Tag: Efficiency & Time Savers

Making Your Database Work for You

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For reasons unkown, decades after this information has been possible to collate by computer, many offices refuse to make use of a simple databases to effectively manage their business. Perhaps you are one of these people. Maybe you see other companies figure out complicated results from surveys they take, from sales promotions they did, and you’re not quite sure how they did it. Maybe you think it was through some superior technology that you do not have access to. But nothing could be further from the truth.


The fact is, they are just taking advantage of this decades old technology called the computer database and then crunching the numbers they find inside. Running a successful office means keeping track of information. If you are not doing so, you are not living up to your full potential. A database can keep all of your business contacts together, so that you can access them at the click of a button. A database can hold all of the information about your last advertising campaign and reveal to you how effective it was in obtaining new business. A database can tell you which of the items you sell is the most profitable for your company.


Advertising Campaigns


One of the best uses of a database is for your multiple advertising campaigns. With an efficient and well put together database, you can access, collate, and compare information in ways you might never have thought of. Only then will you truly be able to get a sense of what has been working for your company and what hasn’t.


You don’t want to spend your time and money running an unsuccessful ad campaign over again, that part is self evident. However, what may be just as important: you don’t want to cut off an ad campaign that might have worked if it were not for other factors. That is why it is so important to keep and store information about every aspect of your campaigns. It is amazing sometimes how one little change or variance in wording can completely turn your ad campaign around. If your ad campaigns are more in the direction of marketing and referrals, you can do the same sort of thing with a database. You will be able to research what works and what has not. What sort of variables might you be able to implement that would increase your referral rate, and so on.


Contacts and Customers


There are too many great ways to keep all of your contact information in today’s digital world to still be trudging along the old way. Is there anything inherently wrong with the old way. No, but when there’s a quantifiably better way, why not put it to use? A lot of people are hesitant to bring new technologies (no matter how basic) into their lives or their workplace. And it’s true, there usually will be a learning curve.

Often there will be a period of a week or a month where you wonder why you switched. After that, it will be smooth sailing. You just have to force yourself to accept the changes and get over that little hump. Soon enough, you will be wondering how you ever got along without it. By stuffing all of your contacts and customers into a clean database, you’ll be able to organize them in any fashion you want, create hyperlinks between related contacts, easily duplicate contact information that falls under more than one category, and much more.


Accounting


Though the uses for a good database are practically endless, we will just take a quick look at accounting management and leave it at that. A database can do wonders in the area of your office finances. Keep track of all of your billing and receiving information, organize your debts and credits, keep your payroll together, and plenty of other things. The limitations are strictly with your own imagination.


Like we said, there are a hundred more ways to use a database, if not more. If you take a look around your office, you can probably come up with more ways without even blinking an eye. Keep in mind that not all of these databases need be electronically based. A good notebook by Universal or Ampad can give you same results in a more portable fashion. Give a try in one area of your office management, and it’s very possible you’ll find it wise to implement it in many others.

Choosing the Right Ergonomic Chair

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Sitting in an office all day and working at your desk can simultaneously be a tedious and rewarding expenditure of the daylight hours. Rewarding because of your position in the company and your desire to do a good day’s work for your employer, but tedious because your job may be the kind that demands the same duties of you day in and day out.

You may not realize, however, that this tedium is far from the worst part of your day. The worst part may be a factor you haven’t even realized, or may have noticed, but not ascribed the proper importance.

It is the effect all day sitting has on your spinal column, joints, and other parts of your body. More than simply filling you with discomfort by the end of the day, this constant sitting can produce real, long term problems most might not associate with a sedentary lifestyle. Some of this can be offset with exercise, but some of it cannot. Your best bet is to go with an ergonomic chair.

What Is An Ergonomic Chair?

Ergonomics is used to describe the way in which our posture is affected by the furniture and appliances we use. You’ll see the word written about keyboards, mouse pad designs, power tools, and especially, the point in case before us, office chairs.

Ergonomics simply mean that the piece of equipment is designed in such a way that it does not fight our natural body posture. Rather than causing us to slouch, sit too straight, or hold our wrists in an unnatural position, the ergonomically designed appliance, chair, or other office supply works with our bodies so that we can be comfortable and avoid long term injury.

Bad ergonomics, found in the vast majority of cheap office chairs on the market, can not only lead to feeling discomfort at the end of a long day, but can actually produce results in the long run that would best be described as undesirable. This could range from advanced back problems, chronic neck pain, and even headaches.

How Does One Benefit from Ergonomic Chairs?

Beyond the obvious elimination of these undue chronic problems, studies have shown that office workers using ergonomic chairs increase their productivity by up to fifteen percent. This is quite a large jump in productivity just by switching office chairs!

The increase in productivity results from reducing the need to stand up and take extended stretching breaks when using a poorly constructed chair. In addition, employees can concentrate more on their work, instead of “why does my neck hurt constantly?”

The simplest benefit of ergonomic chairs is being able to get up after a long day in the office and feel as though you don’t need to take a salt bath just to relax. The chair has allowed you to relax and, simultaneously, achieve your greatest concentration throughout the entire day.

What Separates One Ergonomic Chair From Another?

Good question! There is no shortage of chairs out there calling themselves “ergonomic,” but do they all really fit the bill?

There is no industry standard that dictates how you can label a chair ergonomic, and thus, you can expect chairs that claim to be ergonomic when in fact they are not. And this is exactly what you find. Though they have the temerity to charge much more, many of these so-called ergonomic chairs are no different from the chair you have now. Make sure you go with a brand you can trust, such as HON Chair, when searching for an authentic, real ergonomic chair.

Making The Choice

Once you’ve decided which trusted brand is right for you, it’s a matter of finding your price point and then deciding which features you’d like. You’ll find chairs that have various levels of swivel and height, different fabrics, reclining features, armrests, and much more. You only need to determine which features you need , and then pick a chair based on a combination of which one provides the most desirable features for the right price.