students, faculty, and staff advisors how many credits and courses must be completed by a student, as well as which classes fulfill specific requirements. Students can even process “what if” reports, which can show them how their degree progress is affected by something like changing their major.

Student Retention
It’s not a stretch to say that some students enter higher education underprepared for the increased workload. Whether it’s because of students not knowing how to access the proper resources, needing educational supplements like tutors, or simply requiring a support system that the student doesn’t have at home or on-campus, student retention and persistence can be a challenge for many institutions.

In an effort to improve these statistics, student retention software can be used by faculty and staff to assign flags, create to-do lists, and make appointments with students who are in need of assistance or support. In this way, the support structure that many students need to succeed is both accessible and informative for them.

Online Learning
In today’s increasingly-connected world, online learning has become a viable alternative to traditional, or synchronous, learning. When we say “synchronous,” we mean the traditional lecture style of education, in which a student must be physically present in the classroom to participate in discussions. Asynchronous learning, which is significantly less structured and more of an “at your own pace” approach to education, has provided students with limited time and geographic resources an opportunity to learn at their own pace in a less structured environment.

Depending on the institution, the online learning application might be something like BlackBoard, Angel, or Brightspace, rebranded to suit the proprietary needs of the university. Either way, the end result is generally the same. Online learning uses a centralized environment for all of a student’s learning needs, providing access to message boards, learning modules, grade books, open educational resources, and so much more.

Again, we understand that not all of our readers have stakes in the education sector; we just wanted to share some interesting solutions that are used by professionals in this industry. Are there any other industries you want to learn more about? Let us know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for more great technology-related blogs.

Go in with a Plan
Have you ever had a meeting where you start with a general idea of what you want to discuss, then somehow wind up on a topic completely unrelated? This isn’t that out of the ordinary, and weekly meetings that are held for the sake of having a meeting could potentially result in these kinds of sessions, where substance is lacking, and focus is at an all-time low. If you have a strict agenda, then you’ll be more likely to cover important topics in a way that is conducive to everyone’s us of time.

Use Better Technology
If you find your meetings lacking in presentation, then you can use some technology to make it more interesting than just a couple of people sitting around a table. You can take advantage of media, slideshows, infographics, and so much more to provide context for the conversation you’re having. If meeting in the office doesn’t work out, you can even implement mobile technology and web conferencing software to keep your team connected from any location with an Internet connection.

Give Employees the Opportunity to Talk
People like to feel like they are involved in meetings, and if you give them the chance to express themselves in an environment that values their feedback, they will often thrive. Open up a portion of your meetings to give employees a chance to voice any concerns or thoughts they might have. You might find that the dialogue created from this could be valuable.

If your business could use some help with improving its meetings, Coleman Technologies can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

When your employees are engaged, they are more likely to invest in the future of your company, as well as their own future within your company. Research doesn’t see this situation as likely as you might think, though. The numbers from a 2015 poll from Gallup place the number of engaged employees at about 30%, while 50% claim they aren’t engaged with their work, and an additional 20% claim that they are actively disengaged by their workplace. So… where does your business fall?

There are several ways to improve employee engagement, but we’ll focus on just three of them: digital signage, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and cloud-based communication solutions.

Digital Signage
Some offices have monitors placed around the office that give statistics, reminders, and directions to those wandering around the office. These monitors can be used to give workers an idea of how they are doing, as well as display important information that they all might need to do in order to get their jobs done in a more efficient manner. Examples include deadlines, key performance indicators, and who has closed the most deals (or another important factor for your business) to spur on a little friendly competition. You can even use it to offer incentives to employees who perform above and beyond.

Bring Your Own Device
Some employees would rather work using their own devices rather than the ones you provide them with. This is because they are more familiar with their own devices than the ones your business gives them to get their work done. Maybe their own devices are simply better than the ones provided, too. Either way, a Bring Your Own Device policy solves several issues that your organization might face, such as the revenue used to purchase these devices… as long as the policy is handled correctly to address the potential security issues caused by this.

Cloud-Based Communications
Employees are more productive when they feel their feedback is valued. To this end, collaboration is critical, as everyone who puts forth ideas and information will feel like they are at least being listened to--even if their ideas don’t make it into the finished product. This can also create a sense of camaraderie between your employees and improve teamwork on a fundamental level.

Coleman Technologies can help your business break boundaries and improve employee engagement through the use of technology. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Customer Service
Your customers are one of your most valuable assets, so it’s natural that you want to build a powerful bond with them. If you can’t support the products you sell to them, you’ll have a difficult time keeping your business in good standing with both current and prospective clients. Technology can help you maintain this positive relationship through the use of a ticketing system to handle customer complaints and concerns, and it also makes it easy to handle support for various services you might offer.

Social media and social networking in general provides businesses with more direct ways of interacting with consumers. Sites like Facebook and Twitter essentially offer a platform to promote a brand and knowledge base. Of course, this advantage can quickly become a detriment if it’s not managed properly, as you’re (again) dealing directly with customers--if they aren’t satisfied by your interaction, they’re more likely to share it and complicate public relations.

Productivity
To be successful as a business, you have to accrue money somehow. This is where productivity comes in--technology helps by enabling workers to get more done throughout the workday, building more value for your organization in the long run. For example, time-tracking software can help with task scheduling, giving employees the opportunity to accomplish more during the time they spend in the office. Moreover, you’ll be able to assign a monetary value to the time your employees spend on various tasks and streamline their work processes.

Many of today’s most helpful technology solutions come with built-in productivity solutions that allow for collaboration through the cloud. These cloud-hosted applications provide flexibility to workers so they can communicate in the way most efficient for them. Since these solutions are flexible and scalable, your business can adjust them as needed.

Finance
Money is a big part of why you’re in business, but you can’t do anything without funding of your own. You have a bottom line to keep in mind, after all. Technology can help businesses better manage their finances through online invoicing services to collect payments and reduce paper expenses. If you use software to manage payroll and other accounts, you’ll be able to handle them easily and more efficiently. If you can streamline these processes at all, your business can run much better and you’ll be better off in the long run.

Security
Security plays a critical role in the sustainability of your business, both on your network and in your physical office. You can’t let workers or other entities waltz around your network and your office uninhibited, as the opportunity to cause major damage is practically omnipresent in today’s business world. You need to implement not only network security solutions such as antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and spam blocking technology, but physical security solutions like security cameras, biometric security locks, and other measures as well. Doing so ensures the protection of all your business’ assets, whether it’s from a hacker or a careless employee.

A lot goes into making a business successful, and technology plays a large role in doing so. How does your business use technology? Coleman Technologies can help you get started thinking about the future for your organization. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.