How to Manage Your Business While Traveling

Whether it’s following up on work, assigning tasks, checking on your business mail, or just replying to customers, it can all be done from your phone. As a matter of fact, almost anything can get done online, through your phone today.

Yes, it’s that simple. But don’t go running home or rushing off to your next vacation destination just yet! We need to establish how you can get all this done and more without being at the office. Keep reading to find out the key factors you need to consider when managing your business while traveling or being away.

Key Factors to remotely managing your business:

Conduct Regular Meetings:

Everyone doesn’t need to be huddled up in the conference room to conduct a good meeting; you can get remote employees, freelancers, and employees at the office all in the same meeting with just an internet connection.

Now meeting on a daily or even weekly basis can be difficult while you’re traveling because you’re mostly busy and have other things to address. However, meeting with the managers weekly or bi-weekly will reassure your presence in the office and confirm your supervision on all business matters.

You can easily conduct meetings through Skype or Google Hangouts where everyone can see each other and even share files if needed. You can also use Google Slides for presentations or Team Viewer to share your computer screen with everyone for demonstration.

Be sure to regularly interact with your employees no matter where you are and build close relations with them that can evolve into trust. If this is accomplished, you’ll never need to worry about business when you’re away.

Follow-up on Work Progress & Hours:

You being away from the office should never mean work doesn’t get done or is on pause. Technology created a solution for slacking or lazy employees, time tracking software. This type of software allows you to track employees working hours so you will always be updated with who came late or who worked overtime.

Employees will be able to track their shifts, breaks, and leave notes on their work progress.

There are many types of time tracking software, some are essentially focused on tracking working hours like ClockIn Portal that generate timesheets and can be integrated with payroll systems.

Others include a project management feature like Zoho Projects where you can share projects, assign tasks, and follow-up on tasks.

You can also use essential project management software like Basecamp or Asana that mainly focus on getting work done efficiently. Project management software allows you to assign tasks, update them with comments, set deadlines, add attachments, and eventually mark them as complete. With a straightforward tracking method of working hours and work progress, employees will feel obligated to stay focused and get things done faster.

Handle Business Mail Instantly:

While traveling, your mail is something you mustn’t forget about. Neglecting your mail for even a few days can lead to problems. Unattended mail can be important contracts from clients, documents from partners or investors, or feedback from your customers.

With a virtual mailbox, you can take your mail with you wherever you go.

A virtual mailbox is a mailbox that you can access online and handle your mail. The options vary from shredding any document or forwarding packages to opening, archiving, or downloading mail in just a few minutes. Your mail is delivered to secure mail facilities where the envelope is scanned and uploaded to your cloud-based mailbox for you to control.

So not only is it remote access to your important mail, but it eliminates the need for a mailroom! This means lesser paper storage, no mail operators, and faster mail operations, a win-win for you and your pocket.

Now, you’re ready to go!

With your business essentials all in check, you can easily travel whenever needed without worrying about work falling behind or inefficiently managing your business. By following these three factors, you can manage your tasks and still have time to enjoy your vacation!

Centrally Manage Human Resources Administration

Management of human resource provides solution that connects the people, processes and knowledge essential for an organization. For employees, centrally managed human resource administration, enables organizations in streamline processes, increase access to information, and reduce HR-related paperwork and costs. For this companies has been outsourcing Hr services and the offshore company handles it by efficiently. Managers who are on Hr positions handle it efficiently through knowledge of rules and regulations.

HR Services are a portal solution based on the skills and experience and designed to get employees, from the corner office to the shop floor, more involved in the HR process. These Service provides capabilities of employees to communicate, share documents, timeliness records and access policies, procedures and other HR-related information.

Users also have an access to seven work flow request types, including vacation requests and expense claim approvals. Therefore, those employees easily locate information, initiate, and manage processes in real time.

The self-service aspect of the system also deflects repetitive inquiries regarding benefits, holidays, etc., freeing HR staff to focus on more strategic activities that gives proper satisfaction to our human resource.

This is a cost-effective strategy for an organization and manager. Employee Self Service Portal enables businesses to roll out specific administrative functionality to all employees in a cost conscious manner, enabling them to centralize human resource management and achieve greater efficiency throughout the organization. That has the potential for a company to grab the opportunity in an organization.

