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Is Your Business Keeping up with the Modern Workplace?

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 12:00:00 +0000

The workplace used to be a rigid place where employees conformed to cultural norms such as wearing a shirt and tie and working 9-5. Being in the office every day was an expectation.

Today’s modern workplace is more of a fluid, casual environment, where work-life balance is championed and, depending on your business culture, some of the team might even come to work dressed in sweatpants from time to time.

New-age employers have found that the old, rigid style of thinking is inefficient in reality and doesn't meet new age challenges, like employees collaborating effectively over long distances. The modern workplace environment has a blended workforce, is becoming more responsive to problems, and less tied down to physical locations. Employees now use modern collaborative software like Meet and Google Docs to communicate more effectively with their colleagues around the world in real time.

The workplace continues to evolve in order to meet the needs of both employees and employers. Let’s take a look at 5 modern workplace trends and how they are changing the way we work.

1. Flexible workforce

According to a study from Intuit, freelancers will comprise 40 percent of the workforce by the year 2020. The biggest reason for this growing trend is that employers are finding that freelancers can drive efficiency, especially with the savings on administrative and healthcare costs.

Freelance marketplaces like Upwork are helping to drive the shift towards the gig economy. Sites such as Freelancer, Fiverr, Guru, and even LinkedIn are providing specialized workers with opportunities to work remotely for a wide range of companies around the world.

The rise of the internet also has given rise to the gig economy. Sites like Upwork are connecting more people around the world. This give them the freedom and flexibility to choose the kind of work they want. Millennials, in particular, are trading in the traditional security and benefits of a full-time job for more freelancing opportunities where they have complete control over their schedule.

These outsourcing platforms are hugely beneficial for freelancers, too. Workers enjoy:

The flexibility to choose whom they work for and at what pay rates
The ability to set their own schedule
The freedom to work remotely

Freelancers can have a wide range of specializations. Writers, graphic designers, Photoshop experts, customer service specialists, accountants and many more can freelance by looking for work on sites like Upwork, Guru, and Freelancer. Companies benefit by getting access to a vast talent pool of specialized professionals.

Freelancers aren’t just working with small businesses on a tight budget either. Some of the largest companies in the world take advantage of freelancers for specialized talent. Companies like Facebook, IBM, and BBC Worldwide have used freelancer sites to get projects done on budget and on-time.

In summary, employers are becoming more dynamic and improving productivity. They prefer to hire from a rich talent pool of remote workers from around the world. And with that, there is an increasing need for managers who can skillfully manage both freelancers and full-time employees working alongside one another.

This brings us to trend number two.

Origin Workspace: a very popular freelancers stop here in Bristol. Credit: www.originworkspace.co.uk

2. Collaboration, and a lot of it

Even in our digital age, collaboration can still be a difficult thing to master. As connectivity increases, so do the number of platforms which employees, employers, and clients communicate on. This can pose problems for teams that are working in the same office — let alone those that are working and communicating remotely.

Take a post-click landing page for example and everything that goes into the creation process. Typically, you have a copywriter, designer, and ultimately a manager or VP that gives the final approval for publishing. With all of the necessary post-click landing page elements required to create an optimized page, there is constant communication and changes to be made before a page is published.

Project managers would have to organize copywriters, editors, and designers as well as feedback from clients or other stakeholders. Copywriters might prefer to communicate through Slack or Google Docs, while clients may prefer giving feedback and providing suggestions through Gmail or Trello. Communication through multiple channels likely meant publishing delays and details lost in translation — all making collaboration inefficient.

We help businesses work smarter

Just like the television in your lounge - the new becomes old quickly in business technology. It's why businesses trust us to keep them up-to-date and relevant with the best technology in business. We enable growth through scalability and adaptability whist generally minimising operating costs.

Ensure your business is operating efficiently by keeping up with modern ways of working or your business will end up being the 20" Plasma whilst your competitors become the 50" OLED. See what I did there?

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Why We Love G Suite

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 21:00:28 +0000

We use (and provide) a multitude of different SaaS products here at Ostratto to keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes and to improve the productivity of the business. Although I have a lot of weird love for all of the services we use, my favourite and one I couldn't live without is G Suite.

Yes one could say we are albeit biased but I'm not afraid to come right out and say it’s by far the best all-in-one business services solution on the market right now. It's affordable, easy to use and super powerful.

Today we’ll dive into the unparalleled benefits of G Suite, why we use it and recommend it to all of our partners, and how it compares to other similar solutions on the market.

