Category: Time Management

Deep Work Is The New Secret Of Enhanced Productivity Among Remote Workers

June 25, 2019

Imagine sitting on your office desk, trying to concentrate on your work and suddenly the phone rings. Well, you are not only distracted but also diverted from the thoughts you were initiating. You might have seen a number of managers around the world getting excited the moment they come across a new way to improve the productivity of teams/individuals. They dream of that one ideal day with zero error tasks delivered on time. Deep Work can be a solution to this dream. What is Deep Work?  Deep Work is a concept coined by Cal Newport, a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University. He defines Deep Work as the ability to critically focus on activities which are highly important without any distractions. By doing this, you can avoid “shallow” work. Let us help you understand this better. Rewind your life and imagine a day where you had strict deadlines to meet. Calculate how many times you were forced to go through your email because someone wanted something urgently.  You will debate and see that if things were prioritized it would not have happened, but often a number of things are not in your control. Deep Work is a philosophy, not an initiative  Well, to initiate the process of Deep Work, Newport advices on developing an agile task list which has all tasks listed and is shared with your co-workers so that they are well- informed about their schedule and know when to approach you and for what. With remote colleagues, this philosophy continues as they can follow the same as per their time zones. With remote workers, the biggest advantage is that they can follow their own schedule and every information exchanged is well thought of. Why is Deep Work important for you as well as your team?  Deep Work helps to improve the core abilities for thriving in this competitive environment. It allows developers and designers to work on complex projects in a strict deadline with complete accountability. At Indus Net, we have created an ecosystem which fosters deep work from the onset. Teams based on the client’s needs and not skill sets are set up to ensure minimum distraction and maximum return. Some real-life instances In a survey of 450 remote workers, TalentLMS found that around 90% of survey participants get work done properly and adequately when working remotely. They have highlighted why concentration level is high if people work remotely and where they create a zero distraction zone. At Crossover, managers use Deep Work, productivity and work habits using a number of customized tools to know how effective their culture is. At Toyota, managers often go for short walks through the factory floor to have a look at the work of the team members. They use tools to find out the blocks of time wasted and use these insights to create a rectification plan and provide training sessions correspondingly. So how can you start? Create an agile methodology of work with well-defined tasks and responsibilities for 2 weeks Hire a remote worker and treat all colleagues as remote workers Define your and your team’s work schedule Ensure zero distraction during working hours Measure productivity using smart tools like Worksmart or develop one yourself Understand trends and improve Today, deep work needs discipline, efficient planning along with a change of mindset to understand why remote working can yield maximum results. Just imagine what you can do outside work with all those extra hours!

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When Technology Met Traditional Banking

