Entry Software Corporation

Entry

Archives for November 2017

Boost Workplace Morale with Organization!

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When you are talking about boosting workplace morale, often the blame is laid on the emotional bonds between coworkers and managers. However there is a larger part to workplace morale; it is the employees satisfaction, out look and wellbeing in the workplace. There are aspects of the employees wellbeing that do not include their relations with other co-workers. One of the largest demoralizing factors that many people do not consider is organization.

Not all workplaces have systems in place to ensure employees information is organized. This could lead to confusion between co-workers and managers, company employees and customers or employee and other employees about information, workloads or numerous other potential issues. The constant conflicts that occur will grind team members; demoralizing their mental state in the workplace.

So how can one improve their workplace organization?

A methodology of workplace organization is known as the “five s'”. Developed in Japan, it identifies and addresses the five aspects of understanding organization. These five aspects are sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain. They will each be elaborated on here:

S1. Sort

Spacial Efficiency

Sorting in the workplace is the act of designating information and services appropriately. This applies to all aspects of the business: work distribution, information, supplies, equipment etc all need to be arranged in the most specially efficient way so all those in the work place understand where it is. This will prevent workers from feeling lost when dealing with their own or others information as they will always know its position in the workplace.

S2. Set in Order

Productive Effectiveness

Set in order is about arranging sections in term of maximizing productive effectiveness. This means allocating areas for possessions in their most practical position to create a seamless workflow between tasks. This could be simple changes such as moving the printer to next to the computer opposed to across the room. Employees will be more focused on the task at hand as their concentration in work won’t be broken as easily.

S3. Shine

Visually Appeasing & Accesibility

Shine is about keeping the workplace clean of clutter. This means cleaning up once a task is completed and before you begin another. This visual appeasement will also allow you to access current use items, whereas if it were cluttered it may be difficult to find files you were working on mere minutes earlier.

S4. Standardize

Consistency

Standardization is the act of keeping all aspects of the business be consistent. This means always having the item in their place proper place, exact process when performing a reoccurring task, colour coding and more. Although it may take time for workers adjust to it, it will provide them with a clear state of mind when in the workplace. This will allow them to work to their maximum efficiency!

S5. Sustain

Self-Discipline

You may have already implanted these criteria into your work but have seen little to no results. Why is this? It may because you have to stayed consistent with the implementing. Self-discipline towards being organized is very important. It is an on-going process; not a one time thing.

Now that you know the aspects of workplace organization, it is your job to find the most efficient way of implementing it into your workplace. Each situation is different so most of the workplace organization is up to your work process, however there are some tools that can assist you in your journey. For example, if you are associated in online services, there are project management software applications that can help you organize through online tracking of your resource’s workload and time sheets.

Perhaps the morale of your team cannot be raised through team building exercises; there are factors about your workplace that can be more beneficial productively and mentally to the managers, customers and project resources.

Why SSO Security is Beneficial to Your Business

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SSO stands for single sign-on and is a user authentication service that allows a user to use one set of login credentials. For example, a username and password to access multiple services and applications. The service recognizes the user for all the applications.

SSO is helpful for logging user activities and monitoring accounts. In an SSO service, a module retrieves the authentication for a user, while authenticating against a users repository (where things get stored). SSO is so widely talked about because it supplies users the security they need to keep their information safe. From a business standpoint, SSO is very useful because it is important to keep their files, records, employee information, banking information, etc safe.

Remembering Only One Password

SSO allows only one username and password for a user to remember. You may be asking yourself “If I only have one password, doesn’t it make my information less secure?” The solution is by having a very strong password containing capital letters, punctuation and numbers; which is much more secure than having five easy-to-remember passwords. Having easy passwords may cause you to forget them often, which can also lead to your information being vulnerable to password resetting systems.

Convenience

SSO requires a user to sign in only one time to access multiple apps. This can be beneficial to you and your business because most of the time, companies have numerous different software that require different passwords. Therefore, using SSO saves time. Instead of having to guess and reset passwords over and over again, just have them come from one single source. This is also useful especially if you want to be productive right away. You don’t have to waste your time getting out your long list of passwords and slowly typing it in to make sure you don’t miss a character. We all know the frustrating feeling when you get that long password incorrect and you have to waste even more time going back and checking where you messed up the password.

Security

You can have control over your SSO account, depending on a few circumstances, a user is usually allowed to authorize access or not. This is helpful if someone is trying to get into one of your accounts and you need to either allow or deny access. SSO also has two-three factor authentication which means implementing specific information about yourself to allow access to your account. For example questions like “your first pet’s name” or “your mother’s maiden name” are great examples of authentication questions used by SSO. This means that your information will remain secure, even if, by the off chance, someone found out your username and password

In the end, SSO is a great option for remembering only one set of login credentials, being convenient to the user and keeping information secure. As an employer, you wouldn’t want your company information floating around with unsafe security networks. However, with SSO, your information will be safer than ever.

What to Look for in Project Management Software

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Managing an organized work schedule and workload can be difficult. Managing many people’s workloads and schedules can be even more difficult. Having organized project management software in place to organize the resources, events, and schedules will make the job of the project managers a whole lot easier.

Project management software can provide services that will help businesses organize teams and projects in an organized fashion. Not all software offers the same services. Here are the necessities of a good project management software system:

Resource Visibility

When deciding on a project management software, always keep in mind whether it will have complete resource visibility. When acting as the project manager of an operation, understanding the assets you have and how you are going to use them is important to keep organized and on budget. Project management software should visually inform the project managers and users of the resources currently available and what the used resources have pertained to. Additionally, it should contain all team members’ resources displayed for clarity among the team so resource utilization is maximized.