Contents

What is G Suite?

Gmail

Calendar

Drive

Docs, Sheets and Slides

Google Meet

Admin

Unparalleled Benefits of G Suite

Familiarity

Uptime

Affordability

Security

How to Move to G Suite

Let Ostratto do it for you

Other options

What is G Suite?

G Suite is Google’s suite of intelligent apps. This was formerly known as Google Apps, till it was re-branded in late 2016. We primarily recommend G Suite for clients that are needing email hosting for their business. However, G Suite is much more than just email. It also includes a variety of apps and features that can come in quite handy. In fact, you’re probably already using or are familiar with some of them.

G Suite has three different plans you can purchase - Basic, Business and Enterprise. We utilise the Business G Suite plan at Ostratto. This starts at just £9.20/user/month. For many of you, the basic plan is probably all you’ll ever need and that starts at £4.60/user/month. We have a much fuller breakdown of the individual G Suite system features on our product pages but here's a quick summary of our favourite features.

Gmail

According to a Litmus study, Gmail leads the way as the most popular email client, with a whopping 27.8% of the market share based on open rates. It’s no surprise as Gmail has been around since 2004 and now boasts over 1.2 billion users. One of the best things about G Suite is you basically get an enhanced ad-free version of the online email client you’re probably already using.

G Suite essentially allows your employees to have their own Gmail accounts with email addresses with your business domain name (example: tim@yourbusiness.co.uk). A very small business with one or two users might be able to get away with free Gmail accounts and some alias forwarding rules. But once you start hiring two or three employees, you’ll find yourself needing accounts that can be managed separately. It's the difference between looking like a new small business, or established and professional - we even wrote about it a couple blog posts back.

Calendar

I absolutely could not live without a calendar. Knowing when I have a client call or whether I have an important project milestone upcoming is totally essential. Google Calendar is a feature-packed calendar provided as part of G Suite and it will help you keep your schedule organised.

One of the great things about using Google Calendar in G Suite is the ability to create multiple calendars that are accessible to everyone in your business (or just a few users). For example, you might want a group calendar for events like team holidays and regular meetings. Having all your employees attached to the same business makes tasks like these even easier when compared to the free Google Calendar version.

One of the other cool features you get with Google Calendar once you go to the Business tier and upwards, is the ability to add conference calling features to an event. No messing around in separate products, you simply add video conferencing to the event and all attendees get an invite with join in details as well as a voice dial-in number if they aren't going to make the video call.

Google Drive

Drive allows you to allows you to store, access and share your files in one secure place. You then have easy access to them from any device. G Suite Basic plans come with 30GB of storage for every employee. G Suite’s Business and Enterprise editions provide unlimited storage so you will always have enough space for your files. We think that's pretty cool and I really have put it to the test with over 8TB and counting in a shared drive (we love movies what can I say).

If you haven’t used Google Drive before, one of the best things I like about it is the amazing search functionality. I mean it does make sense - Google do know a thing or two about search technology. No more rummaging around deep in folders, you can easily find what you’re looking for, no matter how disorganised you are.

Shared Drives are also very neat. You can create shared drives for projects, departments or teams so that it's easier to find that shared information with sharing multiple folders with each other. It also means that the classic business situation of a user leaving the company and nobody being able to access their shared important files. You can choose certain levels of access for team members - view, edit or manager roles provide set permission levels.

Docs, Sheets and Slides

Google Docs, Sheets and Slides pretty much speak for themselves. Fully fledged document processing, a spreadsheet tool and presentation suite all reside directly in the G Suite system without any software downloads needed. Should your internet connection not be available, you can still work offline and your changes are automatically synced when you connect back to the world.

Import documents to make them instantly editable, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF files (.docx, .doc, .pdf, .rtf, .txt, xlsx, .csv, .html, .ods). You can even collaborate and comment on Microsoft Office files without it having to automatically convert to Google’s format - great when you are working with Microsoft Office-based customers.

You can also export to common third-party formats which makes it easy to collaborate with other individuals or companies and send files back and forth, without ever needing to install or purchase additional software.

One of the best features of Google Work Suite is the real-time commenting and unlimited versions. Previous versions are kept indefinitely and they don’t count toward your storage. This makes it super easy to track changes made to a document or undo a mistake. Sharing documents with your coworkers or other individuals is also incredibly easy.

