Category: Business

What You Need To Know About Installing Solar Street Lights

Published by Will Chatham on 9/21/2019

Solar energy has been harnessed over the years due to its renewability, cheap price tag, and durability. Since its clean energy, many people have started using it for an opportunity to save the dying planet and reduce pollution. Previously, it was only used as a lighting and heating alternative in homes and industries whose power consumption bills would skyrocket, but that has since changed. It is now a viable and dependable power source on its own. This has seen people use solar and stay off the grid for years. It has also brought with it solar street lights that solely depend on it to function. If you are looking to harness this power for your street lighting project, here are a few things you need to keep in mind:

Location

For your streetlights to work optimally, you need to install them in an ideal spot. Avoid spaces with shades or shadows for long hours as they reduce the light and heat uptake. Consider solar street lights by Solar Lighting International as they engage experts before installation. They help you calculate the maximum insolation and irradiance. However, when there are no open spaces, consider using longer poles or placing adaptive solar lights in high spots. Since the lights require spacing, check the space available for your project as this might hinder your plans.

Cost

To start with, you need to have an estimated cost of installation. This figure can be sourced from several companies that handle installations or from different packages within one company. Compare these prices to ensure you get value for money at affordable rates. You should also consider maintenance and servicing fees as these costs could ruin your budget. In areas where there are known calamities and robbery, consider increasing the maintenance funds kit amount to cater for any eventuality.

Power Output

When installing streetlights, start by having a feasibility study on your power needs. Each space requires different illumination, and you need to have yours figured out. For large spaces, get potent lights and vice versa. The study also helps you determine power output, battery wattage and capacities, lighting options, and fixtures. It also helps you determine the expected light hours each day for correct street light installation. This helps you get customized street lights for your space.

Safety

Despite the power source being the sun, the streetlights can be a threat and risk to those around. For streetlights in public spaces, ensure you do not interfere with the layout and hinder movement or transportation. Consult local authorities first to avoid breaking the law or losing your investment if forcefully brought down. Use quality material to avoid breakages and accidents that can be costly to replace and to compensate victims. Additionally, consider the material that does not put those around it at risk through electrocution.

Return on Investment

Before installing the lights, you must have a motive behind it. Most people install them to enhance security while others do it to increase the work hours within premises. Ensure the cost does not outdo the expected returns as this makes it a non-viable option. Consider cost-effective street lighting options to ensure you recoup your investment and even make more out of it.

Four Tips to Help You Retain Your Employees When Your Business Works Across Time Zones

Published by Will Chatham on 9/12/2019

One of the biggest logistical challenges companies face when expanding across time zones is retaining a team that works in different locations.

One of the top reasons that employees cite as a reason for moving on from a company is that they feel overlooked by management. Not surprisingly, losing your employees is a big risk when you expand your business across more than one location, as your team may start to feel that they are not receiving the oversight, support and attention that they deserve.

If your organization is stretched across several time zones, these strategies offer solutions to help you keep your talent happy.

Embrace Technology Freedom

When your team works from multiple locations, it doesn’t make sense to have your talent tied to a desktop. Your employees may need to travel between offices or work from home or even a hotel room when meetings draw them to far-flung cities.

A useful strategy for managing this mobile workforce is giving your team choice over the devices they use. Thanks to advancements in mobile device management, allowing your team their choice of technology needn’t be cause for worry in terms of security. In fact, MDM is one of the ways that technology can improve security in business. Not only does MDM give you content visibility across your company’s devices, but Electric MDM can reduce business risks and support costs. Allowing your team to use a device of their choice is also a great way to boost retention. Bonus!

Focus on Employee Wellness

Investing heavily in employee wellness is vital, as it signals to your team that you value their contribution. Providing great office facilities with comfortable break-out areas is a great way to demonstrate that you are concerned about the quality of your team’s work environment, wherever they are located.

Prioritize Transparency

When the time comes to expand across time zones, it helps to be as transparent as possible about the future of your business, highlighting what the geographic expansion means for your team. Underlining that expanding your business will open doors for your team in their own careers is a great way to assure them that the transition period and challenges of expansion will pay off for them as well.

Accept Unusual Work Hours

When your various teams span multiple time zones, it won’t be unusual for your team to work odd working hours to cater to the requirements of your business. Some employees may struggle at first, and it’s important to support them if they can’t adjust, ideally offering transfers to other cities as an option. But now and then, one of your staff might embrace the unusual business hours and wish to work all their hours on the 24hr clock. And why not? A nine-to-five does not suit everybody, as research has shown that circadian rhythms vary, so different workers will be naturally more productive at different times. As far as possible, it makes sense to allow your team to work the hours that suit them best. Not only will they be more productive, but they are more likely to want to stay in their jobs, as they will feel supported and valued.