April 3, 2019

Digitization has transformed and challenged every traditional business. Therefore, New Age Banking is nothing but digitization of traditional banking procedures. That means, now you can skip those long queues and can be click dependent! During the course of digitization in India, team Indus Net Technologies have played a predominant role in digitizing products and services for several financial organizations, allowing them to be accessible 24X7 for client servicing and acquiring new businesses. Today, we have a wide plethora of digital products and services and this article takes you through the process of digitization in banking. Online Lending Traditional lending always drove off customers, owing to the cumbersome procedures. However, financial institutions identify lending to be an effective revenue channel for which, banks are also putting effort to minimize the time and effort for a customer to avail loan or cards. Therefore, online lending eases customers to avail of the lending services in no time. Following points brush through the Unique Selling Points (USP) which are used by banks for lending Pre-approved personal loans Paperless transaction Seamless and short online journey Instant disbursal The digital lending process thus simplified the complications of lending and removes the human resources thereby helping banks to maximize their profit. Use case: IndusInd Bank provides pre-approved loans to their customers from their portal where ETB users can log in and get lending’s instantly if eligible. They also have a portal for providing Loan Against Securities and services to provide Consumer Durable Loans. FOREX Foreign currency exchange is something that was served by only aggregators and offline shops till recent times. Digitization of foreign currency exchange is one of the hottest trends sweeping the industry. “Multi-currency Travel Card” is another product in their bouquet. Today, the complete act of end-to-end foreign currency exchange has become hassle-free. And that’s what technology is meant to be! Following USPs are used by banks for foreign currency exchange Hassle-free onboarding Paperless transaction Complete online journey Airport/Kiosk based delivery With respect to the product “Multi-Currency Travel Card” banks today, eased the seamless card buying and reloading process, allowing the customer to opt for the product over cash. Security is another aspect that allows the customer to choose “Multi-currency Travel Card” as their travel buddy. Following USPs are used by banks for channelling customers for “Multi-Currency Travel Card”. Hassle-free reloading Encashment of leftover currency Currency conversion Door Step delivery Airport/Kiosk based delivery & reload Use case: IndusInd Bank has facilitated a dedicated portal for providing existing and new customers with foreign currency exchange, purchase and reloading Multi-Currency Travel Card. The best part about digitization is the end-to-end delivery of the service. That means not just the product became handy, but also the delivery process! Banking Services Banking services is a mandate for the bank customer to visit a branch of a bank. Owing to ease off the ‘request service’ procedure and providing a response to the request, banks are attaining the requests via their service request digital platforms. Different digital platforms are created by banks via web and mobile platforms which allows customers to login with their information and place their service request. The information in turn is processed digitally by the banks and is implemented as per request. USP’s for digital service request processing are Hassle-free requesting placement Less cost of the request processing Customer satisfaction WHAT’S IN STORE FOR TRADITIONAL BANKING’S FATE? Looking forward, digitization is gradually changing the course of human interaction with the bank with respect to our requirements. Though the expectation from a bank remains the same the interaction procedure and channels would completely transform. That way, our future is pretty clear when technology will replace traditional bank visits for whatsoever purpose.   Following transformation in traditional banking could be predicted  Increase in customer on-boarding via the mobile medium Digitization of the products and processes Targeting Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) level customers Less investment in process and more investment in digitization

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Who Are Digital Nomads?

