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The Best Software to Improve Operational Efficiency

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | The Best Software to Improve Operational EfficiencyOperational efficiency is the process of delivering quality services with fewer resources. The more high-quality output you can produce with limited input, the more you can sell and the better able you are to serve your customers. When your business is able to maintain high levels of operational efficiency the more profit you are able to make from a project. So, with all the benefits offered, all businesses should be looking to improve their operational efficiency today.

Accounts Payable Automation Software

AP automation software can help you to improve the operational efficiency of your accounts processes. No matter the size of your business or the scale of your operations, you will benefit from using an AP automation system. The software helps you to automate every related process, from invoicing to manual checks, helping you to save both time and money.

Problems with cash flow and accounts can cause issues above and beyond operational efficiency. For example, when you experience issues with accounts and your staff are not getting paid on time, this can lead to low morale, poor worker wellbeing and increased staff turnover.

Chatbots

Chatbots are another very valuable piece of software that businesses can use to improve their operational efficiency in their customer service teams. Chatbots can be set up to answer many routine customer questions, which means that staff can spend their time on more critical tasks.

Not only does using chatbot technology help you to improve the operational efficiency of your customer service teams, but it also benefits your customer relations. The average customer expects an answer from a customer service representative instantly, which means, within 10 minutes from making contact. Chatbots will provide customers with that instant response they desire no matter the time of day, or day of the week they are contacting you.

Employee Engagement Software

The term employee engagement is used to describe the relationship your staff have with their work and your organization. An engaged employee is absorbed in their work and will go above and beyond to further the interest of the organization they are working for. In contrast, a disengaged employee will do the bare minim work and is either apathetic to the organization or might actually try to harm the business’s reputation.

Using employee engagement software can help you to track levels of engagement in your organization. This can help in everything from task allocation to hiring, all of which can help to boost operational efficiency.

Project Management Software

Project management software is another hugely valuable tool that you can use to improve operational efficiency in your business. Project management software enables you to track the progress that is being made with all staff members that are involved in the project.

When managers have access to the up-to-date information that is provided by the software, they are better able to identify potential drains on efficiency. When you are able to identify when progress is not being made as expected, you are able to make changes early on.

How to save money and time with the right software products

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How to save money and time with the right software productsTo be on top of everything in the nowadays market demands a lot of work with yourself and adaptability. Moreover, if you own a business, you want to grow your business as fast as possible with all the instruments. So how can you save time to focus on the essential things of your business? And how can you save money by using the right software product?

Benefits of software products for businesses

Let’s begin with how people consume and purchase more and more software products, whether they own a business or for personal use. Moreover, the pandemic has increased the demand with all the work-from-home habits. And people are trying to find the right tool that will help them find their balance between work and personal life. As a result, many types of software products on the market are dedicated to so many industries that can meet our needs.

Thus, using a software product can bring real value to your life and company. First of all, you can save time, time that you can use to focus on the business part instead of organizing your team and projects. Instead of having regular meetings, you can use a project management tool like Monday.com, Asana, Teamwork, Trello, or Notion. Moreover, there is a lot of automation tool that will automize all your repetitive tasks. So, your employee can save time, and you can let them be more creative on other projects.

But first, you have to know what your needs are or your company’s needs. So how do you find out what are your needs? If you don’t know how to choose what is suitable for you, you can always visit a software aggregator to read honest reviews.

Secondly, using the right software product can save you money. There are a lot of products designed to reduce your costs on specific tasks. For example, there a lot of accounting tools that can help you with your taxes and invoices. So instead of paying a dedicated bookkeeper, you can choose a great tool and purchase a subscription that will be cheaper than paying a professional doing it.

Read honest reviews on dedicated websites

If you are unsure which tool is better for your needs, you can always do a little research and inform better. As a solution for this, you can always read dedicated websites like Tekpon.com, a software aggregator where users can find the best solution for their business or personal need. This website offers its users honest reviews about all sorts of software products that will help them boost their business and personal life by improving their productivity, saving time and money, from project management software, content marketing, productivity, financial, network security, e-commerce software, and so on. Everything you need in one place. Moreover, they offer great deals and coupons to purchase the tools you want and need. Also, you can read on Tekpon.com the latest news in the tech and software industry. One of Tekpon’s goals is to offer users all over the world honest reviews on each product to ease their job in making the right decision. Thus, they want to help people and their businesses to boost their business with the right software products.

Grow your business with the right software product

The software industry has been designed products over the years to help people save time, as we live in the age of speed. And also save money to invest in what matters for your company. These two are the main benefits detailed above. But how else the right software can help us grow a company or even ourselves, professionally speaking? You can now manage things that you would not know before. For example, let’s say that you need help with your Social Media accounts, and you don’t know anything about how algorithms work for each platform. If you want to hire a Social Media Specialists, you will need a great budget, more than if you invest in a software product that will help you. The significant part of this is that you don’t have to learn how the platforms work; the tools will automatically deliver you the right insights to understand your customer/followers’ behavior and do the job.

