Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

Every business has a choice to make in the productivity software they use. Some options offer cloud connectivity and robust collaboration, but might cost more than small business owners want to pay; while others are affordable, but may not have the integrated options of their more expensive counterparts. In this week’s blog we will go through six aspects of modern productivity software.

"Toxic" is a word we hear a lot these days, but when it’s used to describe a workplace, it’s a serious issue. A toxic work environment can cause many problems that hurt your business. That’s why it’s important to make sure your company has a positive, healthy atmosphere.

Enhancing collaboration is pivotal for the success of many businesses, and leveraging technology can exponentially improve collaborative outcomes. The challenge lies in identifying the most suitable collaboration tools for your organization’s specific needs. In this month’s newsletter, we will explore two categories of software that can enhance your organizational collaboration.

High degrees of productivity can be difficult to achieve for a lot of organizations, and this is primarily due to everyone’s least favorite part of the workplace: rampant distractions. Your business’ productivity can suffer from even the most unlikely reasons. We’ll help you address them so you can minimize distractions in the workplace.

Email is one of the most common productivity tools in any office. It can also be one of the easiest to become disorganized. However, users of Microsoft Outlook 2016 will find that the program provides plenty of useful tools to ensure that your communications don’t get out of hand. For this week’s tip, we’ll explore some of them.

There are remarkably few people on the planet capable of filling an entire workday with 100 percent productivity. The human body simply needs to be refreshed. Fortunately, there are a variety of techniques and technologies that let you do just that!

It’s important that your workflow allows you to get the most success out of your workday, yet this is often easier said than done. Everyone has different routines and practices that might work for them, and no one else. If you’re looking for ways to improve your own productivity processes, why not consider these four famous individuals with unorthodox practices?

Multitasking is no easy thing for a human being to do, no matter what anyone says--our brains simply are not wired to focus on more than one task at a time. To resolve this dilemma, there are apps that will automatically carry out an action if triggered by a user completing some other action. These are called automation apps, and they are becoming extraordinarily useful in today’s dynamic workplace.

Even though taking a break from work seems like something that everybody would want to do, many cogs in the corporate machine choose to forgo breaks in the name of productivity. Oddly enough, this is a counterproductive move, seeing as taking breaks actually makes you more productive by improving your job performance.

The last time you tried to wake up before 6:00 a.m., how did it go? Dragging yourself out of bed can be a huge pain, and when you realize that you have to work for eight, ten, or even twelve hours, you might get the urge to just crawl right back into bed and drift back to sleep. Even though it seems tortuous at best, getting into the routine of waking up early can set the tone for a productive workday.

Business owners that regard employee engagement as an unimportant aspect of managing a business are sorely mistaken. There are few things more crucial to the success of a business than keeping employees happy and fulfilled. Yet, even if businesses have only the best intentions and want to improve employee engagement, few actually manage to do so.

Microsoft Office 365 can enhance a company's operations in a variety of ways. Yet, due to the fact that not every business is the same, your organization will benefit more from a solution that’s customized to meet your needs. This is a big reason behind Microsoft’s customizable offering: Office 365 Business Premium.

Some days, productivity comes naturally and you can destroy tasks like it’s no one’s business. Other times, distractions seem to pop up everywhere and you need all the help you can get, just to get anything done. Here are four productivity tips, proven to help you regain focus at the office.

Editing text can be a rather drawn out process. Thankfully, technology has made editing much easier than it was back in the day when papers were marked up with red ink and notes like “F- See me after class.” Here are two great editing tools that you will want to take advantage of.

Fun is often misconstrued in the workplace and identified as being unproductive, or even lazy at times. However, more businesses than ever before are embracing the power of fun and letting the creative juices flow. Using game-like elements to achieve your business’s goals, or to improve operations, is called gamification, and you can take advantage of it.

Your mobile phone is meant to be an extension of productivity while you’re out of the office, but some people can’t resist the urge to mess around with the numerous entertainment applications right in front of them. Unfortunately, nowhere is this more true than in the office. What’s that? Your employees don’t waste time with mobile devices? Withhold judgment until you see the statistics. Your people might be wasting more time than you think.

How much time do you waste on your mobile phone’s applications on a regular basis? With so much entertainment and social media at your fingertips, it can be tempting to just forget about work for a bit and zone out to Candy Crush. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of employees have this mindset. The Nielsen Company made some shocking discoveries about how much time is wasted on mobile applications each month, and the results are disturbing.

The smartphone was an incredibly valuable introduction to the business world, allowing entrepreneurs to exponentially increase productivity both in and out of the workplace. However, they are a double-edged sword, capable of cutting down barriers, or slicing productivity to ribbons with time-wasting apps and texting.

Have you ever wondered how in the world you’re going to get everything done, only to lose track of everything or get distracted? Some researchers believe that the tomato might be the key to unlocking the latent knack for productivity that lies dormant within us all. Albeit, not a real tomato, but the familiar tomato-shaped timer that counts down from 25 minutes.

No matter what kind of business you run, you’re likely to gain many friends and allies in the war of entrepreneurship. However, you’ll also gain a lot of enemies (i.e. your competitors) that you’ll need to one-up somehow. Of course, you could always just exploit what they are doing wrong, but what about what they are doing right?