March 14, 2019

Transformation is the thumb rule of nature and so is the new millennial workplace arrangement. If you are aware (or not) of the trend of the hour ‘Digital Nomad’, then we would simplify it more! The term refers to a person whose physical proximity to their workplace is not dependent on their work. They are remotely connected over telecommunications and are technology-dependants. That means, if you are a talented globe trotter, your talent can be of use across the world and not concentrate only on your location! This drove around 50% of the young U.S workforce to ditch the traditional format of working while making it the new modus operandi. Though it originated mainly out of the freelance community, today, it is no more restricted to the start-ups or SMEs but established brands are digesting it well! BUT, how effective is it? Lucile Foroni, Growth Manager at Doist, a complete remote workforce organization states “Remote work’s biggest advantage is the ability to focus. You can focus when you want to do deep work, and check messages or plan a meeting when you need to communicate. No one taps on your shoulder, constantly DMs you because your online indicator is green or calls you at whichever time of the day or night. You’re in control of your attention. Moreover, it adds to the managerial flair as I do not need to micro-manage the team.” Having said so, a dispersed team globally helps you in time management. For example, when one teammate residing in the USA completes a certain work and post which can pass it on to his Canadian teammate who then completes his part of the job. This ‘round the clock and around the world’ approach sets one completely free from unnecessary professional stress. The list doesn’t stop here! According to Forbes Financial Council, around 43% of employers are switching to employing remote workers owing to the cost omission of their office spaces. This allows even a start-up to recruit a diverse talent pool without paying bulk from their raised funds. This is an enabler to improve their productivity and ensure effective cost-cutting. This culture erases the need of renting an official space or even a co-working space allowing effective implementation of their funds in other projects or services. ‘Been there, done that’ If you thought that remote working is not your cup of tea, owing to a much larger workforce management, trust Zapier’s co-founders, Wade Foster and Mike Knoop who feels remote working culture leads to a refined and fast-paced work. “Non-remote work defaults to the highest distraction communication first, which is in-person. Remote work defaults to the lowest, which is no communication and is more on point,” they share. However, fostering trust is one eminent task, mutual responsibility for both the employers and the employees. So, before your boss rings up a bell, you should be more self-disciplined and should be managing your and your teams’ regardless of the locations and time zones. Foster adds, “To match the deadline, one should be ahead of it because emergencies are ought to happen owing to the diverse location and time zones.” Therefore, hiring self-managers could be a winning stroke for your company. However, a distributed team faces time differences, internet connectivity issues to conflicting cross-cultural behaviours to start a spontaneous communication, so how would you increase trust among your teammates? To overcome this barrier of productivity, David Horowitz, Chief Executive Officer, Retrium shares his experience, “Be an intentional communicator because there are no break rooms to break off the work monotony. So, take out time to strike off a genuine conversation and build a healthy bond with your digital nomads.” Zoho, created another success story in creating Zoho Connect, its remote working wing suggesting how to intentionally communicate and what if you fall short of content! First thing first, homogeneity would never let you fall short of communication so one could simply exchange information on their weather, national holidays, swap their music playlist or simply gossip about movies to keep it genuine and smooth. This way, one can find a mental connection to talk beyond work, building trust and loyalty among the multi-cultural workforce. But, what if miscommunication strikes off an important delivery? Being video first avoids a lot of unexpected friction owing to cross-cultural blend. Therefore, sticking to video calls over voice calls would help you to analyse body language and instill a sense of connectivity. On this line, Ricardo Fernandez, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Prodigy Finance shares his hard learnt experience, “Once, I had congratulated one of my colleague on a voice note stating ‘you’re killing it out there’. To my amazement, he reverts asking what went wrong on his part! Had I relied on a video call, my intention would have been clear.” To sum up, if you are intending to bring in diversity in your organisation in terms of talent acquisition in minimal cost, then think but to re-structure your go-to strategies in hiring and retaining remote workers across the globe. Around the globe in 80 days, err, 80 seconds! According to fresh data from LinkedIn, web design, social media management are amongst the highest growing digital trends. Today, employers are trying to address mental health issues pretty seriously. Accordingly, 21% of remote workers stated loneliness as their primary concern to their shift. If you are an SME, then bridging the cybersecurity concern is an important concern. Approximately, 18% of remote workers reviewed the lack of cybersecurity when working in an SME. Ernst & Young reveals that more than 50% of the global professionals trust their employees; however, this calculation is pretty low for remote workers. Therefore, addressing the trust issue and building a mental connection is an important mandate for all remote employers. With the rapid digitization and Gen-Z coming over the workplace, 2019 would be the perfect year for creating a perfect remote workplace!

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Project Management in 3 Minutes

