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How to Turn a Struggling Startup into a Successful Business in 3 Simple Steps

How are you going to solve a problem if you don’t know that there is a problem or I must say “you don’t want to admit that there is a problem”! I guess you are reading this because you now admit that your startup business is already struggling or if not, probably you’re doing precautionary measures to prevent this from happening? Congratulation, you are at the right place! If you would like, you could also read Microsoft Office 365 Customer Stories to inspire you and you might also get ideas that you can adopt to your business.

Denial that you are struggling and making excuses bring you no closer to solving the problem and will bring you to the point of no return. Recognizing and admitting there's one will liberate you to finding the solution by exploring what the causes are. Here are the 3 simple steps that can guide you:

Step 1. You need to identify what are the contributing factors

It may be inadequate sales, bad quality, insufficient or incompetent staff, underfunding, software or system and lots of different factors. Another significant issue often overlooked is that if your initial startup idea has the potential to be workable?

Step 2. Strategized and Carry Out the Plan

Here are some ideas that might help you:

Failing to fulfill a client’s want is one among the most important reasons startups fail. A phenomenal product means nothing if customers are not willing to procure it.

The best way to know what client want is to talk with them. By talking to your customers, you'll discover exactly what they need from products or services.

Then you ought to tailor the merchandise or service to what they need, not what you imagined as your original idea. Speaking to completely different parties, especially your customers, gives you a better chance of gaining clients and turning initial buyers into loyal consumers. There are many ways you can talk to you customer and potential clients to know what they really want.

Since limited fund being one among the foremost necessary concerns for any startup, your business should look at all the ways you can cut expenses and increase sources of cash inflow. Streamlining your system and applications tools and consolidating to 1 complete solution such as Microsoft Office 365 could be your turnkey. So make a listing of all of your expenses and eliminate what are not necessaries.

Some suggest startups should outsource parts of their business and an excellent way of freeing your employees up to use their time where it’s best spent. Among the areas often considered best suited for outsourcing are the IT needs of the company. In particular, Microsoft Office 365 migration and support are two services that are best handled by trained professions.

It takes a team to create a successful startup, rather than going at things alone, you might need to get recommendation from trade specialists as well.

Step 3. Check and interpret

It is vital to check and interpret the results of each factor you identified. It should be systematically, professionally (no emotion attached as much as possible) and also be ready to alter course if necessary.

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Clever Ideas How Your Company Can Avoid Errors at Work

Who wanted to make blunder at work? But whether you like it or not, anyone will inevitably make a mistake one day. Utilizing some modern day tools can help your company keep away from these issues. Presently you can help your workforce wherever they are by employing Office 365 migration services.

Use Microsoft To-Do/Notepad/OneNote

Checklist can shield anybody against disappointment in a lot more assignments and under states of unpredictability. Missing an assignment or overlooking a project happens even to the best of us so why not utilize a tracker for agenda. Fortunately, there are numerous applications that can be utilized as checklist like Microsoft To-Do which is a cloud-based task management application and enables clients to deal with their undertakings from cell phones or PC. Indeed, even by utilizing the time tested Notepad to make a straightforward agenda and monitor your assignments to limit these mistakes at work. To-do list is the most straightforward approach to keep botches from occurring. When you have everything recorded you can pursue the rundown accordingly. It is likewise critical to incorporate everything about request not to skip whatever could cause an issue.

Utilizing Microsoft OneNote, which resembles a computerized variant of a physical scratch pad, tends to be an amazing method to sort out your ventures and thoughts. You can catch advanced notes and keep them composed; you can include pictures, graphs, sound, video, and then some. You can utilize it with different projects in the Office suite and can match up among versatile gadgets either on the web or for off-line use.

Use Microsoft Flow to automate the procedure

It is cloud-based programming that enables representatives to make and automate work processes and errands over different applications and administrations. To make an automated workflow, the client determines what move should take place when a particular situation happen and after that can be overseen on the work area or through

an application on a cell phone. It likewise incorporates with different Microsoft administrations and applications, including Power BI, PowerApps, Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

Automating your task workflows using SharePoint

Contingent upon the work you do, a portion of your undertakings may incorporate a progression of complex errands and by utilizing automated procedure arrangements it can enormously diminish botches that originate from these intricate procedures. By making the workflow of the procedure and the advancement to the following stage will only be allowed when review steps have been finished. By incorporating endorsements into each stop you will never need to stress over oversight again.

