In construction, efficiency is everything. The sooner you are able to see a project on the road to completion, but without rushing it to the point that mistakes are made, the better. As such, finding the most efficient ways to get work done effectively should be a major concern for site managers. Yet, there are significant barriers that could prevent you from having your teamwork at their most productive. Here are a few of them.
Poor planning
The logic behind your planning might be sound. However, it’s the easiest stage to make errors, leading to corrections in the following days. For instance, you could under-estimate how much concrete you might need, meaning you have to take time to buy more concrete and readjust. Good construction management software can help improve your planning processes, as well as taking care of invoices, contractor management, incident reporting, and more.
A lack of accountability
When mistakes are made, it’s important to follow them to the source. Simply put, certain colleagues may be in need of training or being moved to other parts of the project if they are not working well. If you’re not tracking key performance indicators to see which colleagues are affecting overall productivity or, indeed, how certain planning and management decisions affect their individual productivity, it can be hard to nail down the precise solutions you need to put in place.
Waste
Naturally, construction projects lead to a lot of waste. Aside from being unsightly when simply dumped on an empty spot of the site, it can also grow to get in the way of the team, forcing them to work around it and even leading to health risks. Click here to see how post-construction cleanup services can help you keep your project site clear. Have policies to make sure waste is effectively dealt with as soon as its created, not just when it becomes a problem.
Theft
Your team will find it hard to do their work when the tools that they are supposed to use in their work are not where they’re supposed to be. Theft is not just an economic concern in construction, it can threaten the timeline of the whole project. As such, click here to read some tips on how to better prevent thefts, as well as how to better handle them when they do occur.
Starting from scratch
Modular construction is a phase that’s on the rise. Even when construction projects are bespoke, there are still prefabricated elements that you could use to speed up the project some without sacrificing quality. The next time you’re planning out a project, take a look at some of the most highly-reviewed suppliers of modular construction equipment and resources. You could shave a significant period of time off the overall project with the right choice.
With the tips above, you can face the biggest problems plaguing the productivity of your team. Ensuring the right investments and organizational tips will help your site work more cleanly, more smoothly, and more quickly.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/architecture-1857175_1280-1.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 16:00:062020-05-05 15:40:37The Barriers Towards A More Efficient Construction Business
“A transactional email is an automatic email sent to a single recipient to confirm a transaction or an event.”
Transactional emails have the highest opening rates because they are a direct response to a previous action; the user is somehow already waiting for them. In general, the click-through rates are incredibly high.
Transactional email is a service email that is sent after a user’s action, for example, a welcome message after registering on a website, a reset password confirmation, an auto-responder, a purchase receipt, etc.
Transactional emails are functional, and they are necessary for the normal functioning of your activity. If they are no longer sent, the function they perform ceases to be fulfilled, which can have severe consequences and cause you to lose many customers. Since transactional emails are so good for marketing, it is vital to ensure that they are delivered correctly to recipients and to trace it accurately.
Difference between email marketing and transactional email
Unlike marketing emails (newsletter type), which are sent in mass, transactional emails are sent to a specific recipient to confirm an action or notify them of an event. Typically, transactional emails include order confirmations, invoices, etc.
Types of Transactional Email
Invoices and receipts
Invoices and receipts can be integrated directly into confirmation emails but are sometimes the subject of a dedicated transactional email.
This kind of transactional email is particularly the case for:
Services not requiring delivery tracking
Subscriptions requiring the sending of an invoice at regular intervals
Tracking control
Your communication after a sale should not stop at the confirmation email. The various order follow-up emails have a crucial role in managing the wait.
You can send an email to notify your customers of the different stages of the order:
Order preparation
Shipped
Arrival order
Order confirmation
Your customer expects the transactional email the most. It is essential if you sell products or services online.
Pledge of seriousness and confidence for your customers; it must fulfil several objectives:
Confirm that the order has been taken into account
Reassure the customer
Send him all the information necessary for follow-up (order reference, access to his account, customer service contact, etc.)
Give him an estimate of the delivery time
This email plays a vital reinsurance role, and it often happens that the user has doubts about taking into account his actions, hence the importance of confirmation emails.
For some customers, ordering online is still something unusual and sometimes anxiety-provoking: a particular order confirmation email should reassure them that you are serious.
Password reset
The password reset email allows you to configure a new password via a single link. It is one of the essential transactional emails to set up: without it, your users who have forgotten their password have no way of being able to access their account!