Therefore, many sites provide the organization streamlining your administrative processes and providing outsourcing human resource and development of the workforce. So that, big amount of money could be saved to certain extent. By outsourcing Hr services to India, the company would developed it marketing concern and concentrate on the core business to develop the potential work more easily.

Plan Your Time – Manage Your Time, Invest Your Time

Introduction

At one stage or another we all have heard or read all or any of the below mentioned, Time Related Phrases:

1) Time is money. Time is wealth.

2) Time is a river. Time is wind.

3) Respect your time.

4) Doesn’t matter what you do…time will just pass away.

5) You never know, when your time will change. (Samey bada balvaan hota hai)

6) Each year, each day, each moment is unique in its own way. Once it passes, it will never come again.

7) Respect my time and I will respect yours.

8) With time, all wounds will heal.

9) If I had more hours

10) I don’t have time

There are many more.

But, like money or wealth or your assets can you save your time for difficult days? No, you cannot. Your time is now, invest it or waste it.

We are living in an era where researchers, philosophers and historians are talking, discussing and debating about “Life Management”…”Plan your life”. Every individual should know what he want in his life? Where he see himself after 5 or 10 years? One should know what he or she is expecting in his or her life. Hence, Time Management is an important aspect of our life.

How busy are you? – Your daily Routine

Let’s see, what we (Most of us) do in our daily life. How we are managing our day? As an example, I will take my daily schedule and I am sure that yours too will be closer to that. We spend time in following activities:

1) Rest / Sleep – 8 hours

2) Health: Yoga, Exercise – 1 hour

3) Prayers – 1 Hour

4) Food (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Snacks) – 2 hours

5) Entertainment – 2 hours

6) Knowledge / Learning / News – 1 hour

7) Socializing – 1 Hour

8) Work/Profession/Career – 10 hours

9) Traveling – 3hours

10) Time for Family – 3 hours

One should do all these activities to have a successful, purposeful, stress free and happy life. If I calculate above mentioned time, it comes out to be 32 hours, whereas there are only 24 hours in a day. So, how to manage? I don’t want to cut any of the activity.

Manage your Time

One can manage his time by using following skills and tools

1) Planning

2) Multi-tasking

3) Optimum use of Technology

4) Delegation

5) Self Discipline

Plan your day. Be disciplined. Respect your time and that of others too. Have proper schedule. Do multitasking. Use technology in a best possible manner.

Let’s plan your day

1) You wake-up in the morning and then go for walk or jogging. At the same time on your walk-man you can also listen to prayers, religious songs etc. Right or Wrong?

2) Once you come back from your walk, at the time of your morning tea or milk, you can scan through Newspaper or News Channels to keep you updated with the latest events and news. Can you?

3) While having your breakfast, you can also spend that time with your kids and family or listen to songs of your choice.

4) While driving or traveling to your office you can either listen to songs or use your mobile – phone to stay in touch with your friends and relatives through messages and calls. If you are at a senior level and really busy and your office is quite far away…you can also have one meeting in your car. You can also go through few reports, analysis; check those reports and also sign those documents that need your signatures and approvals. Can you do this?

5) In office, you do all of the following things:

A) Internal Meetings (There are three types of meetings – Briefing, Discussion / Debate, Review)

B) Routine work (It will be very useful for you to have well defined processes to take care of routine works)

C) Value Addition to your Function and Department

D) Client Meetings (Purpose can be any of the following: update them; get more business; grievance / query handling)

E) Interviews (To add a new person to your team; Employee Retention; Employee Grievance Handling)

Do you think that there is anything more that you do at your workplace; over and above the activities that I have listed???

6) During your first tea-break in office, have a brief meeting with your team-members and delegate your routine work.

7) You can have an important client or business meeting during your lunch.

8) For discussion / debates with seniors or your peers located at different areas, you can either use the technology of Conference Call or Video Conferencing. It will help you in managing your time and save your money. Same technology can be used for interviewing candidates from different locations. You can also use this technology for Induction, Training and Development and also for Media briefing. If you can solve a problem through a simple message on mobile phone or a simple e-mail; you don’ have to call for a meeting. So, use your mobile phone and internet to help you in managing your time.

