While there have been numerous developments over the years in different industries, the healthcare sector has not been left behind. Both technological and policy advancements have brought significant changes to this horizon. Most of these changes have helped better the services and competence of the healthcare industry.
In 2018, more business strategies have been put in place intended to complement the benefits of the industry. Here are four healthcare business strategy trends from healthcare experts expected in 2018 to make health centers more convenient for you and your loved ones.
Doctors Will Emphasis on Patient Education
Other than diagnosing and treating patients, doctors have the responsibility of providing patient education. This education helps patients understand the conditions that they have and accept the diagnosis that doctors give. Over the years, however, doctors have not been competent enough in giving such patient education.
As a result, patients tend to deny some of the conditions that they are diagnosed with such as diabetics and cancer. In 2018, doctors are expected to focus more on providing patient education. This will help patients to become pro-active thus increasing efficiency all around.
Healthcare Organizations Will Address the Poor Employee Engagements
For healthcare centers to be most effective, the employees in the centers, especially doctors and nurses, need to be aggressive in their work. Unfortunately, there have been cases showing that employee commitment and aggressiveness in their jobs is low. The common reason given for the poor performance is low wages and salaries.
In fact, the healthcare organizations that have managed to offer better pay for their workers have realized a change. For this reason, it is expected that by the end of 2018, healthcare managers will address the concrete reasons behind the poor performance of medical experts to ensure better management of the centers.
Tech Companies Will Be More Involved in the Health Sector
Over the years, technological innovations have brought about positive changes offering different Medicare options for seniors and explaining the differences between types in the health market. You can fulfill certain criteria and get better health insurance just because of the information flow. Another good thing the internet has made it easy – both doctors and patients to have more information about various symptoms and diseases. Additionally, it is possible for patients to consultation even from far away, thus making the follow-up process easier and more effective.
It is expected that the tech companies will be more involved in the healthcare centers this year to have positive impacts on the industry. For instance, it is expected that there will be advantages such as ultra-health scans and digital therapy for patients who need home care and cannot afford to travel to the center. Such technological innovations will make it easier for you to access medical services at your convenience.
Easy Access to Accurate Medical Information
Having accurate medical information which is readily available is the key to the thriving of the healthcare industry. The demand for this information is rapidly increasing since there are new symptoms and diseases almost every day. As a result, there has been a need to move all medical details and knowledge to the cloud. This will make it easy for you to access the information at your convenience. Additionally, the cloud memory will have other advantages such as simple record management, reduced practice costs, and reduced price. It is also safer to store patient information in the cloud memory. Generally, moving medical information to the cloud will boost the workflow and thus optimizing the overall healthcare industry.
In the past years, there have been emerging trends and changes in the healthcare technology. Luckily these and more changes are expected to continue in the year 2018 through the healthcare business strategies laid in place. Above are some of the strategies in the healthcare that will help make the health sector better.
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A basic tip provided by start-up technicians, expert technology specialists, self-help experts, and network experts on how to start an online business is: “Be Effective.”
Start-ups in e-commerce do their best, often taking part in courses tagged “Start-up 101” that are being promoted as the “easiest”, “fastest” and “best”, and they all seem to disappear in one or two years for reasons unknown. The people who have created new e-commerce enterprises ask the same questions raised by slick and motivational articles about success, instead of clarifying their vision. Unfortunately, none of these resources contains a single piece of advice on how to avoid at the typical errors synonymous with web development during the creation of platforms.
Our company is not just a web development agency; we are the technology partners of several start-ups. Our focus is on quick launch, and long-term projects have also become our priority. Our company is not only interested in the development hours paid by the project owner, but also in the success of a project, the development of additional features, maintenance capacity, and scalability.
Without further ado, we will talk about the main risks involved in web development:
Risk No 1: Contractor’s Experience
Most decision makers try to find an experienced web development company with skills that align with the planned project. If all companies were the same, there would be no single company or proposal that matches the needs of a specific project.
Solution: Look for a web development contractor with extensive expertise. Brendan Wilde of Discountdomains.co.nz believes that it demonstrates the contractor’s ability to implement different business models and bring the experience of other business areas to the benefit of the system. ‘A contractor with limited experience can be a star in a specific field but cannot always see the system in a broader sense’, Wilde added.
