Category: Operations

Article Contributed by Anand Srinivasan

A recent Gallup study found that nearly 43 percent of the American workforce has worked remotely at least once in the past year. This number is expected to go further up as more and more businesses realize the potential increase in productivity and the drop in operational expenses with a remote workforce. But although a virtual workforce offers great benefits to both organizations and its employees, it also has its fair share of challenges to overcome.

One of the biggest drawbacks of a remote workforce is the inability to arrive at a consensus. Unlike a traditional workplace setting where employees can talk and iron out differences quickly and efficiently, collaboration tools may not always make up for face-to-face interactions. It’s not surprising then that IBM, one of the pioneers of remote working culture, recently asked its employees to return to their cubicles. The ability to make decisions faster featured among the various reasons cited by the company for the move.

But moving employees to a physical workspace may not be feasible for all businesses. This is especially true for bootstrapped startups and enterprise businesses with a global workforce. Also, it doesn’t make sense to create physical workspaces when remote working has proven to be an extremely beneficial concept. For organizations that want to retain a virtual workspace, the solution lies somewhere in the middle – a platform where employees can continue to work remotely without impacting the decision making process.

Virtual platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Trello and Basecamp help remote workers efficiently and collaborate with colleagues on business projects. These tools serve as a discussion board where all project related correspondence is debated and deliberated on. In addition to this, add-on tools like Polly.ai are routinely used by users to conduct surveys among colleagues and stakeholders to arrive at strategic business decisions.

Old school project managers may deem it necessary to engage in a face-to-face conversation for decision making, at least over video conferencing tools like Skype. The idea here is that F2F conversations enable a free flow of ideas and discussions that is absolutely essential. However, one challenge with the legacy concept is that this can discourage shy and inexperienced colleagues from putting forward their ideas. Online survey tools for platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams can offer anonymous polling and the ability to send private messages which can enable a more democratic decision making process.

Remote working is a reality for the modern workforce and comes with terrific cost savings for the employer while also improving the work-life balance and productivity among employees. Given these factors, it may be nigh impossible to turn the clock back and go back to an era of physical offices and a local workforce. But while there may be challenges in some aspects of remote working (like decision making), the tools and technology available in the market today should make sure that workers do not miss the advantages that come with working from under the same roof.

As lucrative as it can be, trading internationally brings a whole new level of risks and challenges. Therefore, if you want to ensure your business and its customers and clients are protected, you’re going to have to take numerous preventative measures.

To help, here, you’ll discover the best ways to protect your business when trading internationally.

Being aware of counterfeit goods

Counterfeit goods are a growing problem for international businesses. While you may associate counterfeit items with purely fashion and jewellery products, research shows many businesses are falling victim to counterfeit software, food and even aeroplane parts.

So, what harm do counterfeit goods have on a business? Well, if you’re advertising high-quality, genuine products and it turns out they’re fake, it’s going to have a serious impact on your reputation. If customers find out, you’re going to need to give refunds, and in serious cases, you could even be taken to court.

So, it’s vital you check your stock to ensure it’s 100% genuine and you aren’t unknowingly selling counterfeit goods.

Choosing a reliable courier

It’s never been more important for businesses to ensure they’re using a reliable courier. However, for international traders it’s even more important; particularly if you’re sending important documents abroad.

If the documents were to get into the wrong hands, again it could have serious consequences for your business. Therefore, it’s vital you use a reliable and secure courier to transport important documents.

You’ll also want to ensure the courier company can deliver documents and parcels quickly. So, look for one which offers a fast delivery service, as well as reliable one.

Be aware of the scams currently circulating

There’s a lot of scammers who target international businesses. Be especially wary of investment opportunities presented to you, along with phishing emails. The latter are becoming increasingly complex and are designed to steal your businesses information including passwords and banking details.

To prevent cybercrime, never click on a link provided in an email unless you can confirm it’s from a reliable source. You should also make sure your computer is protected with the latest security software and you store all of your customer’s details securely.