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Leveraging in the use of Office 365 To Increase Work Flexibility in the IT Industry

Almost 99% of the IT industries are using Microrsoft Office 365 and are taking advnatgae of what it has to offer. It is a multi-functional tool, having the ability to combine several individual functions into a single enterprise mechanism. It basically gives you lots of ways to upload files using SharePoint to jumpstart teamwork.

“Large companies need manageability, security, reliability. You wouldn't see this acceleration of Office 365 in large companies without Microsoft doing a lot of work in those areas” as mentioned by one top CEO in the IT industry, Todd McKinnon of Okta, commenting about how Microsoft Office 365 is indeed a great help for this fast paced industry, considering what Microsoft needs to do in order for it to be fully maximized tailored-fitting what companies need.

Not only in the full IT businesses, but almost all companies with IT infrastructure do benefit from the use of this platform to increase profitability. It is always important to be curious when it comes to technology hence; being able to cope up with what it has to offer. For instance, for Core Tech Group, a leading company, helping small and medium-sized businesses, in terms of deploying effective Apple product use through network and software has fully utilized Microsoft Office 365 to its advantage. Not only being part of the IT and consulting industry, Office 365 has helped them grow other businesses through an innovative way of managing their files, reporting and even financial management through office in the cloud. Through a client to client approach or business to business, you mostly will have to travel and fly across countries or state to deliver what is expected from you. Through the use of Skype for business, this can bridge the gap and make meetings happen online without the hassle of traveling. Being able to collaborate with your team remotely is huge.

From a project management standpoint, we need to be able to keep our information organized. One good example for a team to leverage for is through the demand of RFP or a Request for Proposal. For this, collaboration will play a big role across multiple team members to be able to quickly respond to an RFP on which that would have been a lot of email and a lot of sending files back and forth trying to keep track of file history. With the use of SharePoint, an integrated tool of Microsoft Office 365, you will now have the ease of having it all in one place or one thread that you could be answering everything from your mobile device or laptop while other people are answering from their computer having been able to move very quickly and stay on track. It gives you the flexibility to join calls from Skype for Business without really having the need to be there. Walk into a coffee shop and pull open your machine to access all information you need. These are just a few of what Office in the cloud can offer.

White boarding can be such a critical part of the way that you can do business together, but through screen-sharing through Skype for Business, you can do anything and present anything in real-time. For example, you even can utilize the use of OneNote in making real-time changes or even drawing whole you are on Skype. Draw on whiteboard while on call. You will be amaze of what you can do remotely nowadays.

Another thing this online platform has to offer is capability to have your data ready and be presented live through Power BI 24/7. Before, what companies would normally do is pull up data in CRM system

and analyze an Excel exported file and make sure there was at least a weekly sync on it. Now this can definitely happen live at anytime.

We are all connected constantly in this era. With the fear in the growth of technology, a lot of people feel like we are going to lose parts of our humanity but in reality, we have gained more. Embracing technology can offer you a lot of ways to be flexible and make you even more human. Office 365 will enable you to get more things done in less time.

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3 Features That Allow IT Companies to Maximize Their Investment in Microsoft 365

The capabilities of Microsoft 365 are vast. Think of it as a multi-tool that combines several individual functions into one enterprise mechanism. As you discover its functionalities, you may find that some components that will seem a bit confusing to operate. But it's normal for multi-tools to have this and when you eventually get over the learning curve, you will find Microsoft 365 as an invaluable tool in your organization.

So how can your IT company maximize your investment in Microsoft 365? Here are the features that will to improve collaboration between your employees and improve overall performance.

* SharePoint

Unlike the on-premises versions, SharePoint's version on Microsoft Office 365 has no need for fussy installation and configuration. Simply add user accounts in the Office 365 admin center to enjoy full functionality of the tool. After setting up, it's a practically a walk in the park to add and access data across your intranet.

Employees also get more freedom from your network because they can access SharePoint from any device, which is a must especially for remote employees. They can retrieve and access files and collaborate on projects more efficiently. As for security, SharePoint has topnotch security procedures in place to prevent data loss prevention.

* Skype for Business

Skype for Business gives your organization multiple communication methods in a single platform. This addresses the difficulty of continuous regular internal communications among users of different age groups and personal preferences. The tool makes use of enterprise-grade security to protect your company from hackers. Depending on your needs, you can opt to shell out a low monthly fee for this tool.

* Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams eliminates the challenges of switching between platforms and communication channels, making project management easier. Office 365's cloud-based chat application saves loads of time for communication and improves overall team agility in the workplace.

Workflows become smoother since users can access all they need in just one place, from video calls to Microsoft documents.

To make Microsoft Office 365 work even better for you, you can opt for customization options where you can pay only for the features that you use and the number of users that use those features.

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SharePoint Online from Scratch; Getting Started

Most people find it hard to wrap their head around SharePoint and you might be one of those people. Perhaps you have been playing with it for a while and you don’t really get it yet. You are probably waiting for that one simple description, that one simple sentence that will suddenly make it all make sense. Well, it isn’t a simple thing to explain because it isn’t a program but it’s a platform. It is a collection of many very different products and technologies all wrapped up and given a name.

From one perspective, learning about it is like learning Microsoft Office. You do not really learn about Office, but you learn about Word, then Excel, then Outlook, PowerPoint, Access and so on. It is a massive set of solutions of different things you can do with this platform and with every version of it, Microsoft have added more and more to it. When you learn the different things it does, you’ll pick and choose your own combinations on things that are meaningful to you.

SharePoint is an important part of your office 365 environment. Once on the platform itself, you will see specific sites that you are following, and you also would see the featured link which is the team site. This is the first one created by default when you first accessed it and signed up for a new office 365 tenant.

On the interface itself, you have the regular navigation parts that are part of office 365. You also have the ribbon and you will also see the browse and the page tabs on top. You will also have the navigation which usually shows what’s inside the site that you are currently in. It lets you see or navigate through site collections which is an important word in SharePoint that you need to be familiar with.

Being a server product that you don’t need to install on your desktop or laptop, it is installed on your back-end systems and shared across your network. You connect to it with some associated programs that can install on your desktop such as SharePoint designer and SharePoint workspace though you don’t always need them because the most common ways you’ll talk to it is either using MS Office programs or just by opening a web browser to talk to it.

6 different areas of SharePoint:

1. Sites – It makes websites. It is a massive website engine. These websites are designed for you to be a contributor, to change them, to edit, to join in.

2. Communities – It helps you work with other people. It can let you work on a document with other people at the same time. It can give you shared calendars, shared tasks, lists of discussion boards, etc. The idea of collaboration is built into this thing and that is because you are able to take all the content that makes up your organization’s day-to-day operations.

3. Content – It gives you a place to put your content. A place to put your stuff instead of saving it in a local folder or on a network shared drive or emailing back and forth to people. Some content can be in places where it’s controlled, monitored, audited and can be available to just a few people where you can only put certain types of content. It also can offer you a free-for-all dumping ground that doesn’t add drag to your system when you continue to work seamlessly the way you used to. You are simply saving everything there rather than on your own drive.

4. Search – It lets you search your stuff. It’s got a massive super smart search engine built into it. It’s an excellent and complex search engine that not only allows you to search your own content in multiple ways but it will let you search people and it will do this all securely, so no one gets access to anything they shouldn’t.

5. Insights – It helps you bring all your information together.

6. Composites – It helps you build on top of itself. No platform, no program and no operating system can know exactly what you need so it offers a fantastic capability to be extended. It’s meant to be extended and customized and you don’t have to be a programmer to know how it can be done.

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The Hunger Games Guide How to Use SharePoint Online!

Survival is one of the most prevalent themes in ‘The Hunger Games’. Tributes should have strategy, they need to be agile and should know every components or in-out of the game to able to win. Same also applies in learning how to use SharePoint Online but definitely much easier with the help of this basic tutorial!

One of our goals also is to eliminate inconvenience so that you can begin utilizing this platform without much stress. My first uplifting news to you is that you can easily access it in an internet browser for example Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox through these 2 straightforward steps:

1. Sign in to Office 365 or your company’s SharePoint Server site

2. Just click or select SharePoint tile in the application launcher route. So this is presently your entrance point into the brilliant stage!

So what's in it?

You can utilize this it to make sites and as a safe spot to store, sort out, offer, and access information from any gadget. You can assemble your intranet destinations and make pages, report libraries, and records. Show critical visuals, news, and updates with a group or correspondence site. Find, pursue, and search for destinations, documents, and other individuals over your organization. Indeed, even deal with your every day schedule with work processes, structures, and records. Migrate and store your documents in the cloud, and so on.