How to set up your transactional emails?
Transactional emails are based on the SMTP protocol and require a specialised solution to ensure constant and reliable deliverability.
Sendgrid indeed offers many advantages compared to transactional emails included in CMS such as Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce:
Real-time monitoring of performance indicators: deliverability, openings, etc.
Ability to customise your templates
Optimal and instant deliverability
Using the native solutions of most CMSs, you have no way of knowing if your transactional emails have arrived at their destination!
Separate your transactional mailings from your marketing campaigns
It is also essential to choose a solution that allows the routing of transactional emails to be separated from marketing emails.
Transactional emails are a vital point on your site and should not be penalised by the necessarily lower deliverability of your marketing mailings.
A problem in a marketing campaign can quickly lead to a decline in your reputation with email providers. You must, at all costs, avoid this impacting your transactional mailings.
Tips to Improve Your Transactional Emails
Finally, here are some tips to improve your transactional emails:
Keep the email concise and very clear. The user already knows what he expects, so be synthetic.
Send them a few seconds after the user action.
Use the most beautiful and most uncomplicated model to encourage clicks.
Place your contact details at the bottom of the page (footer).
Always send from an active address, better if authenticated.
Pay attention to the subject, and it must indicate the content of the transactional email to make it immediately recognisable in the inbox.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/email-3249062_1280-1.png7161280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 09:00:252020-05-05 03:51:27What is Transactional Email and How is it Used?
Managing cash flow is so important in business, which is why unpaid invoices are such a huge problem. If you have a lot of customers that are not paying up on time, that will soon lead to cash flow issues and it could mean the end of your business if you are not careful. All businesses deal with a few tricky clients at some point, but if it is becoming a regular occurrence, you need to do something about it. The good news is, there are some simple ways that you can get your customers to pay up on time. These are some of the best ways to avoid unpaid invoices and improve your cash flow.
Provide Clear Invoices
If a customer doesn’t want to pay up, they will try all sorts of tricks to avoid the invoice. They may say that they didn’t know that the invoice was due or they might challenge some of the items on the bill to delay payment and try to get a discount. You can avoid that by writing a detailed and clear invoice that breaks down exactly what they are paying for and when the invoice is due. It’s also important that you keep a clear paper trail when negotiating the price and sending them quotes so they cannot claim that the invoice is higher than agreed.
Consider Recurring Payments
If you have clients that use your services on a regular basis, consider asking them to set up a direct debit for recurring payments rather than issuing a new invoice every month. It makes life easier for you and for the customer and if you use recurring billing software, it’s simple to manage. You can make the prospect more attractive to customers if you offer them a small discount in exchange for making recurring payments every month. This gives you a good steady income, which makes managing your cash flow a lot easier.
Build Good Relationships With Customers
If your customers like you, they’ll be more willing to pay up on time, but if you don’t have a good relationship with you then they will be far more likely to leave invoices unpaid. It’s important that you build good relationships with your customers from the outset, and if you do, you will find that you don’t have an issue with unpaid invoices.
Don’t Be Afraid To Chase People Up
Sometimes, business owners are afraid to chase people up because they don’t want to damage their relationship with customers. However, if you allow people to get away with paying invoices late, they will take advantage of you and the problem will only get worse. It’s best to be clear from the beginning and if people have not paid, call them up and ask them where the money is. In most cases, people will pay up and if they decide that they don’t want to work with you again in the future, you just have to accept that and consider it a win because you don’t have to deal with a tricky customer anymore.
Follow these steps and you should be able to avoid any unpaid invoices in the future.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/numbers-money-calculating-calculation-3305-1.jpg7951200StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 08:00:572020-05-05 03:31:15How To Deal With Unpaid Invoices In Business
Small business owners wear many hats. They are marketers, IT specialists, inventors, accountants, security experts, website designers, human resources, and much more. There are so many different things to think about every single day, so it is little wonder that occasionally, something gets overlooked. For many businesses, that is a plan for what you would do to get your business back up and running after a disaster strikes. Almost three-quarters of small business owners do not have a written disaster recovery plan. While it is something that you hope you never have to use, having one in place is imperative.
Depending on where your business is based, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and fires are just some of the things that pose a risk to your company and your livelihood. Here, we look at some of the things that you can do to mitigate the risk, and if the worst should happen, what you can do to get back on your feet as soon as safely possible.
