Instant Messaging in the Office: Two Apps that Turn Distraction into Productivity
Small business owners have long been concerned about lost productivity due to instant messaging and it’s true that instant messaging can be a huge office distraction. But it’s also a reality, and I’m certain that as Millennials and members of the even younger Generation Z take their places in the workforce, this handy mode of communication will become the standard and eventually relegate email to the dustbin of tech history. Smart small business owners will embrace the technology and make it work for them. Fortunately, some great apps are now on the market that take the power of instant messaging and combine it with the productivity of many of your favorite apps and cloud services. The two big players here are Slack and HipChat, and Slack is the one that has been getting most of the press lately. Slack is probably the best-known “unicorn” right now, a privately held company with a valuation that exceeds a billion dollars. These apps are popular with tech-savvy small businesses because they allow seamless work group or company communication over all devices. But beyond merely being able to send a text message, they also integrate with dozens of apps commonly used in the business environment. Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine you’re working on a project and sharing a cubicle with another person on the project. As you’re plugging away at your work and making minor breakthroughs throughout the day, you might lean over to your cube-mate, point to your computer screen and say, “Hey, look what I did with this and how it works!” That’s the kind of communication you can achieve with Slack or HipChat. Rather than sending out an email, copying everyone on your team and telling them to go look at a certain Google doc for example, you can pull your Google doc right into Slack. However, the integrations go well beyond simple document sharing. Here’s a very short list of some of the apps that integrate with Slack, HipChat, or both: MailChimp GoToMeeting Stripe Zendesk GitHub Dropbox Chatlio Asana Facebook Trello Uber Wunderlist With the introduction and evolution of these apps, there is certainly a strong business case for using instant messaging with your team. And if you’re leveraging virtual employees and freelancers, the case is even stronger. Of course the bottom line when you measure instant messaging in terms of small business productivity, is the final cost-benefit analysis. Not only do you have to consider instant messaging as a distraction and how these apps will improve communication, you have to consider the cost of the apps themselves. Both Slack and HipChat have free versions available and I think these will be sufficient for most small business owners who want to get the most productivity out of instant messaging. The free versions generally limit the number of apps you can integrate with your team and how many messages are archived and/or searchable. Now you might be saying to yourself something like, “Okay, these messaging apps are great, but won’t instant messaging still be a distraction because employees will continue to use their private personal accounts at work?” There are two keys to solving that problem. First, get your team using one of these apps and loving it. Think of this as a substitution, much like moving...
read moreThe critical steps for protecting customer data in your small business
Protecting customer data in your small business takes good planning, training and vigilance because serious threats come from all sides: Hardware, Software, People, and Systems. Hardware “Skimmers” are responsible for many of the infamous retail customer data breaches that have made headlines in recent years. Skimmers are hardware devices that are surreptitiously installed on your card readers. They grab credit card information from unsuspecting users and send it to the bad guys. I’ve read that a skilled criminal can install a skimmer in less than a minute. If you have credit card readers, you need to visually inspect them on a regular – and frequent – schedule. Be sure you and your employees know exactly what your card readers should look like. Note all the screws on your devices and make sure they are all present and accounted for during inspections. Skimmers can be slipped into and cover over card slots. Keyboards can have thin overlays to capture keystrokes. In some cases, a small video camera may be concealed to capture the moment when customers input their PINs. Other dangerous hardware includes the digital items you or your employees may bring into your business and connect to your network. A USB flash drive, for example, can have malware in its operating system that gets transferred to your network as soon as it is connected. Be sure you have “Autorun” disabled on any PCs in your network. Also, you should have a two-way firewall and up-to-date antivirus software. You don’t need to be transferring a file from a USB drive to your system to get infected; it can happen when employees are downloading from your system to their USB drives. Software There are all kinds of malicious code out in cyberspace that piggyback their way onto your computers through downloading appealing “free” software. Let’s face it, we all have a hard time turning down “free” offers, but that cool free browser plugin in might infect your system with code that will steal customer data or even hold your entire system hostage via “ransomware.” Also, don’t download any software, even if you’re paying for it, that is not coming from a website you know and trust. I’m pointing the finger of blame here at software, because that’s where the evil physically resides, but the weak link is really the people haven’t been trained or have become careless, so let’s move to those subjects. People and systems It’s almost always a person who is responsible for not protecting customer data in your small business. It could be an honest mistake or it could be a malicious act. Your first line of defense is to hire honest people and also people who are willing to take direction and work within the cyber security systems you establish. You need to check references and perform background checks as permitted by law. Stress the importance of adhering to digital security measures when you’re interviewing and onboarding new employees. One of the biggest problems we face is that computers, smartphones and the Internet have become such a common component of our everyday lives that we overlook the dangers they pose and we get careless. This is where your responsibility as a small business owner really kicks in. You need to put written systems in place, train your...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Win $20,000 from Microsoft, debunk some myths and sink some 3-pointers!
