Entry Software Corporation

Entry

Strategy

Five Things Businesses Can Learn From Their Competition

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Learn from the competition

On a business’s journey to becoming successful, there are many ‘battles’ and challenges to be faced and overcame. Mistakes will be made and you may find yourself with days where nothing is going the way it’s supposed too. However, one day it’ll all come together and things will begin to fall into place. There is so much to learn about operating a business and generated from many sources such as the internet, business classes, school, friends and family, and even your competitors. Although it might sound bizarre to learn from your competitors, it can actually be beneficial towards you and your business. The following are five things your competitors can teach you about your business.

1. Customer Service Optimization

Imagine if you have a question or complaint about a company’s product or services, and call the company where you are put on hold, for what seems like forever. Or send an email to the company and don’t get a response within the next couple of days. This can be extremely frustrating for customers that have to wait. On average, customers expect a response from a company within an hour, sometimes less if they have a complaint or question. In order to keep customers and maintain a successful business, effective communication between your customers and your team is extremely important. Try going through your competitors’ customer service experience. Highlight what they do better than your company, and find areas in which the experience can be improved. With this information, you can help organize a perfect customer experience that makes your business stand out from the rest.

2. Marketing Strategies

When it comes to advertising and promoting your products, your competitors may be the perfect place to get ideas from. You can take a look at their websites in order to get a sense of how they’re presenting themselves, the words they’re using to intrigue customers, how they engage with their customers, and so on. If the business is local, you can stop in at one of their locations in order to get a feel for how they do their on-site marketing. Getting ideas from competitors is great if you’re looking for a guideline, however, make sure to steer clear of directly copying their strategies; be original!

3. Learn From Their Mistakes

Making mistakes can be one of the best ways to learn. According to a 2011 study from Michigan State University, it has been concluded that the brain sees the mistakes we make as a wake-up call. Our brains treat a mistake as a problem that needs to be solved. After a mistake, decisions are thought out more carefully in order to avoid another one. Using this strategy, figure out how to learn from the mistakes of your competitors. Always note what they’ve done wrong in the past, and find ways to prevent it from happening to your company. This allows you to minimize risk and maintain a perfect brand image to your customers.

4. Social Media

When you visit a competitors social media page, compare theirs to yours. Do they have more followers? How many likes do their posts get? Are they interacting with customers? If they do, ask yourself what they’re doing to gain followers or additional reach that you’re not. Try and pay attention to areas of social media where your competitors are lacking. For example, if your competitors are not posting as often, try and post more often on in order to increase your customer engagement. Lastly, pay attention to the types of content your competitors are posting. Are they posting thought-provoking content, photos or updates about their business? Take notes on what their customers respond well to and see what engages them the most.

5. Reputation

Your business’ reputation can be the main deciding factor when customers decide whether they want to use your product or service. Do some searching and see how your customers review your competitors. If your competitors have higher ratings than you, you may want to pay attention to what they’re doing and try to apply some of the things their customers like to your business.

In the end, your competitors can teach you a lot about how to operate your business, promote your products and engage with customers.

Struggling To Meet Deadlines?

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With the development of technology and the accessibility of information, people have become pretty good multi-taskers, or at least they think so. The downfall to this is sometimes we lose track of time and miss deadlines of important projects. If you can relate to this do not worry, there are many apps and software to help you with this. A help desk or time management software solution is the thing that could change you from that person who is always last minute, to a person on top of their work!

A project management software solution can benefit when it comes to managing your time. This can be useful when dealing with projects, regardless of the size. You can create and assign projects, while clearly seeing all your other current projects that still need to be done. This can help prioritize and manage projects as you see fit. A calendar is also offered, allowing for you to stay on top of your deadlines. From a managers perspective, the software can assist them with staying on track of their work, as well as their employee’s work.

Some software products are integrated with Google and Outlook, so you can manage your work through standardizing providers. The software is easy to use, opening it up to anyone. You can schedule tickets, tasks, operations and other things all in one easy to follow calendar. Another feature this type of software can offer are live dashboards allowing managers and departments to see what is going on in real time. The live dashboard allows a clear visual of when tasks are to be due, completed, and overdue. This feature can help reduce late or unsubmitted work that may have been missed previously. Dashboards are great for people or companies with many tasks going on at once, helping to organize their work in an efficient and simple way.

