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So far Thomas Fuhrman has created 75 blog entries.

NPA ANNOUNCES VOIP DIALER SOLUTION FOR SALESFORCE.COM

New mash-up seamlessly integrates BroadSoft VoIP platform with Salesforce CRM applications, allowing users to access advanced voice features SAN FRANCISCO AND GAITHERSBURG, MD, Oct. 23, 2007 - BroadSoft, Inc., a leading provider of VoIP application software, today announced that it has completed a "mash-up" of its BroadWorks® VoIP application platform with salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. [...]

2018-01-19T23:52:45-05:00

WHAT SHOULD A CEO ASK IN A DIGITAL WORKPLACE?

Digital businesses are becoming a larger and larger part of every company's pie. Often, the planning and growth of digital businesses are the domain of chief digital officers or chief information officers. Yet upper management, especially chief executive officers, need to know how the digital business is developing and being implemented as part of their business leadership. How can [...]

2017-12-08T19:59:25-05:00

HOW TO FOSTER ENGAGEMENT FROM INTROVERTS IN YOUR WORKPLACE

Introverts are often observant and insightful, but extroverts tend to shine more radiantly because of their tendency to engage directly with people. If you’re chairing a meeting or involved in an intense team discussion, you’re more likely to hear from extroverts, who talk easily and gregariously. Introverts, who are quiet and tend to feel uncomfortable in large groups, may shrink from comment [...]

2018-01-15T00:03:06-05:00

WORKING REMOTELY: THE CURRENT SCORECARD

Remote work has become more and more common in U.S. businesses. Currently, 25% of all U.S. employees work remotely, and it is routinely cited as a perk more employees would like, at least some of the time. Recently, however, IBM moved to decrease its remote workforce. The announcement applied to its nearly 3,000-member marketing department, who were told to re-deploy to [...]

2017-12-09T01:55:10-05:00

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES THAT WORK IN A DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Effectively communicating in the office is more than just firing off a few emails or picking up the telephone. There's a degree of strategy that needs to accompany communication in the workplace. It's about intently listening to others while engaging with them on a level that allows everyone to relate. It's also about being direct and clear about the message being [...]

2018-01-29T05:42:11-05:00

ARE MEETINGS WORTH IT?

Are meetings where ideas go to die? If your meetings have let you down, you're not alone. Employees often resent meetings: a study by the American Psychological Association showed that people "who tend to be highly task and goal oriented were most negatively affected by meetings." It is true that sometimes we need to meet: not all decisions are easy to [...]

2017-12-09T02:51:19-05:00

HOW TO MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT PERCEIVED AS HAVING FAVORITES ON A TEAM

Managers need to be perceived as not having favorites in the workplace. It’s a key part of business leadership. If your methods are viewed as favoritism, that perception can erode morale and trust on your team and negatively impact productivity.Of course, the more crucial part is not having favorites among your team. Frankly, that can be difficult to pull off entirely. Whether it’s [...]

2017-12-09T03:15:48-05:00

FINDING THE RIGHT TIME TRACKING SOFTWARE FOR YOUR VIRTUAL TEAM

You’ve stacked your virtual team with competent, reliable individuals. You’ve designed your team’s core values. The machine has been built, now how do we get it to start churning? Equipping your team with the proper technology and collaborative platforms could make or break your virtual team. Slow or distracting systems mean workflow and productivity will suffer. At the same time, [...]

2017-12-09T03:26:36-05:00

FOUR WAYS YOUR VIRTUAL TEAM CAN BENEFIT FROM A TEAM COACH

Think of it as a long-distance relationship. You’ve been apart for months since your last visit. You’ve each settled into your own routine, established your own strategy and procedure to overcome the distance, and worst of all, become comfortable with your own bad habits. And, as in any long-distance relationship, when disagreements or full-blown conference call fights erupt, both [...]

2017-12-09T03:36:40-05:00

MOBILITY’S GROWING INFLUENCE ON THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

More and more, hoteliers are removing end-of- life PBX systems and legacy servers to implement more advanced cloud-based Unified Communications (UC) solutions that enhance the overall guest experience and embrace the full benefits of mobility. According to Hospitality Technology’s 2016 Lodging Technology Study, more than 54% of hoteliers planned to spend more on payment security, guest room technology, bandwidth, and mobile [...]