Google Meet

What better way to meet a new client instantly than jumping on a video call. Google Meet provides an easy and secure way to handle video calling without leaving your business system. All versions of G Suite, Basic, Business and Enterprise provide the product with 100, 150 and 250 participant limits respectively - generally way more than we have ever needed.

Participants can also share screen content, or when they are using Google Chrome, a single browser tab, which is pretty neat when you need to show somebody something. The Enterprise version also allows users to record their meetings to re-watch.

Calls are crisp, reliable and secure - our key desirables in any communication product ultimately.

Google Admin

The Admin console for G Suite is the like mission-control. It lets business owners easily manage everything from one single place. Do everything from adding new users and groups, configuring business apps, manage devices, configure security settings (like 2-factor authentication) and add new custom domains for your business which can be used for Gmail.

Now with the admin console being the admin console, only administrators can access the wealth of configuration available. Users can be provided different administrative levels via roles, so that only the relevant parts of the admin console can be access by users.

Unparalleled Benefits of G Suite

Although there are alternatives - Microsoft 365 and Zoho to name a few - there are some unparalleled benefits to G Suite which we are yet to see overcome. Here's a few.

Familiarity

One of the greatest benefits of going with G Suite for your business is that most of your employees are probably already used to using products like Gmail for email and Google Docs. This makes the transition much easier for your business and ensures you don’t have to waste time explaining to new hires how to utilise company tools; unlike Zoho or Office 365 where there might be more explanation needed.

G Suite also has the best compatibility on mobile devices compared to any other email provider. It works pretty much everywhere which certainly saves time troubleshooting with your users.

Uptime

When it comes to uptime, Google is one of the best when it comes to reliability. If you want to dig into the technical details, G Suite offers a 99.9% Service Level Agreement (SLA) for covered services, and in recent years they’ve actually exceeded that. Also due to the fact that email is such an important part of every business, G Suite has no scheduled downtime or maintenance windows. All of their data centres are built with redundant infrastructure.

But just like any service, they can never be up 100% of the time. Therefore, you can always bookmark the G Suite status dashboard or follow us on our social platforms for updates on all of their products.

It's Extremely Affordable

There are other providers out there that are cheaper, such as Zoho, and don't get us wrong, Zoho offer a truly excellent service too. However, just as we often advise our partners - certain technical aspects of your business you should absolutely not cheap out on. Your business email is one of those areas. Having an email host that you can rely on can save you money down the road.

Here’s a look at G Suite’s pricing and what’s included in each plan - you can drill further down into this here, but here's a brief overview:

For everything that G Suite includes - this really is a steal.

G Suite is secure, really secure

When it comes to security, Google really don't play around. The product is built on some of the most secure infrastructure on earth. It’s trusted by some of the biggest companies in the world; such as HP, Verizon, Whirlpool, and Salesforce. As Google says, they are leading with a “security-first mindset.” They have industry-leading knowledge and expertise backing each and every one of their products, including G Suite. They have a very thorough white-paper which covers some of the measures they take which you can read here.

Some of their certifications:

How to Move to G Suite

If you have read up to this point and you are keen to get started with G Suite then that's awesome - you are making a good decision. Get ready to work smarter.

We are partnered with G Suite. This means we provide setup services for our clients using our wealth of knowledge on the product. We then offer support plans after the initial commission.

There are a few options of migration depending on where you are coming from and how technically versed you are.

Let Ostratto do it for you

The best way to move over to G Suite is to let us handle it for you. We have handled many migrations from various legacy systems with ease and we can help you today. Don't make the mistake of handling the migration yourself and losing years of important business data - it's simply not worth it.

For a quick quote or for more details on our migration and setup services just get in touch, I'm excited to chat with you and I'll try not to nerd out too hard.

Other Options

That being said, Google have provided extensive documentation on migration methods from various sources and if you are feeling technically confident then be sure to check out their guides:

In Closing

So there we are, a quick overview of why we go on about G Suite so much. Hopefully it's been of use to you and provided a half-decent run-through for you. If you have any questions about the product or if you want to get started today, just holla at us.

Get Started with G Suite

Business Systems Integration: Not just a 'nice to have'

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Every growing business grapples with decisions around the best business system to manage its expanding operations. Proper planning of an integrated business management software system often takes a back seat to short-term revenue acceleration goals. And, as a consequence, various applications are installed at various points in time in various areas, resulting in business systems being spread across different platforms with different logins and well ...yuck. This creates process inefficiencies and software integration challenges.

