Is your KPI Tracking Software pursuing these 5 metrics?

Achieving sustainable growth is vital for businesses of all sizes today. With pandemics like COVID-19 showing how unexpected events have the potential of wrecking global economies in the blink of an eye, it is important for today’s businesses to have a well established Key Performance Index driven metrics to track for their business growth. By following these metrics closely, a business can be better prepared to combat threats from competition, changing market trends, disruptive market forces like pandemics, and ensure that there is steady cash flow even in the most challenging of times. These KPI metrics should be on the organization’s business dashboard software which will be reviewed and closely monitored by the leadership and will form the foundation of all strategic initiatives and decisions taken by the board or top management. So now the question is what are those KPI metrics that need to be tracked on an organization’s business dashboard software to ensure sustainable growth? 

Here are our top 5 picks:

1. Cash To Revenue Position

In the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic, China was one of the worst affected economies. Studies showed that nearly 85% of small and medium enterprises (SME) were projected to run out of cash in a timeframe as low as 2 months due to severe lockdowns leading to restrictive economic activity. 

Cash to revenue position is an indication of how well endowed is an enterprise to deal with emergencies and how much liquid cash they have at their disposal to invest in measures to counter low revenue scenarios such as pandemics or weak consumer spending. When the position is better, business owners or management has breathing space to make amendments in their operational style when revenue channels are disrupted and without having to take drastic measures such as cutting jobs or delaying bills. This is definitely an important metric that needs to be on every business KPI dashboard software and monitored regularly.

Read more: Creating Organizational, Department, Team and Personal Dashboards using InfinCE

2. Customer Acquisition Costs

For any business to survive, there is a need for customers to spend money on their products or services. In the business world, it has been proven through studies that acquiring a new customer would incur more than 5 times the cost it takes to retain an existing one. As such, customer acquisition costs have the potential to consume the budgets of several departments like sales, marketing, and IT. So, leaders need to keep a tab on spending in this section and this is precisely the reason why customer acquisition costs are an important metric that needs to be tracked via an organization’s KPI dashboard software.

3. Outbound Marketing Performance

Marketing is the engine that fuels sales. The better a business is able to market its offerings to the right audience, the greater will be the business returns in terms of sales revenue. However, marketing needs to be a highly disciplined and well-tracked activity, especially for small and medium businesses. 

Conversion rates from marketing activities are important in ensuring that a business always has a healthy leads pipeline that the sales department can focus on and convert into deals in due course of time. Using intelligent marketing analytics and automation platforms, businesses need to track their ROI on every single dollar spend and correlate to the leads or business opportunity, or social influence that a marketing campaign was able to generate. 

While sales are in itself a large activity that can be tracked through a separate KPI in an organization’s KPI tracking software, it can also be clubbed with the marketing KPI in small businesses. The reason is that in smaller organizations, it is quite common for marketing and sales to be functioning as a single entity sharing a lot of human and technology resources and well synchronized towards a common goal.

Read more: Focus on these 5 KPIs to improve small business growth

4. Operational Efficiency

Improving the quality of labor is vital for businesses to survive in the long run. Studies show that 52% of SMB owners find it hard to hire a quality workforce. So, the next biggest challenge here is to maintain productivity. Every business organization will have its unique list of business processes, policies, and frameworks on which they operate daily. As the competition tightens, it is important to work as a lean business organization with more agility to ensure that customer needs are understood and fulfilled at the earliest. For this to happen, there is a need for seamless operational efficiency. 

Read more: 5 Key Features Every Project Management Dashboard Should Offer 

It is important to keep track of the time it takes for a sales process to be completed, the number of sub-processes involved, the amount of productive time an employee or team spends in a project or sales transaction, and other similar elements that need to be measured. Once these are known, it becomes easier for decision-makers to re-engineer processes and work frameworks regularly to cope with changing trends in the market and help employees adopt new additions to the business easily, such as new software or new machinery in a manufacturing unit. 

The training process can be tweaked in line with new learning norms prevalent in the market and made easy and highly accessible for employees so that they can speed up the learning activity. Both the employee performance as well as the operational efficiency of the business thus need to be tracked efficiently in an organizational KPI tracking software.

5. Employee Engagement

Employees are just as important as customers to a business. Ensuring that they are well-taken care of is a key milestone that every business must strive to achieve. Studies show that 71% of executives believe that employee engagement is key to ensuring successful business growth. While measuring it as a KPI, employee engagement will include a vast majority of key indicators of employee wellbeing. Some examples of items to be evaluated for this KPI include employee turnover, attrition rates, revenue per employee, hiring budgets, etc. Insights from this metric are important to plan the future expansion of the business as you always need employees to drive your business forward in all circumstances.