February 28, 2019

When the Pyramid of Giza was being built around 2500 BC, Project Management was not much of a fad. Maybe whip yielding Scrum Masters did have daily stand up meetings and maybe some engineers had the blueprint drawn up in some papyrus scroll, but that was all to it. No jargon, no certifications, no proud Project Managers with PMP badges. Yet we know the pyramid was one of the daunting projects of human history, one that modern engineers still marvel at. Was this project managed right? You bet! But modern organizations cannot operate like the Pharaohs. We can not whip engineers to build a project out – well not at least literally. As we have refined process over the years, including sophisticated terminologies like Work Breakdown Structure and Process Flow Diagrams and Trade-Offs, we have no doubt blown up something simple and rational into something more of a puff-and-show. But at the heart of it, Project Management remains simple and straightforward. Any project, of any proportion or complexity, can be defined, scoped and planned (at least the basic draft, not as a versioned scope document that clients will accept, duh!) by just answering in a few sentences the following 6 questions. WHAT Well let’s just answer that, shall we! What is the project all about? What needs to be done? Such a basic, such a primary question – yet I find Project Managers, Project Leads, Team Members and sometimes even clients struggling to answer that question – WHAT is the project all about? Even when someone starts a narrative, they usually go on to describe the WHAT in terms of multitude of scattered user stories and exception scenarios. Well, take a breath and get a hold! The WHAT of a project needs to be like an Elevator Speech – short, crisp and to the point. No matter the complexity or budget of the project, if you cannot define the WHAT of it in a few sentences, you really need to get back to the drawing board. WHY Even though we sometimes survive the WHAT session, what really get’s at us is the WHY. When I ask teams working on a project – WHY are you doing this project? I am always amused by the look of befuddlement in their faces. People go like – What do you mean WHY? As if I have just asked one of the most absurd questions that they have ever heard. When I nudge them further, they conjure up reasons like – Well because the company won this project or Because it will earn us money. There are some bad-ass who retort to my WHY with a smirk and a – WHY NOT? The WHY of a project is the soul of the entire project and is the crux of the solution that we as a service providing company or team is supposed to provide. The WHY is the answer to the problem the client wants to be solved. If the WHY is not clear to the team, it is usually like a driver steering a bus without knowing where they are headed. On the contrary, answering the WHY, again, in a few simple sentences, get’s the entire team on the same page in terms of the requirement of the project and also shift’s their focus from Execution to Solution. HOW Now that we have discussed and written down in a simple document and in very simple format, WHAT the project is about and WHY the client needs the project, we next come to HOW of the project. Answering this clearly and briefly will make sure there is distributed clarity in terms of the solution implementation. Do not mistake this simple description as a replacement to the FRD, but rather treat it as a premise to the same. Different team members of an ongoing project are often clueless about the basic yet critical information regarding what technology the project will be built on, what will be the associated technologies and what will be the solution model. Defining such simple details in this section as to whether the project will be developed as a single application or a CMS or a SaaS model application; whether the scripting language will be PHP or C# or DotNet and whether, if any, a framework will be used, goes a long way in achieving critical project clarity for the development team. WHO With most of the project understanding in place, it just remains to set up the team right. Though we ideally want the best team to work on every project, but unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world! So we know the resource pool at our disposal. In this section, we can be realistic and quickly define the team who will work on the project. This will include defining the entire team – from the Team Leads to the Developers to the Designers to the Client Relationship Managers, if any. It is extremely crucial at this stage to list out the backup resources as well. Though such resources may not be available presently, but we must always have a list of back up resources named to jump into should the occasion arise (trust me, it always does!) WHEN A human may not live by a timeline, but a project must! Discuss and quickly frame up a timeline for the project. When will the requirements be discussed? How much time should be invested for requirement discussion? X number of days? Great! What if it extends to X+2 days? Ah, then the deadline just shifts further by 2 days, right? Wrong! Time has an Avalanche Effect. When a rock starts rolling at the mouth of an avalanche, it is not 1 rock that ends up at the bottom of the mountain, but a huge pile of rumbling, disastrous heap! It is the same with time delays. A 2 day delay in the requirement analysis phase may end up delaying the project by months. So in this section of the document, quickly draft an initial and ideal project timeline, but also draft 2-3 other parallel timelines for delay scenarios. That way, if we jump and miss the rope, we will

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outstaff-outsourcing-case-study

Out-Staffing Vs. Outsourcing: Is There A Better Approach?

