Posts

Sharing and collaborating online while locking the stable doors

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Sharing & Collaborating online while locking the stable doors Collaboration and Cloud go side by side. It's the flexibility of the cloud that let's teams work together and share great contact. But keeping this great content safe and secure in this ever insecure world takes some effort. Why and what do we share? If you think about the sensitive data currently being shared by businesses via insecure email systems and other files sharing tools it starts to get scary. Company and business accounts Tax returns Job offers and HR documents Financial discussions around contracts and transactions Property contract negotiations Legal communications either criminal or civil. Scary stuff indeed! All this takes place on cloud systems that are only as secure as the company that provides the service. A breach of your email service could expose the data from hundreds (or thousands of customers). Think about all the information currently in your "sent" fold

Why a Shared Inbox makes a great forms manager

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We've all got forms - they are part of every business and we need them. But managing your forms once they have been filled in and submitted is where most businesses struggle. What you need is a great tool to track your forms and make management simple. Whether it's an expense request, an event signup or a GDPR SAR, everything has to be managed. What our customers want from their forms We've looked at how some of our customers are building great solutions with Forms and a Shared Inbox. From industrial design drawing approvals, to Homecare uniform requests, and school event signups, forms and a Shared Inbox make great partners. Our customers want to be able to manage their forms simply- to be able to have workflow on any form so that messages can be managed by different teams , to be able to reply and respond to any forms right from the Inbox and importantly, keep a full audit log of each form. I'm a customer and I submit a form. Now what? You share a form

I don't need a customer care app... or do I?

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Something to think about: - 220B emails sent every day - Growing at 6-7% every year - 55% business related. - Facebook Messenger/Twitter messages of growing importance to businesses - Over 20% of website owners are unsure where messages from their site end up - Messages for operations make up over 50% of all incoming email Think of all the email addresses you see on websites -  Hello@, Contact@, Sales@, Booking@, Events@, Support@, Operations@, accounts@, Careers@,  Orders@, bugs@ , Feedback@, press@ , partners@ , marketing@. And now with GDPR here to stay what about SAR@ or Privacy@. Do you know where messages to these email addresses end up in your business and who, if anyone , is responding to them? Your customers are your business. Whether you’re a tech giant, an accountancy practice or small distributor, keeping track of messages from your customers, and more importantly, responding to those messages is crucial to keeping your customers happy. You n

From customer pain point to solution in 30 minutes

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Building connections to your customers or suppliers is getting easier - Many new tools are available for the SME to connect and share data, tasks and everything else that crops up during your business day. At Apptimi, w e’re always in conversations with business, listening to their issues , their pain points as we call them. The Pain Point One such customer had a major pain point - Sharing and managing forms with contractors and agency staff - This was a construction management business that managed many outside contractors and needed to record and track their training certifications before permitting them access to sites - Health and Safety training, Climbing at height, specialist training and more. Their current system used paper, lots of paper, th e worlds favorite app Excel and you guessed it, a fax. Managing this process took time. Time from everyone involved including the contractors, admin staff, health and safety and more. When they approached Apptimi looking

Seeing the wood from the trees!

In my business I get to meet many business owners, from all industries and services. Whether they are IT focused, plumbers, builders, accountants or even schools - Each one has their own needs, their own pain points and their own requirements for their business. The Co nversation Last week I met with a new contact. He was the business owner and was interested in how Apptimi could help him work better. To help him in the discussion he brought along an IT contractor who "spoke my language". The conversation that followed was interesting: The IT pro started first: Q1: Doe's it have an API? Q2: Doe's it export in XML? Q3: If so what standard? Next was the Business owner Q1: Will I need to train my staff Q2: Will I need to spend more on IT integration? Q3: Will it export to Excel and Sage? The Lesson Learned What struck me (once again) was the completely different perspectives on what was required. For the developer it was all abou

Getting A Grip on Your Data

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Too much data If you’re a business owner, then you know about data overload. As business owners, we produce way too much data in too many formats yet most of us lack the right  tools to manage all this this data. Whether it’s data generated from invoices, deliveries , time sheets,  expenses , site visits, development tools, customer support and lots of other sources most small businesses need more help to manage this avalanche of critical data. There’s more to data management than Excel Let’s face when, when most business owners are asked what they use to manage some of their most valuable data, the answer is often just Excel. Excel has been the go-to data collection and management tool for so many businesses for so many years. And while Excel is an easy option for the unskilled, it’s no longer of much real value to businesses that want to maximize the value of their data  Push data so you don't have to look for it Sharing is  caring While spreadsheets

Managing health and safety shouldn't be difficult

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We hear time and again from business owners that managing health and safety is difficult and takes too much time. The fact is, managing this basic business requirement isn't that difficult and when properly organised will take only a little of you or your staffs time.  There are some basics to get right first. These are your obligations under law and are the minimum you must do: Health & Safety Checklist: Take out employers liability insurance. Make sure you display the certificate where your employees and contract staff can see it. Assign a competent person to manage your health and safety requirements. A competent person need not be an outside consultant. Any member of your staff who understands the workplace and the health and safety requirements can be viewed as a competent person. Create your health and safety policy. This is a plan on how you are going to manage your health and safety. Create your risk assessment . This is a list of anything (a hazard) that