Read more: 5 Benefits Of Having A Centralized Employee Dashboard In Your Business  

The above 5 metrics give a clear picture of whether your business is progressing in the right direction. Having a regular watch on these will ensure that you are prepared well for any emergencies or disruptive situations that may occur in the future like the COVID-19 pandemic. To drive maximum results, it is important to have a digital backbone that will enable all units in your business to seamlessly measure KPIs and perform according to expectations in their respective tasks. This is what InfinCE can help you achieve with its range of business applications available on a secure cloud platform. Get in touch with us for more details.

How to Stay on Top of Video Conferencing Software Security

Video conferencing has emerged as one of the simplest solutions to overcome the challenges of social distancing and restrictions on physical meetings amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As more and more businesses are implementing video conferencing solutions for managing their day-to-day operations, the trend has led to the development of a wide range of collaboration platforms as well. However, as the demand grew, it brought along a few security challenges too.

Read more: 10 Benefits of Using Business Communication Apps to Future-Proof Your Company 

Businesses utilizing a video meeting platform to communicate with their team, clients, and customers need to understand that remote video conferencing carries an inherent data risk as well. That is why you need to ensure that you adopt the right cybersecurity measures to protect your organization’s confidential data. Below are 5 ways to help you keep your shared data safe while ensuring increased productivity and collaboration.

1. Monitor your network security

Implementing adequate network security measures is vital for keeping sensitive business data safe from hackers. It does not matter how secure the devices are that you use to connect to the video conferencing software; if you do not have proper network security, anyone can obtain the details shared via video conference by gaining access to the company network.

You can use encrypted passwords and customized firewalls to secure your network. Likewise, you should also use Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication for all users to reduce the risks of network breaches due to compromised user credentials. As SSO credentials are strategically linked to the specific user’s authorization and entitlements, it will help to monitor and control access to all the video conferencing units in case the user credentials are compromised.

2. Assess your current video meeting platform

If you are using a legacy video conferencing software solution, then you could be dealing with an outdated platform with weak security features. Even the best meeting software that performed well a couple of years ago can be at risk of security breaches if it is not updated regularly with the latest security patches. That means putting your employees, customers, clients, and your company reputation at risk. 

Note that installing updates may not work after a certain point for older video conferencing technology. So it will be wiser to upgrade to a reliable, modern team collaboration software like InfinCE. Users can enjoy enhanced communication, without the fear of data breach through InfinCE’s video conferencing platform. 

Read more: Why Is InfinCE A Better Choice For Safe Video Calling Than Zoom

The latest video meeting solutions come with advanced data encryption features that will help to keep your online conferences private and shared data safe and secure.

3. Use tough-to-crack video conference passwords

In order to keep your video conferences secure, you need to secure both your software and hardware with 128-bit AES protection. This security measure will allow your video meeting platform to use a 128-bit key to encrypt and decrypt all the video calls. As it works by automatically generating secured keys before the start of each video conference, it makes cracking the passwords virtually impossible for hackers.

You should ensure that you secure all your new business conferences, instant video calls, personal meetings, and attendees with unbreakable 128-bit encryption. It is also important that you never shared the video conference links via open channels like social media, as it will make it very easy for hackers to hop into your video conferences and try to steal secure company data.

4. Get the best meeting software with domain-based approach

There are a lot of video conferencing solutions out there, but not all of them follow the domain-based approach to security. Choosing such a provider will help you to make sure that all the attendees can collaborate in a well-controlled and secure environment. Moreover, it will also ensure that you do not connect your video conferencing software directly to the internet without a firewall.

Regardless of whether it is managed by the video conferencing provider or by your in-house IT team, domain-based security will allow you to assign various levels of user permissions to have better control of the video conferences. This way, if hackers try to hop into your video meetings, they will not be able to enter the system without you granting access.

Read more: Top 10 Alternatives to Microsoft Teams that Aid Remote Work in 2020 

5. Ensure robust privacy policies

Choosing the best meeting software for your video conferencing needs also has the benefit of reliable privacy policies. Check that the video meeting solution you use has clear policies on the collection of user information as well as meeting content for any kind of advertising or marketing efforts. Moreover, you should also create a video conferencing policy for your company to establish clear guidelines and expectations for all users.

You should have a well-defined privacy policy that specifies who can connect to the video conferencing software remotely and how they should access and use the shared data. You can even prepare a list of team members, pre-approved clients, customers, and vendors, who can gain access to specific meetings to bolster the security of your video conferences.

