5 Ways to Make Your Business Thrive in Tough Economic Times

Times are hard. Agreed. The corona virus scare has toppled the world economy 360 degrees. Businesses – both small and big – have shut down, workers have either been laid off or forced to stay home. New job opportunities are equally dim with growing uncertainty over the future. How can any business hope to keep it going?

Patience and faith are the keys but there are other vital factors which can help you pass through the recession.

5 Ways to Make Your Business Thrive During Crisis

1. Maintain your versatility:

This is the time to try out all those things that you’ve been thinking about for long but could never get on to doing them. Include more versatile aspects into your business operations. This would keep you ahead of competition in this tough phase and also bring you more customers. For instance, if you weren’t online yet, now is the right time. More people are shopping from home now so open your online store. /

Offer more options to your consumers like flexible working hours, home deliveries, free shipping, etc. Think of making improvements in your current product line or incorporating more product ranges. You never know what would click with your audience right now.

2. Pay attention to technological evolution:

Technology is what will come to your aid even when the economy is receding. That is your biggest asset in any challenge. If your employees can’t work in your office premises, technology can enable them to work remotely and continue to work for you effectively. Of course, you’d need certain advanced software tools to manage remote work; a little attention to it will go a long way.

3. Build your employee asset:

They are your biggest strength through thick and thin. Invest your time and effort on maintaining a strong and friendly employee database to help you get through tough business phases. Remember that even during these times, your customers are going to interact with your employees – the vital point of contact – for all their needs. If your employees can assure your customers of continued and quality service regardless of challenges, it’s a battle half won.

4. Work on crisis management and business continuity planning:

To be a successful business, you must give priority to creating a business continuity plan as part of effective crisis management. For unprecedented times like these, it’d really help. Your plan would entail a list of the most important business operations which need to be restored ASAP when the crisis hits. It’d also include employee training to be prepared to work in emergency situations, even remotely, if required.

5. Protect your business repute:

Maintaining your brand presence is of utmost importance. Retaining your current customers and ensuring continual inflow of new ones should be prioritised. Keep your social media presence strong at this time. Send out reminder messages for your brand through these channels and keep the content strong.

Economic crisis is inevitable but careful preventive measures in advance can keep customer trust going and help you retain your market position.

Reasons Why School Management System is Important

Thanks to the evolution of technology by the day, schools are fast growing into ‘smart schools’. The education sector has succeeded in keeping pace with the times, embracing technology with open arms for its betterment. A classic example of this is the School Management System, an innovative software feature that brings immense benefits to schools, which we intend to highlight in this post.

Why Your Institution Needs the School Management System

This technology has simplified administrative and other numerous vital functions carried out in a school in a jiffy. It only makes sense for all schools today to adopt this unique technological feature in their best interests. Here’s why:

1. Reduced communication gap:

The prime challenge a school faces is the gap in information transmitted between the teachers, students and their parents. This three-way communication channel shouldrun smoothlyat all times. Parents should be well aware of their ward’s regular progress and this is what teachers appreciate too – parents sharing the load of child’s academic development.

The School Management System makes this possible by prompting an instant and spontaneous connect between these three significant players via mobile or web apps and SMS/chat bots. All urgent and important info can pass between these three channels immediately, maintaining transparency all along

2. Managing inventory becomes easier:

The school campus encompasses a host of vital inventory in way of library, transport service and hostel provision (if any). The software comes of great use in managing these assets efficiently. By providing for distinct modules for each of these services, the entire school inventory can be managed in just a few clicks. This helps reduce time and effort, thereby improving efficiency.

3. Maintaining attendance records is a piece of cake:

This is the most important task for every school and is perhaps the most challenging as well. Accuracy is the key here. With so many attendance records to handle for thousands of students, the task can be quite daunting for teachers and the admin staff. Not to forget, tons of papers gets used up in the process.

The School Management System brings in paperless attendance records of all students and the software ensures that the entire process is as fool-proof as can be.

4. Effective fee collection:

Collecting fees and maintaining records for every student is yet another challenge for the admin staff, just like attendance. This too gets streamlined with the new technology. Online payments become possible, relieving the parents of undue stress. All the money collected too can be effectively computed via the inbuilt accounting module, keeping track of defaulters too.

