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Are You Making a Double Move~Home and Business?
Sunday, February 12th, 2023
Starting a business and moving to a new home are both pretty overwhelming. But what if you need to do them both at once because your current living situation isn’t sustainable for your home and work life?
Then you might need to take a step back and prioritize what needs to be done, and in what order. Making the process a plan you can follow is much less overwhelming than trying to look at the whole picture at once.
Prioritize
Consider what is most important to you in both your living and workspace. Think about the location first, since everything will depend on that. Will you need to be close to suppliers or clients for your business? Are schools and parks important for your family?
A real estate agent should be able to give you a lot of info about the neighborhoods or towns where you’re looking and can guide you to the areas that work best for you.
Then get pre-approved to find out how much you can afford. This will be important to be able to filter not just for your home price, but for the area you’re looking in where you can expect to find a home in your price range.
If you’re moving to an apartment, try online searches. You can filter for price, square footage, number of bedrooms, amenities, and the schools that are zoned for that complex.
Movers
It can be helpful to hire professionals to help you with your move. This is especially true if you’re moving your home and business together. Professional movers are trained to take care of both your household objects and the safe way to move your electronics. Be sure and do online searches when it comes to finding movers. Look for those who have been rated by other users and read the online reviews.
Take photos, then number all your boxes and write on them in several places as to what room they each will be unpacked in. If you’re moving in stages, find a storage unit that will be close enough for you to access often.
The Business Move
Plan ahead by making a list of everything that needs to be done before, during, and after the move. Try a pre-made moving planner, to keep you from missing any steps.
Next, let your customers know that you’re moving, when, how long you may have a downtime, and when you expect business to resume to usual standards. If you move to a new time zone, be sure to let them know that, too, so they can alter the times they normally get in touch with you.
- Update your website. A lot of the information can be presented in the form of infographics. You can make them yourself easily and for free by following online sources and templates.
- Update your new contact information, addresses, new hours, if pertinent, on all your supplies, especially your marketing materials. You can do that with your business cards, too, using an online business card maker.
- Update your licenses or permits. Check with local authorities in the new location to see if you need to update any business licenses. If you’re structured as an LLC and move to another state, check and see what rules pertain to your new LLC business location, as rules do vary from state to state.
Moving your home and business can seem like a lot, but when you think about it, it’s really efficient taking care of your living and business needs at once. By planning and prioritizing your move, you’re multitasking and that’s the key to efficiency.
Suppose you’re looking to build a website that stands out from the crowd. If you need a new application or even to up your computer skills, visit Ojambo Services. They offer great design and tutorial services for individuals and businesses.
References
Tags: License, location, Moving, Prioritize
Posted in Business | No Comments »
Does Your Business Need a Digital Update
Saturday, January 21st, 2023
The answer is probably yes! As small business owners, we don’t always have the luxury of an IT department to help us keep up to date with daily advances in technology. Does this mean we can’t innovate and integrate our businesses online? No! There are many ways that you can ease yourself into the digital world so that your business can grow today and in the future.
Today, Ojambo shares a brief post that offers ideas that even the least tech-savvy among us can handle.
Update your brand for the web
Your brand is your business identity visualized, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be updated every now and then to reflect a modern age. Try your hand at logo design with a free online logo maker that lets you customize colors, fonts, and imagery in a way that best showcases your business. Your logo is what people will think of when they think of your business, and it’s crucial to your marketing, both online and off.
Move your data to the cloud
If you want your business to be truly mobile and accessible from anywhere, give the cloud a shot. The cloud is a generic term for online processes and storage. According to PC Magazine, there are many excellent options ideal for businesses, including Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive. It’s also beneficial to work with cloud-based tools like payment processing and customer relationship management software which can help simplify and streamline business operations.
When choosing to move data off-site, it’s wise to brush up on your technical computer skills. Being a small business owner means wearing a lot of hats, and you won’t always have the funds available to hire someone else to troubleshoot issues. Keeping online resources handy can save you a lot of time and money when minor issues crop up.
Utilize artificial intelligence
Contrary to the popular trope shown by the media, artificial intelligence is unlikely to become sentient and take over the world. What AI can and will do, however, is streamline many processes, including customer service and troubleshooting ticket resolution. Chatbots, a popular type of AI utilized by more than 1.4 billion people every day, can handle many routine tasks, which reduces your need for manpower. Your AI can help customers with orders, give directions, and even provide installation information, all sans human intervention.
