Category: Operations

One touch Call Divert
This is a great feature for those who find themselves leaving the office in a rush with no time to call their provider to get their calls diverted. Many VoIP phones around will allow you to pre-programme your phone with a desired forward number, enabling you to simply hit the “Call Forward” button as you leave and have your calls diverted instantly!

Professional IVRs as standard
VoIP technology allows you to have an enterprise level IVR menu as standard. You might be accustomed to having to pay your supplier for features such as these but almost all VoIP providers offer it as a free service. As explained further below in more detail, you can also record your own IVR sound files through your handset, allowing the whole process to be completed in under an hour.

Time based call routing
Another VoIP feature is the ability to set your call routing around your working hours. Many businesses use this to have a work hours dial plan calling their extensions, and then an out of office hours dial plan which would, for example, divert straight to voicemail thus allowing your clients to know you’re not open.

Simple call barring
Many VoIP providers offer a managed portal where you can configure your account settings. Platforms such as these often offer a smart call barring feature where you can simply type in the number you wish to block and hit submit. This way you can keep track of what numbers you have blocked and add any more as you see fit.

Call recording storage and download
If your chosen VoIP provider also has a managed portal where you can view your account then it’s likely they have a Call Recording suite as well. This feature enables users to search their call recordings based on number, date, time and what extension answered / made the call. From here you should be able to download or stream your call recordings straight from the portal and onto your computer so you can listen to them yourself.

Record your own messages
Many VoIP systems offer you the ability to record your own messages and greetings straight from your VoIP phone. This feature is great if you don’t want to pay to get your messages professionally recorded or if you need to upload a message to your phone system in a hurry. Simply lift your receiver and dial in a pre-configured code, you can then dictate your message and have it applied to your system in an instant.

Numbers from any area code
If you are using old analogue style telephony you are limited to what CLI you are given by your geographical location. Because VoIP isn’t geographically dependent, you can pick and choose your numbers. Whether that be an 0203 London CLI or a +1 USA CLI, you can realistically display any number when calling out.

Take your phone with you
VoIP only requires an internet connection to function which means that you can practically take your phone anywhere. This could be handy for office workers who need to work from home for a few days and don’t want their calls being diverted to their mobile phones. Simply plug it into your router and home and you’re good to go!

Voicemails sent to your email address
Not being able to check your voicemails unless you’re at the office can be very frustrating. That’s why many VoIP Systems offer you the ability to have any voicemail left on your extension to be copied into handy email format with your voicemail attached! This way you can open your voicemails on your mobile if you’re out and about or on your home computer.

Faxes sent to your email address
This is a feature similar to Voicemail 2 Email. VoIP technology allows you to receive incoming faxes via your VoIP number which then get copied into an email sent to the email address of your choice. A really fantastic feature for those who need the ability to receive faxes but don’t want the hassle of having a clunky fax machine sat around their office.

Business Intelligence, or BI, is a term that has become quite popular over the last few years. At first glance, it seems like strange techno jargon or like machines have started their rise to power. The truth is that BI should be an important part of your company’s strategy. In fact, you might have already been doing some business intelligence tasks without even realizing it. In this article we’re going to teach you what business intelligence is, why it is important to your company and how to use it to improve your profits.

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

According to CIO.com, business intelligence is defined as “an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.”  In layman’s terms, business intelligence is a type of software that you use to gather information about your customers, website visitors, etc.

The type of software you choose to use for these tasks is important. According to the Select Hub business intelligence requirements checklist, you need to make sure that your BI programs can access data in real time, be expanded as the field develops (and this field moves quickly so inflexible software rapidly becomes obsolete), that the software stores and configures the data it collects in easily accessible and easy to read reports, and that it has top-notch security.

Why is Business Intelligence Software Important?

Think of all of the market research that went into your product and company development. You worked hard to collect all of that data, right? Business intelligence collects much of that same data in real time, along with information like how far your customers get along your sales funnel, how long they spend on your site, which pages are the most popular, which items are looked at but not purchased, etc. Instead of having to comb through pages of reports and manually collect the data you find into the reports you need, BI software does all of the work for you and you don’t have to worry about the margin of error that you would need to consider if a human was doing all the work. Plus, think of all of the time (and payroll) you’ll save by running the code instead of having to spend hours doing everything manually!

How to Use Business Intelligence Software to Improve Your Business

There are lots of ways that BI software can help you improve your company—not just its profit margins, but in overall customer satisfaction, workplace productivity levels, marketing strategy, product development, etc. We’ve already talked about the benefit of running a code instead of having a human do the work. Here are a few other examples of how BI can help your company:

Decision making: Instead of making decisions based on what you think (or are “reasonably sure”) is going on with your audience, etc. you will have cold hard and objective data to help you make your company’s decisions. You can evaluate your current choices by what you’ve done in the past with real numbers that will tell you what worked and what didn’t.