2017-12-09T13:59:14-05:00

STOP GIVING COLLABORATION A BAD RAP

A growing number of articles are addressing the downsides of today’s culture of collaboration. Common symptoms are unproductive meetings and individual work groups driving a proliferation of apps as some of the main causes of the “collaboration overload.” Knowledge workers are being hit especially hard. A recent piece from the Harvard Business Review proposes that this phenomenon, making collaboration [...]

2017-12-09T14:08:08-05:00

WHY ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE WON’T HARM YOUR JOB ANYTIME SOON

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is upon us. Everything from appliances like Siri, Alexa, and other voice recognition-driven systems to robots to credit card fraud detection is powered by AI. In fact, technology news indicates that the number of applications and platforms using AI is likely to grow exponentially in the near future. Wired reports that major technology companies, including [...]

2017-12-09T14:28:09-05:00

HOW THE ‘INTERNET OF THINGS’ WILL BE IMPACTING YOUR COMPANY

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become nearly omnipresent, as the billions of connected devices become an increasingly prevalent part of our everyday work and personal lives. As the network of objects equipped with sensors, software and connectivity grows, so do questions about security and ethical use. The question remains for business leadership concerned with the state of IoT: issues [...]

2017-12-09T15:26:33-05:00

HOW TO INTEGRATE OLDER WORKERS INTO YOUR TECH SAVVY COMPANY

The technology industry is very much associated with young people. Corporate wunderkinds Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg were quite young when they were working in the iconic garage where Apple was started and greeting Facebook investors in a hoodie. Many engaged in the tech industry are young, having grown up surrounded by technology. Many tech people exhibit a very strong personal bias preference [...]

2017-12-09T15:32:05-05:00

HOW WEARABLE DEVICES AIM TO BRING HUMAN CONNECTION TO REMOTE WORK TEAMS

CEOs, company managers, and directors can often feel they’ve lost control or insight into their employees work habits and preferences. If the company is instituting new policies or trying out new company culture-building techniques but cannot see the real-time advantages of these investments, it could be a waste of time and money. To make up for the human contact [...]

2017-12-09T15:48:11-05:00

HOW BEST TO MANAGE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Change is increasingly necessary as organizations must adapt to new market forces, globalization, and new processes, including those stemming from the digital, robotics, and artificial intelligence worlds. "Change management" refers to the overseeing of the transition from a company’s current organization and processes to the desired ones. While change is all around us, the majority of change efforts — [...]

2017-12-09T15:58:13-05:00

COLLABORATION TRENDS AND THE FUTURE OF THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Collaboration is good business. Wired quotes a study by Aberdeen Next-Generation Communications observing that companies who prioritize collaboration increased their performance substantially over companies that did not. Moreover, Wired argues that collaboration, in addition to being a good team performance strategy, makes good practices visible, further driving performance. It is, therefore, an optimal business strategy. Trends in Collaboration So collaboration as a method [...]

2017-12-09T16:07:42-05:00

SECRETS TO SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION

“At the core of most successful organizations are people who work well together,” Adrienne Sanders writes in Stanford Business. “Happy collaborators are typically more productive and are less apt to look elsewhere for employment. But what are the circumstances that lead people to want to team up over and over again?” New research by Stanford’s Daniel McFarland suggests that the reasons [...]

2017-12-09T16:20:50-05:00

HOW TO RETAIN MEN AND WOMEN EQUALLY

For the last four decades, gender disparities have been a focus of the U.S. workplace. Pay and promotion of women often lag behind that of men. Salaries and child-care responsibilities are often cited as the most obvious reasons. The solution advanced is higher pay for women and more flexible child care arrangements. The digital workplace has only made these [...]

2017-12-09T16:36:29-05:00

HOW GENERATION Z IS CHANGING THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

The Millennials have been the coming generation for a while. But the cohort that follows them, Generation Z, are either on the entry rungs of job ladders or about to get there. Generation Z is the generation born between 1995 and the early 2000s, while, of course, the Millennial generation precedes them. Right now, at 79 million strong, Generation [...]