Another AI utilization is through Business Process Management (BPM). BPM allows AI to control management decisions in aspects of your business, making them more efficient in the process. It starts by using process mining to examine and evaluate your business. This is a key to success-once it’s mapped your business processes, it can start making decisions and reallocating resources to improve outcomes. Best of all, it is scalable, meaning it will have greater effectiveness the larger your business grows.
Hire workers for remote jobs
Offering your current workers the option to go remote or hiring new off-site workers is a great way to keep up with the digital demands of your customers and staff. Aside from the obvious benefits to your employees (no commute, working in sweatpants!), There are lots of perks for you as well. First, you’ll have access to the global workforce and their many varied talents. Of special interest to small businesses: remote workers cost less in the long run.
Get on social media
Social media does more than connect you to your customers. It is a valuable and vast cache of information that can give you insight into demographics, shopping trends, and engagements. If you don’t already have social media pages, it’s time to launch them. Sprout Social offers more insight into social media analytics and shares how tracking social data can help you convert likes into sales.
One way to generate traffic to your website from social media is with the use of infographics. These informative, visually engaging illustrations can explain your products or services in an easy-to-understand way. Fortunately, building your own infographic is easy-an online tool can help. Choose a template, then customize it to suit your needs. Once complete, share it on social media to draw traffic.
Go paperless
If your business is still utilizing a filing cabinet, handwritten tickets, and other paper products, you’re losing out on the benefits of going paperless. Being paperless-if you’re already using the cloud, you’re on the right track-is efficient, inexpensive, and creates a more collaborative environment. How? One example is when you are looking for a document. With old-fashioned methods, you have to walk to the filing cabinet (or, worse, a basement storage room), search for the paper, and hope that it’s there. When you store your files online, you can typically pull up your cloud storage and type in the name of the document you’re looking for. It will be available for you to view instantly.
To be successful in today’s world, you have to go digital. Don’t be afraid of things like design, data, and social media. These tech tools are easy to adopt, and they can help you build your business so that you can move forward with the Digital Age.
References
Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, Brand, cloud, Hiring, Remote Jobs, Social Media
Posted in Business | No Comments »
Grow Your Business With These Web Tools
Friday, August 19th, 2022
One way to plan for your financial future is to ensure that your business can grow. After all, you have to make money to plan your future wealth strategy. Technology is just one way to make growth possible, and the following suggested tools from Ojambo can help.
IT security
At the top of our list is IT security. Specifically, having a recovery plan drafted and ready for when and if your site becomes compromised. A smart IT security data protection and recovery solution begins by knowing the types of threats you might face. These include DDOS attacks, malware, and viruses. There are many more, so it pays to be acquainted with potential digital disasters. As for your recovery plan, it begins by having at least three backups of your data. You will also need a written time objective, priorities list, and list of people involved in recovery.
Business scalability through outsourcing
The best problem your company can have is more demand than you can currently meet. If you find yourself in such a situation, one solution you can turn to is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to help you and your team keep up. BPO companies are both highly adaptable and highly skilled, so if you’re looking for BPO companies to outsource various tasks to, you can find several agencies listed on staffing websites. Each company is listed with their specializations and minimum job requirements to help you find the right fit for your needs.
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management is a digital tool that allows you to keep better tabs on your professional and personal relationships with your customers. Your CRM should work with all of your tech, including your ERP. By collecting valuable insight into your customers, you can better serve them during all points of contact. Business tech blogger Adam Enfroy recommends several products, including Salesforce.
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of making your website more visible to both search engines and people. It’s a technical and complicated process that involves understanding consumer behavior, keywords, and site transactions. Your SEO endeavors are also heavily linked to location-based technology within your website, such as your listings on Yellow Pages and Google my business.
Social media management
Your website and social media should be linked and visible to one another, and your social media should work to drive traffic to your site. Using a social media management platform helps you manage your entire social media presence from a central dashboard. Most social media managers use these tools, which include programs like Sprout Social and Loomly.
Workflow management
Workflow management systems are online tools that utilize cloud-based technology. Many workflow management tools utilize the kanban visual scheduling system to easily showcase who is working on a project and where it is in the company pipeline.
