All businesses are reliant on IT to some extent. IT is the best way to collate and analyze business information, it keeps your website up and running and makes customer service much easier. The better your IT system, the more efficient you will be, the more profit you are likely to make and the smoother your business will run. But given all of this and the high responsibility that comes with IT management, what is the best way to manage your systems? 

Outsource to a Specialist

IT is a pretty broad term for a whole heap of different functions. This means that while you might find plenty of IT companies advertising, not all will be suitable for your needs. Some IT companies specialize in particular industries. So, you can see more about an IT company specializing in education but you could also find IT companies for manufacturing, marketing or any number of other industries.

The benefits of outsourcing to a specialist is that they will be familiar with your industry’s requirements and may even be able to suggest ideas you’ve not heard before. Specialists are also more likely to be able to tailor their services to your exacting needs. 

Find a Freelancer

If you just need some help setting up and occasional project work, you might benefit from hiring a freelancer. The main benefits of hiring a freelancer are obvious: you don’t need to worry about paying a salary or any maintenance to keep the company’s services. Freelancers are also more likely to go for casual work so could easily do an afternoon as and when you need. 

Freelancers often work within a network so you may find that one good freelancer can lead to another, allowing you to experiment with other services. Working with freelancers is a brilliant way to facilitate growth in this way as you can work on short-term projects first before committing yourself to the investment.

Train an Employee

If your tech is central to your business, you might be better off training an employee to manage your IT needs or even hiring someone specifically for the job. Even if your employee only works on your IT part time, this can be a good investment, especially if you have other functions to fulfill such as office management or digital marketing. 

It’s a good idea to provide on the job training for all your employees on a range of subjects but IT is particularly useful. If your employees can deal with some of the more basic problems themselves, you won’t waste any time waiting for a call out or an appointment with a company. The more skills your employees have, the more efficient they are likely to be and the more value they can bring to their role so it really is a win for everyone. 

Whatever you do, you must ensure that someone is looking after your IT needs. Leaving your IT unattended is very likely to lead to problems from viruses to security risks. Keeping all your soft and hardware up to date is essential maintenance and shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Whether you’re a solo freelancer doing your business from place to place, or you’re running an office that you’re never in, it has never been easier to do your work on the road. We can always stay connected and almost always bring the tools of the trade with us. Here, we’re going to look at some of the tools and techniques that will help you stay on top, no matter where you happen to be during your work day.

Managing from afar

If you have a whole team and office to contend with, you can try delegating and leaving someone in charge, but that only works for so long. For your own peace of mind, you need a way to keep in touch, and the best solution for just that can also help improve communication and workload management in the office, too. Instead of relying on direct calls and instant messengers, embrace technology and implement a project management or team management software in the workplace. Your team can easily share resources on different themed boards or tabs, and you can keep track of where the work is at, while communicating with different groups in a manageable, easily tracked way.

Get paid on the spot

If your business goes from door to door, or from area to area, servicing customers in that specific location, then you need to consider how and when you get paid. It can be inconvenient, for instance, to accept cash only when your customer might not have it readily available, whether they’re at home or passing your stall on the street. For that reason, it’s worth looking at whether tools like and iPhone card swiper could be the convenient, accessible solution that you need to ensure you get paid. Make sure that you’re not missing customers who would be glad to pay up, if only you had the means to accept their money in the first place.

Keeping your finger on the pulse

When you’re running a business that has you visiting and meeting clients in person more often than on the phone, then being able to remember all the key details about those clients is crucial. You need to be able to form a relationship with them and that’s much easier when you have the help of a customer relationship management system. There are plenty of mobile device-friendly CRM software suites, such as Zoho or Nimble, which allow you to store, edit, organize, and update records for each customer you do business with. It can even offer reminders of when you should next call or what your next task should be, so you don’t forget one customer amongst the mix.

Make sure you have access to the resources you need

Regardless of whether you have an office back home or not, you need to consider making use of Cloud servers. If you do have an office and a team that you’re leaving behind, Cloud storage allows you all to share the same digital assets and resources much more easily by uploading and downloading at will. If you don’t, then Cloud storage is still a vital way to backup your most important digital assets. After all, it could be easier than you think to lose your laptop or tablet that has all the vital data on it. If you don’t have a backup, it could be lost for good.

Make sure you’re handling all your employment responsibilities

If you’re running a business on the road and leaving your team behind, then you need to ensure you have the means to fulfil your duties as an employer. Most important of all is payroll. A quick way to get in trouble is to not have the employees paid on time. There are online payroll apps that let you manage that from wherever, however, so you don’t have to race back to the office just to get it done. Some of these modern payroll apps can even automated a large portion of the work for you, removing a lot of the admin work from your day and letting you return to the efforts that help your business grow.

With the tools above, it’s going to be much easier to manage your business, whether you need to ensure you can offer customers the convenience and service they deserve or you need to keep in touch with the team back in the office. These are only a few examples, too. You’ll find plenty more tools to help with a little looking.

An office is not akin to a well-oiled machine. To think that would be to imply that the people within it are simply cogs that you need to keep in check for them to work well. Of course, they are much more complex and important than this, so that can be the wrong frame of mind to go into this inquiry with. That being said, reducing office chaos to a significant degree is often something worth considering, because if not attended to, things can get out of hand.

Human nature is that certain people in your office will socially group together, while others may not get on as well. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, and it’s far from your ability to force social interaction or even pleasantries in the workplace. However, there are steps you can take to make sure everyone is on the same page more thoroughly, and share more of a co-operative mindset rather than one driven by conflict.

With that in mind, let us consider the following advice:

Check Who You Hire

It’s important to check up on who you are considering hiring. The perfect applicant may seem too good to be true, and that’s because sometimes, they are. Pre-hiring background checks on this website have been known to root out undisclosed credit judgements against them, pre-screening for drug use, or perhaps even a criminal record that has not been discussed. For such a simple approach it’s a wonder that more businesses do not thoroughly screen their applications, or at least check their references thoroughly. This way you can avoid the costs in time and resources involved with hiring a bad apple.

Enact A Zero-Tolerance Stance

A zero-tolerance stance when it relates to workplace bullying harassment, or toxic behavior is important. You need to make it absolutely clear that this kind of activity is never permitted within your office. Encouraging staff to be polite, to avoid gossiping, to remain supportive of one another is important. If you pride your office on the diversity of opinion represented then you can ensure a culture of tolerance and mutual respect, which should be essential for any business to enjoy.

Encourage Confidential Reporting]

It may be that through your business HR department you can offer a means for staff to confidentially report hidden, anonymous issues or aggravations taking place within the office. This helps you keep an eye on office culture, and gives potential victims a safe avenue to speak out, which you can then follow up on. Additionally, if many people report one person as the cause of these issues, you can texture your approach significantly. Remember to note that while systems like this can help potential victims come forward more confidently, that you need to take everything with a pinch of salt and also give everyone a fair treatment in the eyes of your firm. This can help you come to the most impartial yet caring solution.

With this advice, you’re sure to reduce office chaos to a significant degree.