Apart from following all the above-stated guidelines, you should also ensure that your employees are educated on how to host and manage a secure video conference. For that, you can conduct training sessions to explain the specific steps, recommended security settings, and company policies that they should follow to maximize video conferencing security.

Want to know how InfinCE can elevate your video calling experience with robust security and exceptional collaboration features? Get in touch with our expert today.  

The Role of Business Communication Tools in the Growth of a Business

Effective communication is the backbone of every successful business. This is even more applicable for modern businesses because of the massive shifts in the workplace culture of late. Technology advancements and the impact of COVID-19 have made robust business communication tools more than a necessity in every industry today. Fortunately, there are many impressive business communication apps, which make it easier for leaders and managers to collaborate with their teams, connect the missing dots, and drive improved performance and productivity.

Why Business Communication Tools are Inevitable in Today’s Workplace

It has become a norm for employees to use business communication tools for efficient collaboration. A recent Facebook Messaging Survey found that more than 63% of people across generations prefer messaging apps for communication instead of emails or calls. The impact can be seen in the business world as well with around 60% of businesses of all sizes using collaborative chat apps today. That is because business communication apps perfectly suit the evolving workplace culture while opening up ways to ensure improved employee productivity.

How Business Communication Apps Contribute to Business Growth

Business communication tools offer a flexible platform to furnish the varying demands of interaction within the company. Below are some of the fundamental advantages of using business communication tools that help in business growth.

1. Unmatched Adaptability

The nature of the modern workplace is changing rapidly and businesses across industries are promoting remote work. With a reliable communication app, leaders can collaborate with remote workers as needed, while allowing them to work as per their schedules. As more than 70% of millennial employees prefer working in a flexible environment, it is high time for businesses to adapt to the change and ensure proper communication channels to boost productivity.

Read more: 5 Tips To Effectively Manage Remote Teams During Challenging Times 

2. Easy Data Sharing

Modern communication tools come with simple features to share all the data and information needed for any task. Team leaders and employees can share files, upload links, or even directly stream content to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Business communication apps like InfinCE allow you to save files and data on the integrated cloud system. This makes collaborating on a project further easier, as anyone can access the required files later.

3. Effortless Task Management

Leaders can have a very difficult time managing a project if the team communicated through multiple channels. A business communication tool is much more than an everyday messaging app. It brings everything in one place so that managers and leaders can have a quick overview of the processes and stay updated with the progress of the project. It also makes planning tasks, assigning duties, setting deadlines, etc., simpler while improving accountability amongst the team members.

4. Real-Time Communication

Team collaboration apps keep employees posted on what is going on and make it easier to focus on their job roles. Messages can be sent to individual employees or in a group to make sure that everyone stays on track and performs their duties on time. Business messaging apps like InfinCE come with video conferencing capabilities to make meetings more interactive and engaging.

Read more: 5 Workplace Innovations You Can Welcome with Video Conferencing 

5. Less Unproductive Meetings

Physical team meetings can waste a lot of productive time. As per the Harvard Business Review, around 65% of employees believe that “meetings keep them from completing their own work, while 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.” This serious problem needs to be fixed as quickly as possible to ensure better employee efficiency. As team collaboration apps allow you to access relevant information anytime and from anywhere, they help avoid the need for any physical meetings.

6. Improved Employee Engagement

Business communication apps are much different from mundane emails. They can act as a platform to share inspiring stories, exciting news, motivational messages, and have some fun too. Team messaging apps are not necessarily limited to sharing business-related data; many of them also come with emojis and stickers to add a personal touch to the messages and make it a bit lighthearted.

Read more: 5 Ways To Improve Business Growth Through Employee Engagement

7. Integrated Modern Technologies

An enterprise collaboration app can also be customized to accommodate various modern technologies, such as Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Natural Language Processing, Predictive Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence. These technologies can help streamline business communication by sorting information, analyzing data, generating reports, creating policies, and much more. This will, in turn, help to ease the stress of performing routine tasks from the employees and they can focus on other productive duties.

8. Performance Tracking

A business communication app can also allow leaders to track the performance of their teams effectively. Team collaboration tools allow managers to create jobs and determine goals before handing over those to the team members. They can then track the progress toward the specific goals and see how each employee is collaborating to achieve them. This brings more transparency to the team, boosts accountability among the employees, and motivates them to perform better.