Risk No 2: Shortcuts
Some decision makers believe that if they find a contractor with the same experience in implementing the same type of project, then there’s no use to invest in research, analysis, lists of features, prototypes, etc. This may seem reasonable for small business websites or blogs, but when it comes to B2B systems and e-commerce platforms, these errors could lead to huge losses.
Solution: Take your time. Analyse the functionalities and their means of implementation, plot production, create prototypes and align the system’s professional outlook with marketing experts before coding. This will save costs on redesign, or solve technical bottlenecks created by lack of planning. This phase requires between 2% to 7% of the project budget, but saves a large amount of funds for long-term projects. Since start-ups are high-risk on their own, we suggest you avoid all possible dangers whenever you can.
Risk No 3: Length of the Project
This risk also relates to the cost of the project. The trick is to combine the financing model and the development calendar. In a linear process, different experts participate in various parts of the project, passing the baton to the next phase and to the team of experts. This approach may be suitable for small projects, but for large platforms it can ruin the whole idea. This is because the project could be obsolete before you even launch it.
Solution: Look for web development agencies aware of this risk. We have seen a huge positive impact when involving all types of experts in every phase of the project. This workflow ensures a faster transition of expertise among project team members at every stage of development, reduces repetitions and over-clarification, saves development costs in general, and shortens the development cycle.
Risk No 4: Linear Development
As per practical implementation, consider linear workflow as an example. The customer decides to create a B2B web platform from scratch. In a linear workflow, the first two months would be devoted to engineering requirements, creating feature lists and creating prototypes. The following two months will be dedicated to the correction of the prototype with the designers, the outlook design, the correction of the design (because the customer takes on a marketing agency for the purpose of the project) and the fine-tuning of the design. Development will begin in the fifth month simply because the corrections made in the second phase would return to the previous phase and would be used again in the second phase. This process is long, boring, complicated and risky in a competitive environment.
Solution: Try to reduce these repetitions, since the amount of work done by the requisite engineers in two weeks is enough to start working on prototypes, present the marketing agency with results, demonstrate the concept, and implement the changes and subsequently adapt to the market.
In this way, the client can start receiving comments from project experts in four weeks instead of four months. In addition, several specialists work at the same time: the developers are involved in the requirements analysis phase to discuss the performance of features and in the prototype phase to share their vision of coding design with the highest engagement ratio during the phase of development. The participation of designers is at the highest during the design phase, but also influences prototyping because they share their UI/UX experience and continue to support developers during the development phase.
With projects created in two weeks, you can start the development phase faster, using good WordPress plugins. Since the start of the design work is two weeks after design requirements, one month of preparation in this model is sufficient to initiate the development of back-end and front-end, and align the design or functionality with the recommendation from the marketing agency.
Think big, ask relevant questions, act quickly and pay attention to the details of hidden importance. These can ruin the entire project or bring it to the highest peak of business.
Conclusion
The team of web developers over at ALT Agency believe that with any web development project the key to success comes down to project management.
When projects aren’t planned correctly from the start they tend to fall apart mid project and leave to unexpected delays and often increased costs for clients.
By sitting down as a team and planning correctly and using tools such as Trello and Invision it allows for a much clearer outcome and with through planning with all requirements and elements of a development broken down it’s easy to identify issues before they arise.
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In the part 1 of this topic, the likes of communication, organization and information was discussed as some of the reasons every business owner should consider using SharePoint. In this article, the focus will be on the pros of using SharePoint as a business technology solution.
Four Advantages of SharePoint
Experts at Domains4less.co.nz say that SharePoint reduces costs by consolidating intranet, extranet and internet sites in a single platform – either internally or through the use of Cloud technology. Training costs can be reduced by using SharePoint to deliver training materials to teams, customers and partners via a password-protected website, accessible from anywhere. Resources, time and effort are saved with SharePoint’s collaboration and productivity capabilities, which allow companies to focus more on higher business priorities.
Useful SharePoint Tools
Often, the reason why companies are reluctant to switch to SharePoint is because they don’t imagine how they can apply it to their business to provide tangible benefits. While there are many tools associated with SharePoint, the following generally feature the most easy to understand applications for business operations:
CRM Tools
With SharePoint, companies can more easily implement a strategy to manage their company’s interactions with customers, distributors and sales prospects. The CRM tools provided by SharePoint can help with marketing efforts, customer service and even technical challenges. CRM data can be shared with customers, partners and distributors, allowing them to send requests, track status and view information. Content management features can be extended to your customers and you can create secure central documents that they can both view and edit.