If you don’t understand the importance of purchasing software products, don’t worry. Precisely that’s the reason why websites like Tekpon.com came to light. To help you understand your needs in the actual context where every business is going digital, deliver you the right solution, and help you get the best of your product. So many great tools are designed to ease people’s lives and offer them more time to do the things that matters to them.

Time and money are two vital elements for a business and the owner. And using the right tools will give you back; time to focus on the things you couldn’t before and money to invest in growing your company further. And not only for business owners but also for their employees; if you want to help them be more productive and work better and in a healthier environment, purchasing the right tools is the key to a successful team and business.

To Outsource IT Services or Not? 8 Reasons a Business Should Outsource IT

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |outsource IT|To Outsource IT Services or Not? 8 Reasons a Business Should Outsource ITOutsourcing has become a standard part of business today. If you’re looking for a function to start with, there’s no better option than IT. It’s the most commonly outsourced position in the business world.

Do you want to learn more about what benefits you will get when you outsource IT? Keep reading to learn eight reasons why working with a managed services provider is worth trying.

1. Save Money

It isn’t a cheap process to hire a new employee. You have the cost of sending out job postings and the cost of spending time in interviews. Even after all that work, there’s no guarantee that you find the right person for the job.

Then you have the cost of a salary. One employee is expensive enough. If you have a lot of IT needs, your entire IT budget can go up by a lot.

You can save a lot of money by working with a managed services provider. You only pay a retainer based on the needs of your business.

2. Focus on Your Core Business

Getting the things done that you’re good at is challenging enough at times. If you decide to manage an IT team yourself, you’re going to run the risk of spreading yourself too thin.

By working with a managed services provider for your IT needs, you can keep your focus on your core business. They will handle the planning and hiring for your company. The only thing you need to do is approve what they want to do.

3. Secure Your Business Online

If you haven’t been following the news, you probably aren’t aware of all the recent data breaches. Even large companies are getting compromised. Nobody is immune from cyberattacks.

You must protect your business from these types of attacks. The bare minimum isn’t going to cover you.
When you work with an IT provider that has a security expert, they can help you put an internet security system in place to protect your company network. It will watch your network at all times and block anything that shouldn’t be there.

4. Backup Your Data

You can’t afford to lose your data in the data-driven world we live in today. Your data is what allows you to make the most informed business decisions. Without it, you’re going to be going into things blind.

Unfortunately, you aren’t going to know ahead of time when an accident will happen. It’s vital to have a backup system in place for when this happens.

Your managed services provider will help put a backup system in place that will do backups regularly. If you do ever lose data, all you need to do is log into your backup system and restore your lost data.

5. Get Help With Compliance

You need to handle a lot of regulations and compliance issues in business today. Consumers won’t stand for companies taking shortcuts anymore. The problem is, it can be hard to keep up with everything you need to do.
Being compliant is even more critical when you deal with technology. You’ll need to invest a lot of resources for staying up to code. An IT company can help you do that.

If you work with a provider that is experienced in your industry, you can count on them to know all the regulations your business needs to follow. They will audit your business to make sure there are no problems that can get you in trouble. After they find the issues, they can start getting them fixed for you.

6. Find Vendor Support

You work with a lot of hardware and software companies to keep your business running smoothly. Things work well most of the time. However, you can run into problems if something you use breaks.

If you don’t have reliable IT support, you’re going to spend a lot of time digging through your contacts to figure out who you need to call. Once you find the right person, it’s a matter of finding the right questions to ask. If you don’t have a background in tech, this can be a complicated process.

Your managed services provider can handle this process for you. They already have relationships with all the prominent vendors in the tech industry. They’ll be able to track down someone to fix your problem and get things fixed before you know it.

7. Scale Your IT Team

It’s hard to grow a team when your business is unpredictable. Sure, hiring people will save you in the short-term, but then you have to find something for them to do when business calms down.

You’ll either need to create new positions for the people who don’t have things to do or start laying people off. Either way, it will create frustration for you and your team.

If you use a managed services provider, you can use them to supplement your team during busy times and not need to worry about what to do when work returns to normal.

8. Get Access to Experts

Technology is making its way to every part of business. The problem is, hiring the experts to help your business use this technology isn’t cheap.

If you use an IT provider, they can provide you the access to the experts you need. They have done the work of finding the top talent in the field. If you need help with something, all you need to do is reach out to your provider, and they will send the person you need over.

You’ll be able to work with people who know big data, A.I., and how to set up remote working capabilities.

Things Get Better When You Outsource IT

Don’t underestimate the benefits you’ll see when you outsource IT. Working with a professional IT business will help you get the infrastructure you need while being able to focus on your core business. Talk to someone today to figure out what they can do for your business.

If you’re looking for more tips that will help your company succeed, go back to our blog and read our latest posts. They will help you figure out ways to take your business to the next level.