Read more: 11 Online Collaboration Tools That Facilitate Remote Work In 2020

9. Mobile Apps

Everyone prefers to use mobile apps these days to read emails, track work, share information, and more. Forrester reports that around “66% of employees now use two or more devices every day.” With an integrated mobile app for business communication, employees will not have to manage multiple channels to communicate with each other. Instead, it will make it easier to access all the data and information across devices.

10. Improved Productivity

The most obvious benefit of workplace apps is that it improves employee productivity. As business communication tools make it easier to set goals, assign jobs, track progress, generate reports, and interact with the team members in real-time, they help boost employee morale and efficiency. Having a single channel for all business communication also avoids the need for multitasking, which further helps to improve time management.

There are countless ways for team members to interact with each other, but business communication apps give a more dedicated platform for building a productive work environment. While it cannot be predicted how the future will shape workplace culture, it can be said that advanced and feature-rich business communication tools will certainly be integral in the coming days.InfinCE brings you a pool of effective collaboration software to help you connect with your teams faster and work together better, for greater business achievements. Get in touch with us to learn more.

How Technology Is Changing Workplace Culture for the Better

The workplace as we know of is continually evolving and there is no denying the fact that technology is playing a key role in that. Over the past decade, businesses across industries have seen numerous iterations of what their ideal workplace could look like and have taken strategic steps to achieve that. With the recent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are now more focused on transforming their workplace and make it safer and efficient for their employees.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce 

The development of workplace apps and integrated solutions has allowed businesses to focus on company culture and find ways to enhance productivity. It is widely accepted that happy employees work better, perform consistently, and even motivate others to give their best. With access to robust workplace technology solutions, employees will be more engaged, efficient, and loyal to the company.

How Workplace Technology and Culture is Evolving

Studies say that companies with a highly-engaged workforce see around 41% less absenteeism, 17% more productivity, and 20% more sales. These numbers perfectly justify the need of adopting top-notch workplace apps and streamline company culture and business operations. For the employers, using such rapidly-changing technologies opens up numerous ways to hire from a global pool of candidates for different job roles. 

Below are some ways in which workplace technology can help you to transform your company culture for the better.

1. AI and Automation will increasingly streamline business processes

Workplace technology is becoming increasingly intelligent with the incorporation of AI tools and automation. This can help reduce the load of many routine business processes and everyday tasks from your employees. Virtual assistants and automation solutions are already being employed by organizations to streamline their day-to-day repeated tasks such as sorting emails, handling data entry, sharing files, etc. As your employees do not have to spend their productive time on such routine and tedious tasks, they can focus on other important business processes.

Read more: Automation In Small Business: 4 Areas To Get Started

You can also employ automation software to monitor and manage various business systems so that your employees can seamlessly conduct audits and quickly generate reports. AI tools allow you to create different scenarios and estimate the practicality of your marketing and sales campaigns. Smart workplace apps can also help to apply different tweaks and see which one would be the most beneficial to realize your goals.

2. Workplace technology will improve usability and experience

According to an IDC report, more than 50% of user interface interactions will be performed using AI-powered technologies by 2024. Businesses are even adopting technologies like AR and VR to deliver a more intuitive work experience for everyone. When coupled with an all-in-one collaboration platform, your employees can access business apps and data from any preferred device that is connected to their workspace, even using VR/AR headsets. 

This can provide greater usability for employees, helping them to analyze critical data quickly, attend business meetings virtually, and collaborate with team members efficiently. It is seen that employees spend almost 20% of their weekly work time searching for information to do their job effectively. With reliable all-in-one workplace apps like InfinCE, teams can share documents and files quickly and even edit or annotate the documents with other team members in real-time. 

Read more: Top 10 Apps That Facilitate Secure File Sharing For Businesses In 2020

3. Remote work will be made more flexible with smart solutions

As the unemployment rate in the US is hovering around 3.6% alongside the high demand for skilled staff, you need to find out every possible way to engage and retain your employees. Remote work has been at the center stage for some time now due to the COVID-19 crisis and workplace apps hope to make it better. Aside from allowing employees to work on flexible hours, smart office and collaboration tools allow you to bring your workforce together from different locations.

This also helps you plan the right remote work model for your company. You can adopt workplace solutions that provide your employees with a secure and unified channel to access the required business data and collaborate with others to deliver the results you are looking for. It also allows your employees to choose the best work environments and tools for their work, while you can manage access and information security centrally.

4. Remote workplace technologies will reduce overhead expenses

Another prime advantage of remote work is reduced overhead costs for your company. All it requires is an all-in-one collaboration platform with all the latest features that you need for improving your employee productivity and efficiency. As your employees can work from home using their devices, it helps to significantly decrease the operating costs. Modern workplace culture with BYOD policies further helps you save on the space, materials, and utility costs.