Overall, there are many risks international businesses face, but the above are some of the best ways to combat the potential problems. Making sure your IT systems are secure and you’re choosing reliable suppliers is a must when you’re dealing with international trade.

Article Contributed by Finnegan Pierson 

You may think that a small business is fundamentally different than a large one, but this isn’t entirely true. Small businesses have to do many of the same things that larger businesses do, only with fewer employees. Obviously, this means an entrepreneur has a number of problems to overcome that a larger business might handle with ease because of its much bigger staff. This is particularly the case when it comes to scheduling, achieving scalability and having the necessary skill sets to do all of similar processes. One solution many businesses turn to is automation.

Benefits of Automation

Automation can be used by small businesses to greatly simplify processes and to relieve staff from having to carry out monotonous and difficult tasks or exhausting manual labor. For example, an automated warehouse can help a business reduce costs and ensure that items are safely stored and delivered efficiently. The more you can introduce automation in your small business, the more time you can spend planning, networking, marketing your business and interacting with your customers.

The Sooner the Better

The earlier you start implementing automation as an entrepreneur in your small business, the quicker you’ll be able to enjoy its many benefits, including greater efficiency and reduced operation costs. Obviously, as busy as any entrepreneur is, you may be wondering whether it’s really worth the time and expense – especially given all the other things you need to focus on daily. But below is a list of just a few ways that automation can help your small business:

Scalable Processes

The entire point of automation is that it repeatedly carries out a preset series of automated actions without much direct human intervention – with the result of these actions being the same each time regardless of how many times the sequence is performed. This means that scalability is very easily achieved using an automated approach, since the outcome will be the same whether you produce 10 widgets or 1000.

Increased Efficiency and Speed

Instead of wasting all day on relatively menial tasks – from sending out email marketing to checking on inventory and the paying bills – an entrepreneur can take advantage of software or online services designed to entirely automate these processes. Doing this in your business allows you to get the benefits of a vast supply of available automation tools without having to reinvent the wheel yourself.

Reduced Operating Costs

Yes, you do have to spend money to automate your business. But if you implement automation correctly it can quickly pay for itself many times over – so it’s better to think of it as an investment. The key to effectively introducing automation is to fully examine your operations by considering your current and future needs. Then you can decide which specific types of automation can give you the best return on your investment.

More Effective Time Management

Implementing automation and your small business removes a number of lower-level tasks from you or your employees so that you – and they – can focus on the important matter of expanding your business. After all, establishing relationships with customers and suppliers and creatively planning for the future of your business is how you should be spending your time. Automation can easily handle any number of day-to-day, time-consuming tasks.

Final Thoughts

Applying automation to your processes can help eliminate waste in your organization. It can also take over repetitive tasks and clunky difficult to perform procedures best done by machine. Automation can give a small business the edge it needs to be able to compete with other small businesses, as well as much larger operations.

A business can’t thrive in today’s extremely competitive market without happy and healthy employees. Making sure that they’re at their best for their jobs, and that they’re working in optimal conditions can lead to success for the company in the long term. Providing a safe working environment for employees and ensuring that they’re healthy for productive work are important duties that any successful entrepreneur should be on top of.

Invest in employee wellness

Healthy employees make the most productive workers. Reserving company finances to maintain the well-being of the most important resource of the entire workforce can be an effective measure to this end. Prevention is better than cure, as they say.

Company-paid medical examinations and drug screenings can be effective ways to anticipate health-related labor issues early on. Drug testing, in particular, through hair drug testing kits or other methods can be a reliable tool to ensure a safe, drug-free working environment.

Inspect the workplace regularly

Workers are entitled to a safe working environment. Therefore, it’s important that business owners regularly inspect the workplace to ensure that the workers are working in good conditions, with the optimal tools for their tasks.

Safety should be a paramount concern at the workplace. Scope out possible hazards and prepare contingency plans to handle them when the need arises. Look into existing and potential problems, and apply corrective and preventive measures. Being proactive is the key in this endeavor.