This sort of issue is something we see a lot of at Ostratto when onboarding businesses that have been trading for a (sometimes little) while. The real question is: how did these problems arise in the first place and how can they be avoided?

The Convoluted System Landscape

It's easy to see how a rapidly growing company can quickly become entangled in a complex system environment.

When starting out, companies first install accounting software so that they can manage their bookkeeping. Then, in the quest to acquire more customers, companies then put in a standalone CRM system, along with separate systems for resolving customer support issues. Inventory management, order management and fulfilment systems soon come along in the form of additional software or even spreadsheets (you wouldn't believe what we've seen).

As growth occurs, many companies will open new office locations and embrace additional sales channels resulting in more sophisticated processes for e-commerce integration and recurring billing amongst others. Additional business software to support these processes can take the form of standalone applications from different vendors, in-house developments, or a variety of spreadsheet workarounds.

Businesses that evolve their systems over time in this manner can find themselves with a poorly planned infrastructure that handles short-term processes sub-optimally. This mess of systems is often referred to as a “software hairball”, a hairball that inhibits flexibility, productivity, and ultimately slows down the company's ability to grow.

John in the finance department, wondering which login

he uses for his accounting software. (Credit: unsplash)

Business Challenges

When high-growth companies become entangled a 'software hairball' challenges within business begin to arise. Here's five of the main issues that can hinder business growth when a business runs with disparate business software systems:

Wasted Employee Productivity

For a company to grow easily, every employee must be operating at optimal productivity. If the team is bogged down by inefficient and disjointed processes, it takes time away from their more important (profitable) tasks. Important processes such as order processing, invoicing, expense approvals, and fulfilment can take a lot longer to get completed, and are often prone to errors.

For instance, your team may be spending hours manually re-entering order information into an accounting system, while other employees pull that same information from your CRM system for their order fulfilment processes and to calculate sales commissions. If any orders are cancelled in the meantime, your employees have to sift through mounds of data to reconcile this information again. Such labour-intensive and manual tasks reduce the agility that your company needs to grow.

Lack of Real-time Visibility

When software systems aren't integrated you often cannot easily get a view of business performance quickly. Reports showing performance across your finance, sales, marketing, service, and fulfilment departments really are crucial to giving you an overview of your company's operations and performance.

It's easy to see why companies simply give up on reporting on a regular basis because of the amount of time it takes to source, extract and analyse this data. For the businesses that still produce these reports, countless hours are wasted trying to tie unrelated, error-prone, and out of date information together. Consequently, businesses either end up making critical decisions slowly, based on inaccurate information, or they make hasty and risky decisions off gut instinct.

Integration Complexity and Cost

With so many separate systems, an IT department wastes an enormous amount of time and money on integrating, maintaining, and acquiring new versions of these applications. Often when new versions are purchased, even more integration and maintenance needs to be performed for all the different versions of software to work together. Consequently, valuable IT time that could be used to make the business more productive is wasted, while maintenance costs skyrocket.

Increased Customer Churn

Customer acquisition and revenue growth are key pillars to your company's continued success. With fierce competition, it's essential that your company provide an exceptional customer experience or risk having customers take their business elsewhere.

When customers are unable to quickly get information on their order status, can't get issues resolved in a timely manner, or frequently deal with products being out of stock, they will be less satisfied and less likely to continue purchasing from you. A set of separate, convoluted business systems which don't talk to each other, won't be doing your service any favours.

Advantages of Integrated Software Applications

To keep your business growing at the dramatic rates you have always aimed for, it is essential to have your business software applications integrated and seamlessly connected. The advantages of designing your systems in this manner yield tremendous cost savings and improved business productivity, including:

Process Efficiency Across Your Organisation
There are several key processes that you may encounter in your daily operations, such as order management, fulfilment, invoicing, cash collection, expense approvals, and financial consolidation to name a few. Automating such processes enables you to avoid new hires that would otherwise be required to manage these processes, and redeploy staff to higher-value activities to help your business innovate and grow.

Significant IT Time and Cost Savings

With IT no longer having to maintain multiple systems as well as the various integrations between them, a significant reduction in operational costs can be expected so that IT time can be spent improving the business operations.

Dramatically Improved Visibility
Real-time visibility is important in making informed decisions. When information can be accessed instantly from almost anywhere, without wasting employees are better informed and can make more accurate, faster decisions.