Site collection

It is the parent site that contains other sub-locales. Each keeps up its own security settings and customizations. Its administrator or owner has oversight of the whole site collection, including the sub-locales beneath it.

Sub-sites

They are sub locales inside a site collection. They will acquire consent settings from the site collection; however the site owner can quit acquiring those authorizations and at the same time can make desirable customizations.

Lists

It is basically a rundown of information, much like an Excel spreadsheet. It has lines and segments to plan, channel, and sort information. Its preference is that a structure might be given to the client, making information simple to catch.

Document libraries

It could be a system to store content among SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. It's basically a rundown, yet intended to store records. It allows continuous record coordinated effort with co-creating functionalities, wiping out the requirement for putting away various forms of a similar report.

Wiki pages

A wiki page could be a specific page among a library in this stage grants clients to team up and contribute substance to the page. Substance can be refreshed at once; and you can include pictures, content designing, hyperlinks, and that's just the beginning.

Blogs

They work a similar way any blog on the Internet capacities to impart thoughts and data. It can acquire the authorizations from the parent site.

Discussion boards

This permits online discourse all throughout the association. It gives a discussion to individuals to collaborate amid a discourse wherever they will post questions and answers that might be seen all through the association.

We can't talk about everything in this article so stay tuned in our next episodes!

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Shocking! Office 365 Changed How Businesses Think About Going Paperless

Most innovative-thinking businesses are embracing the digital workplace and going paperless; transforming them to be more efficient workplaces. It’s something you can also achieve right now by investing in cutting edge applications that can help your business go paperless like Office 365. There are lots of additional benefits aside from the convenience of having all your notes and documents wherever you are which listed below:

1. Save Lots of Business Funds

Lessening paper implies that less money will be spent on purchasing for paper, printing, toner and other expenses related with paper documentation. Storage space is likewise an essential concern with regards to recording paper archives as file organizers take up loads of room and require their own support.

2. Enhance Business Processes

Through digitalized documentation, your staffs can all the more likely oversee, audit, delegate, approve, or exchange information with the few ticks of a mouse. Day by day routinely or excess procedures and work processes can likewise be computerized. Gatherings, meetings, business introductions, arranging and basic leadership turn out to be increasingly viable in light of the fact that everyone approaches most exceptional data.

3. Improved Collaboration

Platform like SharePoint make on-screen coordinated effort conceivable by enabling various individuals to chip away at a mutual report at the same time. They can work successfully and synchronously together in a similar record/article or venture and can immediately give input. Collaboration is hence improved.

4. Mobility

Going paperless allows management and employees to work remotely even when they’re geographically far apart. This can improve effectiveness, efficiency and save time and transportation costs too.

5. Increase Efficiency

This is a result of alternate advantages we referenced before. What's more, the hunt abilities on electronic gadgets make it simple to discover the record you're searching for in merely seconds as opposed to endeavoring to find them physically. A run of the mill representative burns through 30 to 40 % of their time scanning for data in a file organizer. At the point when records were kept digitally, the recovery of data turns out to be fast and basic, saving that opportunity to finish different errands. You can likewise dispense with the issue of losing vital paper reports due to losing or incidentally discarding them.

6. Improve Security

Putting away vital archives to a cloud server is currently a lot more secure and offers genuine feelings of serenity. At the point when records are put away electronically, standard back-ups are done as such that the latest adaptations are spared. These days, numerous organizations are putting forth migration services with entirely affordable cost. Protection and security settings can be set when sparing your organization and customer's information carefully. You need likewise to think about disasters, specialists says that more than 70 percent of the world's organizations would flop inside three weeks if paper records were lost because of a flame or flood. Besides paper don't remain always as they fall apart after some time.

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Most Effective Tactics for Your Growing Company

Congratulation, you made it to the next level! But you need to remember that as your company grows, diverse issues emerge and new open doors will open that request distinctive arrangements. Also, because of quick pace innovation, specialists say it's getting to be inescapable to go on cloud and portable that is the reason you should have online arrangements administrations for your developing organization. Picking the trusted and right tools like Microsoft O365 is a vital advance toward making your business succeeds.