February 28, 2019

Outsourcing product development as a concept took off sometime during the 1990s when the digital revolution enabled client companies to waive off their software development projects to service providers who would then realize it internally. Primarily, the clients can choose a fixed cost per project which is agreed upon a mutually agreed deadline (Fixed Cost Project model). Otherwise, they can also hire developers from a staffing agency who would be managed by the client’s internal teams. Outsourcing is primarily associated with the Fixed Cost Project model, whereas out-staffing is associated with the Full-Time Equivalent model. Both the models have pros and cons, but the success of its implementation depends upon your project and staffing requirements. Here is a quick comparison between the outsourcing and out-staffing models. What’s outsourcing all about? In an outsourcing scenario, a particular project (e.g. Software development) is dished out to a service provider, who remains responsible for execution and delivery. The service provider is responsible for the successful completion of only the project. The provider manages the end to end execution, and can also hire talent if required. Apart from that, the client doesn’t need to take any added responsibility to complete it. This allows the client to focus on core business activities and delegate specific project(s) to the chosen service provider(s). Advantages Talent Acquisition responsibilities are taken care of by the service provider. Eliminates overhead costs associated with the completion of the project. A client does not have to manage the project or the service provider’s team. Disadvantages Client loses quality control of the project. Communication with the development team is not direct and lucid. Pain points may not be communicated with the offshore team accurately. Costs can soar if additional projects are added along the way. Case study: A manufacturing company based in New York City intended to launch a mobile application to manage its field staff. The company outsourced the project to a client based in India. While the quality of the application was excellent, the company realized that it needed IoT sensor integration as well. The service provider agreed, but this resulted in additional fees to the client. What went wrong? This scenario could have been avoided through transparent and ease of communication between the client and the service provider. Lesson: The outsourcing model is great for simple single one-off projects. With more complex projects on the sleeves, a more flexible model is required. How is out-staffing different from outsourcing? In an out-staffing model, remote workers who are employed by another company are recruited temporarily to perform certain tasks. The external agency acts as the employer of the remote team and is responsible for their salaries, bonuses, and equipment etc. The client provides and manages the assignment directly. This is a great model to choose when the client company has begun a project and requires specific assistance from professionals with certain skills that are not available in-house. Herein, lies the advantage because you can hire a top level talent for a fraction of the full-time hire.  Additionally, the client company’s managers oversee project management and completion. Advantages This model is perfect for ongoing projects. Specific skills that are required only for a short duration could be hired based on specific projects. Direct access and control of remote workers either onsite or offshore. Disadvantages Client bears the management responsibilities. Communication channels need to be of high quality and transparent. Deliverables are the client’s onus. Case study: A San Francisco Bay Area software company required to execute Python-based projects. Unable to acquire in-house talents, they decide to hire two skilled Python developers from an out-staffing company. While the projects were completed in time satisfactorily, the company realized it needed to complete more projects in other newer technologies such as Kotlin. This resulted in the client having to hire more remote workers from a different out-staffing agency. What went wrong? Hiring multiple remote workers could have been avoided if the client company hired from the same agency and paid for the development time, rather than for the number of workers. The client also didn’t receive the necessary guidance. Lesson: Out-staffing model is suited for a large IT company that already has well-defined processes and management but is looking for specific skills temporarily. It is not suitable for companies with dynamic requirements. What a flexible model looks like? A flexible model combines the outsourcing model with out-staffing services and adds IT consultancy to the mix. Most outsourcing and out-staffing models fail because consulting is often ignored and the fact that project requirements change along the way is taken for granted. Software development and digital requirements are always dynamic and cherry picking projects and remote workers can both prove to be expensive. Dedicated hiring is a flexible and dynamic solution that erases constraints placed by traditional models such as outsourcing and out-staffing. It combines the advantages of traditional project outsourcing and remote workers with that of consultancy so that businesses only pay for skills used and services rendered. Most importantly, businesses do not have to squander temporal and financial resources on multiple project outsourcing and parallel remote hiring. Advantages of a flexible model As project requirements and skill demands can widely oscillate, a flexible model is leaner and cost-effective Such a model gives the client company access to developers, designers, digital marketing consultants, security experts, project managers, ScrumMasters, etc. It also stresses on the importance of an agile framework, which helps businesses to scale down or scale up depending on their evolving needs. Dedicated hiring can be understood as an amalgamation of the benefits of outsourcing and out-staffing models with added benefits of IT consultancy. This is a flexible model that allows businesses to manage projects the way they want while having access to a multi-disciplinary team of IT professionals and consultants. Key takeaways The traditional outsourcing model focuses on project completion by an external service provider Out-staffing model focuses on hiring remote workers to fill specific gaps temporarily Dedicated hiring addresses the pain points associated

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Here Is How to Set the Right KPI and Targets For Your Digital Journey?