Calendar
A SharePoint calendar will keep users abreast of events, meetings, deadlines, milestones, and other important dates to remember. Users remain focused and teams are more consistent when everyone is aware of notable calendar events. Customers can also stay abreast of company or product events via e-mail updates. You can even overlay a SharePoint calendar with Outlook calendars (or other SharePoint calendars) so you can filter events or view them simultaneously.
Workflow Solution
Regardless of their size or scope, all companies have workflows that dictate an activity pattern, enabled by the systematic organisation of resources, defined roles and flow of information in a tangible process that can be documented and learnt. Using SharePoint, the workflow is defined as the automated movement of documents or items via a sequence of actions or activities, related to a business process. When applying SharePoint business logic, you can attach workflows to instructions that specify and control the actions that occur in any given document or article. Subsequently, this can simplify the costs and time needed to coordinate common business processes.
Dashboard Instruments
SharePoint lets you create a project panel to help users synchronise and perform tasks. You can view and filter elements such as project details, project documents, project activities, project problems, project calendars, project milestones, lessons learnt from the project, the risks of project, and project modification orders, amongst others. Effective use of the dashboard can help you monitor business metrics, analyse the causes of any problems and improve business intelligence to aid decision making. You can customise the SharePoint panel so that essential tools for managing content and users are readily available.
Is Sharepoint Adequate For Your Business?
There are valid business reasons to use SharePoint, but it’s up to each entrepreneur to carefully analyse their business credentials and calculate the actual cost of ownership. In general, if effectively implemented, SharePoint should reduce costs, save resources and ensure accuracy, whilst delivering tangible benefits for the business, including improved productivity, better decision-making and greater innovation.
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SharePoint divides the different areas of a company and provides tools to connect them in a meaningful way. However, many businesses are cynical about Microsoft’s swiftly rising SharePoint tool. This could be because they’re not entirely sure how it can be applied to their business operations. Therefore, the goal of this article is to define SharePoint, analyse its uses and help you apply it to achieve a positive return on your investment.
What is SharePoint?
Microsoft SharePoint is a multipurpose web application platform that makes communication, collaboration and content management more fluid and effective for many businesses. The SharePoint platform collaborates with information exchange, enterprise research implementation, business processes and business intelligence to simplify operations, increase productivity and ultimately save time and money. The three main components of SharePoint are communication, information and organisation.
Communication
SharePoint’s communication capabilities improve the way people work together, enabling teams to be aware of who did what, when and with what documents. Essentially, it helps to share and distribute information in order to improve teamwork. You could also install virtual machines, Artificial intelligence equipments, bots and the likes, but do not neglect the power of SharePoint.
Content is stored in a central repository instead of being distributed throughout the organisation; this facilitates access, allocation, control and exchange. Tasks are assigned and team members receive automatic notifications accordingly. Any upcoming events are easily available and sent to the relevant parties. Meanwhile, blogs and discussion forums provide a platform for sharing information and ideas.
Information
SharePoint allows users more control over information. Content management is more fluid and effective for companies, keeping it in a centralised and synchronised position for all members to access. Here, information is stored in a secure and private place, where it can be shared with team members, customers or assigned partners. With efficient input / output management features, users can add, edit and delete the same documents, whilst maintaining version control.
Organisation
The organisation as a whole is also improved through using SharePoint. Content can be added as a table or list, in which users can easily search for and assign tasks. By storing the content in a manageable database, it becomes much easier to access and share. Utilising the calendar tool, an event can be created and stored alongside related documents, while automatic notifications can alert interested parties about any upcoming events or document changes. Data can be accessed on mobile devices with internet access, so that all parties can have the relevant information at their fingertips, no matter where they are in the world.
In short, SharePoint is a collaborative tool that improves the way in which colleagues work together by providing tools that facilitates information flow between users and departments.
How Can A SharePoint Solution Help Your Business?
Increased Productivity
SharePoint aims to increase productivity via a range of features and tools that provide the relevant information for the right people at the right time, eliminating unnecessary activities through automated processes. Team projects are best managed using centralised workstations and workflow solutions that keep members informed about the status of activities, deadlines and milestones.