This level in your business additionally brings new issues and difficulties. Normally the issue comes when you begin to develop from a couple of individual groups to the bigger scale because of poor correspondence, no work process structure, IT issues, and so on. In addition staying aware of the quick pace of technological advancement can be troublesome for the entrepreneur loaded with the numerous undertakings required to keep his or her developing business above water.

Your growing company currently will begin to deal with enormous volumes of differing information, for example, correspondence with clients and colleagues, budgetary records, worker subtleties, company archives, clients' buying conduct and others. Likewise, the more your business develops, your IT arrangements should cooperate and their usefulness is adequate to cover your developing business needs.

Organizations hoping to stay aggressive have no choice however to go hard and fast in improving inward effectiveness and boosting worker efficiency. Developing organizations upscale their procedures and work processes and are bouncing into the cloud to help streamline work processes and convey versatility to their workforce. Here is the place Microsoft O365 services are both cost-effective and reliable.

You may consider Microsoft O365 Business Plan, its clients are automatically upgraded to Windows 10 when they buy in, and Windows Defender is consequently turned on and set to auto-refresh. It has every one of the highlights of Business Premium, in addition to access to new IT security and cell phone the board highlights. It is an incorporated arrangement that brings along great efficiency devices, security, and

gadget the executives abilities for little to medium-scrutinized organizations with to 300 clients.

Incorporated into this pack are: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access, Exchange, OneDrive, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Business applications from Office (Bookings, Outlook Customer Manager, MileIQ1, Microsoft Listings1, Microsoft Connections1, Microsoft Invoicing1) with customized security and the executives highlights from Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Applications incorporated into this suite increment representative profitability, help to improve business procedures to acquire more joint effort, effectiveness, and can adjust to your new plans of action. This administration group likewise will give you cloud storage favorable position, security and less IT upkeep.

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Why O365 Is Really Worth It for Your Small Business

If you think that you have already done so much with your business, you have to think again. With Microsoft Office 365, your business is always a step ahead towards your goal. Tools and applications, it offers can even help you take it further.

This complete integrated solution helps you securely run and grow a small business by bringing together the best in class productivity with high level security and device management tools. You and your employees can be more productive and work better together. You get apps design to help you build your business by attracting customers and simplifying processes. It comes with building tools that let you manage access to your data, keep sensitive data safe and keep your business compliant and protected against threats. It is simple to set up and manage.

To measure it up;

* 50% of the people are into collaboration for faster work

* 37% are mobile

* 43% are a big chunk of cyber attack due to unsecured documents in the cloud

These factors in what Office 365 can offer for Small and Medium sized businesses. It lets you share and sync documents with a dynamic set of cloud connected tools that offers 99.9% of uptime guarantee.

With MS Office 365, you have one subscription that powers teamwork, helps you grow and gives you peace of mind letting you focus on the most important work, so you can achieve more every day. It has an easy way to manage your users, devices, and data within a single admin console.

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How beneficial the services of MS 365 are?

Change is the new constant, and it can be hard to keep up. Gone are the days that we are used to using traditional office applications on which there is always a need for upgrading every now and then. What we have achieved as an advance society is the help of online access through internet. This is where office online comes in very helpful with the convenience of updating applications that comes with it easier and faster.

There are a lot of reasons why you should acquire and start using Office 365 for your business. You can get the latest tools it offers and take advantage of its features for business use.

You can get things done anywhere with any mobile device you have. Store, sync and share your work files for a collaborative effort in finishing a report. Set up meetings, update your online calendar and get connected through email with your bosses and co-workers.

Have the tool for your people to do the job at the quickest way possible. With office 365 tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and even OneDrive access, you and the team can exchange ideas and get the latest information and flag each one for opportunities to adapt quickly and make change happen. These are all possible and indeed a beneficial service Microsoft Office 365 offers. It allows you to collaborate and even discuss with partners in business how you can venture together through a more profitable goal. Set up meetings through skype and get things done in just a matter of days or even hours.

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My 365 worth; It is an investment

Considering a lot of applications online you can download and access nowadays, do we still find the worth of having Office 365 as a great deal breaker in investing for a bigger venture? Well, the answer is yes! There are things worth investing for and Office 365 is one of those.

It is a flexible tool which can help an individual or an organization for any purpose it may serve them for their own benefits. It is a package deal. A year of subscription can already give you 15 licensing through Windows devices and Macs.

There are also extra features of Office 365 that you can take advantage of.

