Starting Your Paperless Journey Going paperless will likely be a challenge, but it?s something that can take a considerable cost out of your business? budget. Here is a simple guide that you can use to implement a comprehensive paperless strategy for your company: Identify Your Current Paper Needs First, you need to take inventory of how much paper your business is currently using, including any that is used, filed, or stored. You also need to know if there are unnecessary duplicates of these documents, and whether or not they are being disposed of in the long run. Are your filing cabinets filled with countless versions of the same document featuring only minimal changes? Is paper taking up valuable office space that could be put to better use? Once you?ve answered these questions, you can go a long way toward understanding the changes that you need to make relative to your paperless endeavors.  Use Available Technology Paperwork is such a staple in many organizations that it?s impossible to think about an alternative, but the fact remains that going paperless is just a fancy way of saying that you?re replacing physical documents with a digital alternative. From e-sign capabilities, to document scanning, as well as other advancements in document storage can all be leveraged to make your office less paper-reliant.  Thanks to the cloud and other digital solutions, you can fully eliminate the majority of your business? physical document storage. Not all files can be stored in this sense, but you?ll find that the vast majority of them make for a much better PDF file than a massive 200 page booklet stuffed into a bulky filing cabinet. Get Your Employees on Board Your office is more likely to change if your employees are encouraged to use your digital solutions. Make sure that they are comfortable with using these strategic solutions so that they don?t resist your attempts at introducing them to something that can not only save your business money, but make their lives easier, too. Remember, the goal is a near-seamless transition, not a perfect implementation, as such a thing doesn?t exist. Does your business want to go paperless? White Mountain IT Services can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

The Role Technology Plays in Remote Collaboration You?d be hard-pressed to find a business that doesn?t use IT in some way to facilitate a large portion of its day-to-day tasks. Even if it?s just one part of your operations, like managing payroll or keeping track of inventory, IT can help your business by providing value in how it streamlines these tasks. Similarly, collaboration solutions allow your business to glean value from technology by making communication more effective, especially for remote workers. Doing the same thing day-in and day-out can be monotonous at best, and it?s likely that your team would agree. If you can take some of this burden off your employees and instead leverage technology to assist with some of the more repetitive workday tasks, you could see some benefit there. Since remote workers tend to want to get right to the task at hand, you can effectively use technology to make this goal more feasible. What a Business Needs to Do to Get Collaborative Results from Remote Workers There are various things your business can do to help remote workers meet their designated goals. Here are some of them: Provide equipment: If you want to make sure your remote workers have access to the tools they need to be successful, you can make it much easier by providing them with the equipment they need. Plus, since the equipment belongs to the company, you can install whatever you need to on it, and managing the devices becomes much easier. Improve communication: Communication can be aided when you build out your collaboration platforms with the remote worker in mind. If you implement tools that are specifically designed for this purpose, like VoIP and other collaborative tools, you’ll have a much easier time adjusting to the remote conditions when needed. Be involved: It?s extremely important for business owners and leaders to embrace the technology in use by your organization. Employees will be that much more likely to adopt the same mindset if they see their leaders doing the same. If your organization uses remote workers, it?s critical that you find a balance between micromanagement and a more hands-off approach. Be sure that you aren?t overloading your employees with even more work in your attempts to make their daily tasks more manageable. A Two-Step Process You Can Use to Improve Remote Team Collaboration There might be plenty of tools out there that facilitate collaboration, but there is a difference between implementing a solution that you think might be beneficial to your team and implementing one that your team thinks might be beneficial for themselves. Due to the unique circumstances surrounding remote workers, we recommend that you involve them in the decision process early before you implement something that does the exact opposite of what you expect. To make this happen, we recommend following a two-step process: Collaborative Vision for Product or Service Delivery It all boils down to communication and feedback. You should work to get ideas from your employees who are actively working for your organization so you can best address issues that arise with their workflows. Ask your staff the following questions: How would you describe what we are trying to accomplish? What are some of the problems you see with the project as it currently stands?  How would your […]

Start Simple Say your available time is represented by a bucket. All of your crucial, mission-critical goals and responsibilities are represented by large stones, your less-impactful responsibilities by smaller stones, and repetitive menial tasks are symbolized by sand. If you were to use these objects to fill the bucket, the way you order your priorities will impact how much can be accomplished. If you put the sand in first, followed by the smaller stones, you leave little room for the large rocks. However, if you start with the bigger rocks, you can make the biggest impact. Transferring over the metaphor, by focusing on your biggest responsibilities first, you can fit the most into your workday. Anything left over isn?t that important and today can mostly be automated through the use of technology.  Five Second Rule Everyone needs to find a plan to keep those tasks that, frankly, we just don?t want to do from holding us up. Known as the Blastoff Method, you in effect defy the normal hesitation that puts the brain into protection mode and stalls on whatever that task is. By taking control and overcoming that hesitation, you can improve your overall state of mind resulting in better productivity.  By counting down your actions?5,4,3,2,1?and then acting before you get the chance to think your way out of it, you can just get busy and not ruminate on how annoying or mundane the task is.  In fancier terms, you?re interrupting a set habit loop and shifting your behavioral process. So, next time you?re avoiding a task, count down and dive in. Two-Minute Rule How long will each of your tasks take to complete? In the office, the length of time can vary wildly, but there are some trends that will become apparent after a few repetitions. For instance, you?ll know that Tasks A through E will take a longer time, while Tasks F through N might take mere moments each. So, why not take advantage of these differences to accomplish more throughout your day? The two-minute rule seems deceptively simple: if a task will take fewer than two minutes to complete, just do it. That is an oversimplification of the actual approach. While the idea of doing the quick stuff first is present, you should use these tasks as a means of growing your motivation to tackle the big tasks. This is possible because all your responsibilities, big or small, will start with a small, two-minute action and once you get invested in a responsibility, it is much easier to continue carrying it out. Two-Hour Solution The Two-hour solution tackles productivity more proactively. The strategy is based in that, by taking two hours each week to evaluate how things have worked out for you during the previous week, reconnecting with your goals and giving yourself a schedule to follow throughout the coming week, you can optimize the time you spend on your tasks. This may all sound typical to some people, because we haven?t gone over the key difference that sets the Two-Hour Solution apart?you?re really dividing the time that you?re spending each week by how it contributes to your goals. ?Green time? is time that generates financial capital, and ?red time? is the time spent preparing for the productivity of your green time. ?Flex time? is the […]