5. Simplifying admissions:

Every new academic year welcomes new admissions to the school in bulk. Bulk is the underlying word here because making data entries of all new entrants using the traditional system can be quite tiresome. With the school ERP software, human effort can be reduced; edits to the info can be made easily later on.

If you haven’t already, time to get the School Management System installed for better streamlining of school operations.

JIRA: An Overview of a Unique Project Management Tool

JIRA has gained immense popularity as a highly efficient project management tool that has streamlined several software projects in a jiffy. Here we present a detailed overview of this unique software –the leader in project management tools – its several benefits and how it has changed the face of project management in business organisations.

What is JIRA?

In simple words, JIRA refers to a centralised project management system that allows for customisation too. All projects in an organisation can be entered into a central database under the JIRA software system. Each project then undergoes several workflow processes (software development lifecycle). These workflows, guided by JIRA rules, help keep a check on the individual status of each project.

How Does JIRA Work?

The software works on the famous Agile methodology for development of software. There are two key principles guiding this project management system – user flexibility and easy customisation.

The project management workflows of JIRA represent the work processes in an organisation. JIRA allows for easy customisation of all workflows, including projects, issues/bugs, and other subtasks. Besides, any task or issue can be made part of a workflow. Each workflow is marked by different statuses and transitions. JIRA enables the user to keep easy track of a specific project, determining the exact stage at which the given project or task is currently at.

Why Use JIRA?

Though the tool was originally designed for software developers as a bug tracker, it soon developed into an excellent project management software that can come in handy for several teams/domains. Here are a few advantages of using JIRA in every organisation, irrespective of the nature of work:

Effective team organisation, within and outside:

Not only would you find it easy to manage your team inside the company but also those employees/freelancers who work remotely. JIRA’s team organisation and detailed reporting skills can be used in this case – to keep tab on the tasks assigned to each person.

Customisable workflows:

The best part about JIRA is its customisability. JIRA provides certain built-in workflows too but you can also design your own from scratch to suit your individual needs. For instance, approval requirements for certain tasks can be entered. Also, when the project transitions from one stage to another, certain functions can be set up to be automatically triggered.

Track bugs in time:

This is one of the best features originally intended for the tool – to track any issues in any project at any stage. This facilitates timely resolution of problems to prevent extensive damage. You can also use this project tracking software to track the time taken to work on specific tasks and projects integrated into the tool. This would allow the user to watch progress as it happens and even get accurate timesheets for the entire team working on the project. Project summaries and reports can be easily looked at too.

Conclusion

The emergence of JIRA project management tool has streamlined daily functions, allocating that time to other vital tasks in the organisation. If you haven’t already, time to switch to JIRA now!

How Small Businesses Need to Survive the Coronavirus Crisis

Corona virus continues to spread like wild fire in the whole world. Amid this scary scenario, the worst-scared are the small businesses. They just have one plea to make to their respective governments – save us from closing down.

It’s true. Most small businesses operate literally paycheck to paycheck. They have minimal or no savings at times. Their business thrives only temporarily, sometimes seasonally. They primarily sustain on daily cash inflow which means daily incoming customers. In the current times, the number of customers has dwindled and as more people prefer to stay home, most small businesses have entirely shut down.

This isn’t good news at all because the longer the situation continues, these businesses could literally collapse. In the wake of this looming scare, is there anything to pick them up?

What to Do in Small Business Financial Crisis

We’re well aware of the situation now. Small shops and businesses like bars, restaurants, beauty salons, and the like depend on daily cashflow to meet their expenses. Whatever they make gets expended on paying bills, salaries, inventory, etc. In tough times, they fail to meet up even these expenses too, let alone save or enjoy any profits at all.

To make matters worse is another cruel reality – small businesses face greater credit constraints than large, successful enterprises. With lower loan repayment ability, they even find it difficult to secure loan help from banks/other credit institutions. So the big question: what do they do now. Economic experts suggest the following measures to be taken immediately to prevent upcoming small business financial crisis.

Apply for SBA loans:

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans are meant to aid small businesses in financing their essential business needs. It’s partially guaranteed by the government and therefore frees the credit lender somewhat of the risk involved. Experts say this is the time to apply for these loans in addition to the disaster relief already being provided by state governments.