Whether you employ a staff of three or thirty, managing your team across time zones can be tricky. These tips will help you ensure that none of your work (or team members) slips through the cracks, and your business continues to thrive.

Effective Ways To Use Technology In Business

Published by Will Chatham on 4/14/2019

Technology is benefiting more and more businesses nowadays than ever before. There are plenty of advantages to using technology and companies of all sizes and industries should be looking at technology to help run their businesses more efficiently. Here are some effective ways to use technology in business.

Use Social Media To Reach Customers Globally

Social media is a very powerful tool when it comes to marketing and sales. There are a variety of social media platforms now that businesses are using to grow a following not just nationally but internationally. With users all over the world, people are using social media as a way to connect and find new interests. This is a great opportunity for a business that wants to branch out and possibly take on a global market. It is now more difficult to grow your following, so having the right individuals or team to solely focus on the social media side of the business is crucial

A business looking to use social media should do some research into what platform would work best for them. Twitter is more a newsfeed whereas Instagram is a visually stimulating platform, ideal for those who use images to sell their products or services.

Promote With A Website

Having a website is a must-have for every business as that’s how many potential clients or customers check out a new company that they’ve just come across. A website is also the place where a business fully owns the content that they share. The website should be high-quality, well designed and has an easy to navigate layout. There should also be a contact page and links to social media pages. This gives anyone who’s visiting the site, plenty of ways to contact the business through their preferred line of communication. Having a website boosts a company’s legitimacy as many find it strange if a business doesn’t have an online profile.

Monitor Projects With Digital Analytics

When it comes to monitoring the success rate of a project or campaign, the data received isn’t as accurate or detailed as it is with today’s technology. There’s now online analytic software like Google Analytics which gives a detailed breakdown of your website is performing. It’ll give information on your visitors, how long they engage on a page, their demographics and interests. Social media platforms are also offering the same thing, and this is providing businesses with an opportunity to fine-tune and tailor their product or service so that it hits the target audience even better next time.

There’s also plenty of other systems available that help achieve success much more easily, like Spiro for example. Spiro offers AI-powered reports to help organise contacts, reach more prospective clients and close deals.

Streamline Finances With Software

When providing invoices and tracking expenses, sometimes there can be delays or simply cases of human error where certain finances get forgotten about. However, using one simple piece of software can help streamline all of these avenues of finance so that fewer mistakes are made and it’s all conducted within a professional realm. Most of these interfaces can be controlled via computer and mobile, so it also gives you the opportunity of managing finances on the go.

Productivity Management

Productivity within the workplace can also now be monitored thanks to project management applications. This is great because it means that no one can get away with not pulling their weight. Everyone in a team can see what everyone else is doing, and that’s also great for keeping communication clear, rather than mistakes being made because not everyone was on the same page. A project system is great for those working in teams and will hopefully keep productivity levels constant.

Improve Your Security

As more of us get on board with technology, there also becomes more of an opportunity for scams and cyber attacks. For any business, this can be dangerous, especially if they’re dealing with confidential information. Protecting your wireless networks with passwords, encrypting files and having a solid security system in place for your servers and network is crucial. This is something that should always be monitored and looked at to improve. As technology improves and advances, so do those individuals who seek to cause major damage to companies

Technology has now become very dominant in all aspects of our lives, and without it, the opportunities for success may not be as widely available as they are now. So don’t be afraid of using technology in business, it could end up benefiting you hugely.

Nail Your Next Presentation With These Killer Tips

Published by Will Chatham on 4/10/2019

You never know when you might be required to make a presentation, so it’s always worth having a few great tips and tricks up your sleeves ready for when the next one is sprung on you. Your manager might ask you to prepare a presentation to give during your next team meeting or in the coming pitch to a client. Some employers even get applicants to create a presentation to present in their job interview. It’s also regularly asked of students in high school and college, and a portion of their final grade in a subject might rest heavily on their presentation skills.

So, as you can see, it really is worth brushing up on these skills if your current presentation skills are fairly weak. To get started, you might want to use a few of these useful tips.

Make Your Slides Look Great

First of all, you need to make sure that your slides look amazing. If they look quite plain and dull, then your audience might get bored of them pretty quickly. There will be nothing intriguing about them that will make them want to read all of the content on them. It’s easy to brighten up your slides, though. Reading The 78 Best Free Google Slides Themes will give you an idea of the kinds of themes you can use to make the slides look as entertaining or professional as you need them to be. Make sure you stick to the same color scheme on each slide, as using too many colors and patterns could make them look very messy and there may not be much flow between them.

Follow The 10-20-30 Rule

Have you ever heard of the 10-20-30 rule before? This was devised by Guy Kawasaki, who is something of a presentation expert! It basically means that there should be no more than ten slides in your presentation; it can’t last for more than twenty minutes, and the font that you use shouldn’t be smaller than thirty point. This will help you get to your point quickly, without including any information that isn’t really necessary and might end up boring your audience.

