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Three Ways Property Owners Entice and Retain First-Rate Tenants

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Three Ways Property Owners Entice and Retain First-Rate TenantsHave you ever rented to a tenant who refuses to pay rent on time, adhere to rental agreements, or get along with other property residents? If so, then you understand the value of a high-quality resident.  Whether you are trying to attract a reliable, considerate tenant with a stable income or are simply trying to keep one, these three techniques will increase your chances of finding a first-rate, long-term tenant.

1. Implement an Effective Tenant Selection Process

Quality residents are easier to find if you have a detailed screening procedure. Do not allow your need for a renter to prevent you from checking an applicant’s income, references, criminal history, previous eviction history and credit rating. Having the potential applicant provide references from previous landlords and employers will give you another opportunity to identify any red flags before generating a lease agreement.

2. Keep Your Property Well Maintained

Regular cleaning, painting, and appliance replacement will make your property look like a nice place to live. Property investment gurus like Paul Daneshrad understand that you must treat your properties as assets. Therefore, a landlord must keep their rental property impeccably maintained if they wish to entice good tenants to stay. Renters who make regular payments enable you to make repairs, comply with building code requirements, pay utilities and taxes, and supply other services to residents. You do not want to tick them off a tenant by not promptly responding when they inform you that something is broken. Keeping up with maintenance schedules and maintaining your property will reduce the likelihood of things breaking.

3. Use Effective Communication Strategies

Approachable, frequent, and clear landlord-tenant communication will help you build positive relationships. It is especially considerate for you to show flexibility in how you communicate with tenants, as some people prefer emails, texts or phone calls. Make yourself available in person and through all three of these communication modes. High-quality residents will want to stay long-term if you are easy to reach in the event of an emergency. Providing your tenant with a 24/7 contact goes a long way to building a trusting, professional relationship that will last.

Reliable and responsible tenants are hard to find, and not keeping them long-term can make your property management experience difficult. If you are choosy in your selection process, impeccably maintain your property, and practice frequent and clear communication, you are more likely to attract a trustworthy resident.

4 Signs It Is Time to Upgrade Your Business Telecom System

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | 4 Signs It Is Time to Upgrade Your Business Telecoms SystemHaving an outdated phone system in your operation can have lots of repercussions. It limits communication between members of your team, leads to major delays because of shortages, and can also result in lost leads. Having customers not being able to reach you if they need support will also hurt your brand. This is why you must always monitor your system’s performance and see if it’s up to par. Here are some of the signs that your business’s telecom system is due for an upgrade.

You’re Experiencing Shortages

If your customers constantly let you know that they couldn’t get through or that their calls were lost, then it could mean that your system needs an overhaul. These are often caused by network issues. Sometimes, it may be due to poor cabling, like improperly grounded lines, for instance. In this case, you might want to call a professional structured cabling service to come and give your network a close look and propose solutions.

It’s Holding Your Team Back

Whether you like it or not, the future of business will be increasingly mobile and we can’t think of many industries that will not have to embrace remote working at least to some level. And, in this case, your current phone systems might be a huge hurdle in making the switch.

For instance, traditional phone systems do not allow interconnectivity in the same way modern solutions like PBX and VoIP do. These solutions could allow you or your reps to seamlessly answer calls sent to your main office on your mobile from wherever you are. If you’re in a line of business that requires you to move a lot, such as construction, then a legacy phone system will limit you.

Modern technologies also allow things like transcription, for instance. Voice messages can be transcribed and sent to any email or through SMS. Conversations with clients can be transcribed and stored in a CRM for future reference. Legacy systems can’t keep up and you will have to consider making the switch as fast as possible if you are thinking of going remote or hybrid.

You’re Spending Too Much

An outdated phone system will cost you in so many ways. Not only will you end up spending more when scaling or for repairs, but you’ll also be missing out on the savings you could be making with a more recent system. Not only that, but you’ll also be losing money from lower productivity. Just changing to a new, more efficient system will automatically reflect on your bottom line.

It’s Taking too Much Time to Resolve Issues

If it takes days for everything to be back to normal when you’re experiencing issues, then you might also need to upgrade your system. This could, again, be an issue with how your system was cabled. In this case, only an expert team will be able to help.

These are all clear signs that you may need to overhaul your current business phone system. We suggest you speak with a reputable team today if you’re experiencing recurrent issues.

 

Boost The Efficiency Of Your Business

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If you’re just starting up a business, it’s vital that you know how to run it as efficiently as possible, you can’t afford to waste even a penny on a poor investment. Knowing what you can do to make sure you’re getting the most sales and income while spending the least amount of money without sacrificing customer and employee satisfaction is key to growing efficiently!