9) Along with your second tea-break, you can also have another meeting (Review Meeting) with your team.

10) While moving from one office to another or one department to another, you can also send messages to your family members, relatives and friends and stay in touch with them.

11) When you are in a meeting, it is important that you prepare yourself for the meeting and keep it within the limits of discussion. Be there for the meeting, on time and you should also know when to end the meeting. It is a matter of discipline.

12) In the evening, while going home you can do any of the following: Listen to your favorite songs; go through the reports and papers or have meeting with client or customer.

13) Once you are at home, give your time to family. Listen to them. Solve their Concerns. Enjoy with them. Do not bore them by discussing about your day in the office.

14) At the time of Dinner, you can again update yourself with news and current updates.

15) Before, you retire for the day, read something.

Do you think, that you have things to do or to take care that I have not mentioned in the list?

What Busy People do?

1) They respect their time as well as that of the other person.

2) They manage their time in such a manner that they get time to do everything in their life.

3) They use technology in a best possible manner.

4) They are self-disciplined.

5) They plan their day and their time.

6) They know their limitations. They trust people, efficiencies & talent of people around them and delegate their work.

7) They take responsibility and accountability.

What Busy People don’t do?

1) They don’t scream or complain for lack of time.

2) They do not procrastinate or postpone their work.

3) They don’t gossip.

4) They don’t blame TIME for their failures and frustrations.

5) They don’t mix their work with family. They don’t carry their work to home and don’t bring their family emotions and fights to workplace.

6) They don’t blame others.

Conclusion

Number of hours in a day will not change. There will only be 86,400 seconds in a day. It is up to you, how you manage and use each of those seconds. One needs to invest each second. As, it has been rightly said, time once passed will never come again. Busy people are very satisfied, happy and do everything that they want to do in their life. Those, who show that they are busy, end up with frustration, burn-outs, stress and most of the time failure in life and profession.

Before I sign-out, I like to share few examples to let you know the value of Time, I studied these examples when I was in school,

To realize the value of one year; ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month; ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week; ask an editor of a weekly newspaper or magazine

To realize the value of one hour; ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute; ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second; ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond; ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you share it with someone special.

Looking forward to your Comments and Feedback

With lots of love, care and affection,

Tips on How to Manage Your Business

Running a business requires a lot of caution, especially when it comes to issues that have to do with finances. The main aim of starting a business enterprise is making money, and as such, the money that comes in and goes out of the enterprise should be kept in track and kept in good custody. If one cannot account for the finances that get in and out of the business, then they have no business being in that venture. Finance management is not always an easy thing to do, and if as an entrepreneur you are not confident in the whole management process, do not be afraid to consult professionals in that area.

In this uncertain and unpredictable economy, it helps to come up with a strategy for fast collection of funds especially from your debtors. The faster you can get your money, the easier it will be to plan for it. Remember that, it is not always easy to plan for money that is not already in your hands. Once you are able to collect money from debtors in good time, you are also able to pay bills and your creditors in time, and as such, the remaining amount can go into savings. Otherwise, you will be entangled in a cycle of borrowing every now and then to keep up with creditors demands.

If you talk to a majority of financial advisory, they will give you clues on what you can do to ensure that cash inflows come in promptly. Among the tips include:

1) Speeding up customers orders by having them faxed to you instead of mailing them. The sooner you are able to receive and clarify your customers orders, the sooner you will be able to send out invoices.

2) Always send out invoices as you send the goods to the customer. Do not wait for a week or a month to start sending those bills to your clients!

3) As a measure of caution, always make it clear on the invoice when payment is due, such that there will be no disagreements arising later when you start making follow up calls on payment.

One way in which you can make your customers committed to paying up on time is to always indicate a penalty fee in case they default on the due date for payment. Just to make collection easier for you and payment easier for your customers, make use of a bank lock mailbox which is conveniently placed near them. This will make it easier for them to just drop off their checks and for the bank to credit your account immediately as soon as the checks have been deposited. If this arrangement does not work for you, then be sure to always deposit the checks as soon as you receive them for your account to be credited in the shortest time possible.

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