1. It gives you lot of storage. It offers 1 terabyte of storage of OneDrive which is really a lot.

2. It offers extra applications to use. One very useful application is Outlook for email access and management.

3. Get the smartphone and tablet apps for free. These are the usual apps we know like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

4. It is secured and can be accessed mobile. Anywhere you are at any time, you may create or edit documents by just logging in online to your secured credential for office 365.

5. Connect with people through skype for business. This is one useful application for setting up meetings and reaching out to clients or team members which office 365 offers.

These are just a few things to consider and these things are already proven advantage for using office 365. The benefits are just worth investing for.

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Project Portfolio Management’s Role in the Fast Evolving Technology

Digital innovations already began! Evolving technology has already forced Businesses to move on from traditional Project Portfolio Management methodologies and to adapt to the wave of disruption led by the development of cloud-based tools and collaboration technology. The rapid evolution of Internet of Things and AI technology have led to a huge shift in the nature of projects themselves, pushing organizations to think differently about Project Portfolio Management (PPM).

Here are key themes that expert expect to dominate PPM projects by early next decade.

1. ‘On-premise-on-the-cloud’ to become the preferred option for businesses globally. 

Many Software as a Service (SaaS) has already changed the nature of enterprise software by diminishing infrastructure costs, increased collaboration, and providing anytime-anywhere access. Private cloud deployment is gaining popularity as businesses looking at digital transformation not only as a revenue stream but also as a means of transforming the way they run their business. Open-source technologies give businesses a lot of flexibility, control, and scalability. This new breed of deployment gives enterprises the best of both worlds: on-premises and cloud-based access to private data.

2. Enterprises typically deal with large-scale and long-term projects of higher complexity, making PPM a huge priority for them.

Multiple large scale and complexity of projects drive the need for Project Portfolio Management, and therefore enterprises have been the biggest buyers of PPM tools. Organizations that adopt start early will see real value grow over time, which will fuel overall growth. Businesses will need to be aggressive about their growth so to embrace PPM solutions will give them great advantage.

3. The Rise of all-in-one PPM tools in SMBs and Startups

The trend is changing; Small Medium Businesses and startups are now warming up to a more structured project management approach by investing in all-in-one PPM tools. They now see that it can help streamline their project management endeavors and processes by consolidating planning, tracking, reporting, and analysis on a single platform, and by integrating key functions such as marketing, sales, Human Resource management, and finance with project management.

Digital transformations will going to drive organizations at any size to rethink processes, methodology, skill sets, and organization structures. Project Management will need to cope up with this digital transformation driven evolution to get a better edge in the market so software providers need to cater to these demands and need to ensure that they are also keeping up with the pace.

The big question now is if you will adapt or be left behind?

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Innovation: PPM for the Next Generation

What’s the future of PPM? PPM or Project Portfolio Management for the next generation is essential as we head towards innovation in this fast-paced world. Because of the rise of technology today, the market landscape has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades and the pace of change is increasing ever faster. Traditionally, brick and mortar type of businesses are rapidly becoming digital or technological software driven companies. The experience is more technology and software driven these days. What does this mean? It really means changes across all aspects of an organization. Now the question really is how we stay competitive and ahead of our competitors in the marketplace.

Change is the new Norm

In the past we had the ability to plan and build strategies and build longer term plans and execute on projects in a traditional waterfall or phase to gate approach that is increasingly not the case. By the time we reach the end line, the marketplace and the criteria and the objectives may have changed dramatically and may end up not delivering what is needed. It is an unpredictable business environment with constant changes being the norm and we have to be able to respond to that in a very nimble fashion.

How do we put enough process in place with enough standards and policies such that we can get repeatable and consistent processes and outcomes from our projects? This is when we needed to have a process that gets everybody working in concert and deliver value to the organization. We have to deliver the right things and we have to deliver something that actually brings value to the organization.

Resource capacity always matters. A lot of us work in organizations where the mantra is “We just get it done”. The idea is we don’t really factor in seriously the resource capacity constraints that we have in an organization.

Dependencies are also part of your constraints. Today with complex systems and infrastructures, the hardware and software components are sometimes a good example to that. New hardware platforms that maybe requires new softwares to run is one thing that can happen which can be delivered to the marketplace with the need to interact and work together to deliver something to the end customer in a successful fashion.