Simple Work and Event Scheduling

A good project management software system should integrate all of the user’s work and events into their system. Calendars such as Google Calendar or Outlook can be integrated so you receive email or notification reminders about upcoming events. You can also create plans or events so it will notify you in advance.

Team Member Work Loads and Scheduling

Project management software should allow for team members to be organized and managed in projects. Aspects such as their workloads and schedules can be organized and altered at any time by the manager. It should also relay clarity to the team members by including information about their assignments. Each team member works with their schedule and the system works with their availability. Finally, timesheets are included so the managers know the effort consumed to complete work. Overall, the project management software should organize the ideas and jobs of the project managers and provide a clear schedule and fair workload for employees.

Quality Project Help Desk

A very important aspect of a quality project management software is to improve customer service through the use of an integrated project help desk. A help desk is an online system where customers can comment, advise or inquire about difficult or confusing aspects of their project deliverables or experience. The customer sends a ticket to the project support team who then answers the request, which is then sent back to them. The software will set up the system and provide the support team with an organized system to address each problem. The system should allow the support tickets to be affiliated with a project since issues will arise as the project is in the development or deployment phase.

Organized Project Management Support

Overall, good project management software should provide support to the project manager through organized UI, automated reminders, visual resource management, team member overview and scheduled events. All of these aspects should be presented to the user in an organized and easy to use way. When all of these aspects are together they form a proficiently functioning project management software system.

Customers Hate Waiting – Ticket Management Can Help

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Longer wait times study

In a study done by the US National Library of Medicine, they confirmed that longer wait times establish extremely negative influence on customer satisfaction. Additionally, they also found that other aspects of the business functions were viewed negatively, particularly their confidence in the businesses care for customers. Customers hate waiting. Ticket management can help.

See yourself as a customer; although the customer experience can range from business to business, many service-based companies have grown largely because of their customer’s expectations of satisfaction is often fulfilled. Customer satisfaction is the key to building lasting relationships with clients as well as keeping them coming back to do business with you. Aspects that affect customer satisfaction are the quality of the product or service and the interactions with the business prior, during or after the purchase.

A businesses customer satisfaction can range depending on the quality they provide. If a business provides poor products and little to no integration with the business, the customer will be dissatisfied with their experience. And vise-versa; if a business provides a quality product and offers advice, assistance and guidance through the whole process of the transaction as well as additional support afterward, the customer will be greatly satisfied with their experience. All of this equates to how customers perceive your business and your offerings and determine to if your customers will come back, or better, bring in new business the next time they come.

There are many aspects that will benefit or deteriorate the quality of the customer satisfaction. The aspect of wait time for services or products is one of the most detrimental to compromising customer service. It is no surprise that many people lack patience, though. As technology advances, systems become quicker and people receive their information or products quicker. As a result, people’s patience has decreased. This has affected the way in which companies conduct their business with customers. They opt to offer faster services or simple UI to process services to improve customer satisfaction. However, these customer services provide general support during the purchase.

Ticket Management

Ticket Management is a system of interacting with customers directly in an organized fashion to address any concerns or advice they may have. A “ticket” is given to a customer and they may ask a question or voice any concerns they may have. The ticket filed in categories and submitted to the customer service team of the business. They can address any problems or concerns they may have with representatives. This process is very short, allowing for staff to interact with the customer and address an exact issue as opposed to general issues that are often foreseen. As long as there is staff working, there are people to answer your questions!

Having ticket management is a great solution to the patience issue that is seen in many businesses. Whereas people may get fed up with long wait times or automated responses, ticket systems allow the customer to receive a response directly from the business. The best part, you don’t have to set up this system yourself! There are purchasable online services that provide quality systems to be implemented into your online website.

In conclusion, customer satisfaction is integral to generating new business. Providing quality products or service as well as customer service is the best way. There are automated ways of processing faster, which benefits the customer, however, there is some satisfaction lost in organic processes. Providing a ticket system offers an option to customers that allow them to voice their questions or concerns about the business, with a speedy response. This benefits both the business and the customer.

How Service Trumps Products: Why Invest In Customer Service?

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Your product is worthless if no one wants to buy it from you. (Sorry To Break It To You…)

Since the introduction of internet and our range of communication expanding, the accessibility of stores in which we purchase our goods and services from has increased. Twenty years ago you had to purchase all your needs and wants from your local general or specialized store. However, the internet, can allow anyone to open an online store and sell you a wide variety of items to anyone in the world. This has lead to a wide variety of online stores pertaining to all markets. What can you do to differentiate yourself from others? Excellent service will always trump well built products.

Introducing Customer Service

Customer service is the advice, assistance, or guidance that a business provides a customer with both before, during and after their purchase. The quality of the customer service is dictated by the organization, interaction, and simplicity of the purchasing experience and usually is built around what questions customers are asking during their experience. Good customer service is support founded on correct advice and assistance when needed in addition to easy to follow guidance. The results of this can be extremely beneficial to your business and often results in new sales or repeat clients. On the contrary, poor customer service is found in incorrect advice, tedious assistance and little to no guidance; and will lead to poor customer satisfaction.

In addition, the quality of the good customer service in a business dictates how well you are likely to have reoccurring customers as well as how likely your customers are to recommend your business to their peers. Customers want to know that you are there for them, even after they’ve invested into your offerings and your business. This equates to customers discussing their experience with others one-on-one, on social media and on sites like Tripadvisor, Yellow Pages or Yelp. If they are incredibly satisfied with their experience, there will be a positive backlash, whereas if they are dissatisfied with their experience, there will be a negative backlash, potentially losing many customers.

In conclusion, in business what you give is what you get. If you provide poor customer service, you will receive negative reviews and customer reoccurring. However, if you provide amazing customer service, your business will continue to positively gain new and reoccurring customers as well as a good reputation. Customer service adds value to your business in customer satisfaction and reputation.