Business

RPA or Robotic Process Automation involves the use of software and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in order to handle menial tasks. Businesses are able to eliminate the sort of tedious grunt work that employees hate to do by delegating the boring bits to AI-powered, “robot” helpers.

RPA tools have been embraced by a wide range of industries and businesses. These include human resource departments that use the tools to process mountains upon mountains of resumes while outsourcing companies have used the technology in order to help managers and other executives focus on important business decisions. They have even been used by accountants in order to process invoices, switching from a system where they received PDFs, printed them off and filed hard copies. This is a complex system but one made a lot simpler with RPA tools stepping in to provide a helping hand.

How Businesses Can Benefit from RPA Tools

Businesses can delegate all sorts of tasks to AI helpers using robotic process automation. Employees can automate their workflows, allowing these robots to take care of tasks such as sending emails (and crafting the responses), filing invoices, submitting and processing payouts to partners and handling orders, which is especially important for growing e-commerce channels. This can help businesses to save thousands of hours, allowing employees to refocus their time on other things that do require their input, such as telemarketing or making sales pitches to new clients.

According to a recent Gallup poll, some of the biggest reasons why employees do not enjoy their work include the fact that work has too great a demand on their time, there is little distinction between their work and personal lives, and it is difficult for them to focus on important tasks (e.g. there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in). By introducing more automation into the workday, employees will be able to free up more time, alleviating many of the frustrations that they have.

How Small Businesses Can Success With RPA Tools

RPA tools may be used by some of the biggest and most well-known businesses on the block, including Microsoft, HP, AT&T, and Allianz, but the technology can also benefit smaller businesses. It could even give smaller organizations a huge advantage over their much larger competitors.

In a small workforce, the happiness of employees is integral to how that company grows and thrives. In a team of 10, one unhappy worker is 10% of the entire employee base and they may not be working at their best as a result. But, by supporting them with robotic process automation, that company can become more efficient. It also means that, as the company grows, it is able to expand much quicker as tasks that would traditionally require new hires (thus thwarting potential expansion) could be delegated to robot helpers.

The adoption of RPA may be driven by major names, which have garnered many headlines. However, smaller businesses can benefit greatly from it.

Buying a house has always been considered as a major achievement. It’s a sign that you’re already a responsible adult. However, things are starting to change as of late as people are now questioning whether real estate is actually a good investment or not.

Nowadays, people already have different opinions when it comes to home ownership. Some believe that renting is a better option than buying which sounds completely ridiculous to others. They believe that nothing beats property ownership as you can also cash in on your mortgage later on. Avid renters, on the other hand, argue that the costs and hassle of the maintenance, and the upkeep isn’t worth the large upfront costs.

In a few major Canadian cities, renting makes a lot more sense, especially with the sky-high property prices. Renting isn’t just the affordable option for but it’s the only choice for the average citizen. But is this also the case for Calgary? Stick around to find out.

Buying vs. Renting in Calgary

Calgary’s real estate market is deemed as a “topsy turvy” one following the continuous improvement of the local economy. It hasn’t been considered very hot in the past but recent changes have turned it into what many experts consider to be a buyer’s market.

This is why the question of whether buying a home right now is a good idea became more pressing. Reports claim that the prices for detached homes haven’t changed while condominium prices are 3% lower than last year’s. These make the market more attractive for those who are considering investing in real estate.

But with such a large amount of money involved, it’s not surprising to see why a lot of people are asking whether doing so is a good idea. If the market is becoming more attractive to buyers, it can mean you might not be able to resell the property right away and still profit from it.

On the flip side, buying now means you’ll probably get properties at a bargain. The savings you can make from what’s currently available in the real estate listings in Calgary might just be worth the wait until you can resell the property for a profit.

Note, however, that mortgage rules have been tightened in Calgary just recently. In hopes of curbing debt loads, the Bank of Canada has ordered a mortgage stress test that will apply to uninsured buyers. Experts believe that it will prevent about 50,000 people from buying a property in Calgary. This can affect a lot of people who are already planning to buy their own homes.

Renting, on the other hand, saves you from all of these worries. If you’re not planning on staying in Calgary for a long time anyway, renting won’t tie you down. You can be liquid if you have the money for a down payment, which can be beneficial for your situation.

Then there’s also the fact that renting is way cheaper than buying a property. This makes it even more ideal for those who are thinking of investing their money in something else.

Buying as an Investment

Looking at how locals reacted to think pieces regarding the rent or buy debate in Calgary, it’s easy to see that people have quite a divided opinion about the matter. At the end of the day, though, the answer lies on what you consider as an investment.