Be creative in your marketing:

It wouldn’t have mattered so much earlier but your presence online would make a hell of a difference now. If you aren’t already on social media, come today. Interact with your existing permanent customers, assure them of your resumption of services soon. If you can, look for alternative productive ways of resuming service – home delivery, home services, gate pick-ups, etc. Just anything that can help you keep reaching your customers in this difficult time.

Stick together:

If you have employees, make sure you keep them comfortable. Laying them off isn’t the solution, remind them that you’re in it together and this shall pass. Make short-term meaningful decisions, subject to uninformed change. Take one step one day at a time.

Appeal for extensions:

Ask the landlord to extend rent-payment time and likewise, other businesses you interact with for your daily operations. Assure them that when you have access to cash, you’d pay them all.

It’s difficult but not impossible. Right steps at the right time can help you pick yourself up and move on.

6 Keto-Friendly Snacks That Satisfy Cravings

Who said that just because you chose to go Keto in your diet, you’re going to be deprived of the pleasure of snacking? Or, that you can’t quieten up your inner cravings now that you’re committed to eating healthy? It’s all a myth, my friend. As much as you deserve to be congratulated on taking a bold and healthy step towards eating Keto, you also deserve to satisfy your cravings just as before. The only tiny change you need to bring in though is eat Keto-friendly snacks. And the good news is, there’s no dearth of them out there.

Here we bring to you 6 of the best Keto snacks that you can comfortably munch on in-between meals to satisfy those hunger pangs. Feel free to try your own variations to these the way you like them.

6 Best Keto-Friendly Snacks to Go Crazy

Keto diet is all about low carbs. Keeping that in mind, we’ve selected these top snack options for you:

1. Hard-boiled eggs:

We all love them and we love to have them our own way – scrambled, fried, half-boiled or full-boiled. Well, if you’re now on Keto, better stick to the hard-boiled version. Plus, because they’re nearly always readily available in your fridge, just grab two, boil them to hard and take a big bite when hungry. You can season them as you like to spice them up a bit.

2. Coconut chips:

Fresh and healthy, they’re a great alternative to munching on fried and unhealthy store-bought crisps. Not only do they bring in the goodness of coconut, the mild sweetness in them would also satisfy your craving for something sweet in between a Keto-based meal.

3. Dark chocolate:

We all love chocolate (healthy or not healthy; we just crave for it some time of the day). Keto-lovers can now satisfy their craving for chocolate by opting for its dark version which contains at least 78% cacao (seemingly healthier than normal chocolate). You can simply take a bite as it is or melt and use it as fondue or dip sauce with your favourite evening fruit snack.

4. Keto chocolate shake:

Yes, you can continue to enjoy your favourite summer drink – the chocolate shake – by adding non-dairy coconut milk to it. Sprinkle some cinnamon and a few drops of vanilla extract as well to create a beautiful chocolaty-white colour for your delicious Keto snack.

5. Keto nuts:

They’re perfect to keep in your purse/bag when at work, on the go or just sitting at home. Just pop a few in your mouth each time you feel a hunger pang hitting against your belly and you’re set for a while. Macademias, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans and brazil nuts are the top Keto choices.

6. Veggie sticks and low-carb dip:

An easy and nutritious Keto snack any time of the day. Carrot, cucumber or celery sticks dipped freely into cream cheese or sour cream is an unbeatable combination.

Feel free to add to these snack options and let us know below. Munch Keto, stay healthy.

Tips to Choose Home Decor Accessories to Create a Picture-Perfect Look

Your home is your heaven – your very own refuge you long to come back to after a long day out. It’s also the mirror of who you are as a person, reflecting your tastes and choices in living. It’s only natural you’d want it to be perfect so as to impart an exact impression of your very own personality to the outside world. But do you know that creating a picture-perfect look for your home isn’t as daunting a task as it may seem. It’s neither time-consuming nor has to be heavy on the pocket

Just by tastefully choosing a few home décor accessories can make a world of difference to your little heaven on earth. Here are a few home decorating tips & ideas on choosing the best home décor stuff so that your guests feel that they’ve entered a magical world.

Home Décor Ideas for Picture-Perfect Homes

Remember whatever you choose needn’t be too complex or costly. It can be simple, everyday stuff you can pick right up at a home store. The trick lies in using those items to create magic.