Best Decisions
The decisions made by any business consequently determine its future. Successful companies know how to gather, save and study vital trade and marketing statistics to attain efficient, tactical, strategic and active information to facilitate better decision making. SharePoint services enable organisations to quickly respond to a changing market and fast-changing business needs by easily accessing readily available information.
For example, a project panel allows users to view and filter information about the company and project, so they can get an overview of a particular business problem at their fingertips. Subsequently, accessing and distributing correct business information allows a company to make more effective decisions about its future.
Unlocked Innovation
Innovation is a process whereby new ideas are created and applied successfully. Innovation can help businesses improve productivity, reduce costs, be more competitive, find new customers and increase profitability. A company that fails to innovate will lose market share and won’t succeed.
SharePoint is an innovation assistance tool that helps unlock creativity through discovery and information exchange. SharePoint discussion features allow users to share ideas, as well as offer experience and create customised solutions for specific needs. For example, a user can start a blog for a private company to share ideas with a team that’s visible only to those who have access.
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There are two fundamental aspects of digital commerce that have the potential to tarnish the reputation of your success; the loading speed of your website and the credibility of your email account. Indeed, there are many essential ingredients every business needs but perhaps there are none more important in the sphere of online business than the load speed of your website and the amount of emails that get through to your list of subscribers.
First off, let’s take a look at your email account.
Email marketing is one of the most essential ways to communicate with customers today, indeed it is one of the most essential aspects of digital marketing, yet it can be notoriously difficult as often commercial emails end up in spam folders.
Today, there are over a hundred different SPAM blacklists in operation but with the use of certain tools and strategies such as using email list verification, this risk can be mitigated in order to ensure the majority of emails do get through to their intended recipients.
Now, let’s look at how the loading speed of your website.
It’s well known that there’s a direct correlation between the loading time of your website and bounce rate, that is to say the number of people that visit your site but leave straight away; just like in the offline retail world, where a customer walks into a shop then walks straight out.
In fact, to better explain the term ‘bounce rate’ it can help to picture a busy shopping centre – where people are walking around browsing or searching for a particular solution. In the shopping centre, signposts help point people in the right direction, whereas in the online world, Google is the authority.
In the offline retail world, people naturally browse a few different stores based on the attractiveness of their retail display amongst other factors such as brand awareness and perceived relevance to their needs.
Now, as the store owner once they come through the door, it’s your job to engage them with special offers, product demonstrations, engaging retail displays, and relevant ideas to solve a problem they face.
In essence, your job as a retailer is to engage consumers so they spend as much time in your retail environment as possible – for there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time spent in a store and the amount of money spent. This is why large retail brands invest so much in visual merchandising.
Now, in the digital world, if you have high traffic but low engagement this is known as having a high bounce rate.
The reason a high bounce rate will cripple your online business success is because it’s akin to people walking in your store, and then straight back out, without buying anything. Whilst a high bounce rate can be attributed to many factors such as a lack of engaging content, or a lack of perceived relevance, it has been found that 40% of potential customers will leave your website if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
This is particularly pertinent in our increasingly impatient digital world and therefore we’re going to take a brief look at three ways to optimise the loading speed of your website.
1. Hosting
Load speed can be somewhat contingent on your hosting provider, and therefore, it’s something you should seriously consider before committing to a provider. If you have a high volume of traffic to your website then you might want to consider upgrading to private hosting, as this can offer a much speedier service in terms of load speed.
2. Optimize Images
Many website owners use large image files and then scale them down automatically using CSS, to be displayed on the user’s device. This might not seem like a problem, but the challenge is the browser has to load the full size image, then scale it down, which is a very inefficient way to process photos – and this can seriously affect load speed.
3. Enable Browser Caching
When you regularly visit a website some of the elements of that web page are stored on your hard drive, in a temporary storage folder, known as a cache. As a website owner, if you enable browser caching it means you are able to temporarily store data on the user’s computer which means they will have a much faster loading experience.
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Healthcare Management: The Top Strategies You’ll See In 2018
/in General/by StrategyDrivenWhile there have been numerous developments over the years in different industries, the healthcare sector has not been left behind. Both technological and policy advancements have brought significant changes to this horizon. Most of these changes have helped better the services and competence of the healthcare industry.