Before a disaster strikes
Identify responsibilities
Every person within your company has a role to play and responsibilities to handle, but often these can become blurred. It is important to note down in your disaster plan and make sure every person is aware of their responsibilities, and should there be a disaster, they know what they need to do.
Back up documents
The last thing that you want to do when your premises have been damaged or destroyed, or if conditions have made it unsafe to travel is to have to worry about finding out important documents. It is essential that you have at least one copy of all your relevant documents – insurance details, inventories, employee details, etc. Store these somewhere secure, and that is easily accessible.
Install security cameras
These might be damaged in the event of a disaster, but they are still worth having in to see what happened. They may be useful if you have to claim on your insurance as well.
Have secondary power sources available
Sometimes, the whole premises might not be damaged or destroyed, but the electrics blow or a storm knocks out your power. Give yourself a chance of trading, or at least make sure anything that relies on electricity such as fridges, freezers, tanks for animals etc. are kept running and protect your stock by having a secondary source of power available, such as industrial engines and generators.
Inventory
For both stick purposes and insurance purposes, an inventory is essential. Where possible, keep receipts and invoices as you may be asked to hand these to insurance companies as proof of costs, but having an up to date inventory of stock, machinery, and equipment is useful.
When a disaster strikes
Inform your employees
One of the first things that you need to do is inform any employees who might be due to work that day so that they know exactly what to expect. It is important to have a contact list accessible at all times. You also need to have a contingency plan fr paying your staff – it is vital that you try to keep paying staff as normally as possible, as you may find that you do not have a workforce when you are back up and running.
Work remotely
You may need to work remotely for a while, as may your staff. Ensure that you have access to the technology and tools you need – this is where cloud services are a good idea, as you and your team can access any documents required to continue working from anywhere in the world. Ensure that any confidential information is encrypted to prevent any hacks in the transfer of information – the last thing you want to be dealing with at this point is a huge data breach!
Let your customers know
Your customers keep your business going, so it is imperative to let them know what is going on as soon as possible. Pop a note on the door if it is safe or appropriate to do so, informing them of the situation and when you expect to be open again, as well as any contact details. Put a note on your website and a post out on your social media platforms.
Talk to lenders
If you have any loans or finance on anything, talk to your lenders and creditors. In a situation such as this, many will be willing to work with you to give you a payment holiday and catch up when things are back to normal, but if you don’t ask, you won’t get!
You can’t stop a disaster from happening, but the steps you take to prepare for one and how you deal with it afterwards can make the situation a little less stressful and get you back up and running as soon as possible.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/street-3246398_1280.jpg8531280StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2020-05-05 07:00:312020-05-05 03:20:23Preparing Your Small Business For A Disaster
Many companies do not realize the benefits of IT help desk software until they are in a reactive mode trying to fix issues with hardware and software that continue to compound.
Imagine that you are an employee who has just spent hours working on a report when suddenly, your computer crashes. All your work is gone, and you are unable to get your computer to operate. In this technological era, most daily work functions depend on an internet connection and electronic appliances. When troubles arise, employees are dependent on the IT experts of the company to get their system back up and running. Implementing IT help desk software and best practices allows end-users to request and receive assistance as quickly as possible. Help desk software automates and streamlines IT support so that your support staff can efficiently handle tickets.
Improve Employee Productivity and Satisfaction
Employees rely on IT support staff to troubleshoot and mitigate technical issues. Employees can quickly open up a ticket using help desk software instead of spending time tracking down IT staff. This reduces employee downtime, and work can resume. Employees tend to become disgruntled when there are problems that result in wasted effort. Knowing that there is a team dedicated to preventing such problems will reduce frustrations. When frustrations are low and satisfaction is high, the company is in a better position.
Automated Support Ticket Management
Some companies use email to report technical issues. However, as the quantity of tickets increases, it becomes harder to manage and prioritize critical issues. Help desks organize, prioritize, and distribute tickets efficiently for the IT help desk staff.
Automated ticket management can improve your IT team’s performance and help them stay on top of all incoming tickets. It will distribute tickets based on location or type of issue. If many issues are originating from users located in the same area, a team member can be assigned all of those tickets. This reduces traveling back and forth from one person to another.
Another way ticket management can maximize efficiency is to delegate all similar tickets to one person. That team member will be able to work faster since they are in charge of one specific task.
IT Documentation and Analytics
A very useful benefit of help desks is the retention of all the different tickets, as well as the implemented solutions. Recurring problems can be dealt with promptly even if it is a new team member who is working on it.