Choose a picture-perfect rug first:

Start your home décor with the most basic and highly important accessory – the rug. It can be stylish, colourful, bold or elegant, but a rug can really add character and life to the room. It’s the foundation on which you can build up other decoration work.

Put more picture frames around you:

You may not even realise but picture frames and wall art are one of the best décor accessories to spruce up your home. They can bring life into any room where they’re placed almost instantly.

Besides that, placing them in unique ways can actually change the entire look of your room. Place your picture frames horizontally to make the room look wider. If you place portrait photographs, the room looks taller in height.

Mirrors can work magic too:

Of course you need them for a vital reason – to look at yourself every morning before heading out. But using them as a decorative feature on walls is the best way to create illusionary space in any room.

Try placing them on the empty wall adjacent to the one where you hung your picture frames/wall art. Not only would the mirror reflect the image, it’d also make the room look wider. Also, hanging mirrors near the windows will add more natural light to the room. This style tip works best for low-lit or dark living spaces.

Use light fixtures for more light and style

Another basic element of every home but you can use varied light fixtures to create different lighting to suit varying moods. If you want to focus on wall art, accent light fittings can do the job. Soft wall-fitted lights or designer table lamps can create an ideal romantic setting.

Whatever decorative items and accessories you use and how you beautify your house with them, it’d be a direct reflection of what you think and like. Try and be instinctive as much as possible.

Digital Payment: A Way to Reduce Social Contact

Social distancing is the current norm that every citizen of the world is following religiously. Well, simply because each of us realises its immense importance now than ever before. It’s only in the benefit of us (individually) and of the entire world that we’re a part of. And every step towards the achievement of this common goal counts. One such important measure is digital banking.

The RBI has strongly appealed to and encouraged the entire world through several means of communication to accept and follow digital payment method. It is being looked at as a powerful way to reduce social contact as well maintaining the need of the hour – social distancing.

Why are Currency Notes Deemed Unsafe?

According to research, the corona virus has the potential to stay active on several physical surfaces including metal, cardboard and paper. This includes currency notes too, which are currently deemed as the highest risk transmitters of the virus. The UK, Australia and Canada have already made the switch to polymer notes. In other nations, until this possibility can be looked into, digital payments are a safe and more convenient alternative.

Why is Digital Payment Crucial at This Hour?

Currency notes have contributed quite a bit in the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in the entire world. This is because these notes involve hand-to-hand touch, an extremely risky means of spreading the virus from one person to another within seconds. With a view to reduce such physical and social contact among people and to further curtail the spread of the virus, governments in several parts of the world followed a state or nation-wide shutdown policy.

This entailed shutting down of stores, malls, theatres, and the like. However, it can’t be denied that exchange of currency and making/receiving payments even at this critical hour is inevitable. We need money for everything – from buying essentials in the wake of this unprecedented crisis to paying employees working from home. To keep this currency flow going, the RBI, with support from local governments the world over, is encouraging respective citizens to adopt, rather completely switch to, digital banking wherever possible.

How does it help? It drastically removes the possibility of any physical touch and also reduces the chances of social contact. People don’t need to use or distribute currency notes anymore for their vital needs. They can easily and safely accept and make payments via numerous digital payment channels available at their disposal –internet banking, mobile banking, UPI, PayPal, mobile digital wallets, etc.

These channels can be easily installed on every phone or portable device in the form of internet or mobile apps. Just one click and you’re all sorted to pay bills, groceries, fees and whatever else you’d been paying via currency notes earlier. It’s that simple.

To Sum Up

The corona virus impact has crippled several economies. While its aftereffect still needs to be seen once it wades off, to keep the economy going strong and not cause turbulence, digital payment is being looked at as the best substitute.

How the Coronavirus Outbreak Will Affect Your Job Search

The coronavirus pandemic has tightly gripped the whole world in its claws, bringing about life-changing consequences almost overnight. While the corona scare has succeeded in threatening people the world over, there are a few sections of the society that have been the worst affected. The job-seekers, for example.Where the corona scare is keeping businesses shut down and people shut in at homes, those who’ve lost their jobs are finding it extremely difficult to cope up.

How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has Affected Job Search Internationally?

According to a report by The Economic Policy Institute, the virus outbreak is likely to remove 3 million jobs in the US by summer. Furthermore, the UN prediction presents an equally grim picture. The international body fears at least 25 million jobs getting eradicated all over the world.

