Posts

A Guide for Protecting Your Business Data

/in /by

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | A Guide for Protecting Your Business DataThere are many threats to your business data on a daily basis. Taking the right steps to protect your business data in the best possible way will help your business to remain secure, and your operations fully protected.

Here is a guide on all you can do to make sure that your business data is protected.

Back Up Your Data on a Daily Basis

A huge threat to your data can be data loss, and it is very easily done. Even if you are completely careful with your business data and avoid human error, there are many reasons you could end up losing data if it is not backed up, such as computer viruses, system problems or even power failures.

Backing up your data at least once a day — ideally storing data offsite — will help your data to remain protected.

Implement Virus and Malware Protection Methods

Viruses, malware and other cyber crime will always be a threat to business data, and all you can do is put up the maximum defense measures to keep your data protected. This means installing the right anti-virus software and firewall protection.

When it comes to cyber crime, it is also about staying aware of any new or evolving threats. Training an internal team on how to recognize threats can help to increase your protection (such as how to identify a potentially threatening email or suspicious activity).

Be Secure When Sharing Data

Data sharing is when data can easily become compromised. If data is being shared in unsecure ways, this can risk data hacking or even lost data through human error.

A great method for ensuring safe data sharing — if your team needs to work together with data securely — is by implementing a data sharing solution you can trust, like the platform from ovatiotech.com. This means data can be regulated and shared through a secure software channel so that your team can comfortably manage data efficiently.

Make Updates a Regular Item on the Agenda

The technology you use in business and where you store your data will be able to work most efficiently when regularly updated. Outdated programs and systems will easily become more vulnerable.

For ease, you should try to install automatic updates so that updates can always be made when they need to be. If manual updates are preferable, be sure to create a schedule and reminders so that it is not neglected.

Dispose of Any Business Data Securely

Not all data needs to be kept, and there may come a time when you need to dispose of old business data. Even if the data is no longer relevant, it still leaves your business vulnerable if the data gets in the wrong hands.

If you have hard drives or data files to dispose of, be sure to use professional services to completely overwrite and remove any information, or understand how to successfully remove the data yourself, as most of the time simply deleting a file does not mean it cannot be recovered by an outside party if they gain access to a device.

Always take the right steps to fully protect your business data.

The Significance of Data Optimization During Covid-19 Pandemic

/in /by

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article | The Significance of Data Optimization During Covid-19 Pandemic | Data Optimization | Data ManagementUntil recently, very few CEOs, IT, or marketing professionals would have put ‘data optimization’ high on the list of agenda items that keep them up at night. These days — and by my estimation — this notion has become a top priority for the majority of businesses. Given the impact of events surrounding COVID-19, I view this not a matter of if, but when decision makers also arrive at this conclusion.

The simple fact is that businesses need to be able to build trusted relationships with their customers beyond the physical spaces represented by storefronts and square footage. As ironic as that sounds, what distinguishes data is its human factor. Interpreting and making decisions based on data during a time when competitors are trying to capture the attention of their consumers is vital.

Today, amid a global pandemic and subsequent overhaul of how businesses access and interface with their customers, we find ourselves suddenly competing on a level playing field that is the attention of a phone, computer, or TV. No foot traffic, no event, launch, or experience — just time and attention on a screen, and it’s the ones who have optimized their data who are winning.

Here are a few tentpoles to consider points of entry towards optimizing your data:

The Customer

The modern customer has high expectations and demands that enterprises strive to achieve — at all costs. A business with quality data optimization services has comprehensive information that is customer-centered, dynamic, and always available.

As a result, there is a real-time ability to address all customer demands without going through a complicated, costly, or time-consuming process. Naturally, as customers become more aggressive in having their requirements met, your business stays a step ahead of competitors, when it comes to availing quick and accurate solutions. The most critical aspect of better data management is the reduction of inefficiencies in operations that cost businesses as much as 25% of their revenue. This is because enterprises with better control over their data reduce the potential of making mistakes. As a result, their trustworthiness among customers in any niche industry grows, and they become seen as market leaders.

Direct Sources

Long gone are the days when e-commerce strategy meant focusing only on SEO. Mike Ewing, a Customer Success Strategy & Operations Manager, writes on Hubspot, ”if you rely on free/direct sources of traffic, you are fighting shared losses. Direct has gone from 75% to 9% over the last ten years, while e-commerce has been growing 15-25%.”