Another benefit is being able to analyze the data and history that the system is saving. Many help desk software can generate reports so you can easily detect trends or bugs in the system. This information offers crucial insight into any holes within your company’s IT infrastructure. For example, if many employees are repeatedly reporting the same problem, then you know that you need to spend resources to correct it.
One Resource for All Answers
Tracking via help desk allows IT staff to manage and maintain resources for the whole company. This will build the company’s knowledge base and free up IT staff to troubleshoot more serious issues.
Once common issues are identified, staff can compile solutions that employees can easily follow on their own. This provides a single tool for the entire company to utilize when they need help, but assistance is unavailable immediately.
Another way to use help desk is to quickly provide office-wide announcements as soon as an issue is known to be happening all across the system. For instance, if a specific application is having problems, the IT team can broadcast to everyone that a solution is in the works. This will reduce confusion, as well as the number of tickets in the help desk system.
Help desks can be valuable to your company and its employees. It provides a way for the support team and employees to communicate with each other and to work together to bring the company onto the path of success.
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Business Programs
The Barriers Towards A More Efficient Construction Business
/in Managing Your Business/by StrategyDrivenPoor planning
The logic behind your planning might be sound. However, it’s the easiest stage to make errors, leading to corrections in the following days. For instance, you could under-estimate how much concrete you might need, meaning you have to take time to buy more concrete and readjust. Good construction management software can help improve your planning processes, as well as taking care of invoices, contractor management, incident reporting, and more.
A lack of accountability
When mistakes are made, it’s important to follow them to the source. Simply put, certain colleagues may be in need of training or being moved to other parts of the project if they are not working well. If you’re not tracking key performance indicators to see which colleagues are affecting overall productivity or, indeed, how certain planning and management decisions affect their individual productivity, it can be hard to nail down the precise solutions you need to put in place.
Waste
Naturally, construction projects lead to a lot of waste. Aside from being unsightly when simply dumped on an empty spot of the site, it can also grow to get in the way of the team, forcing them to work around it and even leading to health risks. Click here to see how post-construction cleanup services can help you keep your project site clear. Have policies to make sure waste is effectively dealt with as soon as its created, not just when it becomes a problem.
Theft
Your team will find it hard to do their work when the tools that they are supposed to use in their work are not where they’re supposed to be. Theft is not just an economic concern in construction, it can threaten the timeline of the whole project. As such, click here to read some tips on how to better prevent thefts, as well as how to better handle them when they do occur.
Starting from scratch
Modular construction is a phase that’s on the rise. Even when construction projects are bespoke, there are still prefabricated elements that you could use to speed up the project some without sacrificing quality. The next time you’re planning out a project, take a look at some of the most highly-reviewed suppliers of modular construction equipment and resources. You could shave a significant period of time off the overall project with the right choice.
With the tips above, you can face the biggest problems plaguing the productivity of your team. Ensuring the right investments and organizational tips will help your site work more cleanly, more smoothly, and more quickly.
What is Transactional Email and How is it Used?
/in Tactical Execution/by StrategyDrivenDefinition
“A transactional email is an automatic email sent to a single recipient to confirm a transaction or an event.”
Transactional emails have the highest opening rates because they are a direct response to a previous action; the user is somehow already waiting for them. In general, the click-through rates are incredibly high.
Transactional email is a service email that is sent after a user’s action, for example, a welcome message after registering on a website, a reset password confirmation, an auto-responder, a purchase receipt, etc.
Transactional emails are functional, and they are necessary for the normal functioning of your activity. If they are no longer sent, the function they perform ceases to be fulfilled, which can have severe consequences and cause you to lose many customers. Since transactional emails are so good for marketing, it is vital to ensure that they are delivered correctly to recipients and to trace it accurately.
Difference between email marketing and transactional email
Unlike marketing emails (newsletter type), which are sent in mass, transactional emails are sent to a specific recipient to confirm an action or notify them of an event. Typically, transactional emails include order confirmations, invoices, etc.
Types of Transactional Email
Invoices and receipts
Invoices and receipts can be integrated directly into confirmation emails but are sometimes the subject of a dedicated transactional email.
This kind of transactional email is particularly the case for:
Tracking control
Your communication after a sale should not stop at the confirmation email. The various order follow-up emails have a crucial role in managing the wait.
You can send an email to notify your customers of the different stages of the order:
Order confirmation
Your customer expects the transactional email the most. It is essential if you sell products or services online.