September 19, 2018

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help you understand whether you are achieving your target goals or not. KPIs also tell you how close you are towards achieving them. KPIs can help you track progress related to expenses, customer insight, revenue, etc. There are KPIs for every business function within an organization. Important sales related KPIs include number of wins, deals, and opportunities, sales qualified leads, etc. Return on marketing investment, customer retention, customer acquisition cost, etc. are examples of marketing KPIs. Measuring customer service KPIs is important too, as it tells you how happy or satisfied your customers are with your brand. Key performance indicators of customer service include Customer Satisfaction Score, first response time, customer retention rate, SERVQUAL developed by Valerie Zeithaml, which measures service + quality, etc. In this article, let us take a look at how you can choose the right KPIs and set targets so that you are always on track. Choosing the right KPIs to improve performance KPIs can be grouped under lagging and leading indicators, and you will need to monitor both. Lagging indicators are those which can be easily measured but hard to influence. Leading indicators, on the other hand, are easy to influence but hard to measure. An example of a lagging KPI is the number of orders placed on a certain day, while an example of a leading indicator would be return on marketing investments. Begin with choosing a KPI Key performance indicators should be SMART, i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Specific KPIs are easy to track and monitor than vague ones. For instance, a specific KPI would be “exact number of orders placed every week”. A vague KPI would be “Satisfactory order processing”. In other words, it should be reduced to a number in order for it to be tracked. KPIs should also be measurable. If we take the number of orders per week as a KPI, it can be averaged over months and years. KPIs should be realistic so that if employees work hard, they are attainable. If they are unrealistic and unattainable, you stand the risk of demotivating employees. KPIs need to be tracked over a period of time and measured against time too. Make sure you can evaluate your chosen KPI across time phases. An example of KPIs : Image Source: Flickr Monitor and measure KPIs and metrics However, you might wonder what a “metric” is. Metric is a quantifiable measure or that which can be reduced to a number. The number of orders placed on a given day is a metric. However, only when it is studied over a period of time (number of sales per week, observed over many weeks) does the metrics become a KPI. While a KPI helps you measure performance and success, a metric is simply a number that needs to be assessed within a KPI. Reward employees who achieve KPI targets Recent research reveals that setting realistic KPI targets help employees to perform better. Not just that, rewarding employees when they achieve or surpass KPI targets will incentivize their performance. This IBM white paper explores how the right employee behavior can be rewarded and motivated by using KPIs. An interesting observation of the paper is to reward teams instead of choosing individual employees for rewards. This motivates entire teams to work harder to achieve set KPI targets. Key Performance Indicators (KPI): The 75 measures every manager needs to know by Bernard Marr is an important book that can help you familiarize with using the right KPIs to evaluate employee performance and encouraging them to achieve KPIs set for other areas. Review and make changes to your KPI strategy Conduct regular audits of the KPI targets and assess the metrics associated with each KPI. If they are under-performing, you might want to set a more realistic goal. If you have been consistently performing high, set yourself a higher target that is tied around time phases. Choose a different KPI is the one you have chosen is not getting you the result you need. You may also need to vary your targets consistently depending on your business success. A neutral observer will help you take an objective look at your KPI performance, and provide you with a more realistic picture of your situation. Speaking to a consultant that specializes in KPI metric analysis helps. KPIs help businesses to get back on track KPI is a measurable value that helps businesses achieve targets. KPIs help businesses to understand and evaluate their performance so that they can be further improved over time. Choose the right KPIs carefully and make sure that they are specific in what they measure, quantifiable so that what you measure can be reduced to numbers, and that they can realistically be attained. They must also be relevant to your goals and success, and must always be measured against time. Once you choose your KPIs and set targets, you should continuously monitor and measure your chosen KPI metrics. Make sure to reward employees (preferably teams) who enthusiastically work towards attaining KPIs. Finally, always review your KPI strategy and make changes to it if need be.

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The Accelerator of Growth – Sales Automation