Microsoft is giving away more than $20,000 and the Golden State Warriors are providing marketing lessons. Those are just two of the highlights among the curated content that we have for you this week. Leadership, management and productivity You can adopt these three small business leadership strategies right now. And you should. If you think that a 401(k) isn’t right for your small business, you need to read this article that debunks three myths on the topic. Colin Shaw says that being customer centric in your small business probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. In this article for AT&T I give you nine ways to use Twitter to help position yourself as an industry influencer. Facebook has had great success with its employee cross-training program called “Hackamonth.” You can apply its principles to your small business. Do you know the differences between leadership and management? You need to. Marketing and sales Two million advertisers and counting! Facebook is getting a foothold on small businesses. Don’t have the patience for a carefully planned and executed 2016 growth strategy? Then try these five surprisingly simple growth hacks. Keep track and optimize all of your social media marketing efforts from one app dashboard. It’s free and it’s from Staples. Recycle, repurpose and reuse. That applies to your content marketing materials too. Here’s how to use those concepts via SlideShare. This case study will really help you understand how content and posting frequency can boost your small business blog. Are you sinking your three-pointers? If not, check out this article that draws marketing lessons from the Golden State Warriors. Have you considered using Pinterest analytics to inform your marketing decisions? Here’s how it’s done. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation With prizes from $1,000 to $20,000 (plus non-cash bonuses) you should definitely enter Microsoft’s Small Business Contest. In this Entrepreneur article, Michael Mamas lists six essential keys for founding and developing a successful startup. Politics, government and the economy This survey focuses on Illinois small business owners, but the “five things (they) want you to know” probably apply across the board. Small business owners and government bodies at all levels are often at odds with one another. Here’s a story about a Norfolk, Virginia owner who won his case based on his right to free speech. Anthony B. Kim of the Heritage Foundation makes a strong case that U.S. economic freedom has been rapidly...
read moreHow to use today’s low fuel costs to power your competitive advantage
Managing fuel costs may not be quite the high-stakes proposition in your small business that it is in the airline industry, but you can learn a few things from how various air carriers have dealt with rising – and falling – fuel costs. Right now, Americans are enjoying very low fuel costs. However, we all know that we were suffering through record high costs not long ago. There are three critical things to do under these conditions: Make your best guess as to which direction fuel will go next, Capture savings when costs go down, and Find ways to reduce costs when the price goes up. Let’s see how these price swings have hit air carriers. For example, when prices were going up, Southwest enjoyed a competitive advantage because it had bought future contracts that locked in lower prices. As long as prices kept increasing, “buying ahead” at the current price, worked well. Wisely, however, Southwest didn’t secure 100 percent of future fuel requirements this way. But American Airlines wasn’t hedging fuel prices at all, so when the market essentially collapsed in recent months, it was in the ideal position to cash in on the lower prices. It reminds me of the famous Clint Eastwood quote in “Dirty Harry”: “You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” American Airlines is lucky right now, but most small business owners – if they feel their luck might run out – can’t hedge their fuel prices like the major airlines. They still need to have a sense of which direction they believe prices will go in the short, medium and long term, and plan accordingly. In the short term, the answer is easy, and this is where you need to be focusing your efforts right now. Fuel costs will be low, and they’ll probably stay that way for many months if not a year or two. Iranian oil will hit the market very soon, bankruptcies within the U.S. oil shale industry will ratchet down their costs, and economic growth in China isn’t what it was when demand for oil was driving up the price. To answer Dirty Harry’s question today, you should be feeling lucky. But if you aren’t consciously taking advantage of these lower prices, you’re wasting an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often and sooner or later you’ll be out of luck. Almost every small business is enjoying some kind of savings due to lower fuel prices. Don’t let that extra cash dissipate into the ether. Capture it. Where will this extra cash deliver the greatest benefit to your small business? Do you need to upgrade some equipment? Would it be wise to pay off some debt? If fuel costs figure heavily into your pricing structure, maybe you can cut your prices and snag some new customers or clients. You might even take the money you’re saving on fuel today and invest it in ways that will make you better prepared for the day when prices go up again – new, efficient HVAC; more fuel efficient vehicles; fleet monitoring hardware and software, etc. Only you can answer these questions. However, if you don’t sit down and calculate how much money you are saving due to lower fuel costs, it’s unlikely that you’ll make...