Why Invest in Technology? Before we get into some tips that can help you make the best technology investment decisions, we want to talk about why companies are investing in technology. In the small business world, most business owners feel as if they are constantly falling behind if they don?t continuously improve their technology. In fact, according to a poll conducted in 2021, over half of respondents to the small business poll thought they were spending too little on their technology, while only about 20 percent felt that they were spending too much. Obviously, these are just opinions, but it can give you a look into the game of catch-up that a lot of small business owners are constantly playing. Some of the reasons small businesses invest in technology include: Integration of new systems/applications to advance efficiency Cybersecurity Managing and analyzing data Upgrading systems Upgrade for younger workforce Expanding reach/commerce to Internet Managing building IT complexities  There are many others, but if you are like the over half of small business owners that feel like stagnation in your tech is stagnation in your business, finding the right technology to invest in is imperative to not wasting capital. Let?s take a look at three strategies that work to identify the technology your business needs.  Look Inward The first thing you should do before making any technology-procurement decisions is assess what problems your business has that could possibly be fixed by adding new technology. Do you pay a lot of money for a certain part of your business that a new tech investment could reduce over time? Are you lacking efficiency in one part of your business? You will want to identify the pain points of your business and then take some time to see what type of investment works best for you. Do you need to see a rapid ROI? Technology can be a solution to your problem, but it can just as easily become another problem if you don?t plan ahead.  Look to Deliver More Value Your company is unique, and if you consider it, it has a unique offering. Identifying what unique value your business presents to your customers is a great place to start when looking to implement technology to help your business. You will want to explore how new technology could help you differentiate your product and service delivery and then make decisions on those investments to improve your value proposition to customers. After all, if your customers won?t pay more after a massive innovation project, other than market sustainability, why would you want to put that kind of stress on your business? Get Creative You are in the business of creating great outcomes for your customers so that they continue to buy your products and services. Why then would you try to develop and integrate technology that could end up costing you a lot of money? Nowadays, there are many technologically-based organizations that your business can partner with to ensure that you are able to move operations forward. Whether that be organizations that specialize in virtualized hardware, managed software, or simply getting your team the coffee they need, there are technology-based solutions to nearly every business problem. That?s where the IT professionals at White Mountain IT Services come in, we handle all manners of technology-related issues that you can […]

Establish a Usage Policy Your company should have a policy in place that governs how your employees use it. This means that you must establish clear guidelines for appropriate use of instant messaging. For example, having a group chat for a department is perfectly fine, but having a group that is exclusively for sharing distractions is a problem that can lead to too much wasted time.  Keep It Professional You should always use greetings when sending instant messages, similar to the way you would if you were using emails. Using a salutation such as ?Hi Name,? rather than opening the conversation with a question can make a world of difference. You should also try to use similar professional language in your IMs as you would in an email. Keep It Short and Sweet As we previously mentioned, the big difference between the IM and email is that IMs are designed for instantaneous responses and quick conversations rather than long, drawn-out, detailed messages. The best way to use IMs inside your business is to use this strategy. If you expect someone to respond to a long IM that requires a detailed and analytic response, you might be asking too much. Besides, it may seem like the user is ignoring the message until they can find time to respond to it in the way that you expect. Still, you?ll want to make sure that you are conveying thoughts and ideas clearly, but instant messaging is a great place to encourage questions to prevent communication gaps. You can really do a lot with many of today?s instant messaging apps, so writing long, drawn-out messages is just counterproductive most of the time.  Respect the Status Message Most instant messaging applications allow the user to set their status. This might be something like Available, Away, In a Meeting, Busy, etc. If the user has a status message up, typically they are unavailable.  If this is the case, you should reconsider sending the message until the user is indeed available to take your message. Otherwise, there is a solid chance that the message will slip through the cracks. Don?t Solely Rely on IM Obviously, an instant message is not a substitution for a good old face-to-face conversation; it?s just a good option to relay quick messages and communicate when you need to talk to someone who isn?t in the same place as you. Much of communication is non-verbal, so having face-to-face interaction helps you avoid instances of messages being taken out of context as well as establishes that you can make time in your busy day to make connections in this way. White Mountain IT Services can help you implement the best instant messaging platform that suits your company?s needs. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.