IO Improvement: Making Your Computer Perform Better Than New

Over the last few decades, computers have just about taken over the world. These machines are used in business, for people’s personal lives, and to handle loads of background jobs which most people are blissfully unaware of. While they are invaluable, though, they can also cause their fair share of mischief. Degradation, where a machine becomes slower over time, is a big part of this. So, to help you out, this post will be exploring some of the options which can be used to make your computer faster than when it came out of the factory, all with as little expense as possible.

Overclocking

If you’ve ever heard computing enthusiasts talking about performance before, you might have an idea of what overclocking is. In simple terms, this is the process of making your system components run at higher speeds than they would out of the box. This is usually achieved through the BIOS before you get to Windows, OSX, or Linux, and will involve raising voltages and clock speeds until you have a stable, but much faster, system in place. There are loads of guides around the web which can be used to make this easier, and you should always aim to find ones which cover your exact hardware. You will probably lose your warranty when you do something like this, and it doesn’t come without other risks, either.

Underclocking

A lot of pre-built computers and laptops don’t give you the power to overclock, instead keeping their chips locked down to avoid heating issues. While they won’t let you go up, though, some will still let you go down, and the benefits of underclocking are often under appreciated. For example, if you’re able to lower your CPU’s voltage without changing its clock speed, you will get the same performance out of the chip, but the machine itself will use far less power. In the case of a laptop, this can improve battery life very dramatically, sometimes being enough to freshen up the device for another year or so.

Remove The Bloat

Companies which sell computers will almost always an ulterior motive for doing their job. Bloatware is one of the biggest symptoms of this, and this term covers any applications which are pre-installed on a machine when it is taken from the shelf. Some companies are worse than others for this, with companies like Acer being well-known for making their computers perform far worse than they should as a result. To overcome this, you need only spend a little bit of time uninstalling these programs. Application portfolio optimization is becoming an increasingly large part of business, making it well worth putting some time into doing it for yourself. Once you’ve removed this software, it should ever come back.

System Clean Up

Over the years, a lot of internet users have become somewhat jaded when it comes to storage clean up solutions. With adverts for scam software claiming to perform this service found all over the web, it’s easy to see why people wouldn’t take the idea of cleaning their storage seriously. In reality, though, this is very important the speed of your machine, and can usually be handled using tools which come with your operating system. For hard drives, disk defragmentation is crucial, and should be done once every week or so. SSDs, though, need different treatment, with the less you use a drive like this, the faster it will be.

Boost Your Storage

Cleaning your storage will provide a temporary benefit which will only last for so long, and will be something you will have to keep on top of if you want to see the benefits for a long time. Boosting your storage with a hardware upgrade, though, can be a great way to see something more permanent. If you have an old school hard drive, buying an SSD for your operating system is one of the best improvements you can make, improving loading and data transfer times by a huge margin. If you already have an SSD, you could look at getting a faster hard drive for storing larger files. Making this part of your machine faster is an affordable upgrade which won’t be bottlenecked by older hardware.

Free Up Some RAM

Software applications like Google Chrome are well-known for their resource hungry attitude towards running on your machine. While you could simply go without the tools they offer, it is far easier to find a way to give them what they need, and RAM is one of the best ways to achieve this goal. Storing data for use by the CPU, this component can slow down a whole machine, making good hardware feel very old. Websites like Crucial can scan your machine for you, giving you an idea of what you’ll need to buy if you want to upgrade this part of your machine. While it will cost some money, it’s far cheaper than going out and buying a new computer.

Update Your System

It’s easy to let things like software updates sit in the back of your mind, failing to handle them until the system forces you to. When you take this approach, though, you could easily be missing important performance boosts which would make your machine feel far younger. To make this easier, simply restarting your computer after each session is a great idea, relying on the automatic processes in place to download and install the updates for you. Once you have this running like clockwork, it will often feel as though you spend far less time waiting for updates.

With all of this in mind, you should have the tools you need to be able to start using your PC for far longer than ever before. Making a tool like this last is not only important to your wallet, though, as electronics waste is becoming a very big issue around the world. Most people won’t look at using an old computer as being the eco-friendly option, though it certainly is.

Three Ways Document Management Software Can Streamline Operations

No matter what size or type of business you run, chances are, you’re overwhelmed with incoming files – both paper and electronic documents. It generally starts slowly – an email here, a receipt there, incoming invoices and customer correspondence, and before you know it, you’ve got a mountain of paper and no way to find the documents you need.

There’s a better way. Document management software can put important documents at your fingertips in seconds and help you keep everything organized. But which document management solution would work best for your office? Here are three tips to help you understand how document management software can help and which features you’ll need to make it work.


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About the Author

Jeff PickardJeff Pickard founded Lucion in 2005 and brings over 15 years of management experience and innovation to Lucion, where he continues to steer Lucion’s technology advancements in the document management and paperless office software markets. After three years as an attorney with the Chicago-based law firm Kirkland & Ellis, Jeff founded zCalc, LLC, a software company which served the needs of professionals in the estate and financial planning fields. In 2005, he sold the company to Thomson Fast-Tax and then began to focus his attention on paperless office software. Jeff graduated cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, where he was editor-in-chief of the BYU Law Review.