These software products are very beneficial, especially when it comes to keeping track of tasks. People can oversee every job and project assigned so they know what and when tasks need to be done. Create a calendar with all your activities ahead of you; with this feature, employees can see upcoming tasks and prioritize them. This can allow for a more efficient and organized workplace. Overall, the software will make your life and your colleagues lives better and can reduce the stress in a workplace. Staying on top of tasks can improve your performance at a workplace, and maybe even impress your boss! Being a multi-tasker can be difficult sometimes. However, with this type of software, it will be difficult missing deadlines.

2 Key Principles For Productivity

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Being productive can be challenging, even for the hardest working and most relentless of employees. The focus, determination, and resourcefulness that one needs in order to be productive require a lot from a person, that can sometimes be challenging to achieve. Being productive 24/7 can be categorized as an art, but for employers, it is an asset. So what are 2 key principles for productivity?

The term “productivity” can be defined as ‘the state or quality of producing something and how effective the effort by an individual, population or community is.’ This means that although you have various tasks or projects that are currently ‘in the works,’ making sure that each one is of quality and produced efficiently is still as important as how much you achieve during your day. Overall, productivity can be defined by two very different things:

1. How much you completed during your day.

or

2. How effective you were during your day. Getting The Most Done In The Shortest Amount Of Time

Getting Rid of Interruptions

Working hard during your busy day can sometimes be impossible. The biggest distraction, now at work, is your colleagues around you asking questions or gossiping about the latest episode of Stranger Things and social media. This can be a huge issue for you as they are, directly and indirectly, cutting off your focus to get the day’s tasks completed quickly and effectively. How do you solve this? Isolation, and some good music. Moving into an area that is quieter, a less trafficked area, and more productive, can help you focus on what lies ahead of you. In addition, a good playlist of music is another key thing to have with you as it allows you to ‘zone out’ the people around you and focus.

Working Through Projects…FAST

Another thing that can be troublesome is the lack of motivation or desire to complete a project because of how large, complex or lengthy it is. Fortunately, there are ways of working through your projects quickly without losing your moral. One effective way is to keep your current activity tasks to a minimum and focusing on each specific task on its own. This will allow you to finish your projects faster and at a higher quality, which will ultimately impress your peers and (more importantly) your boss.

Timing Matters

Throughout your day you may have multiple meetings, events or functions that require your input and this in itself can stop productivity in its tracks. To work around this, while keeping deadlines and making sure projects are in check, there are a few ways to get things done without missing anything. One way is to formally block sections out in your calendar for work time. This gives you the time you require to get work done and ensures that you won’t be disturbed by your peers for a set amount of time.

In addition to this, you can also keep the number of meetings you take to a minimum or keep designated time for meetings with colleagues in advance. This does two things. One, it allows you to make sure that meeting time is used for important items or discussions and two, it allows you to ensure that your time won’t be wasted during the day.

Making Sure Your Assignments Get Done

Utilizing Software Applications

Using project management, time tracking, or scheduling software can make all the difference when it comes to planning tasks in advance and ensuring they are delivered on time. Not only does this allow you to stay on track and see your progress from start to end, but it also lets you collaborate with other team members involved in the project when necessary.

Setting Task Deadlines

Creating task deadlines for smaller items within projects ensures that you know when things need to be completed, allowing you to track your progress. Today, work management software allows you to understand when specific tasks need to be finished, what resources are required and who is responsible for completing them. The ability to view, in real time, what is going on gives you the added benefit of understanding if you’re behind, on track or ahead of schedule.

Action Time: How To Productively Stay On Task

The best way to commit to your projects and ensure that you stay productive is by keeping a digital or paper ledger of your tasks. This will help you to understand quickly if you’re on track to success, allowing you to make sure that your customers and co-workers are happy with the work you’re completing. Overall, the biggest thing to understand is that you must keep a record of where you are in a specific project, as at the end of the day, if you don’t know where you stand you will lose productivity quickly.

Remember, productivity can mean how much you finish in a day, but we also fail to remember that it too means how effective we are amongst our peers. So, even if you don’t get everything done you set out to do for the day, the quality and the effectiveness of your work is what’s important.

Strategic Leadership: Easy Ways Be A Better Manager

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All good companies are run by good leaders who understand the needs of their colleagues and can act on those needs, thus be a better manager. However, great companies who have strategic leaders at their core know when and where to serve the needs of their team and how to do so in the most efficient way. This can all be achieved by doing one thing, listening. As your business grows you lose the ability to offer your employees one-on-one time to work with one another and discuss developments over the last few days, weeks or maybe even months. It is because of this that as your organization grows and matures, your employees, especially at the bottom of the ‘food chain’ lose the ability to communicate effectively with their superiors.