The impact of using workplace technology is growing strong in every industry. Powerful workplace apps like InfinCE empowers businesses to make the most of digital transformation. Remote work software will not just ensure higher employee productivity and satisfaction, but also lead to better customer experience and help in superior revenue generation. Get in touch with us to understand how InfinCE can be the game-changing workplace application for your enterprise. 

How InfinCE Transforms the Way Your Workforce Operates Today

As vaccine trials show promising results, the world is in high hopes of recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic slowly. But the scale at which vaccination needs to happen, conquering challenges in production, logistics, demographic, political, and societal scenarios, is huge and hence it may take time for the total eradication of the virus. This means, the new norm of working for most companies wherein a good majority of their employees work from home, is likely to continue for the long term. However, 2020 witnessed the massive change of modern workplace software being increasingly brought to the traditional workforce wherein it only took a matter of days for millions of employees to work at the same pace from their home as they would from their office.

One of the most celebrated enterprise collaboration and digital platform for small and medium businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic was InfinCE. Some of the most demanding businesses managed to successfully keep their staff engaged and productive through seamless collaboration courtesy of InfinCE. 

Read More: Top 10 Alternatives to Microsoft Teams that Aid Remote Work in 2020

Today, let us take a look at the 5 key features of InfinCE that make it an undisputed leader in enabling better employee collaboration and transforming the way employees work remotely.

1. Easy Information Access

When employees work remotely, the biggest hurdle they face is getting information about their job activities at the earliest. With InfinCE’s cloud-based platform, companies can create a centralized virtual repository of all company information that employees can access based on their job roles. InfinCE allows privileged access control options to ensure that confidential or sensitive files and data are made available only to the right stakeholders and with proper logging of access to ensure transparency. 

The best part is that employees can access this information on the go right from the comfort of their smartphones thereby providing more flexibility. This allows them to plan better responses for customer-facing job objectives.

2. Improved Collaboration

With InfinCE, enterprises can create virtual workspace platforms wherein teams working on a project can converge and collaborate digitally. Be it brainstorming for solutions and ideas, daily standup meetings, project progress meetings, the platform allows all team members to digitally meet in one place.  You can securely share files, work together on documents, communicate via instant messaging, manage dependencies in work together, and create custom dashboards- both at the individual level or at the team/ department level to visually track and analyze what’s happening in your business. 

Read more: 5 Benefits Of Having A Centralized Employee Dashboard In Your Business

Collaboration is propelled to the next level as employees can carry out almost all sorts of work activities together just as how they would do so when they were at the office. This is facilitated irrespective of where your employee may be based out, anywhere on the globe.

3. Budget Friendliness

When a pandemic rips through economies worldwide, it is important for companies to preserve operational cash flow to the maximum possible limit. For this to happen, they need to enable a digital-first environment for employees that don’t burn a hole in their pockets. InfinCE has always been built for the cloud-centric enterprise of tomorrow. With a range of subscription pricing plans, the digital enterprise platform offers more value for every single dollar spent as a subscription charge. 

InfinCE offers small and medium businesses the flexibility to save on costs since they only pay for the features and scale they consume from the platform. This helps them significantly boost their operating margins as expenditure comes down drastically. The additional savings can go a long way in helping businesses preserve cash and sustain profitable operations in challenging times.

4. Secure Digital Infrastructure

Today’s businesses deal with a large volume of sensitive customer data that needs to be accessed and shared between multiple employees across different departments. When your entire work environment turns into a remote one due to a global pandemic, the concerns regarding data security heightens to new levels. This is where InfinCE assures peace of mind with its state-of-the-art security credentials. The platform offers you the choice to run your digital enterprise infrastructure on a secure private cloud location which can be monitored and managed effectively by your technology team without worrying about security threats.

From building your website to offering a secure intranet, InfinCE offers all the IT set up needed to run your business under one roof! InfinCE provides you a dedicated and secured cloud-hosted IT infrastructure comprising a private email server, dedicated virtual servers, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), intranet for internal communication, and custom website builder. 

Read more: How InfinCE enables you to quickly transit to remote working

5. Long List of Applications

Over the years, InfinCE has grown a large community of applications under its ecosystem that enables businesses to streamline productivity and improve engagement levels of their employees. Additionally, the platform also allows small and medium businesses to experience the digital transformation of their key growth activities like human resource management, marketing, and sales by introducing applications for CRM, marketing automation, HCM, and much more. 