As some people pointed out, there are those who buy so they can have a home that they can call their own. Others cash out just to make money from the property. Only you might be able to decide whether buying a property is a good investment based on your priorities and values related to home ownership.

Workplace safety is essential in any kind of business. Without it, employers will be exposing their workers to various hazards that can seriously affect their safety and productivity. You will also be overwhelmed by liabilities that might cause your company’s breakdown.

It is required by the law to protect your workers, so you should tighten workplace safety measures. Fortunately, taking the first step isn’t that hard. In fact, here are five of the simplest ways enterprises can implement better security measures for their workers:

Identify the Different Threats to Your Workers

Different industries face various challenges and threats on a regular basis. It depends on who and what they work with and the tasks they need to do to get their work done. By identifying and recognizing what these dangers are, you can immediately take the appropriate measures to prevent and eliminate them altogether.

Doing this shouldn’t be a major undertaking. A lot of research has already conducted about the various workplace safety concerns in different industries. You can also easily determine a few unique dangers right inside your workplace through keen observation,

Follow Safety Standards

Aside from having a legislation that requires businesses to implement safety measures in the workplace, the government also has its own set of safety regulations that it requires the public to follow. The HSE (Health and Safety Executive), the agency created by the government to regulate and enforce workplace safety, health, and welfare in the UK, made a guide that businesses should follow. They also conduct formal inspections and audits to make sure workplaces adhere to their safety standards. Be sure to have all your safety signs in place throughout your building.

Properly Train Every Team Member

Workplace safety also starts inside your organization so it’s crucial to make every member aware of its importance. This can be done by properly training each team member so they can execute their tasks in a correct, safe, and accurate manner.

Conducting regular safety trainings and seminars would also help assure that your employees know how to ensure workplace safety. Information is the biggest key to the success of these efforts, because a weak link can definitely put your efforts to waste. Cover all your bases by making sure that everyone is aware of how to keep the workplace safe.

Conduct Regular Inspections and Checkups

Employers should also take note of checking how their operations are doing in terms of maintaining a safe work environment. Regular checkups and inspections will help accomplish this as it can help them see if their team members are actively practicing safety measures while at work.

Safety tests and assessments are also essential to ensure that the workplace is still meeting the safety standards set in place by the government and the internal safety rules of the organization. Without these, employees can become lax and skip the essential measures required to ensure workplace safety.

Enforce a Lone Worker Policy

Lone worker security is just as important. Because lone workers work on their own or away from the base of your operations, they don’t have the protection given to those working within a controlled environment. Without having colleagues around, they can be exposed to certain threats that can otherwise be prevented when you’re with other people. So if you have employees who work alone, it’s crucial to implement a lone worker policy.

Special measures are required for lone worker safety because of the unique nature of their jobs. It’s important that employers pay close attention to these intricacies to prevent any harm from happening to their lone workers.

With safety measures in place, a workplace can be a safer, healthier, and more productive space for employees. Everyone will benefit from such an arrangement, which is why employers should strive to meet and even surpass the safety standards set in place by the government.

If you’re building a budding business endeavour, you might have gone through the trouble of dealing with energy expenses and it’s natural. With the tide of 2018 nearing its mid-year mark, a number of energy companies, like British Gas and EDF in the UK, have taken brave steps in raising energy prices to accommodate the growing living costs of the global market. Energy providers worldwide are sure to follow this example later on in the year and will make it a difficult year for consumers, especially business owners, to deal with the challenging price increases. Here are a few things to consider in getting the most out of the tricky situation of the energy economy and get the best business gas prices.

Know your own business

Your energy expenses are proportional to what your business is about. For stay-at-home business owners, this might not be as much of a problem for you. If you’re operating off-site, then things should go smoothly in paperwork. But if you do operate an energy expensive business at your home, an inn or a restaurant, for example, it’s a little trickier to avail of a business tariff rate. You might be better off looking for a cheap domestic energy service provider. Knowing the actual range of your business in terms of electricity and gas expenses, and how much you use each one, can help you find an adequate service provider.

Preparing to find the right service

As with any business deal, you might have to negotiate your way into getting the best benefits for your business expenses. It’s a little-known fact that new customers are often given more favourable deals at the start as what companies are looking to buy is customer loyalty. Compared to your rate to a service you’ve been used to, you can see in the math that you’re slowly but surely paying more expensive bills than when you first signed up for it. You’re not being delusional about it. Sure, the cost of living increases every year but new customer rates are far-off from regular customer rates. Take advantage of this fact once you plan on jumping ship to a new energy service provider.