read moreKeys to scaling up a business for increased value
Why do Internet startups that aren’t showing a profit wind up with astronomical valuations? Scalability. The idea is that the startup will eventually find a system to make some money and by virtue of being Internet-based, that system will lend itself to being cost-effectively scaled up. And by “cost-effectively” I mean that it can produce a “multiplier effect” during a small business scale up. I’m oversimplifying, but if you have a good Internet-based business model, scaling that business can be done by adding more servers. For example, you could even expand overseas that way. Your developers could still be about the same in number (again, I’m simplifying) and located in your home office, but your business could have an increasing presence over seas. You would be able to leverage the same intellectual capital to an expanding market without increasing your overhead in “lock step.” Other business models, on the other hand, don’t scale up as efficiently. Let’s say you have an accounting firm and want to expand overseas. Essentially every direct and indirect cost (overhead) that you have to pay at home, will have to be replicated and paid overseas. If you want to create real value in your company, the first question you need to ask is how to scale your business and at the same time improve margins. If you don’t, you’ll find that as you grow, your profit margins will shrink, and that’s not a formula for creating value. If you have to spend one dollar to increase revenue one dollar, you’re headed toward a dead end. If you have to spend 95 cents to increase revenue one dollar, you aren’t much better off. You need to start with a product or service that is: Teachable, Repeatable, and Consistently delivered. Those elements position you to be able to scale up your offering. But as you begin to grow, you need to create efficiencies in your small business that allow you to support greater sales with less (proportionally speaking) overhead as well as marketing expenses. Think about mergers and acquisitions in reverse. When two companies merge, they enter into a phase where they consolidate redundant departments. Essentially the hope is to be able to support the sales volume of both companies with the infrastructure and marketing of just one. Note that usually a stronger company buys a weaker one. The weaker company didn’t plan on being weaker, but decisions management made along the way, put it in that position. The stronger company paid more attention to efficiencies as it scaled up and did a better job in sales and marketing. The point is that if you don’t relentlessly manage costs as you grow, your efforts at scaling your operation can easily backfire and put you in a weaker position in the end, despite the growth you have experienced. Here’s one more warning for any small business owner who wants to achieve scalability and create impressive additional value: If your business depends on you, it’s not scalable. You need to look at that list of three points above and find ways to make the source of your revenue stream “teachable” and “repeatable” so it continues on successfully when you’re out of the equation. It’s likely that someday you’ll want to sell your small business and take away a...
read moreNew free app empowers small business owners
Editor’s Note: This post is sponsored by Staples. All the comments and opinions are my own. Let me give you some bedrock business principles and share a couple of corollaries: * If you can’t measure it you can’t control it, and * If you can’t control it, you can’t grow it. Those are simple enough and easy to understand, but implementing the means of measurement and control aren’t quite so simple and easy. Here’s what I’m getting at: Because of the Internet and the fact that so much of our small business infrastructure today is computer based, we have more data at our disposal than ever before. That’s the good news. However, the bad news is that all of this business-critical information is located on different websites and different apps. This makes accessing and analyzing the data difficult; it can be like herding cats. It would be great if someone made an app that combined all of your small business’ most important metrics in one easy-to-use graphic interface so you can almost instantly get an up-to-date picture of how your small business is performing. This, and more, is what Staple’s new free app – Quick Wins – does for you. It essentially creates a metrics dashboard that gives you all your vital information from: * Facebook, * Twitter, * Google Analytics, * QuickBooks, and * Shopify. Instagram and MailChimp metrics will be added soon. Further, Quick Wins keeps all of these essential metrics synched across virtually all of the platforms you use. If you commute via train, you can grab your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet and instantly take the pulse of your small business. I think virtually every small business owner will immediately see the value of this, however Quick Wins goes even further. Based on what your metrics are saying, the app makes suggestions on how you can improve your small business performance. Let’s be honest, ideas are the currency of the day and it’s easy for small business owners to burn out trying to come up with the best ideas to drive growth, for example. Having a source of free, customized suggestions is invaluable. There’s one more component of this app that I need to mention in this quick overview: community. When you start using Quick Wins, you join a like-minded community of small business owners and managers, where you get to share ideas, success stories and failures. It’s undeniable that there is strength in numbers and the good thing about other Quick Wins users is that you know they are folks who are serious about moving their small businesses forward. The mere fact that they’ve downloaded, installed and are using the app shows that they’re committed. It’s sort of a self-selecting process that eliminates those who aren’t at your level of involvement. You’ll be trading ideas with small business owners who share your aspirations, but at the same time, you’re certain to find many who have experience in areas that are new or less familiar to you. They’ll help you grow in certain areas, while you will do the same for others who are using the Quick Wins app. I think Quick Wins really represents a new level of maturity in app development. For the last several years, we’ve been seeing a lot of...
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