Improve Customer Satisfaction: Your reports will tell you what sells well, what doesn’t, how many customers complete the buying cycle and (this is especially important for web-based sales portals) where in the buying cycle customers usually bail out. This information can help you decide which products to keep developing, how to improve your site and products so that you make more sales, whether or not a product line or service provides a good ROI or not, etc.

There are lots of ways to use business intelligence to help run your company more smoothly and profitably. What we’ve outlined here is just the beginning. As you work with and explore the software, you’ll find plenty of other ways in which BI is an integral to your operations.

Article Contributed by Kristen Elansky

By now, you are probably aware of the dimensional weight charges implemented by big shipping carriers UPS and FedEx back in January. Under these changes, packages less than 3 cubic feet are subjected to dimensional weight pricing, also referred to as DIM pricing and DIM charges. DIM pricing calculates shipping costs based on a package’s volume— or how much space it occupies— in relation to its weight.

DIM charges, which have been applied to air shipments and larger ground parcels for a while, are now being applied to smaller ground parcels due to the increase in e-commerce sales. The continued popularity of online shopping has led to a steady increase in the volume of packages handled by carriers like UPS and FedEx, resulting in higher operating costs for these carriers. According to Alan Gershenhorn, UPS executive vice president and chief commercial officer, dimensional weight pricing “enables us [UPS] to more appropriately align rates with costs which are influenced by both the size and weight of packages. ¹”

The Impact of DIM Pricing

Now that DIM pricing is being applied to ground parcels under 3 cubic feet, retailers are experiencing an average increase of 17% to their ground shipping costs, with some seeing 30% increases.² A recent survey, which polled retailers to determine the impact of DIM pricing, found that shipping prices have greatly increased as a result of DIM charges. According to the report, the cost to ship men’s sneakers increased 13%, while the cost for a kid’s backpack went up 27%, a toy truck increased 32% and a toaster rose 35%.³ 

Holiday Shipping Predictions

The holiday shopping season is the busiest time of the year for retailers and shipping companies. For e-tailers, the National Retail Federation predicts online sales will increase between 6-8% to as much as $105 billion during the holiday shopping season. From Thanksgiving through December, USP is expected to ship over 630 million packages. December 22 is expected to be the busiest day, which is set for 36 million packages, doubling its average daily deliveries.⁴

Due to the substantial increase in sales and shipments over the holiday season, it’s important that e-tailers take the necessary steps to minimize the impact of DIM charges. According to the survey that analyzed the impact of DIM pricing, over 70% of respondents said they have not made changes to their shipping operations as a result of dimensional weight pricing.⁵ E-tailers that have been significantly impacted by DIM pricing thus far can expect to be hit even harder from now through December.

What Can You Do?

One of the best ways to reduce your DIM charges is minimizing the size of your parcels. According to Packsize research, the average package has 40% wasted space, which leads to expensive dimensional weight prices. Remember when I said DIM charges are based on how much space a parcel occupies and its weight? Well, by using the smallest possible box size, you are reducing the amount of space it occupies, thus limiting the DIM price.

To reduce the size of your packages, you can use a custom packaging solution, which allows you to make custom-sized boxes for the items you intend to ship. With custom packaging, you can create the smallest box possible and reduce the amount of corrugated and void material used.

In Conclusion

Dimensional weight pricing has had a huge impact on e-tailers that have not updated their shipping strategies. With the holiday season in full swing, your business should be utilizing every available means to reduce your DIM charges, or else your company will face the consequences.

 Resources:

1. The Newspaper of Trucking and Freight Transportation:  UPS to Use Dimensional Pricing for All Packages http://www.ttnews.com/articles/basetemplate.aspx?storyid=35267
2. How Is Dimensional Weight Pricing Being Addressed 9 Months Later? http://multichannelmerchant.com/opsandfulfillment/warehouse/dimensional-weight-pricing-addressed-9-months-later-27102015/
3. DIM Weight: One Year Later
   https://proshipblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/june-webinar-dim-weight-one-year-later1.pdf

4. Online Shopping to Drive Record Holiday Shipments for UPS http://www.gosanangelo.com/business/bizearnsups_02512146
5. Dimensional Weight (DIM) Impact: One Year Later
   http://proshipnews.com/2015/07/20/dimensional-weight-dim-impact-one-year-later/

The holiday season is a busy one for most businesses as this the time of year when people tend to buy gifts for others or businesses are trying to drain their yearly expense budget. As sales volumes increase, the volume of foot traffic, number phone calls and number of shipments that need to be made will also increase. What are some ways to increase productivity to meet the demand this year?