Add Some Humor

One surefire way to keep hold of your audience’s attention is to add some humor to your presentation. Even if it is a professional presentation for work, you should still try to keep it light by adding a few jokes throughout. You might even want to add some to the content of your slides for your audience to read themselves. If you do add enough humor, you should find that the audience end up on your side quickly and will be a lot more open to what you have to say. That will also help you relax as well, as knowing that the audience like what you have to say should help remove some of your original nerves.

Concentrate On Your Main Message

It can be all too easy to end up waffling about matters and topics that aren’t all that related to the main topic of your presentation. Make sure you don’t do that, though, as this could be very distracting for people watching your presentation, and their minds might start to wander elsewhere. So, whenever you are speaking, make sure that it is only ever about the main message that you want to get across in your presentation.

Tell Stories

It will always pay off to try to appeal to your audience’s human side, and the best way you can do this is to tell some stories and anecdotes. People love listening to stories and they will connect with you a lot more than if you simply read out facts and statements. One way to use stories in your presentations is to use some real-life examples. Just make sure that they are related to the topic of your presentation, though, or else they might seem pointless to your audience.

Don’t Force Your Gestures

Using body language throughout your presentation will help you come across as very relaxed and natural. Some people try and force some gestures to try and come off as feeling relaxed when in fact they are actually quite nervous. This will only make you look even more nervous, so it’s best not to force anything and instead just let yourself make your regular natural body language and hand gestures.

Hopefully, all of these tips will help you do a good job of your next presentation. It could help you get a new job, promotion, or sign a new client!

5 Tips to Finding the Ideal Working Space in Long Island

Published by Will Chatham on 4/9/2019

Although, nowadays, most people operate their business from their homes, research shows that customers tend to have more confidence in businesses that have a brick and mortar shop that is outside of the home. This is because it’s easy to get in touch with such businesses when you have a burning need. And as an entrepreneur, having an office puts a statement that you are serious about what you do. Besides that, it guarantees that you will enjoy working in a cool environment that’s free from disturbances and have enough space for keeping your tools of the trade. However, finding an ideal office space for rent can be a huge challenge, especially if it’s your first time. This is because you don’t know what to look for. Here is a list of things to consider when looking to find offices in Long Island.

1. Location

When it comes to setting up an office, location is everything. In fact, the location that you go for will definitely determine how your business will perform. You should actually narrow down to a strategic location. An ideal office location is one that’s within a city so that your clients don’t have to drive for many hours to reach you. You should also make sure that the area where you will have a has a reliable transport system. This is because you can’t be sure that all your clients will use their cars when coming to your office. Besides that, you have to consider the other businesses that are in that area. For best results, it’s advisable you rent an office in an area that’s known in majoring in your niche market. That way, you will have higher chances of being seen by clients that visit other similar businesses in the same office block.

2. Size

The size of an office plays an important role in determining how comfortable you will fee. At the end of the day, you want to pick an office space that’s neither too small nor large. If by any chance you pick a small space probably because you don’t want to have time for doing a thorough search, you will have an office that’s congested, meaning you will not have enough space for all your equipment. On the other hand, a bigger space will make your office look empty. Such a problem can be avoided by approximating the size of the office by measuring every square foot that you might need for keeping all your stuff including furniture and computers.

3. Price

The price of office space is usually determined by location and size. If the space is small, you will definitely be charged much less rent than someone who takes a bigger space and vice versa. Besides that, offices that are located in prime locations normally cost more. But that’s not a problem. Before occupying any working space, you should first ask yourself whether you will be able to afford the listed price without hurting your finances. It actually depends on the profits that your business is currently making. However, don’t make your decision based on projections because you can never be sure whether your venture will thrive in the new location. In addition to that, you should consider asking for a discount because everything including rent is negotiable. If an office space has been vacant for too long the landlord will be desperate to have some tenants. Take advantage of such desperation to ask for a discount.

4. Accessibility

People generally like visiting offices that are accessible. Such offices have infrastructure that make visitors feel at home. Some of the things to look out for include elevators, grilled staircases and parking yard. Assuming that your office will not be on the ground floor, it’s advisable you pick a block that’s served by an elevator round the clock. Keep in mind that some of your clients might be using crutches or a wheelchair. In addition to that, you should rent an office in a place where there is ample parking space for your car and those of your clients.

5. Consult a Tenant Broker

Tenant brokers usually know a given area like the back of their hand. They can therefore help you find an office space for rent within a short period of time. And since they have been around for many years, they definitely know the best offices in town that are tailored to meet your needs. Besides that, they know the landlords that are a pain in the neck and those that are cool. They can therefore spare you from the trouble of renting an office space that’s not close to what you really need. The good thing is that they will not ask you to pay them because they are usually paid by the landlord.