Today, you need to find a way to seamlessly integrate direct traffic, transaction data, demographic data, paid search, comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, mobile, and social media. That’s a lot! Each medium comes with its own tools, database, and strategies — only by combining all can your business stay on top of your competition… and crush your topline goals and quotas.

Bottom line: Your products and services should be where your clients are.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures eBook


Speed

The data modern enterprises depend upon may have many different sources and a variety of structured and unstructured formats. In many cases, the data will contain inaccuracies, inconsistencies, redundant information, or other anomalies that make it unnecessarily difficult to access critical information in a timely and comprehensive fashion.

The data optimization process makes use of sophisticated data quality tools that help to access, organize, and cleanse data — whatever the source — to maximize the speed and comprehensiveness with which pertinent information can be extracted, analyzed, and put to use. That enhanced availability of critical information provides businesses with significant benefits.

Data optimization helps business leaders understand and improve their business processes so that they can reduce the wastage of time and money. Consider the information age, a time and place where consumers expect to get fast, accurate, and comprehensive information from the business they are dealing with.

Embracing Data

Amid the panic and unrest of a rapidly changing COVID-19 environment, business leaders in the trenches must lean in to leverage all tools to make themselves more digitally enabled… if for no other reason than to maintain their relationship with their customers during times when human contact is not an option.

We must all consider new ways to bring the human factor into decisions around data optimization. The time is now.

About the Author

Megan Silva is a data optimization leader and advocate. Over the course of her 15-year career in data, Megan has led numerous business and process improvement initiatives, with an emphasis and focus on increased capabilities and decreased costs. She is best known for her leadership on measurable and scalable results, defining customer journeys, aligning content for automated campaigns, and improving contact and data strategy. Megan holds a Master of Industrial Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Business glossary vs. data dictionary

/in /by

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Business glossary |Business glossary vs. data dictionaryWe live in a world that has a prominent and vast scale of complexity to deal with the business and data. We are accumulating all forms of data in every aspect from terminologies to segregating a project. Consider an organization that is building computer processors, this will have a in-sync data base systems and regulations to fill in including the device with its owners captured.

Business Glossary includes unneeded complicate nature. For instance, a startup firm of less 20 employees should not have to gather around the table characterizing Business Glossary terms. Along these lines, if few of IT workers have inquiries regarding what “invoice” explanation. Indeed, they can Skype message to their supervisors or the attorney to discuss about what that business term, among others, mean. The other way toward making a Business Glossary can prompt pedantry about delicacies on characterizing a term, removing time and assets towards being beneficial in a business. Here are a few options in contrast to the Business Glossary vs Data Glossary.

Preliminaries of business glossary

There are many cumulative data bases that has all data of a firm. Data glossary solves or show the way in dealing the complexity nut shell in an organized manner. In this turbulent data world, all the business success rate factors are dependent on each aspect of business process flow.

Values of business glossary

We have governments upheld their laws on some of these business data being a vital role for the future of a country.

Businesses data are being what they are intended, there’s astounding profundity to business glossaries, with the thoughts that is drawn them from such assorted vertices philosophy, semiotics, linguistics, cognitive science, and data science. Let me assure you, however, that while I like to seek out as much as the next information geek, I’ll downplay the powerful stuff for materialness. Not to conclude on how we take up a meeting with valuable information being conveyed and not reproducing the same tech points or flow chart while executing a new project. Business Glossary starts forming its shape from the idea level.

For final business glossary the preliminary step stands with that of the categorization. Within a business glossary, business practices are grouped into categories or clusters according to a set of criteria. Categories are backbone for which they provide the logical structure for the business glossary so that we can manage, make sense of and preliminary find terms within it.

Knowing these connections, it will ensure the categorized information is appropriately managed and kept it updated that are considerable a lot of capacities of an endeavor business glossary.

Preliminaries of data glossary;

We have a few questions that come in right away when you think of data glossary:

  • Where is the information expended within the firm?
  • Is the definition updated, affirmed and accessible or are we surveying with respect to the seasoned terms?
  • Are there synonyms words, abbreviations forms accepted or expressions that portray a similar term?
  • Does everybody utilize similar terms indefinitely?
  • Are there any extraordinary instances for this business term from past to the present time?
  • What are the effects of modification done to the source or to the formats and executing of terms?With these increasing questions thorough bits of knowledge would help a laymen to into the deep comprehension of data, we need perceivability into various components of the Data, for example, utilization, specialized and business prospectus, related policies and rules, just as the rules and duties related with the different data assets.