The reason – most businesses have closed down, resulting in massive loss of revenue. The problem aggravates because we don’t know yet until when the situation would last. The longer these businesses keep shut, the employees are uncertain of their futures at their jobs. To worsen the problem, a large number of organisations the world over have laid off their employees, again owing to revenue loss.

In such a situation, these poor employees are standing at crucial crossroads, not knowing what to do or where to go. Considering the highly uncertain global situation, adding to it the equally ugly job market at the moment, lots of job seekers are low on hope. And it’s not entirely baseless either. Employees are being laid off, jobs are uncertain (because of uncertainty over businesses reopening) and even if jobs are there, searching for a job is daunting.

There’s little or no room for salary negotiations. This means that even if there are few new jobs on offer, candidates may just have to be content with what’s on offer. Besides, underemployment is also likely to considerably increase amid the coronavirus outbreak. With businesses having closed down, lots of employees working from home find it difficult to get enough work to sustain both themselves and generate enough revenue for the company too.

How a Prolonged Shutdown Might Affect the Job Market

We’ve evaluated above the corona impact on job search since the pandemic broke out. Now imagine if this entire situation were to prolong for a while more – 15 days, a month, a few months, a year? It’s hard and scary both to imagine so. Put it this way. All of the above ramifications we’ve discussed so far multiplied by two! This is how this virus is going to have game-changing effects on the global economy, particularly the job sector.

If business organisations continue to remain shut for a prolonged period, more lay-offs may hit employees, for revenue loss. These job seekers may not find enough jobs too for there won’t be just enough work left in the market for long. Underemployment may continue to be on the rise as well.

We can only adopt a wait-and-watch policy for now and hope for things to get better, well, soon.

Staffing & Recruiting: Do They Have Common Goals?

These two terms are often interchangeably used, and for this reason, they’re often confused too – one with the other. While it’s easy to assume that staffing and recruiting are two sides of the same coin, the reality is far from so. The two words may sound to mean the same, but they’re actually different. Here we attempt to explain whether staffing and recruitment goals are common or are they two different processes.

Staffing and Recruiting – Common Goals They Share

These two processes indeed have some common objectives. Here’s what they share in common:

• The common purpose both these processes intend to achieve is finding a suitable candidate to fill a specific role in the organisation.
• Both these services come to the applying candidates free of cost; the fee is charged by the concerned companies in search for prospective employees.
• Both these processes are targeted at addressing common problems faced by the business or the HR. These include difficulty in hiring the right talent, employee retention or low employee productivity.

Now that we’ve discussed the common objectives of recruitment and staffing in any organisation, let’s look at some of the key differences between the two. You’d then know that these two terms aren’t really interchangeable.

How Staffing and Recruiting are Different from Each Other

1. Staffing agencies hired by most businesses aim at hiring candidates to fill short-term job positions. People for these roles are intended as temporary hires and appointed on contractual or project basis.
   Recruitment companies are asked to provide candidates to companies for full-time, permanent roles.
2. Staffing agencies can be really good at expediting the search-and-hire process for a company. They’re generally preferred over recruitment firms for urgent position-filling.
3. Staffing firms generally maintain a well-researched database of candidates. This helps them scan through those immediately available with the desired specific skill sets in case of urgent requirement by a company..
   Recruitment firms, on the other hand, may work both with candidates actively looking for jobs and those who aren’t.
4. Companies generally hire staffing agencies to fill an urgent requirement. They’d therefore provide specific information regarding skill sets requirement. As such, the agency wouldn’t need to be too involved in candidate screening and interviews.
   Recruitment firms would first flash the requirement for a suitable candidate, screen relevant resumes, organise interviews with shortlisted candidates and finally select the ones that best suit the job requirement in hand.
5. The staffing process is actively involved in the complete life cycle of employment of a particular candidate. This includes appraisal, promotion, retention policies and exit interview of the employee.
   A recruitment company, as explained above, is more involved in the actual selection and hiring process of a candidate. It’s therefore less concerned in the latter’s entire employment cycle.

Summing Up

Now we understand that even though staffing and recruitment do share a common goal of finding the right candidate for the company to fill a role, they do have their fair set of differences. It doesn’t seem appropriate to use them inversely then.