Pledge of seriousness and confidence for your customers; it must fulfil several objectives:
This email plays a vital reinsurance role, and it often happens that the user has doubts about taking into account his actions, hence the importance of confirmation emails.
For some customers, ordering online is still something unusual and sometimes anxiety-provoking: a particular order confirmation email should reassure them that you are serious.
Password reset
The password reset email allows you to configure a new password via a single link. It is one of the essential transactional emails to set up: without it, your users who have forgotten their password have no way of being able to access their account!
How to set up your transactional emails?
Transactional emails are based on the SMTP protocol and require a specialised solution to ensure constant and reliable deliverability.
Use a dedicated and reliable solution
The best option is to go through a specialised transactional email services to manage your transactional shipments, such as sendgrid transactional email.
Sendgrid indeed offers many advantages compared to transactional emails included in CMS such as Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce:
Using the native solutions of most CMSs, you have no way of knowing if your transactional emails have arrived at their destination!
Separate your transactional mailings from your marketing campaigns
It is also essential to choose a solution that allows the routing of transactional emails to be separated from marketing emails.
Transactional emails are a vital point on your site and should not be penalised by the necessarily lower deliverability of your marketing mailings.
A problem in a marketing campaign can quickly lead to a decline in your reputation with email providers. You must, at all costs, avoid this impacting your transactional mailings.
Tips to Improve Your Transactional Emails
Finally, here are some tips to improve your transactional emails:
How To Deal With Unpaid Invoices In Business
/in Customer Relationship Management, Managing Your Finances/by StrategyDrivenProvide Clear Invoices
If a customer doesn’t want to pay up, they will try all sorts of tricks to avoid the invoice. They may say that they didn’t know that the invoice was due or they might challenge some of the items on the bill to delay payment and try to get a discount. You can avoid that by writing a detailed and clear invoice that breaks down exactly what they are paying for and when the invoice is due. It’s also important that you keep a clear paper trail when negotiating the price and sending them quotes so they cannot claim that the invoice is higher than agreed.
Consider Recurring Payments
If you have clients that use your services on a regular basis, consider asking them to set up a direct debit for recurring payments rather than issuing a new invoice every month. It makes life easier for you and for the customer and if you use recurring billing software, it’s simple to manage. You can make the prospect more attractive to customers if you offer them a small discount in exchange for making recurring payments every month. This gives you a good steady income, which makes managing your cash flow a lot easier.
Build Good Relationships With Customers
If your customers like you, they’ll be more willing to pay up on time, but if you don’t have a good relationship with you then they will be far more likely to leave invoices unpaid. It’s important that you build good relationships with your customers from the outset, and if you do, you will find that you don’t have an issue with unpaid invoices.
Don’t Be Afraid To Chase People Up
Sometimes, business owners are afraid to chase people up because they don’t want to damage their relationship with customers. However, if you allow people to get away with paying invoices late, they will take advantage of you and the problem will only get worse. It’s best to be clear from the beginning and if people have not paid, call them up and ask them where the money is. In most cases, people will pay up and if they decide that they don’t want to work with you again in the future, you just have to accept that and consider it a win because you don’t have to deal with a tricky customer anymore.
Follow these steps and you should be able to avoid any unpaid invoices in the future.
Preparing Your Small Business For A Disaster
/in Managing Your Business, Risk Management/by StrategyDrivenDepending on where your business is based, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and fires are just some of the things that pose a risk to your company and your livelihood. Here, we look at some of the things that you can do to mitigate the risk, and if the worst should happen, what you can do to get back on your feet as soon as safely possible.
Before a disaster strikes
Identify responsibilities
Every person within your company has a role to play and responsibilities to handle, but often these can become blurred. It is important to note down in your disaster plan and make sure every person is aware of their responsibilities, and should there be a disaster, they know what they need to do.
Back up documents
The last thing that you want to do when your premises have been damaged or destroyed, or if conditions have made it unsafe to travel is to have to worry about finding out important documents. It is essential that you have at least one copy of all your relevant documents – insurance details, inventories, employee details, etc. Store these somewhere secure, and that is easily accessible.
Install security cameras
These might be damaged in the event of a disaster, but they are still worth having in to see what happened. They may be useful if you have to claim on your insurance as well.
Have secondary power sources available
Sometimes, the whole premises might not be damaged or destroyed, but the electrics blow or a storm knocks out your power. Give yourself a chance of trading, or at least make sure anything that relies on electricity such as fridges, freezers, tanks for animals etc. are kept running and protect your stock by having a secondary source of power available, such as industrial engines and generators.