Values of data glossary

We have come across various cases in a firm when the new task is depending on information where it is shared across divisions and even specialized department. At the point when business lines are reliant on one another’s information, for a strong business glossary becomes basic as every business units has its own needs, responsibilities and useful utilization of data that can be the equivalent or potentially in line with the business and the rights from different clients.

This methodology turns the leverage to use a core arrangement that offers data to meet an objective. Think about the business glossary like the card index in a library. Novel books can cover up a wide range of categorization, for example, life events, history or geology or a thriller novel. They can have explicit characteristics that can assist you with scanning for the book, for example, class, distributer, configuration, writer and production date. Similarly, a business glossary can utilize different arrangements and substance about information to help in the inquiry, accessibility and utilization of the endeavor information. Having this accessible list at a venture level gives a degree of straightforwardness around assisting with maintaining a strategic distance from equivocalness around the information being used.

Diverse business partners characterize basic data glossary in an unexpected way. For instance, take “invoice.” An “invoice,” from the point of view of a buyer, may allude to the document sent that solicitates payment information. In the IT engineering sight an invoice may mean the way toward preparing a bill. In accounting, “invoice” may allude to the record sent to demand payment of a client. An explanation of whether an invoice information component is a physical thing or a procedure becomes necessary when producing invoice reports.

Eforms 101: Everything You Need To Know About eForms

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |eForms|Eforms 101: Everything You Need To Know About eFormsEach year, businesses in the United States waste about $8 billion managing paper alone. It’s a shocking statistic, given the amount of lip service business owners around the country pay to innovation. The age of 3D printing has been around for a while, yet the vast majority of businesses are still stuck on technology invented millennia ago.

One of the primary uses of paper in businesses is for creating forms that help collect information. Businesses of all kinds need to gather statistics regarding their customers and input it in their database.

Unlike eForms, handwritten forms tend to complicate things. Not only do they get lost easily, but they also become skewed. Moreover, handwritten forms are very susceptible to damage. It’s the reason more businesses are turning to electronic forms to gather and store information.

But what is an eForm? More importantly, how can electronic forms benefit your business? How do you make the transition from paper-based forms to eForms?

In this definitive guide, we give you eForm 101. Keep on reading to learn more.

What Is An Electronic Form?

An electronic form (eForm) refers to a computerized version of a form that’s paper-based. In various industries, eForms play a significant role in helping a company achieve compliance. They also help provide customers with a record upon the completion of a job.

How can eForms Benefit Your Business?

Most of the processes in your businesses rely on forms. By choosing to use eForms, here are six benefits you stand to gain:

1. You Get To Eliminate Paper from the Start

Eforms are much more than electronic versions of paper forms. They effectively capture and integrate essential data with critical business systems that you can use to run your organization. By capturing and distributing data electronically from the beginning, you can streamline processes, cut costs, and boost efficiency.

2. They Enable Quick Release Of Essential Business Information

The biggest percentage of the information you need to run your business is often trapped on paper. If you can capture all that information and move it into your core business systems, it becomes easier to shorten cycle times and lower your operating costs.

3. Electronic Forms Improve Data Accuracy

Certain features surrounding eForm information such as auto drop-down lists and completion guides help in capturing data accurately. Electronic forms can effectively auto-populate fields based on previously entered data. Since there’s no need to enter data manually from a paper form, there are hardly any data entry errors or losses.

4. Electronic Forms Make It Easy To Automate Workflow

Upon submission, eForms enable the implementation and automation of workflow depending on a company’s business rules. Applications by your personnel can easily be sent to the relevant HR staff for review. Sales orders can be distributed to the manager for approval, while the finance manager can promptly receive credit applications to review and approve.

Implementing an automated workflow in your business increases speed and accountability.

5. Electronic Forms Are Easy To Design and Set Up

You don’t need any programming skills to design, create, or publish eForm details. Currently, there’s a myriad of eForms software solutions that provide helpful features like prebuilt field validation controls, drag, and drop, and group controls. These features ensure highly sophisticated layouts that have hassle-free design and implementation.

6. You Get to Realize a Quick Return on Investment

Electronic forms typically deliver a considerable ROI within months, depending on the number of forms you process in your business every month. Eforms can radically reduce form completion, processing, and correction costs. All other paper-related expenses like supplies, transportation, and storage are altogether eliminated.