A well-equipped employee is generally more productive than an ill-equipped one. A carpenter armed with shoddy tools will find it difficult to create well-made furniture. Providing the workers the best, cost-effective tools for their task can be a major factor in the overall productivity of the company.

Look into incidents and keep records

Keeping records of accidents and other incidents that involve the company is part of responsible management. Carefully investigating how a particular incident came about is the first step to ensuring that it won’t happen again. Follow-up investigations promptly with the needed changes to prevent a recurrence.

Of course, there are situations that no precaution or preventive measure can remedy. Criminality can be a surprise issue, as well as the sudden natural disaster. Learn from these experiences and prepare as best as possible for the future.

Build morale and trust between the employees

Team building is sometimes a neglected activity that can greatly improve working conditions in the company. It can result in a more harmonious, safer, and ultimately more productive workspace. Don’t be afraid to fund the employees’ team building efforts. So long as the costs are reasonable, the dividends to holding a successful team building event can be significant, especially in a newly-formed group.

Team building events can be as simple as a paid group meal outside on a weekday or sending the employees to a fun teamwork-inspiring activity within the building. Decide which activities are suited for each group and give them ample time to bond with each other.

Keeping the workforce safe and healthy is a crucial part of managing a successful business. The process is always ongoing and there will be unavoidable costs, but the potential benefits can greatly outweigh the time and resources spent.

Businesses today rely heavily on information technology, from automated production in the manufacturing process to shared data and resources in the office, and even through to websites or online shops. As a business grows, resources can be stretched which may impact productivity. At this stage, it only makes sense to add more resources to meet the demand; that can mean the hiring of more staff, the purchasing of more equipment, the expansion of premises and changes in the way the business uses computers and the internet. This where load balancing comes in.

In simple terms, this is done by taking the work that one computer would do and distributing that work between two or more computers so that efficiency and productivity can be increased. Load balancing can be done using software, hardware or a combination of both depending on the needs of a business. It’s a common strategy by businesses which offer online purchases, whose websites have a high volume of traffic. If one server was used, the volume of traffic could be such that visitors to the website could find the website slow to load at best or may not be even to see the website at all if the server crashes. For example, 40% of people will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, while a delay of 1 second can cause a 7% loss in conversion.

By sharing the traffic among multiple servers, the business can make sure that there is no disruption to guests visiting their website and potentially losing out on the custom that these visitors can generate. Because load balancing uses more than one server, it is typically combined with services that prevent failure such as backup and failover protection. One way this can help is by having servers in multiple geographic locations so if for example there is a power failure in one location there is still at least one other available.

It is not only in that way that load balancing can benefit a business. Load balancing has the added ability to making scaling up much easier simply by adding more servers as needed either locally or online. Load balancing systems are highly programmable, allowing a business to customise how traffic is routed to and from the servers, which is hugely beneficial when it comes to security as well as efficiency. For example, if your business is only using one server to host its website and that server falls foul of a malicious cyber-attack, then your whole website could be down until the problem is resolved. On the contrary, having your website running from multiple servers can help keep the website up and running whilst the attack is being neutralised.

In late 2016, a series of DDoS attacks from a botnet engulfed the internet connections of Dyn, a DNS provider for companies such as Twitter, Spotify and Amazon. The attack came in three waves lasting hours and affected over 150 websites. According to the CEO of Dynatrace, a company that monitored the attacks, up to $110 million was lost in sales. One way of fighting against these types of multi-pronged attacks is to use a layered or multi-dimensional defence model. This model incorporates multiple defence solutions or protection methods in different points in the network. The way this works is that if an attacker penetrates one level of defence or exploits a weakness or flaw in the first layer, then the second layer can compensate with a different form of protection and so on with the subsequent layers of defence. This is where load balancers excel as they are built to work within a network with layered security.

With the advent of cloud computing and the promise it holds for the future of Information Technology, load balancers can also help prepare the business world utilise cloud computing effectively and securely. The obvious benefit of this is that the business can operate at all times, which can be very important if the business trades internationally working with clients in multiple locations in today’s global market.