Scouting for potential choices

It’s a little difficult for businesses operating outside the urban district to find alternative energy service providers. But if you’re closer to the city, chances are, you’re just in range for smaller energy supplier companies that can provide a friendlier range of energy prices than that of big-name companies. Taking a stroll on the Internet can lead you to various news sites, blog posts, and user reviews on a company and their services.

Thankfully enough, if you’re still undecided about the choices that you have, there are services available like Utility Bidder that give prime advice on consulting and price comparisons with big-name energy suppliers. The global economy is slowly but surely struggling to find its way to remain stable within a competitive energy market, but this does not have to mean that commercial and residential customers have to suffer that much for it. It takes a little bit of legwork to find an affordable alternative, but it’s worth the trouble.

You can trust Walter Benenati with your needs for handling any kind of significant bankruptcy issues that you might hold. But you should be aware of what Chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcies are about. Benenati can assist you with either of these bankruptcy declarations. Such declarations are different based on what they entail, so be sure you have a clear plan on hand for how you are going to get the debts you have covered soon.

Chapter 7

To start with, you have to look at what a Chapter 7 bankruptcy involves. This is a basic liquidation bankruptcy. This is for individuals and companies alike.

You would have to complete the appropriate means test to qualify for this declaration. Walter Benenati is available to help you with this process.

Your nonexempt property will be sold to the creditors as needed as a means of paying off your debts. This is designed for some of the more intense situations you are in where it might be next to impossible for you to pay off your debts at a time. Also, it would take around three to five months for you to get this bankruptcy discharged.

The Chapter 7 process is designed as a last option for many debts that you might have. The issues that come about from this could be rather difficult to manage, but it is important to see what you can get out of this process.

Chapter 13

The other option that Walter Benenati is available to help you with is a Chapter 13 process. The Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan is a reorganization effort for your debts. This is only available to individuals.

You must have less than $380,000 in unsecured debt or less than $1.15 million in secured debt to qualify for this. But the key here is that the debts you have are fully reorganized into a plan that allows you to pay off your debts in a reasonable fashion. You would have to make monthly payments to a trustee in your plan at this juncture.

You will be able to keep your property, but you must pay an amount of money that is equal to all the nonexempt assets that you might have. These debts must be covered accordingly to ensure there are no problems with what you are trying to maintain or handle at a time.

You would have to get your debts paid off in about three to five years depending on how the Chapter 13 layout is managed. In this situation, you will have to spend enough money on your monthly trustee payments to keep this organized well. You will have the bankruptcy discharged from your name after everything is covered in a few years.

You can trust Walter Benenati with your help for getting any of the debts you have covered as soon as possible. Talk with Walter today to see what you can do and how it will be easy for you to cover the problems that come with your debts.

 

Our government loves its bureaucracy. But few people know however, is that some of these bureaucracies, which have been around since 1934, have been designed specifically to support and constitutional operations. This is shocking to some but the reality is that there are currently some 1,550 different federal regulatory agencies, each of which is isolated from the other so as not to trespass on each others work. This is asking for trouble and something that Turning Point USA wants to address as a matter of urgency.

 

The Illness of Bureaucracy According to Turning Point USA

 

Consider the CIA. This is an autonomous and independent organization in which at least 300 different departments exist. Within each of those departments, there are around 100 sections. And each of those are then further divided into teams and, finally, operatives. What this means is that Congress, responsible for the original creation of the CIA, has absolutely no understanding of how each of the different operatives actually work.

 

Another example is the NSA. This is actually three times larger than the CIA in terms of the bureaucracy, which creates great friction between the different sections, subsections, departments, and individuals. It is absolutely vital that this is addressed as a matter of extreme urgency.

 

According to Turning Point USA, the reason why this is in place is because of compartmentalization. This was a concept developed by US Army general Leslie Groves in the 20th century while he managed the WWII Manhattan Project. There was a reason for compartmentalization, which was because the government was busy creating and testing the atomic bomb, something that had to be completely under wraps. The US military saw that Nazi bureaucracy worked incredibly well, keeping citizens in the dark, and they wanted to copy this. Unfortunately, compartmentalization may be useful in periods of war, when it is in fact vital that the enemy is kept in the dark, it really has no place in modern democracy.

 

One of the greatest problems with this extensive bureaucracy and underhandedness that continues to exist in the US government is that it also gives rise to various conspiracy theories. Some of those theories are so ridiculous they are not worthy of consideration but others do make people think. Could it be that 9/11 was an inside job? While it would have been impossible to imagine the American government purposely wanting to kill its citizens in order to start a war elsewhere, the fact that so many governmental organizations actively try to undermine each other through the spread of false information and misinformation makes us wonder that perhaps it is not that crazy after all.