The list of supporting apps for the InfinCE ecosystem has been steadily growing which makes it a complete digital package for today’s businesses. InfinCE helps you build a branded cloud platform with customization options to match your brand identity.

As your business operations are increasingly being disrupted, it is becoming clear that there is a need to rapidly transition your operational model to accommodate a highly digital-friendly workforce that can work from anywhere. InfinCE takes you closer to this goal by creating the most secure and cost-efficient yet feature-rich experience for your business’s digital infrastructure. Get in touch with us to know more.

How can businesses succeed with employees working completely remotely?

One of the major implications of the COVID-19 lockdowns is the shift from an office-based work environment to the remote work mode. Even sectors that had previously taken a cold approach to let their employees work from home have suddenly become flag bearers of the work from anywhere culture. Dynata’s Global Consumer Trends: COVID-19 survey series reveal that the lines between work and home life are getting significantly blurred. The report also says that most people prefer the work from home culture to stay around, at least for some more time. 

In the US alone, nearly half of the working population has transitioned into a completely remote work mode since the outbreak began in early 2020. However, as the pandemic is showing mild signs of receding and vaccine developments are moving into promising trials, the question of whether the remote work culture will prevail for the long term has risen in the corporate boardrooms.

Changing Work Lives in the New Normal

When employees started to work continuously from home, some of the key challenges that concerned senior leadership were productivity, security, and client timeline commitments. However, the trends witnessed across the globe were largely positive in these 3 areas with several organizations reporting that their staff productivity levels were in fact much higher when they worked from home rather than in the office. In Dynata’s survey, 75% of respondents report that their productivity levels are high while at home than they were in office, with considerable travel time saved. 

Read more: How To Build A Highly Productive Remote Workforce

So the question that should really concern the senior leadership is how to succeed in this new normal of working remotely if it is the future of work?

To remain successful while adapting to a long term remote working culture, companies need to make strategic changes in their policies, technology infrastructure, and their cultural approach to ensure that all employees stay united in their objectives while working apart. 

Here are 4 tips that we suggest to accelerate successful operations with a remote workforce:

1. Set up a transparent communication policy

One of the major elements of unifying diverse team members working remotely is through regular communication. Employees need to have a source to continuously engage with their peers, seniors, managers, or even the leadership in the company to address the challenges they face daily as well as gain insights into their work objectives. 

Companies need to break down their legacy hierarchy of communication and create an open environment where even the top leadership executives are available at the touch of a button on an employee’s phone. Leaders need to take their employees into confidence by regularly communicating updates about the company’s growth, business and service performance metrics, initiatives to keep employees motivated, and much more.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce

2. Create a specialized procurement team

The challenges in enabling a remote working environment can be solved to a great extent when setting up an effective procurement team to assess, identify and procure relevant technical, managerial, and operational assets required for specific work contexts. When this team gets things done faster, employees gain quicker access to their work assets irrespective of their location. 

For empowering your procurement team, you need to provide them with the right tools for strategic sourcing, managing contracts with vendors for various assets, intelligent reporting, and purchase management.

3. Create a collaboration platform

Enabling a transparent communication policy is only one side of the coin. Investing in a powerful digital platform to enable this communication is the other side. Employees who work remotely need to collaborate with their peers on different work tasks daily. They also need a place to get insights, reviews, and feedback on their work, company objectives, business, and other relevant aspects related to their career. 

This is where a powerful and collaborative intranet portal like InfinCE makes sense for your business. Remote work collaboration platforms like InfinCE enable better collaboration, reduce friction on dependent tasks, and support unified goal fulfilment for distributed team members. The platform will also serve as a place where employees can feel reminiscent of their office virtually.

Read more: 5 Points To Consider While Choosing Your Enterprise Collaboration Software

4. Seamless Project Management

When remote teams are involved in client projects, there should be a smooth mechanism for managers to oversee projects, give instructions and guidelines, set expectations, and track progress. Only then will the organization as a whole be able to meet commitments made to clients and improve trust in the process. 

For distributed teams, there should be a seamless project management capability via a digital platform that can be used to assign, monitor and track progress of tasks at different levels ranging from individual to teams working on modular components of a project to the entire organization or service delivery unit as a whole. When project management is streamlined, it will facilitate transparent client reporting and improved credibility for your brand.

COVID-19 was a catalyst for a change that is well poised to remain a stronghold of tomorrow’s workforce. The future of work may be changed forever as we know it and to remain successful, companies must rethink their strategies of work from a cultural and practical perspective. 