Technology has become a highly complex landscape of features and functionality versus a means of empowering human creativity, innovation and intelligence. We have to factor in all the work that’s on our resources plate to figure out what our true bandwidth is and what we can actually deliver based upon our capacities within organizations. The integration has to happen between different work types, different solutions and different constituencies within our organizations. This is where technology has to come in place for a major role.

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PPM for a Startup Company

Projects as we all know are the temporary endeavors which are undertaken in order to create a unique solution to a problem. Now project management ensures a smooth flow of development of these projects starting from its conception till its delivery. In other words, it is a practice of initiating planning, executing, controlling and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. Nowadays, project management tools are being used heavily in the market irrespective of the size or the type of the project, these tools act as an aid to an individual as well as a team.

There are 5 steps a startup company can use with Project Portfolio Management. PPM is much more thank the individual words alone suggests. It is a process by which project managers and their organizations can analyze the Return of Investment (ROI) of doing a project. Project portfolio managers can use this process to evaluate and organize data into a collective piece of information and give senior executives accurate analysis, so they can decide which new projects are worth investing in. 

Being able to predict the outcome of one project plan over another, allows companies to have greater control over their budgets and employee effort allocation. With PPM, executives will know the outcome of their project managers data through a portfolio. Stakeholders get to stay on top of what they need to know with solid information. Project managers can easily stay connected with their teams and team members know what is going on overall so they can work more effectively.

Implementing PPM is no easy process. There are 5 steps to take that require a slow steady approach to see the process through. These steps are essential in its proper usage.

1. Decide what PPM means to you.

* Project Portfolio Management must be strategic and configurable in order to be effective.

2. Build the PPM structure carefully.

* Change doesn’t have to be disruptive. Taking a top-down approach allows for seamless integration.

3. Decide where it will start and end.

* Typically, you will start with idea generation and end when the desired result is achieved.

4. Put it where it belongs.

* It required a major shift, and everyone must not only agree with it but be willing to get others to buy into it.

5. Ensure consistency.

* Be patient. If you know PPM is the way to go, then ensure that expectations are clear, and everyone understands the end goal.

A small-scale project is simple to manage but things become challenging when more people get involved in project management. This is where project management tools come in to the rescue.

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SUPERCHARGE YOUR STARTUP COMPANY WITH SHAREPOINT

Are you planning to start your own company? The major challenges of startup companies were limited resources e.g. limited capital, limited work office /building, limited manpower so you need tools that will enable you to overcome these obstacles. You need tools that you can utilize that will enable you to work anywhere, anytime, on any device; and one of that must need tools is SharePoint!

If you've got Microsoft SharePoint, you can view information on sites, collaborate with colleagues, access shared documents, and stay connected with your work using your mobile device. It empowers teamwork with dynamic and productive team sites for every project team, department, and division. Share files, data, news, and resources. Customize your site to streamline your team’s work. Collaborate effortlessly and firmly with team members within and out of your organization, across PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Granting external access has never been easier. Your users will share sites, folders, and individual documents with external users, who simply tie a Microsoft Account to their corporate e-mail address. You can conjointly generate Guest Links, which allow Read or Edit permissions to be granted without requiring authentication, while allowing the Guest Links to be revoked at any time.

Compared before that they are just limited to human resources available in their locality; startups can now outsource people with the right skills and talents they need in any part of the globe. Imagine they no need to pay for transportation, board and lodging just to acquire that needed key persons. With these features alone you can save lot of time and money. This will be mutually beneficial also to the startup company owners and their employees or team members because they can work at the comfort of their homes.

You can automate their Business Processes with this platform. Automating business processes can increase productivity; it can reduce the time involved in pinpointing down who is responsible for a next step, or who has the latest version of a document; reducing time and mistakes while rising productivity is sweet for your bottom line.

Here are 4 key pieces of functionality to help you with automating your business processes:

(1) Task Management. Task lists permit you to outline work things, assign users, set start and end dates and display the status of tasks in multiple ways. As your team completes the task, timestamps record when and who completed that specific task. You can come later and verify all steps were accomplished, when and by whom.

(2) Workflows can be attached to Task lists to automate a variety of work functions, such as notifications when certain tasks are completed, startup of review and approval workflows and repetition knowledge from the task list to alternative lists or

libraries. Workflow helps make sure tasks get done on time and the right personnel are notified

(3) Templates with Content. Task lists are often created with content (the list of pre-defined tasks) and imbedded progress to supply a simple to generate the materials required to run your work process exactly the same as before. Your custom task list currently makes it straightforward to make identical set of tasks whenever you would like to run your method. A custom task list provisioning service can be created to automatically create new versions of your custom task list on a regular schedule

(4) Governance and Retention Processing. You can set around how to manage your Tasks lists, you can define how long task lists should be retained, who should have access and when audits should occur.