Inventory
For both stick purposes and insurance purposes, an inventory is essential. Where possible, keep receipts and invoices as you may be asked to hand these to insurance companies as proof of costs, but having an up to date inventory of stock, machinery, and equipment is useful.
When a disaster strikes
Inform your employees
One of the first things that you need to do is inform any employees who might be due to work that day so that they know exactly what to expect. It is important to have a contact list accessible at all times. You also need to have a contingency plan fr paying your staff – it is vital that you try to keep paying staff as normally as possible, as you may find that you do not have a workforce when you are back up and running.
Work remotely
You may need to work remotely for a while, as may your staff. Ensure that you have access to the technology and tools you need – this is where cloud services are a good idea, as you and your team can access any documents required to continue working from anywhere in the world. Ensure that any confidential information is encrypted to prevent any hacks in the transfer of information – the last thing you want to be dealing with at this point is a huge data breach!
Let your customers know
Your customers keep your business going, so it is imperative to let them know what is going on as soon as possible. Pop a note on the door if it is safe or appropriate to do so, informing them of the situation and when you expect to be open again, as well as any contact details. Put a note on your website and a post out on your social media platforms.
Talk to lenders
If you have any loans or finance on anything, talk to your lenders and creditors. In a situation such as this, many will be willing to work with you to give you a payment holiday and catch up when things are back to normal, but if you don’t ask, you won’t get!
You can’t stop a disaster from happening, but the steps you take to prepare for one and how you deal with it afterwards can make the situation a little less stressful and get you back up and running as soon as possible.
Benefits of Help Desk for Your Business
/in Managing Your Business/by StrategyDrivenImagine that you are an employee who has just spent hours working on a report when suddenly, your computer crashes. All your work is gone, and you are unable to get your computer to operate. In this technological era, most daily work functions depend on an internet connection and electronic appliances. When troubles arise, employees are dependent on the IT experts of the company to get their system back up and running. Implementing IT help desk software and best practices allows end-users to request and receive assistance as quickly as possible. Help desk software automates and streamlines IT support so that your support staff can efficiently handle tickets.
Improve Employee Productivity and Satisfaction
Employees rely on IT support staff to troubleshoot and mitigate technical issues. Employees can quickly open up a ticket using help desk software instead of spending time tracking down IT staff. This reduces employee downtime, and work can resume. Employees tend to become disgruntled when there are problems that result in wasted effort. Knowing that there is a team dedicated to preventing such problems will reduce frustrations. When frustrations are low and satisfaction is high, the company is in a better position.
Automated Support Ticket Management
Some companies use email to report technical issues. However, as the quantity of tickets increases, it becomes harder to manage and prioritize critical issues. Help desks organize, prioritize, and distribute tickets efficiently for the IT help desk staff.
Automated ticket management can improve your IT team’s performance and help them stay on top of all incoming tickets. It will distribute tickets based on location or type of issue. If many issues are originating from users located in the same area, a team member can be assigned all of those tickets. This reduces traveling back and forth from one person to another.
Another way ticket management can maximize efficiency is to delegate all similar tickets to one person. That team member will be able to work faster since they are in charge of one specific task.
IT Documentation and Analytics
A very useful benefit of help desks is the retention of all the different tickets, as well as the implemented solutions. Recurring problems can be dealt with promptly even if it is a new team member who is working on it.
Another benefit is being able to analyze the data and history that the system is saving. Many help desk software can generate reports so you can easily detect trends or bugs in the system. This information offers crucial insight into any holes within your company’s IT infrastructure. For example, if many employees are repeatedly reporting the same problem, then you know that you need to spend resources to correct it.
One Resource for All Answers
Tracking via help desk allows IT staff to manage and maintain resources for the whole company. This will build the company’s knowledge base and free up IT staff to troubleshoot more serious issues.
Once common issues are identified, staff can compile solutions that employees can easily follow on their own. This provides a single tool for the entire company to utilize when they need help, but assistance is unavailable immediately.
Another way to use help desk is to quickly provide office-wide announcements as soon as an issue is known to be happening all across the system. For instance, if a specific application is having problems, the IT team can broadcast to everyone that a solution is in the works. This will reduce confusion, as well as the number of tickets in the help desk system.
Help desks can be valuable to your company and its employees. It provides a way for the support team and employees to communicate with each other and to work together to bring the company onto the path of success.