August 24, 2018

Globally, the sales team is crucial in helping businesses succeed and it is often the duty of top-level executives to breathe life into sales teams. Sales teams are often pressurized to identify and gather leads, make contact, manage opportunities and leads, convert them to sales, and prepare sales reports. In between these dreary-sounding tasks, they also need to make calls, write emails, answer queries and engage in a lot of repetitive manual tasks. In fact, across North America and Europe, manual and repetitive tasks take up sales teams’ time much more than actual core sales activities, which leads to reduced sales and conversion rates. Sales automation helps fix this problem and gives your sales team their mojo back. It helps them to get back on track and plan strategies and implement them, instead of writing repetitive reports. In this article, let us take a look at what sales automation is, and how it accelerates your business growth. What is the sales automation? Sales automation is a software tool that helps your business to automate repetitive tasks such as documentation, sending emails, controlling inventory, pricing, and contract management. It often comes as a part of your CRM or can also be purchased separately, if you want a specialized tool. It helps to reduce the burden on your sales team by automating repetitive and manual tasks so that they can focus on core sales activities. In result, your sales team finds it easier to nurture leads, to interact with them, and to help convert them into customers. The reduced time and effort leads to increased productivity at work, and of course, sales automation has a number of other advantages too. Here are its basic features: Close deals easily: Sales automation helps you to close more deals quickly. You can automate content management, collaboration, and use marketing tools that will help you to find leads as well. It is not a surprise that most businesses use sales automation to manage contacts and accounts and to manage sales opportunities. Find more leads: Sales automation also helps you to find more leads. you can track how well your marketing campaigns are doing, and access sales data on demand. This helps you to send out reports to decision makers quickly so that territories can be planned and campaigns can be launched instantly. Enhance productivity: Most sales automation tools are available on mobile devices, and you can perform sales activities while on the go. You can close deals while on the train or while waiting for your business lunch at a cafe. In other words, sales automation helps you to accelerate productivity. You can easily share files, sync data, and access visual workflows. All business processes can be automated using drag and drop features within a mobile app. Make informed decisions: Most importantly, sales automation tools help you to make informed decisions at the right time. You gain access to reports and dashboards from wherever you are, and accessing sales forecasting gets just as easy as well. With real-time access to your team’s forecasts, mailing to and fro and intra-departmental squabbles are a thing of the past. How sales automation accelerates growth In this section of the article, let us take a look at how sales automation accelerates growth and quickly improves your teams’ productivity as well. Identify your customers Sales departments spend a lot of time trying to identify who could be potential leads and customers. The more time they spend on identifying customers, the less time they can actually use to make contact with them. Sales automation helps identify customers and leads quickly using various metrics. This helps sales teams to quickly make contact and engage in actual sales activity to urge the customer to make a purchase. Businesses often waste considerable temporal and financial resources on customer identification and with a good CRM, that can simply be automated. Access customer information There is little wisdom in developing a sales strategy if we do not understand what the customers want. Knowing how the customers think, where they come from, and what their demographic tends to do are more important than blindly developing sales campaigns. Sales automation provides deep and rich insights about target audience so that intricate sales campaigns can be designed and developed. Targeted campaigns help drive up conversion rates and assist in company growth. Create and edit content Writing reports and documenting sales activities are crucial duties a sales team does. However, these activities can take a lot of time, and result in unnecessary delays in performing other core activities. A good sales automation tool readily creates reports and helps you to focus on more important activities that cannot be automated. Why not generate reports and then make a presentation in person, which has a better impact than just mailing the marketing department cold reports? With sales automation, there will be more time for your sales team to engage in such activities that enhance inter-team communication and collaboration. Follow-up with customers and leads Whether it is writing emails or calling customers over the phone, if you do not do it at the right time, you will not be able to keep a lead warm. To make sure that customers are followed and tracked continuously, and to ensure that leads are kept warm, automate the process of follow-ups. Sales automation can automate communication and help you to remain in touch with them. However, do not automate all communication with your leads and customers as that can have unintended effects. Analyze calls, emails and other communication platforms Call analysis provides valuable information about what customers want, and analyzing email texts can be equally important. CRM tools provide exquisite features that help you to track how email newsletters are read, by whom, and when. They also provide information related to how you can improve your email communication to enhances sales growth. Manual analysis is simply too tedious and sometimes not even accurate. Let us not forget about how important analyzing social media communication is for sales. A

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How to overcome the challenges of Managing Time: One Question, Many Approaches