Where Can You Use Electronic Forms In Your Business?

Regardless of the type of business you run, there are many areas where you can embrace eForm technology. Here are some of them:

  • Human Resources: You can use eForms for position changes, timesheets, vacation requests, and employee reviews.
  • Accounting: eForms are ideal for expense reports, purchase orders, mileage reimbursement, and capital expenditure reports.
  • Engineering Department: Use electronic forms for engineering change orders, defect tracking, and requests for product enhancement.
  • Manufacturing Department: In this department, electronic forms can help in employee training certification, survey forms, safety inspections, quality assurance, and document change requests.
  • Customer Service: eForms are perfect for survey forms, incident reports, customer service requests, and customer warranty requests.

Choosing the Right eForm Software

As mentioned earlier, there are lots of eForm builder software solutions for businesses of all types and sizes. To select the ideal one for your needs, consider the following factors:

  • Cost – If you operate a small business, a cloud-based solution is best for your business functions. That’s because you won’t need to worry about purchasing or maintaining hardware, and the cost of the software will depend on how many people use it. For a bigger business with particular security concerns, an onsite solution may make more sense.
  • Ease of Use – The primary goal of downloading an app is to simplify tasks. The last thing you want is a software solution that has a steep learning curve. Opt for a solution with a friendly and intuitive user interface, not a technical one that takes you ages to understand.
  • Customization – Every business is unique, so your forms will be unique. Veer away from software that locks you into specific templates and designs. Choose forms that allow you precisely as you visualize them.
  • Customer Support – Before choosing a form builder software solution, take a look at case studies and customer testimonials to get a good idea of what to expect. You can even call their technical or customer service contact to get an experience of how they handle their clients’ issues. Generally, you want an assurance that you can easily reach customer service should the need arise, and that they won’t abandon you as soon as you’ve purchased their software.

Time to Go Paperless

As more companies strive towards becoming entirely paperless, eForms are increasingly becoming the ideal choice for businesses around the globe. Not only does going electronic reduce costs associated with the printing, distribution and storage of paper, but it also improves workflow in your business.

Would you like to read more great content like this? Please keep visiting our blog.

Why Data is Vitally Important to Your Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven OPM (organizational performance measures) Article |importance of data|Why Data is Vitally Important to Your BusinessBusinesses have always understood the importance of data and how it relates to their success. From the very beginning, companies knew they needed to understand the market and their customers to make money; the difference was, back then, collecting and accessing data wasn’t easy. That’s not the case today, as technology has helped automate many aspects of data collection, allowing companies of all sizes access to useful information. In fact, nowadays, we have access to so much data, the bigger problem is knowing which data to use and how best to interpret it.

For data to be useful, you have to be able to turn it into actionable insights, and this is where the challenge lies for businesses today. If your company can learn to make better use of its data, it can have huge benefits across your organization.

Decision Making

We make decisions based on the evidence we have available to us. In theory, the more evidence you have access to, the easier it is to make the correct decision, but this is not necessarily the case in real life. When you have an unlimited amount of evidence, it makes it far more challenging to find evidence that will lead you to the right decision. To find the most pertinent evidence to make more informed choices, your company needs people who understand data and know how to apply that data.

You can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t have employees who understand things like SQL join types and can interpret the data, it’s of limited use to your decision-making process.

Problem Solving

Without the evidence that data gives you, it becomes more difficult to spot potential problems and find solutions to fix them. Even the most straightforward processes create data, and this data can help you when problems develop with that process. When you scale this up over an entire business, the data allows you to better understand and solve the issues affecting your organization.

Track Performance

Being able to see how we’re performing against our goals is a crucial element of business success. When correctly interpreted, data can allow you to see how you’re performing in key areas. The insights you gain will enable you to evaluate all areas of your business without any complications. The right people will be able to turn vast amounts of complex data into easy to understand performance metrics that everyone can use.

Improve Processes

This information allows you to make the changes that improve processes across your business. Small changes can have a big effect on the efficiency of your business, and we all have access to the kind of data that can lead to these changes. The challenge is finding the right people to turn that data into actionable insights. The evidence you need to make informed business decisions is there in your data; you just need to be able to find it and use it effectively.

No matter what size your business is, data can play a crucial part in your success.