Using SharePoint Online, you need minimal IT staff because setting-up and maintenance of managing servers is not a problem plus you get compliance with the following standards out of the box: HIPAA, FISMA, ISO 27001, FERPA, SSAE 16, EU Model Clause, US-EU Safe Harbor Framework and others. You don’t have to invest in a private or public cloud, plus the necessary IT staff, to be a cloud-enabled company.

[doriswills-blog]

6 Tips on Effective Project Portfolio Management

Project management holds everything that is happening within a project, from start to finish. This makes it a complex domain and project managers have to be involved with a lot of factors to ensure the successful completion of a project. Portfolio Management is essential in a plan's execution.

What is Project Portfolio Management?

It is "the central management of processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics," according to the Project Management Institute.

PPM is complex and takes a lot work, but consistent and effective management is possible if you take these following tips to heart.

* Focus on best practices

There are project managers who focus mainly on project management methodologies. This is a problem since these methodologies are static and will eventually become obsolete. Meanwhile, the process remains the same. This is why project managers should direct more of their energies towards best practices and processes and make these fit every project, no matter what the size and type.

* Forget about trends

The industry is constantly evolving and newer methodologies take the place of the older ones. It's best to stick to the stable best practices and processes instead of following every popular methodology or project management process for the sake of trying it out. Trends will eventually fade so better stick to your tried-and-tested methods.

* Optimise Your Resources

Managing your resources carefully is imperative if you want to complete projects on time and within budget. Using task management software will certainly help. The task allocation mechanisms on project management tools will help you make the best of your resources.

* Use collaboration feature in processes

It's impossible to make your project portfolio management successful without the help of collaboration features in processes. These systems help maintain in continuous enterprise communication. If you have a seamless communication channel, you can improve workflow with ease, increase productivity, and make your organisation more efficient. Another plus for project managers is that they can handle multiple projects at the same time without compromising results.

* Hold regular process reviews

There's no way to improve processes without conducting regular and thorough reviews. A periodic assessment will help spot loopholes and aid you in creating solutions for them. This proactive approach is better instead of just being reactive. Prevention is indeed better than the cure.

* Have a flexible approach

Even if you are in a tightly structured setting, you should still scalable workflows in your processes so you can easily adapt to different project types and sizes. This helps in avoiding the overburdening of your resources and execute your plans smoothly.

Given the highly dynamic nature of project environments, you have to be flexible in order to survive. Always consider the limits of your resources and be careful in allocating them. You have to monitor how your resources are utilised and track the progress consistently to make sure that nothing goes to waste.

[doriswills-blog]

FREE MICROSOFT 365 VS. PAID: WHICH IS BEST FOR YOU?

We already discussed the different features and benefits that you can get from paid Microsoft 365 subscription in our previous articles (hope you can check it out as well) so now we will take time to discuss the features of the free version so that you will have an option if you have a tight budget or perhaps if these features is already enough for your needs.

Office Online for all!

Office Online offers the fundamental four: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote; you can also utilize the free Outlook.com for email.

Office 365 Education

All you need is a school email address given by the school and obviously Internet; it incorporates the Office Online highlights (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote) in addition to boundless individual distributed storage, Yammer, and SharePoint destinations.

Office Mobile for Office 365

This enables you to open, see and alter Microsoft Office reports on your Smartphone. It is intended to give you a chance to get to your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint archives in a hurry, utilizing your Android telephone; it gives you a chance to get to the majority of your Office records that are saved on the Cloud and any progressions you make are saved and synchronized. You can also enjoy Office Mobile sharing through OneDrive and SharePoint. Viewing your document is incredibly clear and direct. Reports are streamlined for minor screen review and size subsequently. There are shields designed into the application that ensure you can't make changes to a report if it's as of now open in Office 365 on the net or the work area, locking it for altering on one stage.

The drawback

Office Online tools are adequate to meet basic needs for most users but obviously free versions have limited abilities contrasted to the paid reciprocals. Also, you can't expect the more advance features of Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise.