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Archive for the ‘Management Tool’ Category

Choosing Your Office Screens

Office screens are available in many guises. They can  offer a practical answer for dividing  today’s open plan offices.  Modern office screens are an attractive and inexpensive method to offer private areas for both group working areas and for the individual employee.

Not many offices will be found without a screen or two. They abound in colleges, schools and universities. They are extensively in use in  airports and hospitals and are especially popular in call centres.

There are various shaped desk mounted screens which include straight, curved or wave ~ curved, wave or straight} panels. They may be finished with a fabric covering in a choice of colours and a complementing trim of either metal or PVC, with or without a ‘pinnable’ surface.

Glass or polycarbonate  panels in a choice of finish are also available .

Floor Standing Screens – offer a range of options which include:

Straight or curved panels, fabric covered, part glazed or constructed from polycarbonate, with or without a ‘pinnable’ surface, safely mounted on purpose built, stabilising feet. They may be used to direct the flow of office traffic or the queuing public when placed next to each other, either in a straight line or curved to suit the individual office requirements.

General office noise and machine generated noise may be reduced substantially by using floor standing Acoustic Screens which have proven sound reduction qualities incorporated within their construction by the application of an insulated central core. These are available in a selection of fabric colour ways and complementing trims. They may be used singularly or in multiples of two or more when joined with hinges in a variety of layouts

Choosing  the correct height screen can reduce glare from ceiling lighting or sunlight proving hugely beneficial to all users.

A range of practical accessories such as hinges, stabilising feet and multi-way hinges are available to help facilitate many different office layout schemes.

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Direct Mail Marketing To Businesses: 4 Factors That Will Make Your Campaign More Successful

Direct mail marketing to businesses has proven to be an effective method in the marketing industry. Of course, the success of this strategy depends on the target audience of your marketing activities. Similarly, the audience plays a huge role in the development of print, TV and radio advertisements as well as direct the way the marketing copy is expressed in mails.

The key is to get a good business direct mail list that will make sure your marketing mail is opened and read by the recipient The names and addresses of recipients of one or more direct mail marketing emails to businesses are contained in this list.  These factors that will help you optimize your list and make sure you have the right target market :

Demographics: Your target market will be segregated according to age, gender, income level, and location.  Knowing these factors will help you make a more concise, more refined list for direct mail marketing to businesses .

NCOA Validation: You have to make sure that your business direct mail list has been validated based on the NCOA service.  The National Change of Address (NCOA) lists all the known addresses of residents in the United States. It is updated regularly by the United States Postal Service.  Validating your list ensures you have an updated and correct list at all times.

Number of names on the list: Include as many addresses on your list as possible. However, be careful in maintaining a list that is too large for your campaign, especially when it contains too few leads to cover your expenses in obtaining the list. You may end up spending a lot more than you should be paying for the mails.

Mail content: Direct mail marketing to businesses has evolved and intensified in terms of appeal and effectiveness. A compelling mail content, therefore, is vital in the success of your direct mail marketing to businesses campaign. You may also include some small surprises, such as pens and cards, as gifts of goodwill for the recipients.

Direct mail marketing to businesses has many advantages.  It will be highly effective if you use the right methods with the right business direct mail list. Here are some of the advantages your business can achieve from direct mail marketing to businesses:

More attention: Mail catches a person’s attention more frequently than a 30-second TV or radio ad does.  If you want your audience to take you seriously and to pay more attention to your words, use direct mail marketing techniques.

More information: All the possible questions your client would seek about your product or service should be included in the mail. You may include price and package rates, description of your product or service as well as the benefits of using it. People make their purchase decisions based on a balanced mix of presentation and credible information.

More credibility: Constant communication with your contact and prospect customers through mails defines how much your clients mean to your business, which is very important in establishing a credible reputation.

For Business Direct Mail, postcards are a less expensive, and more efficient way, of informing other businesses about your company.

Click here for more on management tools.

The Observations About using an Enterprise or Department Management Tool like ManagePro and Those Who Get it – (1of3)

1. ManagePro is like a seductive Jet, that doesn’t come with a pilot’s license

Part of what differentiates ManagePro from other products is how flexible (it will fly in any direction) and multi-featured (very capable) it is.  It can get you to 30,000 feet very quickly and just as quickly get you to ground level with a click of a button.   You can wrap it around your business process, your agenda.  You don’t have to wrap your business process around the program. 

Business owners, executives, CEOs, senior managers like it.  The concepts and functionality are very attractive.  It looks shiny, fast… powerful.  They taxi it back and forth a bit.  The leather smells great, those dials look very good.  And then it gets parked in the hanger.  Why?

The truth is that most of our customers are used to having other people do the work.  They function in a role that has them managing the workers, representing them, establishing direction, not driving the bus, or in this case the jet.  When they buy ManagePro, they don’t get a corporate pilot, they believe they or their staff will manage the “jet.”  In fact, they don’t learn to fly themselves very well, and then when they run into turbulence, sometimes on the very first flight, the whole experience starts looking pretty uncomfortable, if not a lot more work than anticipated.

This reflects a bigger truth, one that Gerber outlined in his book the E-Myth.  That being, that most of us, most business owners and executives don’t invest enough time working ON the business, we’re so easily consumed working in the business.

You buy something like ManagePro to be more effective in managing the business.  That requires working on the business, not in the business.  Working in the business is making the next sale, going to a meeting, answering the email that pour in, picking up that call.  If you don’t invest enough time to work on the business, you won’t invest enough time to competently pilot ManagePro, and it will get left to someone else, left in the hanger or used for taxing around the field.  That doesn’t generate big results or big numbers.

 

Contact ManagePro for more about office and project management software.

The Observations About using an Enterprise or Department Management Tool like ManagePro and Those Who Get it – (2of3)

#2 ManagePro Represents a Structure for Inventing Your Future,
but Initially Exposes more than it Solves

ManagePro can represent the future to be achieved, both for the business and the people who resource it.  I’ve written about this one before, but in developing a structured outline of your business process and trajectory in ManagePro, two reality points can quickly and disarmingly surface.

1. Lack of Clarity – This reality, the fact that your business continues to funtion with a number of areas, decision points, processes, and strategic initiatives not clearly defined, can be quickly exposed in a flash and for many becomes an uncomfortable, “I should know this” moment:

1.  It may be a struggle to articulate a requirement spec or scope on your top projects
2.  You haven’t decided what the top 3-6 critical steps are to complete each of your strategic initiatives
3. You start listing projects, products and customers and you feel confused about where to store records… you can’t find things you put in yesterday
4. You would like to see scorecards, but you’re not sure how to measure what’s important, and are unsure of how you would go about getting the information
5. You start developing the structure in ManagePro, but never get beyond Titles and some to-dos…

2. Lack of Engagement and Alignment – Introduction of ManagePro and the accompanying shifts in how work is managed, documented and measured, surfaces the fact that some members of the organization are not in the boat.  They aren’t as aligned or engaged or committed as you would wish.  Introducing ManagePro and the required change process serves to expose the gaps in engagement very quickly.

What do most of us do when feeling exposed?  We cover-up, we withdraw.  “I’ll get back to this later.”  In reality what would be best is to admit we need help, and the exposure means there are lots of areas that need attention in working on the business.

What also gets exposed is that without someone regularly working with you to address those areas, we all get busy with day-to-day stuff and it gets covered up again.  There really is something to the notion that if it’s not on your schedule, it’s not going to happen, and that accountability to someone else helps all of us achieve our goals a little, sometimes a lot, easier.

The Observations About using an Enterprise or Department Management Tool like ManagePro and Those Who Get it – (3of3)

#3 Rodney Brim and Your Commitment to Act is a Bigger Resource
than the Software

Working with Rodney as your advisor, and implementing what the two of you discuss, is a much stronger predictor of success than using ManagePro alone.  Most of our customers don’t realize that.  He’s not only the guy behind the software for the last 10 years, but he’s the guy who’s consulted with everyone big and small, from Warner Bros to the United Nations.  He’s the guy who was a very successful psychologist for 20 years before re-inventing himself as a management consultant, and then again as the CEO of Performance Solutions Technology.

He’s the guy you want in your corner, helping you take advantage of all the capability in ManagePro, and helping you navigate the challenges between now and inventing your future.  The reality is that if more of our customers used him, we would have more successes like Avaya.  We want you to have that type of multi-million dollar success.  But he’s busy and expensive, so what are you going to do?

Ah, back to the jet imagery again.  Except this time it’s the fractional jet model. Instead of having Rodney work sequentially with one or two large installations a year, we want to leverage his skills to more of our customer base, and set up a schedule where for 10 companies he’s on your team, every week for 2, 4 or 8 hours, helping you architect your future in 2008 at a price you can afford.

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