2017-12-09T16:54:57-05:00

THERE ARE MARKETING HINTS IN PICTURES SHARED ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Advertisers target consumer computer searches and purchasing activity so that ads can be matched to them. That is why, if you’ve shopped for anything from shoes to kayaking gear recently, images of shoes or kayaks miraculously show up on your computer. Mining Social Media Accounts Technology news indicates that searches and buying activity are not the only things being [...]

2017-12-09T17:09:26-05:00

FIVE ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP TASKS

According to the Wall Street Journal, management is responsible for motivating, communicating with, and developing their employees, in addition to setting goals, organizing, and measuring progress. These tasks were delineated by management guru Peter Drucker many years ago. The first three can take some doing. Not all managers are clear on how to motivate, communicate, and develop. These three tasks [...]

2017-12-09T17:44:46-05:00

WHAT THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE CAN LEARN FROM THE HUGE RANSOMWARE ATTACK

The WannaCry malware attack that crippled computers around the world in mid-May 2017 could have been much worse if not for the quick-thinking actions of a 22-year-old British cyber protector. His actions are a bright light on an incident that caused costly damage to companies and individuals who rely on a digital workplace. It’s also a happy ending to May’s [...]

2017-12-09T18:18:01-05:00

HOW TO HELP YOUR EMPLOYEES WORK TOGETHER

Today’s workers carry smartphones, tablets and laptops that connect them with colleagues and job tasks wherever they go. Collaboration apps have exploded in recent years, and now even most basic business software — to make spreadsheets, documents and presentations — has become cloud-based and portable. The result is a truly mobile workforce that can accomplish virtually anything without setting [...]

2017-12-09T18:53:03-05:00

REMOTE WORKERS CAN BE HAPPIER AND MORE PRODUCTIVE

Despite some resistance from middle management and the occasional exception like Yahoo, remote work is becoming the norm — and for good reason. A 2014 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that remote employees experienced greater contentment, increased productivity and were less likely to quit. The author of the study, Nicholas Bloom, states, “The more robotic the work, the greater the [...]

2017-12-09T18:59:14-05:00

CAN ENOUGH CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS BE FOUND?

Cybersecurity breaches and cybercrime have been recognized as an area of immense risk for at least five years. Organizations ranging from the government to corporations have had data compromised or stolen. Currently, cybercrime alone is a business estimated by $445 billion, according to the Harvard Business Review. Technology news reveals that the average company deals with 200,000 attempts against security [...]

2017-12-09T19:09:29-05:00

5 SUCCESS TIPS FOR WORKING REMOTELY

The average full-time American employee spends one third of their day working, five days a week, according to the Center for Disease Control. That means your coworkers, your daily tasks, and the work culture you surround yourself with can be just as important as the relationship, activity, and environmental decisions you make with the other two thirds of your [...]

2017-12-09T19:19:26-05:00

HOW BEST TO COLLABORATE

Collaboration drives so much in a workplace. Collaborative teams have a deeper sense of trust, are more willing to take risks, and are supportive of each other more consistently. It’s a powerful trait to infuse into any work team. How best to collaborate depends on many factors: the teams, the work, the need and the project. Yet there are common [...]

2017-12-09T19:31:16-05:00

WHAT PROBLEMS CAN TECHNOLOGY SOLVE?

It’s clear that digital technology can power business and that many digital companies have disrupted entire industries with the way they deliver products and services for the better. But can technology be part of solving social issues as well as business ones? Can it disrupt models of organizations where progress on social issues has been made? In the last [...]

2017-12-09T19:47:44-05:00

HOW SHOULD WE MEASURE CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE?

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is an important business metric. It provides management with a view of how much repeat business they can expect from customers. In turn, the revenue projection arising from that calculation can provide an overview of how much they need to spend on retaining customers. Typically, CLV is computed as follows:(Average Value of Purchase) x (Number of Repeat [...]

2017-12-09T20:03:42-05:00