Make Use of Available Technology

There are a large array of tools that you can use to make sure that you are meeting demand without burning out your workers. The use of electronic POS systems can enable you to take sales wherever they occur in your store. This means that you can help a customer complete a sale while he or she is standing in line or even in the aisle where the product is located. You may also want to use a digital checkweigher to ensure that gift bags and packages contain the exact amount of product as advertised on the package. It can also be used to determine how much an item costs to ship without making an error.

Make Sure You Have Plenty of People On-Call

The holiday season is not the time to be short staffed. You will need to have a certain number of workers on call as necessary or attempt to recruit workers who will be willing to come in for extra shifts on a moment’s notice. To determine how many workers you will need at any given time, you should study last year’s sales numbers or use workflow software to help create the ideal schedule.

Keep Extra Inventory On Hand

You should aim to keep about 10 percent more inventory in your store than you think you will need on any given day. In addition to the holiday season being busier than normal, you never know when a snowstorm or some other event will increase traffic to your store even further. The last thing that you want to do is run out of inventory or fail to keep your shelves stocked in a neat and visibly appealing manner. How busy does it get during the holiday season? On Black Friday in 2014, retailers reported sales totaling $1 billion.

Make Use of Social Media and Your CRM to Communicate With Customers

Communication is critical during the holiday season, which means that you need to use as many tools as possible to automate or make communication easier. The use of social media allows you to update customers about the availability of products, shipping prices and other discounts that may be available. A CRM may make it easier to send coupons to your best shoppers or mine data to determine what types of products you should feature the most prominently in your stores. This information can be shared with executives and managers throughout the company quickly and easily during the busy sales days.

Only Use Experienced Workers During This Time of Year

To increase your productivity, it may be best to only use experienced workers during the busy holiday season. Experienced workers understand the pressures of the season while also being able to do the job quickly, promptly and correct the first time. Furthermore, workers who have been with the company for many years may have relationships with customers, which may make it easier to serve them during what can be a stressful time.

It is important that your company is able to keep up with demand during the holidays. This is a time when your company may see its most revenue and actually turn a profit for the entire calendar or fiscal year. Therefore, make sure that your people can handle the pressure and that there are tools available to them when doing their job.

Research contributed by DataLabel

Research carried out by a label website has revealed that 20% of people have stolen something from where they work. Additionally 36% would consider stealing from work if the need or opportunity arose. The most common items found to be stolen from work include; stationary, food and toilet rolls. The more popular reasoning given for the theft is that most employees think no one would notice.

To find out levels of theft in work places, labelling website www.data-label.co.uk surveyed 1,986 UK adults aged over 18, asking: “Have you ever stolen something from your place of work?” 80% said they had never stolen anything from work, however 20% had. Those who had stolen from their place of work were then asked: “What did you steal?” The most popular responses are broken down below:

1. Stationary
2. Food – Company and other staff members
3. Toilet roll

They then asked: “Why did you steal from work? The majority of respondents (85%) said because; they didn’t think anyone would notice, however 8% said that they stole because they believed that they deserved more from the company. Whilst the remainder said that they didn’t care.

The respondents who had said they had not stolen from their place of work, were also asked: “Would you ever consider stealing from work?”  The majority (83%) said no, the 17% who said they would consider stealing were then asked what they would steal and why. As with those that had previous stolen the most popular choice was stationary, and the reason given was also the same  they believed stealing something small like stationary would go unnoticed.

Those surveyed who had not stolen anything from their place of work and would not either in future said they wouldn’t because; “stealing is wrong, no matter where from” and “it is also a crime and should not be taken lightly”.

Philip Carlyn, Managing Director of Data-Label said “It is probably not as uncommon as people think; stealing from work, even if it’s something as small as toilet roll or tea bags in an emergency. As we can see from our results there are varying reasons why some people think stealing from work is acceptable. Although the news stories of fraud or embezzlement are not the norm for many employees, rather theft of goods or products seem to be the most common.”

He added:

“For many people there is a sense of entitlement, especially if employees feel undervalued or do not believe that they are being paid a fair wage. They also feel like they are not hurting anyone either, especially with some of the smaller thefts admitted. However over time those stealing costs can add up for companies, I wonder if people would re-consider if they knew that company theft of small items and stationary was responsible for a delayed wage increase. “

About the Contributor

DataLabel are specialists in label manufacturing and distribution with over 25 years’ experience within the label printing industry. They pride themselves on being the UK’s leading label manufacturer of custom printed labels.  Their customer friendly and experienced staff provide a fast, efficient service ensuring a smooth transition from enquiry to end product.