The lack of communication amongst management and staff can mean many things for your business. This could include, lost creativity, additional money because of duplicated tasks or projects, and poor employee satisfaction among other things. Therefore, it is critical to empowering yourself as a manager to give your staff, no matter their duties or maturity within the company the opportunity to talk with you about what is going on.

Listening 101

Regardless of what industry you’re working in, every employee wants to know that their boss genuinely cares about them and is willing to invest time and resources into their success. To be an active listener, there are three things that must occur to reach your maximum potential.

1. Create Open Time For Employees To Meet With You

This allows your staff to be welcomed into the conversation and be able to express their interests more comfortably, ideas and inputs on tasks, projects, and day-to-day operations. Also, this allows you to anticipate the needs of your staff better should anything urgent in your schedule suddenly arise.

2. Take Notes or Build Off Of Staff Discussion

Discussing with your team is a start, but if you don’t allow yourself to make anything of it, you’re wasting everyone’s time. Anticipating to take notes or address discussion points directly is critical should you want both parties to take value away from your discussions.

3. Follow Up, follow up, …

Continuing the conversation with workers not only tells them that you care about their interests but also allows you to keep track of initiatives that you may put into motion on a personal level with your team members. For example, if one of your employees suggests a new customer support software to better serve customers and their peers you should look into their suggestion. This allows you to receive critical feedback from your staff on what action actually came of your discussions.

Wrap Up

Humans are not programmed to listen to one another, and it will take time, even for veteran managers to be more open to meeting and sharing ideas freely with staff, no matter their status within the company. With the introduction of an open discussion with your team, you will not only be able to gather ideas, thoughts, and creative input much faster, but your staff will more openly discuss topics with you ranging from office gossip to management chain issues, etc. Overall, offering your team the ability to voice their ideas to you freely can have a massively positive effect on your bottom line, even if you don’t set aside a significant amount of time to it.

How Smart Project Management Software Saves You Money!

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It may seem that no matter how focused you are on work, there are always times in which you hit a roadblock and lose concentration. This is natural; we are only human. Issues begin to form when you return to work, and you are unsure of how to continue from that point. Whether you cannot find where you left off or cannot remain in the same format as your previous work, issues often stem from being disorganized. It may take some time to regain your momentum of work. Office workers waste an average of 40% of their workday (Wall Street Journal Report). Not because they aren’t smart, but because they were never taught organizing skills to cope with the increasing workloads and demands. Smart project management software saves you money.

From a business perspective, this process wastes time and resources as your maximum work efficiency is being hindered by disorganization. This issue often stems from the systems the business has in place to organize the workload between its project resources and conveying the task needed to be done effectively and efficiently. The typical executive today wastes 150 hours a year, almost one month, searching for lost information. For someone earning $50,000 a year, that translates to a loss of $3,842 (Forbes ASAP). The most straightforward solution to this problem is using smart project management software.

Project management software provides various organization and communication services between employees and their managers that will eventually save the business money. Using the correct organizational tools can improve time management by 38% (Mobile Technology Product). One of the main areas of communication and organizational assistance is in project management. With the software, you can create individual projects that only those involved can access that displays the workloads of each. This is beneficial for the managers running these projects as they can easily see what project team members have completed and have left to do for the project. Through this system, you can visually compute the productivity and quality of each team member and can designate specific work to those more suited to complete it. This will better balance time and resource management.

How Employees or End-Users Can Benefit

For employees, project management software provides a dashboard of all of the projects they are assigned to. This way they can designate their time to assignments that may be more significant or time-based. Through the organized layout of all the work that needs to be completed, project resources will be more inclined to complete one task at a time opposed to multitasking as projects are presented. People who multi-task decrease their productivity by 20-40% are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time. Time lost switching among tasks increases the complexity of the functions (University of Michigan Study).

Project management software is incredibly beneficial for communication and organization to all levels of business. For managers, they can layout projects and work for project team members in a way that designates appropriate workloads. Project Managers know the workload of team members so they do not become stressed and can better assign the project tasks is a more controlled manner. As for team members, they will be better at designating their workflow in an organized fashion to keep it on track. Overall, this will increase the worth of the business resources as it is going towards productivity as opposed to wasted on confusion.

Information Sources From http://www.simplyproductive.com/2012/03/time-management-statistics/

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.