In 2018, more business strategies have been put in place intended to complement the benefits of the industry. Here are four healthcare business strategy trends from healthcare experts expected in 2018 to make health centers more convenient for you and your loved ones.
Doctors Will Emphasis on Patient Education
Other than diagnosing and treating patients, doctors have the responsibility of providing patient education. This education helps patients understand the conditions that they have and accept the diagnosis that doctors give. Over the years, however, doctors have not been competent enough in giving such patient education.
As a result, patients tend to deny some of the conditions that they are diagnosed with such as diabetics and cancer. In 2018, doctors are expected to focus more on providing patient education. This will help patients to become pro-active thus increasing efficiency all around.
Healthcare Organizations Will Address the Poor Employee Engagements
For healthcare centers to be most effective, the employees in the centers, especially doctors and nurses, need to be aggressive in their work. Unfortunately, there have been cases showing that employee commitment and aggressiveness in their jobs is low. The common reason given for the poor performance is low wages and salaries.
In fact, the healthcare organizations that have managed to offer better pay for their workers have realized a change. For this reason, it is expected that by the end of 2018, healthcare managers will address the concrete reasons behind the poor performance of medical experts to ensure better management of the centers.
Tech Companies Will Be More Involved in the Health Sector
Over the years, technological innovations have brought about positive changes offering different Medicare options for seniors and explaining the differences between types in the health market. You can fulfill certain criteria and get better health insurance just because of the information flow. Another good thing the internet has made it easy – both doctors and patients to have more information about various symptoms and diseases. Additionally, it is possible for patients to consultation even from far away, thus making the follow-up process easier and more effective.
It is expected that the tech companies will be more involved in the healthcare centers this year to have positive impacts on the industry. For instance, it is expected that there will be advantages such as ultra-health scans and digital therapy for patients who need home care and cannot afford to travel to the center. Such technological innovations will make it easier for you to access medical services at your convenience.
Easy Access to Accurate Medical Information
Having accurate medical information which is readily available is the key to the thriving of the healthcare industry. The demand for this information is rapidly increasing since there are new symptoms and diseases almost every day. As a result, there has been a need to move all medical details and knowledge to the cloud. This will make it easy for you to access the information at your convenience. Additionally, the cloud memory will have other advantages such as simple record management, reduced practice costs, and reduced price. It is also safer to store patient information in the cloud memory. Generally, moving medical information to the cloud will boost the workflow and thus optimizing the overall healthcare industry.
In the past years, there have been emerging trends and changes in the healthcare technology. Luckily these and more changes are expected to continue in the year 2018 through the healthcare business strategies laid in place. Above are some of the strategies in the healthcare that will help make the health sector better.
Four Risks to Avoid During B2B Web Development
/in Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales/by StrategyDrivenA basic tip provided by start-up technicians, expert technology specialists, self-help experts, and network experts on how to start an online business is: “Be Effective.”
Start-ups in e-commerce do their best, often taking part in courses tagged “Start-up 101” that are being promoted as the “easiest”, “fastest” and “best”, and they all seem to disappear in one or two years for reasons unknown. The people who have created new e-commerce enterprises ask the same questions raised by slick and motivational articles about success, instead of clarifying their vision. Unfortunately, none of these resources contains a single piece of advice on how to avoid at the typical errors synonymous with web development during the creation of platforms.
Our company is not just a web development agency; we are the technology partners of several start-ups. Our focus is on quick launch, and long-term projects have also become our priority. Our company is not only interested in the development hours paid by the project owner, but also in the success of a project, the development of additional features, maintenance capacity, and scalability.
Without further ado, we will talk about the main risks involved in web development:
Risk No 1: Contractor’s Experience
Most decision makers try to find an experienced web development company with skills that align with the planned project. If all companies were the same, there would be no single company or proposal that matches the needs of a specific project.
Solution: Look for a web development contractor with extensive expertise. Brendan Wilde of Discountdomains.co.nz believes that it demonstrates the contractor’s ability to implement different business models and bring the experience of other business areas to the benefit of the system. ‘A contractor with limited experience can be a star in a specific field but cannot always see the system in a broader sense’, Wilde added.
