Coleman Technologies Blog

Here, we’ll commit some time to examining the enterprise-level technology that SMBs are now leveraging to encourage their business’ forward momentum, and how you can leverage a solution that may not initially seem to be a fit.

The first consideration that any small business decision maker needs to take is how connected people are today. This level of connectivity produces many things, perhaps most of all heightened expectations - a fact that any SMB needs to contend with.

Historically, a small business would never invest in solutions meant to improve the customer’s experience and relationship with the company - they just didn’t have to. However, consumer demand makes it so that investing heavily in software can bring opportunities that simply wouldn’t be there otherwise.

As a result, your SMB needs to have the following solutions in its arsenal:

Customer Relationship Management

It can almost be said that, if your business doesn’t use a CRM, you aren’t really in business. That’s how crucial a CRM system can be nowadays. With hundreds of options out there, there are those that are unquestionably meant for the enterprise user, as well as plenty of options dedicated to a particular industry’s needs. These particular solutions take the benefits of the CRM and integrate different options that are precisely suited to a specific industry vertical.

One of the biggest small-business benefits of a CRM has to be how it can automate a significant amount of tasks that once were handled by multiple employees - a relatively larger chunk of its workforce (and payroll) than a larger competitor would be concerned with. This makes the CRM that much more valuable to a small business, as it reduces the manpower needed to complete business-critical tasks through automation. By integrating your customer relationships with your scheduling, your payroll, and other concerns, a CRM helps to make your business and its operations more streamlined.

Supply Chain Management

The demands of the customer are more crucial than ever to meet, especially for today’s smaller manufacturer. This means that the supply chain (procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution) needs to smoothly work in coordination with its different parts. This is made easier by leveraging a single Supply Chain Management platform. Some of the options that these platforms often include, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, are the same that are found in a CRM. This makes it easier to combine and consolidate software solutions so that users have that much less to learn to keep business moving.

Marketing Automation

Much like was said regarding the CRM, today’s small business doesn’t really exist without some kind of online presence. Some businesses will have an entire website created, while some stick to social media profiles. If you’re looking to boost your own business’ revenue generation (and why wouldn’t you be), building up your online presence is both an affordable and an effective means of doing so. Pairing this presence with automated systems can help you to nurture leads while simultaneously speeding up business and reducing operational costs.

This is how it works: your website captures leads. Once you have these leads, your marketing automation solution takes your captured information and integrates it with the CRM - saving you from the considerable task of doing it yourself. The end result, more worthwhile conversations that ideally end in more closed sales.

With the tools that are available today, it is amazing that more businesses aren’t leveraging them to cut costs and accomplish more. Don’t you want to get out ahead? The IT professionals at Coleman Technologies can help by deploying the ones that fit your business’ operations. For more information, call us at (604) 513-9428.

Study after study has been performed over the years about the impact of workplace wellness programs, producing various results. Some have indicated health improvements and cost savings, while others haven’t. However, the studies that were performed in the past had a high rate of issues. Whether there was no comparison group, or the chance of personal bias influencing signups, these studies simply didn’t provide reliable data.

Now, however, researchers from the University of Chicago and Harvard have conducted a large-scale study that meets the requirements that such a study is usually beholden to.

The BJ’s Wholesale Club Experiment

This experiment began by selecting 20 of the big-box retailer’s outlet centers to offer an employee wellness program. 140 additional BJ’s locations did not offer any such program. Across the 160 clubs involved, there were almost 33,000 workers employed.

Participants filled out a health risk questionnaire, took health classes, and had basic medical tests performed. After 18 months, their progress was evaluated...and that’s where things got interesting.

Despite the workers who were participating in this program reporting healthier behaviors than they once exhibited, almost all other factors were left unchanged. Blood sugar levels, job performance and attendance, and employer health care spending all were unaffected.

Why This Might Be

There’s a good chance that the results of this study were skewed by the incentives offered to participants. Participants were given gift cards for attending wellness courses, for a total incentive of about $250. According to founder and CEO of Bravo Wellness, Jim Pshock, this may just not have been enough. According to Pshock, any amount less than $400 is only going to be enough to incentivize people to do what they were already going to do anyways. As Pshock put it: “It’s simply too small to get them to do things they weren’t already excited about.”

Another study, published in 2018 by the University of Illinois, essentially debunked the idea of the workplace wellness program, concluding that it neither reduced costs or impacted behaviors - although this study also found that participants of wellness programs were those who were already healthy and motivated. This potentially suggests that the true benefit of these programs isn’t to make their existing workforce healthier, but to attract and retain healthier employees.

There are other potential contributing factors as well. A recent survey indicated that 84 percent of employees saw their wellness programs as “one-size-fits-all,” a concept that doesn’t really work will all of the various factors that contribute to health. Eighty percent of respondents to that same survey claimed that more personalization would contribute to their participation in wellness programs.