 

It is vital that the government commits to greater transparency and to a reduction of bureaucracy. It is equally vital that the different departments learn how to work together for the greater good. At the end of the day, all these governmental organizations and departments are there to represent us, the people.

When it comes to having a productive, profitable workforce, few factors are quite as important as employee engagement. Engaged employees are more focused, more productive and generate more profit, and an engaged workforce will produce a far lower staff turnover rate, saving a business substantial sums of money in hiring costs.

But what makes an employee feel engaged? According to the Society for Human Resource Management, cited by STL Training, the most important contributors to job satisfaction are:

Treating the staff with respect (67%)

Compensation and pay (63%)

Feeling of job security (58%)

Opportunities to use skills (55%)

Of course, many businesses can’t afford to simply increase wages across the board, but there are some clues there as to how we might be able to improve overall employee engagement. Our five recommendations would be:

Ask about pain points

Communication is one of the simplest yet most effective ways of improving engagement, and taking part in an honest discourse with staff about their pain points is a great place to start. It not only show staff members that you care about them and that you’re willing to listen, but it gives you a list of potential problems to solve to make your workforce feel happier and more engaged.

Be clear about goals and expectations

Numerous research projects into disengaged employees report that they don’t know what’s expected of them at work, or that they are unclear about their goals and targets. An easy way to avoid this in your own business is to ensure you clearly communicate goals and expectations of the business to employees, both in terms of their individual role and the business as a whole.

Show that you care

There are lots of ways you can show employees you care about them, from showing appreciation of a job well done to recognising personal events such as birthdays or the birth of children. Research has shown that when an employee feels cared about, the become more engaged at work, leading to a dramatic increase in productivity and performance.

Provide opportunities for growth

There is a direct correlation between the engagement levels of employees, and the amount a business invests in development. Whether it’s skills training, management and leadership training or a clear route of progression through the business, providing your employees with the opportunity to develop and grow can dramatically increase loyalty, trust and overall engagement.

Celebrate achievements

Recognition has been shown to be a crucial factor in employee engagement, and one of the best ways to ensure an employee feels recognised and valued is to publicly celebrate their achievements. Anytime an employee hits or exceeds a target, achieves a new qualification or performs particularly well, the achievement should be celebrated via a reward or announcement, and this can be made both to clients and the rest of the team.

Jarle Thorsen is the founder of Unaico, a company he has successfully managed for nine years. He has been done very well in all his enterprise and he takes great pride in his business acumen. In an effort to give back to others, he wants to provide some of the key tips and words of advice he lives buy in order to be as successful as he has been in areas such as Exergonix, something that his envestors have long been waiting for.

Jarle Thorsen on Being a Successful Businessman

Being a better businessman is about the power of the mind. Having the right mindset is key to being successful in business. In fact it sets people apart, enabling them to be part of that 3% of people in business who are truly successful.

Business owners, no matter what type of business they are in, always face the negative mindset of themselves and others. That is because they, as the owner, see their business as an extension of who they are, whereas others see it simply as a business. They do not truly care whether it succeeds or fails. Only when the mind is void of negativity will people truly grow on the pyramid of needs within the business.

Optimism is said to be the key to power, contrasted by pessimism, which inevitably leads to weakness.  Jarle Thorsen  believes that success is about having that positive mindset. Too many people continue to measure the level of success by money. Anyone who can afford a penthouse apartment in Hong Kong must be successful because of the price tag associated with that penthouse apartment. For Jarle,  however success should be measured in who people are and how people are. Success is not about having a million dollars in the bank. That could have landed there by accident or through an inheritance or even by winning the lottery. Someone who has won the lottery is not a successful businessman period they are simply someone who got lucky.

For hundreds of years people have tried to define the secret of success. Jarle Thorsen  feels that the secret is all down to positivity. He is not the only one to consider this, with many books  having been written on the subject and turning into almost instant best-selling books across the world. A key example of this is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne comma Who was able to explain to everyday individuals how important it is to think positive. However, Jarle Thorsen believes that particular book is linked may need to personal happiness and not to business success. While they both focus on positive thinking, it is important to direct this positivity and optimism in the right place.

A businessman must think positively about their chance of success. They have to feel and really know that they deserve everything they get, both the good and the bad. By doing that, they will inevitably become more committed to think positive, as what people want is the good not the bad.