Read more:  5 Tips To Effectively Manage Remote Teams During Challenging Times

It has been proven beyond doubt that with the right culture, adequate digital infrastructure, and transparent communication, you can run your business remotely with unified management. The main asset you need is a digital backbone that will connect various units within your business to enable seamless workforce operations and support sustainable growth. This is where InfinCE can make a difference. Get in touch with us to learn how InfinCE can help you accomplish success in the new normal of “work from anywhere!”

5 tips to run your workforce remotely during COVID-19

The global economy is undergoing a tremendous shift as the COVID-19 pandemic rips through boundaries of trade, social interactions, and travel. With more businesses forced to let go of their stringent office-based work culture and transition into a remote working model, there are a rising number of challenges that employers must learn to cope with. With the pandemic showing vague signs of receding any time soon, it is important for businesses to learn to efficiently manage remote teams and ensure disruption-free customer service from their business. So how can they achieve this excellence of managing remote employees?

Here are 5 tips to effectively manage remote teams during challenging times:

1. Set Protocols and Agreements

Before you start to assign work orders or schedule delivery timelines for remote teams, it is important to arrive at a consensus on the operational model for remote employee management. Though lockdown and other government regulations indicate fewer chances of people moving out of their homes (except emergencies), it is important to set the terms on operating hours clearly so that the work-life balance of employees isn’t affected. 

Read more: 8 easy tips to effectively work from home

Organizations need to follow up with employees not only on work-related proceedings but also on the personal health and safety of the employees and their family members. As such, companies need to publish and make managers aware of availability guidelines for work. Employees need to be offered flexible working hours when they are continuously working remotely as they may need to attend to personal priorities as well.

2. Strategically Plan Meetings and Reviews

It is important for managers and their reports to be in sync with assigned workloads and ensure timely submission of customer deliverables. While provisions for any time communication will always be there, it is better to create a schedule to review work progress. 

There could be weekly or bi-weekly team review calls that can happen over video conferencing for the entire team to come together and interact as if they were in an office meeting. Task dependencies, support, and other mutually concerning matters can be taken up for discussions and managerial interventions could be made wherever necessary. 

One-on-One meetings between managers and employees who report to them should also be a trend that should ideally occur on a monthly basis. While the type of meetings can be sorted and agreed upon by employees, it is important to follow a time-sensitive schedule for such meetings. Ideally, any non-core meeting shouldn’t be scheduled for more than 30 minutes.

3. Leverage Collaboration Platforms

When employees work remotely, there is often a need for them to work together on achieving the desired results or customer deliverable value. Since meeting up at the office isn’t feasible under situations like COVID-19, companies must look at alternative ways to facilitate collaborative work arrangements. 

The best option is to have a powerful remote collaboration platform like InfinCE that can create a virtual workspace for employees to work together as a team on projects. From file sharing to virtual conferencing involving the entire team, digital platforms like InfinCE allow better project management and easy collaboration on customer deliverables. 

Read more: How InfinCE helps you quickly transit to remote working

Since customer data or other valuable credentials are likely to be managed by employees using these collaboration platforms, they need to offer high levels of security. It is important to maintain logs and traceable information on these platforms to ensure there is no compromise on security.

4. Organize Information

While it is a good thing to have multiple communication channels open for employees when they work remotely, it is equally important to have a well balanced and organized communication strategy to avoid distractions and eliminate loss of productivity due to these distractions. 

Effective use of project management tools, virtual repositories, file organizers, and knowledge management platforms can help streamline work communication efficiently. Employees can access information needed for work support, view their pending tasks, prioritize work, view progress of dependent tasks, and do much more when there is a structured and well laid out information and communication management practice. This allows remote work teams to be transparent about work commitments and avoid overwhelming responsibilities.

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce

5. Encourage Engagement

While the merry of an office environment will always be missed in remote work culture, there is nothing that will stop you from setting up an engaging work experience when all staff works remotely. Try hosting weekly fun activities, brainteasers, music, and fun activities all via video conferencing so that employees get to connect with the fun side of their work more frequently. It is also a great gesture to allow families of employees to participate as it will create more social bonding. Use social media to promote employee engagement. 

Read more: 5 Ways To Improve Business Growth Through Employee Engagement

Managing your remote workforce efficiently in times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic can be less stressful if you have the proper digital infrastructure in place to support your workforce. This is where platforms like InfinCE has proven to be a game-changer for some of the world’s most successful businesses. Get in touch with our experts to learn more.