Why You Want to Adopt a Workplace Wellness Initiative

Admittedly, we’ve provided a mixed defense for these kinds of activities, but it cannot be denied that anything you can do to promote the health of your employees will only benefit your business - healthy employees tend not to call in sick, after all.

There are other benefits to these programs as well:

• Reduced Stress - The stress management benefits of healthier behaviors have been well documented. By adopting these healthier behaviors, you and your staff can reduce the stress that comes from the office and approach the source issues more effectively.
  
  
• Community Building - As the boss, you want your entire team to work as, well, a team. Unfortunately, if certain departments don’t work together much, this kind of relationship can be hard to develop. However, many activities that would fall under a workplace wellness initiative can help cross departmental lines, drawing your team closer together.
  
  
• Better Moods - Wellness programs allow employees to try out new activities, which can not only add to their wellbeing, but can also keep them engaged and productive. Plus, studies have indicated that employees who participate in these programs were generally happier with their work situation.

What have you done to cultivate a more health-conscious workplace? Share your strategies in the comments!

Profitable Types of Data

Believe it or not, even a small business with a handful of clients has data worth stealing. You’re in business to make money, and by virtue of this fact, you likely collect and store financial information. In fact, you collect a ton of valuable data. The type of data that hackers are looking for.

In addition to all of the financial details you collect, there is also all of the contact information regarding leads, clients, and customers. With so many emails and phone numbers stored on your infrastructure, hackers can have a field day. They will have all the information they need to steal funds, distribute malware, and create unpleasant situations for your business.

The Unpredictability Factor

Not all hackers have any specific goal in mind when they hack you. Sometimes all they want to do is make your life miserable. The unpredictability associated with hackers is one of the most dangerous parts of them, as they can take advantage of any overlooked vulnerabilities to create a problematic situation for you.

The Impact of Security Negligence

If your business falls victim to a hacker, it’s certain to affect your business' operations. In some cases, it could be subject to compliance fines that could break your budget and put your business at greater risk. Furthermore, you could lose access to important data that makes your business work, threatening its future and all but guaranteeing that recovery can never happen. Therefore, the importance of protecting your network can never be overstated.

Coleman Technologies can help your business implement the security solutions needed to maximize protection from threats. To learn more about what we can do for your organization, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Unfortunately, most attacks still come in through email, and can slip by your users. Even the most complex cybersecurity platforms used by massive corporations and governments can be foiled by a simple phishing attack, and your end-users are your last line of defense.

How Can an Employee Fall Victim?

Phishing attacks are designed to look real. An email might come in looking like a valid message from Paypal, a bank, a vendor, or even from another employee or client. Hackers use several tricks to make the email look real, such as spoofing the address or designing the content of the email to look legitimate.

Unfortunately, if the user clicks on the link in the email or downloads the attachment, they could open themselves and your company up to whatever threats contained within.

Commonly, this leads to stolen sensitive information, or installs malware on the device, or grants the hacker the ability to log into the user’s bank account.

While having strong IT security can reduce the amount of these phishing attacks that come in, a percentage can be tricky enough to bypass your firewalls and content filters, exposing your staff to situations that could your whole endeavor in

Educate Your Employees

It’s important to teach employees how to catch a phishing attack. We recommend sharing the following steps with your staff, or even printing them out and posting them around the office:

1. Carefully hover (don’t click!) over links and see if they go to a legitimate URL. If the email is from Paypal, a link should lead back to paypal.com or accounts.paypal.com. If there is anything strange between ‘paypal’ and the ‘.com’ then something is suspicious. There should also be a forward slash (/) after the .com.   If the URL was something like paypal.com.mailru382.co/something, then you are being spoofed. Everyone handles their domains a little differently, but use this as a general rule of thumb:
   1. paypal.com - Safe
   2. paypal.com/activatecard - Safe
   3. business.paypal.com - Safe
   4. business.paypal.com/retail - Safe
   5. paypal.com.activatecard.net - Suspicious! (notice the dot immediately after Paypal’s domain name)
   6. paypal.com.activatecard.net/secure - Suspicious!
   7. paypal.com/activatecard/tinyurl.com/retail - Suspicious! Don’t trust dots after the domain!
2. Check the email in the header. An email from Amazon wouldn’t come in as This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Do a quick Google search for the email address to see if it is legitimate.
3. Always be careful opening attachments. If there is an attachment or link on the email, be extra cautious.
4. Be skeptical of password alerts. If the email mentions passwords, such as “your password has been stolen,” be suspicious.

Phishing Simulation

Another great tactic is to have regular phishing simulations. This is where we create a series of fake phishing emails (don’t worry, it’s safe), and randomly send it to your staff. When someone falls for the attack, we send them educational information to help them prevent being tricked by a real one.

We’ve found this to be very effective, without taking a lot of time out of an employees already busy day.

Are you interested in helping to protect your staff from falling victim to phishing attacks? Give us a call at (604) 513-9428.