Outsourcing

If you’re looking to take on more work so you can grow, you might find yourself struggling with the idea of all the new workload. Not only would you likely have to hire more employees, but you may even need to invest in new or more equipment; which isn’t always the best course of action! You may find that outsourcing your work to another business is the more cost-efficient way to go about things, and it can be almost anything. If you need deliveries handled, there are services that offer that, if you need chemical testing, there are services for that too! You don’t need to handle the work that’s out of your comfort zone, and it can be passed on to someone who’s already equipped and trained to do it!

Customer relations

The better reputation that you manage to build with your customers, the faster you’re going to be able to gain new ones! Your business can grow from word-of-mouth, and giving your customers something to talk about is a great way to encourage that! Being known as a business with great customer service can take you a long way! There are a number of ways you can nurture and encourage this, but mainly you need to focus on customer service for it to be effective. Encourage your customers to leave feedback after they’ve shopped with you, open up a way for people to publicly view reviews of your business, accept and use feedback from customers to grow in the future!

When buying online, a lot of people will use the reviews to determine whether you’re a reliable business or not, so it’s best you do what you can to make sure those reviews aren’t negative or a deterrent for potential customers!

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Boost The Efficiency Of Your BusinessMeetings

If you have a busy workday, the last thing you want is to be constantly interrupted with different problems, it can really slow down your work process. You can deal with this by holding meetings at the start and ends of the day so people can bring up problems there, meaning your work won’t be interrupted during the day. Not only this, but it allows you to make plans for the next day, and it can be handled effectively without getting in the way of anything.

Management

Proper management is essential if you have many people working in the same place, as it can be difficult to get your work done when you have to make sure everyone else is on track too. Always make sure you have enough management to make sure everyone gets their work done properly, without miscommunication.

How To Streamline Your Law Firm & Achieve Peak Performance

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How To Streamline Your Law Firm & Achieve Peak PerformanceLaw firms can be fast paced, incredibly challenging places to work and can also be chaotic.

There are a lot of moving parts in a law firm. High volumes of files are constantly floating around, there are many clients that need to be attended to, court dates and legal proceedings are time consuming and at some point the business needs to be managed including financial and marketing management. Needless to say, law firms take a lot of effort to manage them effectively.

A periodic review of ways to streamline your law firm operations can lead to a significant reduction in the chaos. Below you will find a few tips to help get you started.

Utilize Technology

Technology is a huge factor in almost every industry across the globe.

The benefits of heavily utilizing technology cannot be understated for law firms. Well known law firms are frequently the targets of malicious hackers, so the latest state-of-the-art technology is no longer optional, but essential. Effective cybersecurity can safeguard sensitive client data, and make sure that the legal process is never compromised at your firm.

Additionally, cloud storage means all the dreaded paperwork that can litter a law firm never gets misplaced, damaged, lost, or stolen. Ultimately, technology helps make the work less manual. Everything is moving online into shared spaces for easier access yet shielded by encrypted servers and other password locked cyberspaces.

Utilizing software that makes case management more efficient keeps your staff smaller and costs lower. It helps your team focus on the important legal work and not be bogged down in monotonous legal administration.

Consult or Outsource to Expert Marketers

Technology and efficient internal operations also play a crucial role in marketing your law firm.

Marketing can get overwhelming, particularly if your law firm is not well-versed in digital marketing strategies. You can take your broad ideas and filter them through some expert consultants for well-polished results. You guarantee that your online advertising will not distract your internal team and will be the most effective by outsourcing your marketing.

For example, Legal Back Office provides highly regarded law firm management consultancy in marketing, accounting and with key law firm operational areas like intake, billing and case management processes. They can partner with you to define your marketing needs, generating new cases and helping you to make your brand identity as impactful as possible. Legal Back Office is in it for the long haul, drafting technical and strategic solutions for you as long as you need them. They offer a variety of services beyond marketing, making them a key business partner for your law firm.

Limit/Eliminate Time Wasting Practices

Perhaps more than any other business, those dealing in law face constant factors that drain their use of time such as holding too many internal meetings, being dependent on paper client files and having outdated processes requiring more steps than are necessary.

A high volume of and poorly run meetings are a consistent culprit in filling your time. Business Insider notes that people should avoid eliminating them entirely and instead make them more productive. Facilitate meaningful discussions and ensure everyone has the time to raise important issues. Communication in a law firm is vital, but only when every word spoken truly counts for something in a dedicated context. Make your meetings internally count so the real focus can be on case work and meetings with clients.

If your law firm is still overly dependent on a physical client file, this is an area of “low hanging fruit” that when transitioned to a digital process will save your lawyers and staff a significant amount of time. Intake process can also be overly burdened by steps that truly are required to get a client retained by your law firm.

If you feel like your firm could use some tune ups in your processes, working with a law firm consultant like Legal Back Office can help you identify where time is being wasted, develop recommendations for change and even implement those changes. When you are focused on doing client work, attending to business best practices always falls to the bottom of the priority list. Working with Legal Back Office to implement efficiency changes can ensure that you will maximize the results you are able to achieve and to reach peak performance metrics for your firm.

Factors to Consider When Choosing Managed IT Services

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Managed IT Services|Factors to Consider When Choosing Managed IT ServicesTechnology is on the rise in every sector of the world, including the business sector. Technology demands for business have made it a necessity to have a department managing IT. Management of IT has today become a vital aspect of every business.

As a result, most businesses have opted to have an internal IT department to help manage the technical aspects of a business. However, some companies have opted to outsource IT management services from professional managed IT service providers. Being that technology is an integral part of business IT, it is essential to always choose a provider with high levels of skills that will provide you with excellent services. Settling on a provider is not easy because there are numerous managed IT service providers.

Here are some if the important factors that you should consider when choosing a managed IT service provider.

Security

With the high levels of cybercrime, security has become an important aspect of a business. However, ensuring a high-end securing can be difficult and costly. With that in mind, you must choose a service provider that does not just monitor your information system and infrastructure. But you must consider a company that can also offer strategic security plans.

With a rigid and reliable IT security, you can ensure all customer and employee data remain safe and secure. Reliable IT managed services ensure to encrypt your network to prevent people from accessing it not unless with permission. Network encryption also allows you to monitor any activity that is conducted on your network. This gives you a straightforward way to detect suspicious activities, giving you an opportunity to come up with an appropriate measure to counter it. With this, you can guarantee that you can minimize and prevent risks of cybersecurity threats from infecting your IT system and infrastructure.

Due to the nature of their work, IT support providers gain access to sensitive company information and private data. As a result, you should ensure the company has a high level of confidentiality. Or you can limit the extent of information they access to have some discretion. You should identify the initiatives the company will take to guarantee the confidentiality of your sensitive information and customer data.

Availability

One of the most essential factors to consider about manage IT companies is their service availability. The company should provide service and support 24/7/365. Quality IT managed services company will provide you with qualified IT personnel to take care of your IT needs on a shifting basis. IT service providers assure constant delivery of top-notch managed IT services through continuous and round the clock IT support.

Determining the availability of the company is crucial. This is because it will help you ascertain how proficient the IT service provider can be. 24/7/365 IT monitoring means that the company will be in a position to offer updates and provide technical support as quickly as possible. On top of this, the constant monitoring of systems also allows them to detect IT related issues in a timely manner before they became a major problem in the organization.

With early detection of problems, your provider will be able to quickly come up with solutions to the problems. This guarantees that your business can prevent worse system problems and IT disasters in the future.

The managed IT service provider you choose must be capable of addressing all your concerns. Apart from 24/7 system monitoring, the company should also provide a responsive service desk where your employees can be able to reach them for support, either through call, email or chat. This allows you staff to have a faster resolution to any IT challenge that they might face, such as problems logging in.


Scalability

You should always remember business growth when selecting an IT managed services provider. Your business demand today may not be as critical to what your business will have in a few months or years. That is why it is important to hire a service provider that understands your ever-changing business needs.

Reliable and experienced IT managed service providers offer scalable services. This means that their IT services will adapt to all the technical needs of your business. For instance, if the number of employees in your organization increases by a large number, say from 3000 to 4500, the IT service provider should be able to provide you with enough skilled personnel to provide quick and timely resolutions to prevent a decrease in productivity. This allows the It service providers to meet all your IT requirements smoothly and effectively. Through this, you can ensure that your IT system and infrastructure will be able to adapt to the changes as a result of business growth.

Experience and expertise

It is imperative to consider the experience and skill of the company. Should the personnel have the right skills, knowledge and expertise? The IT service company should have a team of professionals in IT who are certified to offer these services, thereby preventing amateur companies from experimenting with your IT infrastructure. Reliable service providers are ones that have successfully handled a number of clients from different industries.

Every industry is unique. Similarly, every organization and company has its own way of handling day to day operations. Consequently, every business has varying and different IT requirements. As a result, you must choose a provider with a proven reputation and experience of handling IT needs of a diverse set of clients. This shows the company can offer unique IT services that your system needs.

Additionally, you should choose a company with the ability to provide cloud back up and data recovery services. Generally, the company should be able to provide solutions to any problems with your network and computers. If you hire a company that does not offer full IT support, then you will have to incur additional costs of hiring a new company or losses from unsatisfied customers or clients.

Conclusion

Outsourcing managed IT services allow you to focus on other vital needs of your business. With the best IT service, you can ensure that your network is secure and stable. This allows you to maintain smooth business operations. You need to ensure you only outsource services from a well proven and reliable company.