Here is a list of the leading remote collaboration tools of 2020

We’re nearing the halfway mark of 2020, and most of the world’s working population has shifted to remote working. This transition would not have been possible if powerful digital collaboration tools for employees to stay connected were not available. From schools to IT companies, every organization has integrated an online communication and collaboration platform to help their workforce carry out daily operations smoothly and interact with their peers, customers, or any relevant stakeholders in their work. 

Read more: 5 Best Practices To Enable Seamless Communication For Your Remote Workforce

Here is a look at the top 11 online collaboration tools that made a difference for businesses in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic:

1. InfinCE

While collaboration and communication are the key elements to look forward while choosing a digital platform for your business, InfinCE offers enterprises with a host of other features in addition to the key elements like an integrated CRM, Rich management dashboards, cloud-based secure web hosting, virtual desktops and much more. It is one of the best online collaboration tools for small and medium businesses.

2. Microsoft Office 365 and Teams

One of the most popular players in the global software industry, Microsoft has helped numerous organizations manage their remote work operations smoothly with their pool of collaboration tools and platforms. From productivity tools like MS Word, Excel, etc. to video and conferencing solutions like MS Teams, they offer a large set of options for businesses to choose from.

3.  Slack

Slack definitely needs no introduction to several global companies as it has helped millions to collaborate efficiently even before the COVID-19 pandemic took things in a different direction. Offering personalized experiences, video and team conferencing, mobile app support, and seamless integration with popular cloud storage services, Slack offers a solution for all your remote work needs.

4. Zoho Cliq

From simplifying team communication to managing real-time messaging, task schedules, and automation, Zoho Cliq offers enterprises of all sizes with a comprehensive suite of collaboration tools. It also offers easy integration with other 3^rd party platforms for storage, calendar management and even offers easy management of customer relationships by integrating seamlessly with Zoho’s own established CRM solution.

5. Trello

Trello has a massive fan base across the globe, be it amongst organizations or individual freelancers and consultants. The primary reason for this fan following is undoubtedly the simplicity of the platform to help organize multiple tasks that require collaboration from a number of employees. The simple interface and easy navigation within individual Trello cards help managers and employees to handle even complex projects efficiently with Trello and it integrates well with other platforms such as Slack, Google Drive, GitHub, etc. to make the experience even more rewarding for teams.

6. Asana

From organizing workflows, tracking work progress, and facilitating seamless communication, Asana is still one of the veterans in the online collaboration space and has been around since 2008. Companies like Intel and Uber rely on Asana as their core communication platform to stay organized, enable better conversations between staff, and manage diverse projects and their individual task progress.

7.  Google G-Suite

Undoubtedly one of the world’s most well-known tech brands, Google doesn’t want to be left behind in the race for online collaboration tools. Its G-Suite platform offers a host of capabilities with a collection of apps for various enterprise collaboration activities. You have everything from emails to video conferencing to productivity apps all rolled into different subscription plans that you may feel free to choose depending on your organization’s size. With top-notch security, support, and scalability, G-Suite is a trusted platform for thousands of businesses worldwide to help run their operations smoothly.

Read more: 5 Workplace Innovations You Can Welcome with Video Conferencing

8. Ryver

Ryver offers a simple and easy to use interface for employees to connect and converse within an enterprise. From the ease of setting up teams to offering privileged features to different groups and the ability to manage private virtual spaces for individual project discussions, Ryver has grown into a strategic internal tool for several modern-day businesses. A major highlight of Ryver is the Facebook inspired intranet feed where employees can converse together/with each other on updates shared by the organization.

9. Facebook for Work

How amazing it would be if virtual office collaboration tools work similarly to Facebook with the same theme and inspired layouts? Well, this is exactly what Facebook themselves tried to offer when they launched the Facebook for Work platform. From productivity apps to seamless communication channels, the social media giant has brought several inspiring features into the product aimed at making internal enterprise communication interesting.

10. Podio

Podio makes for a great mobile-friendly workforce communication and collaboration platform. It offers flexible configuration options and easy integration with several functional and productivity apps like Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and much more.

11.  Basecamp

A darling of technology service companies, Basecamp brings together a very useful set of capabilities for communication and collaboration under one roof. With a highly affordable fee for unlimited teams, it finds tremendous use in companies with more staff.

Read more: 4 ways to bolster your IT team’s efficiency to support remote operations during COVID-19

With COVID-19 showing minimal signs of weakening, your business will be in dire need of an online collaboration platform to help employees stay connected. Get in touch with us to explore why InfinCE will be your best choice among the 11 we have covered in this blog.