Cloud storage
The cloud can also be used to store your valuable data or to run your website. According to VMWare, a cloud server can be either public or private, and these are typically accessed through a VPN or other portal requiring login credentials. Utilizing cloud storage and web hosting means that employees from all over the world can help you grow your business through the internet. Cloud technology also makes it possible to do away with a brick-and-mortar environment, which can reduce overhead.
Connected e-commerce
Finally, and just as important as all of the above, your website should offer consumers a seamless buying experience. Not only should your customers be able to buy from your website utilizing a variety of payment methods, but their purchases should also be routed through your CRM and other systems so that your inventory, invoicing, and shipping processes are initiated automatically.
We are in the digital era, and that is unlikely to ever end. If you want your business to grow with your future financial aspirations, you have to keep up. The above tools can help, but don’t be afraid to change your digital growth plan as the market demands.
References
Tags: CRM, Scaling, security, SEO
Posted in Business | No Comments »
Two-Factor Authentication Is Not Secure Or Private
Thursday, July 21st, 2022
How Two-Factor Authentication Works
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) works by sending alphanumeric characters to an email address or mobile phone. During the login process after entering correct username and password, the send code is expected to be input in order to complete the login process.
Email Two-Factor Authentication Issues:
- If your login credentials are compromised, the hacker will already have the email address which also commonly used as the username.
- Most platforms show or ask for the email address to be entered before sending the 2FA code. A hacker can then send phishing emails or spam emails to the email address.
- Email 2FA is not a secure method of communication because the messages are encrypted.
A better option would be to secure the platform by never sending passwords over email and never having third party scripts especially trackers on the login page.
Voice Call Two-Factor Authentication Issues:
- This method assumes that a user has a phone and wants to receive phone calls from unknown numbers.
- Relying on a phone call means a user needs to add their phone number to the platform which motivates a hacker to sell the phone number to scrupulous actors.
- The user will have to pay for unnecessary long distance charges.
- Voice Call 2FA is not a secure method of communication because the messages are encrypted. Also the phone voice call can be heard by other people nearby.
- Assumes that a user has full unfettered access to the phone or phone line, which might be on temporary loan or compromised such as an abusive relationship both at work and home.
- Assumes that a user will have reliable phone service. In Canada, telecommunications provider Rogers Communications had a major outage on 2022-07-08 affecting individuals and businesses.
A better option would be selecting a random question that only the user can answer. The online bank Tangerine has used the random question method since at least 2009.
Text Message Two-Factor Authentication Issues:
- Same issues as voice call 2FA in that it assumes a user has a phone with a text message plan.
- Means that a user is not allowed to travel as they will have to pay roaming charges.
- A compromised platform will allow hackers to have access to users phone numbers and send spam text messages.
- When the phone service is down or unavailable in remote rural areas, the user will not be able to login. Also the phone text message can be seen by other people nearby, especially with modern notifications.
- Spammers and scammers can mimic the simply text messages and redirect users to malicious sites.
A better option would be asking a suspicious question that only the user can answer. Tracking the location of a user is a privacy issue and does not improve security.
CAPTCHA Authentication Issues:
- One way to separate humans and bots is with the Turing test for machine intelligence. CAPTCHA tests typically use images, a check-box or simple math calculation. Modern versions implement a timer and click algorithm to verify that the user is a human.
- Users dislike CAPTCHA methods because they are repetitive and impersonal due to the random generated images. There is no need to keep showing CAPTCHA methods if a user just logged off.
- CAPTCHA will not work when a user disables JavaScript or a web browser is not compatible
- Web browser cache can prevent CAPTCHA from loading.
- CAPTCHA will not work when some countries and IT departments ban IP addresses or ban popular third-party services
A better option would be to use a honey pot or wait for human behaviour such as a click.
Better Security With Privacy Without Annoying Users:
- Two or Three-Step login process where the user clicks something to bring up a generated login form.
- The user clicks a button to bring up the password form separately from the username.
- The user clicks can act as a CAPTCHA method using a honey pot such as a hidden check-box or another input form.
- The contact us form of both Ojambo.com and OjamboServices.com implement a tweaked hidden honey pot and never receive spam.
- No tracking on the login screen to prevent hackers from stealing credentials.
Sites that really care about user security should not compromise on privacy. Two-Factor Authentication should not be though of as a secure method because it utilizes two of the most insecure methods of communication. Email, phone voice call and phone text message are not secure as they are unencrypted methods of communication.
References
Tags: 2FA, Authentication, Privacy, security
Posted in Business | No Comments »