Risk No 2: Shortcuts
Some decision makers believe that if they find a contractor with the same experience in implementing the same type of project, then there’s no use to invest in research, analysis, lists of features, prototypes, etc. This may seem reasonable for small business websites or blogs, but when it comes to B2B systems and e-commerce platforms, these errors could lead to huge losses.
Solution: Take your time. Analyse the functionalities and their means of implementation, plot production, create prototypes and align the system’s professional outlook with marketing experts before coding. This will save costs on redesign, or solve technical bottlenecks created by lack of planning. This phase requires between 2% to 7% of the project budget, but saves a large amount of funds for long-term projects. Since start-ups are high-risk on their own, we suggest you avoid all possible dangers whenever you can.
Risk No 3: Length of the Project
This risk also relates to the cost of the project. The trick is to combine the financing model and the development calendar. In a linear process, different experts participate in various parts of the project, passing the baton to the next phase and to the team of experts. This approach may be suitable for small projects, but for large platforms it can ruin the whole idea. This is because the project could be obsolete before you even launch it.
Solution: Look for web development agencies aware of this risk. We have seen a huge positive impact when involving all types of experts in every phase of the project. This workflow ensures a faster transition of expertise among project team members at every stage of development, reduces repetitions and over-clarification, saves development costs in general, and shortens the development cycle.
Risk No 4: Linear Development
As per practical implementation, consider linear workflow as an example. The customer decides to create a B2B web platform from scratch. In a linear workflow, the first two months would be devoted to engineering requirements, creating feature lists and creating prototypes. The following two months will be dedicated to the correction of the prototype with the designers, the outlook design, the correction of the design (because the customer takes on a marketing agency for the purpose of the project) and the fine-tuning of the design. Development will begin in the fifth month simply because the corrections made in the second phase would return to the previous phase and would be used again in the second phase. This process is long, boring, complicated and risky in a competitive environment.
Solution: Try to reduce these repetitions, since the amount of work done by the requisite engineers in two weeks is enough to start working on prototypes, present the marketing agency with results, demonstrate the concept, and implement the changes and subsequently adapt to the market.
In this way, the client can start receiving comments from project experts in four weeks instead of four months. In addition, several specialists work at the same time: the developers are involved in the requirements analysis phase to discuss the performance of features and in the prototype phase to share their vision of coding design with the highest engagement ratio during the phase of development. The participation of designers is at the highest during the design phase, but also influences prototyping because they share their UI/UX experience and continue to support developers during the development phase.
With projects created in two weeks, you can start the development phase faster, using good WordPress plugins. Since the start of the design work is two weeks after design requirements, one month of preparation in this model is sufficient to initiate the development of back-end and front-end, and align the design or functionality with the recommendation from the marketing agency.
Think big, ask relevant questions, act quickly and pay attention to the details of hidden importance. These can ruin the entire project or bring it to the highest peak of business.
Conclusion
The team of web developers over at ALT Agency believe that with any web development project the key to success comes down to project management.
When projects aren’t planned correctly from the start they tend to fall apart mid project and leave to unexpected delays and often increased costs for clients.
By sitting down as a team and planning correctly and using tools such as Trello and Invision it allows for a much clearer outcome and with through planning with all requirements and elements of a development broken down it’s easy to identify issues before they arise.
Why You Should Consider SharePoint as a Business Technology Solution, part 2
/in Tactical Execution/by StrategyDrivenIn the part 1 of this topic, the likes of communication, organization and information was discussed as some of the reasons every business owner should consider using SharePoint. In this article, the focus will be on the pros of using SharePoint as a business technology solution.
Four Advantages of SharePoint
Experts at Domains4less.co.nz say that SharePoint reduces costs by consolidating intranet, extranet and internet sites in a single platform – either internally or through the use of Cloud technology. Training costs can be reduced by using SharePoint to deliver training materials to teams, customers and partners via a password-protected website, accessible from anywhere. Resources, time and effort are saved with SharePoint’s collaboration and productivity capabilities, which allow companies to focus more on higher business priorities.
Useful SharePoint Tools
Often, the reason why companies are reluctant to switch to SharePoint is because they don’t imagine how they can apply it to their business to provide tangible benefits. While there are many tools associated with SharePoint, the following generally feature the most easy to understand applications for business operations:
CRM Tools
With SharePoint, companies can more easily implement a strategy to manage their company’s interactions with customers, distributors and sales prospects. The CRM tools provided by SharePoint can help with marketing efforts, customer service and even technical challenges. CRM data can be shared with customers, partners and distributors, allowing them to send requests, track status and view information. Content management features can be extended to your customers and you can create secure central documents that they can both view and edit.
Calendar
A SharePoint calendar will keep users abreast of events, meetings, deadlines, milestones, and other important dates to remember. Users remain focused and teams are more consistent when everyone is aware of notable calendar events. Customers can also stay abreast of company or product events via e-mail updates. You can even overlay a SharePoint calendar with Outlook calendars (or other SharePoint calendars) so you can filter events or view them simultaneously.
Workflow Solution
Regardless of their size or scope, all companies have workflows that dictate an activity pattern, enabled by the systematic organisation of resources, defined roles and flow of information in a tangible process that can be documented and learnt. Using SharePoint, the workflow is defined as the automated movement of documents or items via a sequence of actions or activities, related to a business process. When applying SharePoint business logic, you can attach workflows to instructions that specify and control the actions that occur in any given document or article. Subsequently, this can simplify the costs and time needed to coordinate common business processes.
Dashboard Instruments
SharePoint lets you create a project panel to help users synchronise and perform tasks. You can view and filter elements such as project details, project documents, project activities, project problems, project calendars, project milestones, lessons learnt from the project, the risks of project, and project modification orders, amongst others. Effective use of the dashboard can help you monitor business metrics, analyse the causes of any problems and improve business intelligence to aid decision making. You can customise the SharePoint panel so that essential tools for managing content and users are readily available.
Is Sharepoint Adequate For Your Business?
There are valid business reasons to use SharePoint, but it’s up to each entrepreneur to carefully analyse their business credentials and calculate the actual cost of ownership. In general, if effectively implemented, SharePoint should reduce costs, save resources and ensure accuracy, whilst delivering tangible benefits for the business, including improved productivity, better decision-making and greater innovation.
Why You Should Consider SharePoint as a Business Technology Solution, part 1
/in Tactical Execution/by StrategyDrivenSharePoint divides the different areas of a company and provides tools to connect them in a meaningful way. However, many businesses are cynical about Microsoft’s swiftly rising SharePoint tool. This could be because they’re not entirely sure how it can be applied to their business operations. Therefore, the goal of this article is to define SharePoint, analyse its uses and help you apply it to achieve a positive return on your investment.
What is SharePoint?
Microsoft SharePoint is a multipurpose web application platform that makes communication, collaboration and content management more fluid and effective for many businesses. The SharePoint platform collaborates with information exchange, enterprise research implementation, business processes and business intelligence to simplify operations, increase productivity and ultimately save time and money. The three main components of SharePoint are communication, information and organisation.
Communication
SharePoint’s communication capabilities improve the way people work together, enabling teams to be aware of who did what, when and with what documents. Essentially, it helps to share and distribute information in order to improve teamwork. You could also install virtual machines, Artificial intelligence equipments, bots and the likes, but do not neglect the power of SharePoint.
Content is stored in a central repository instead of being distributed throughout the organisation; this facilitates access, allocation, control and exchange. Tasks are assigned and team members receive automatic notifications accordingly. Any upcoming events are easily available and sent to the relevant parties. Meanwhile, blogs and discussion forums provide a platform for sharing information and ideas.
Information
SharePoint allows users more control over information. Content management is more fluid and effective for companies, keeping it in a centralised and synchronised position for all members to access. Here, information is stored in a secure and private place, where it can be shared with team members, customers or assigned partners. With efficient input / output management features, users can add, edit and delete the same documents, whilst maintaining version control.
Organisation
The organisation as a whole is also improved through using SharePoint. Content can be added as a table or list, in which users can easily search for and assign tasks. By storing the content in a manageable database, it becomes much easier to access and share. Utilising the calendar tool, an event can be created and stored alongside related documents, while automatic notifications can alert interested parties about any upcoming events or document changes. Data can be accessed on mobile devices with internet access, so that all parties can have the relevant information at their fingertips, no matter where they are in the world.
In short, SharePoint is a collaborative tool that improves the way in which colleagues work together by providing tools that facilitates information flow between users and departments.
How Can A SharePoint Solution Help Your Business?
Increased Productivity
SharePoint aims to increase productivity via a range of features and tools that provide the relevant information for the right people at the right time, eliminating unnecessary activities through automated processes. Team projects are best managed using centralised workstations and workflow solutions that keep members informed about the status of activities, deadlines and milestones.
Best Decisions
The decisions made by any business consequently determine its future. Successful companies know how to gather, save and study vital trade and marketing statistics to attain efficient, tactical, strategic and active information to facilitate better decision making. SharePoint services enable organisations to quickly respond to a changing market and fast-changing business needs by easily accessing readily available information.
For example, a project panel allows users to view and filter information about the company and project, so they can get an overview of a particular business problem at their fingertips. Subsequently, accessing and distributing correct business information allows a company to make more effective decisions about its future.
Unlocked Innovation
Innovation is a process whereby new ideas are created and applied successfully. Innovation can help businesses improve productivity, reduce costs, be more competitive, find new customers and increase profitability. A company that fails to innovate will lose market share and won’t succeed.
SharePoint is an innovation assistance tool that helps unlock creativity through discovery and information exchange. SharePoint discussion features allow users to share ideas, as well as offer experience and create customised solutions for specific needs. For example, a user can start a blog for a private company to share ideas with a team that’s visible only to those who have access.
Two Things That Can Tarnish Your Online Business
/in Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Sales/by StrategyDrivenThere are two fundamental aspects of digital commerce that have the potential to tarnish the reputation of your success; the loading speed of your website and the credibility of your email account. Indeed, there are many essential ingredients every business needs but perhaps there are none more important in the sphere of online business than the load speed of your website and the amount of emails that get through to your list of subscribers.
First off, let’s take a look at your email account.
Email marketing is one of the most essential ways to communicate with customers today, indeed it is one of the most essential aspects of digital marketing, yet it can be notoriously difficult as often commercial emails end up in spam folders.
Today, there are over a hundred different SPAM blacklists in operation but with the use of certain tools and strategies such as using email list verification, this risk can be mitigated in order to ensure the majority of emails do get through to their intended recipients.
Now, let’s look at how the loading speed of your website.
It’s well known that there’s a direct correlation between the loading time of your website and bounce rate, that is to say the number of people that visit your site but leave straight away; just like in the offline retail world, where a customer walks into a shop then walks straight out.
In fact, to better explain the term ‘bounce rate’ it can help to picture a busy shopping centre – where people are walking around browsing or searching for a particular solution. In the shopping centre, signposts help point people in the right direction, whereas in the online world, Google is the authority.
In the offline retail world, people naturally browse a few different stores based on the attractiveness of their retail display amongst other factors such as brand awareness and perceived relevance to their needs.
Now, as the store owner once they come through the door, it’s your job to engage them with special offers, product demonstrations, engaging retail displays, and relevant ideas to solve a problem they face.
In essence, your job as a retailer is to engage consumers so they spend as much time in your retail environment as possible – for there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time spent in a store and the amount of money spent. This is why large retail brands invest so much in visual merchandising.
Now, in the digital world, if you have high traffic but low engagement this is known as having a high bounce rate.
The reason a high bounce rate will cripple your online business success is because it’s akin to people walking in your store, and then straight back out, without buying anything. Whilst a high bounce rate can be attributed to many factors such as a lack of engaging content, or a lack of perceived relevance, it has been found that 40% of potential customers will leave your website if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
This is particularly pertinent in our increasingly impatient digital world and therefore we’re going to take a brief look at three ways to optimise the loading speed of your website.
1. Hosting
Load speed can be somewhat contingent on your hosting provider, and therefore, it’s something you should seriously consider before committing to a provider. If you have a high volume of traffic to your website then you might want to consider upgrading to private hosting, as this can offer a much speedier service in terms of load speed.
2. Optimize Images
Many website owners use large image files and then scale them down automatically using CSS, to be displayed on the user’s device. This might not seem like a problem, but the challenge is the browser has to load the full size image, then scale it down, which is a very inefficient way to process photos – and this can seriously affect load speed.
3. Enable Browser Caching
When you regularly visit a website some of the elements of that web page are stored on your hard drive, in a temporary storage folder, known as a cache. As a website owner, if you enable browser caching it means you are able to temporarily store data on the user’s computer which means they will have a much faster loading experience.