December 27, 2017

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” —Albert Einstein While the struggle against time has existed since the beginning of time, tackling it requires a new approach today. We are all so well-connected now that we often disregard the notion and value of productive hours, which varies from person to person. This timeless conundrum has intrigued economists and sociologists alike. So we as an organization, which harps on productivity, tried to understand how people around the world manage their time. In a small social media poll conducted by us, an open call for suggestions from experts yielded a number of valuable insights and solutions. CEO Abhishek Rungta’s question—What’s your best time management and/or productivity tip?—was met with voluble replies across social media forums like Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #mytip. Here’s a compilation of what the savants have had to say about the matter. The importance of spacing your work out Serial entrepreneur Mr. Prashant Pansare’s take on the issue involves compartmentalizing chores and prioritizing while planning in order to achieve the immediate goals you’ve set for yourself. He suggests : Slice the workload into smaller tasks based on different focus/methods Keep two uninterrupted hours for the most important work that you can do by yourself Keep an hour aside for unplanned activities that can’t be rescheduled, like important phone calls In case of business meetings, define the outcome expected along with agenda. It is best to avoid email clutter, for eg. asking to be CC’ed Pansare (@PrashantPansare) addresses the unfortunate customer/client trend in India, where the outcome is generally demanded immediately; he adds that expediency must sometimes be sacrificed for priority and time management. Besides maintaining a weekly planner, he also advocates making a note of the amount of work done, work left, time spent, and time wasted over the last week to get a clear idea on the aspect of time management that needs to be worked upon. UNmultitask: Delegating is the key to perfection Nirupam Chaudhuri of NASSCOM and Srish Agrawal of A1 Future share the same opinion about multitasking and urge everyone to pick and focus on one thing at a time. Agrawal (@srishagrawal) says, “Multitasking sounds great but not a great idea for most serious jobs. Delegate, and delegate more as you grow.” He also advises against ad-hoc meetings, encouraging young professionals to have a fixed time and agenda for every meeting. Regional Director at NASSCOM, Chaudhuri rightly adjudges, “Smart working is the need of the time. Rather than finishing all jobs at hand perfectly and thus perhaps not doing justice to all which require parallel processing, it’s perhaps more important to optimise and stick to timelines for jobs at hand.” Give yourself credit for small targets Andy Vale sends pearls of wisdom and motivation all the way from Spain, asking beginners to face each day and each task at a time: “Just pick one thing every day that you will definitely get done. Doesn’t have to be massive, but it makes sure you’ve done something.” (@AndyVale)  Keep your work hours free of social media Kuntal Chandra, Senior Software Engineer at Stockopedia (@kuntalchandra) gives voice to the problems of distraction and lack of sustained focus that internet and technology have brought in its wake. Offering a valuable hack from his personal experience, he has found that turning the mobile internet off while coding has helped him prevent distractions and thus “become more productive”. Students who often face this problem especially before examinations have also fallen back on methods like keeping a particular time of day aside exclusively for social media networking and other internet-driven distractions like games and films. For professionals who need complete silence and isolation to get their creative juices flowing, don’t think twice before turning the WiFi off. It will cut the flow of excess information which at times can be a major deterrent. Conquering time as an economical construct comes with great patience and perseverance, as is evident from these pro-tips brought to you, straight from the horses’ mouths. It takes active willingness and effort on your part to make the ticking hands work in your favour. Each person has their own way of dealing with inertia at work and means to fuel one’s productivity. “We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.” —Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO Today, the productivity industry is faced with overcoming new challenges and assisting students, young professionals and aspiring entrepreneurs in this brave, new world. Large organizations have pulled up their socks, geared to help achieve new heights and set new standards in terms of time manageability. App and office suite developers are harnessing this demand for structured and strategic means to use productive hours based on individual needs. In order to track, analyze and manage time more effectively, iPhone has recently launched a productivity tool called Time which claims to help you “stay focused and crush procrastination”. Most timers like this use the Pomodoro technique (which enables users to break their work hours into intervals of 25 minutes separated by short breaks). Apps like Slack, WeTransfer, and Germ make working from different parts of the world a piece of cake. Task management tools like Journmail are easily accessible for teaching yourself consistency by writing every day. There are also apps like Slite to help you take down notes on the go faster; Feather is a daily management goal tracker that helps maintain a to-do list. There are customised music apps with ambient playlists like Noisli and ASoftMurmur which cause a visible jump in the concentration level. An endless number of apps are available to designers and illustrators with pitch decks, icon templates, UI kits and layouts in place, thus saving a lot of time. Popular among these are Crello, Sans Francisco, SpeedFont, Emblem, Animista. There are plenty of similar applications and patches that could prove effective for young professionals. Can

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