Accelerated Growth
With an integrated software system, expansion to multiple locations and additional sales channels can be accomplished a lot faster because of unified order and accounting management processes and data. Teams can upsell more efficiently to their existing customer base because of the improved visibility they would have.

User-Driven Innovation

Because process changes can be implemented quickly, everyday business users are able to apply their functional expertise to tailor processes and applications in a way that improves performance. Meanwhile, technical teams are liberated to focus on strategic works that can add value to the bottom line rather than just fight fires.

Parting Comments

Today, companies in virtually every industry are using sophisticated business software to fuel their growth but many are still struggling to keep up and manage costs effectively because of a hairball of disconnected functional systems causing process bottlenecks and employee productivity issues.

Integrated business software suites are transforming how companies run, and enabling them to experience growth that takes them to the next level.

All products that Ostratto sell are designed to work together in harmony - it's what we call being 'lightweight' and it's one of our core principles. Get in touch with us today to see how we can simplify your workflows and make your business, smart business.

Let's Chat

What is VoIP?

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 20:22:16 +0000

We've recently covered why having a landline number is good for business and we did tout VoIP as being the way forward. VoIP is one of those technologies that you've maybe been hearing and reading about for many years now. It’s gotten to the point that you rarely see a discussion of how VoIP works or even what it is anymore. So let’s take a step back, walk through the basics, and answer the question: how does VoIP work and what can it do for your business?

What is it?

VoIP is Voice Over Internet Protocol, or in more common terms: phone service over the Internet.

If you have a reasonable quality Internet connection you can get phone service delivered through your Internet connection instead of from your local phone company. This opens up quite a few possibilities for your new or existing business and trust us, it's actually nowhere near as technical as it might sound and nowadays it's very cost-effective. A comprehensive discussion of the technical details of VoIP can get very complicated, so here’s an explanation for us non-techies.

VoIP takes a standard analog phone call - the type most homes and businesses still make today over the public phone network, and converts that analog call into digital packets. Then, rather than traveling over the standard phone network, those packets are transmitted across the internet to the other parties on the call. Voice packets of a VoIP calls travel over the internet just like any other type of digital data, such as an email message or a file being uploaded to your Google Drive.

Now, for the common user, a VoIP phone system is mostly indistinguishable from a usual phone system however they are in-fact fundamentally different in the way they operate 'behind-the-scenes'.

What does it do?

VoIP systems provide users an escape from being tied to a desk because their office phone numbers will no longer be limited to any particular phone. For example, most modern VoIP providers offer an app enabling users to make business calls on their desktop, laptop or mobile device using nothing but an internet connection, a microphone and speaker setup or headset, and the app itself. Calls you make or receive from anywhere, too, will use the same number. That ensures you present a professional image to clients or customers wherever you speak to them from.

A modern VoIP systems will grow as fast as your business can - this is referred to as scalability. With traditional telephony, expanding a business's system can be a major undertaking - cables to run potentially, more networking equipment required and new phone devices. Things can be much simpler with VoIP. A system can be expanded to include new workstations or phones with ease and new features can be added with a 'flick of a switch'.

In other words, a VoIP system can act as a full-scale cloud communications platform, allowing your team to easily manage calls and other communications features, including auto attendants with recorded greetings, advanced call routing and forwarding services, virtual voicemail, and even online faxing.

Businesses can drastically reduce costs in a variety of areas. Initial hardware and setup expenses are often much lower. Call charges, too, can be a lot lower. That’s in addition to the added accessibility and agility which a VoIP system provides.

Left: your callers, right: your devices. Thanks RingCentral!

How does it work?

Now bare with me here, it could get rocky. I'll cover the principles and then if there's any bits you aren't sure on just drop me a line and I can explain further.

With a regular phone call, a specific physical path is provided by a phone company. That path goes between yourself and the number that you call. That system also utilises the traditional telephony infrastructure, which means the network of phone lines crossing the country - usually provided by BT in our country.

With VoIP, calls are transmitted differently. The audio at your end of a call (your voice) is converted into digital packets. It's easiest to think of them as being like envelopes of data. In the same way as traditional envelopes contain what you've written.

The conversion of audio voice signals into digital packets is handled by what is known as 'codecs'. Codecs can be either hardware devices or software-based processes. They compress the voice signals and then encode them as digital data. To continue our analogy, they take what you say and pop it into the digital envelopes.

The data packets are then transmitted via IP. This can be either across a Local Area Network (LAN, like in your home or office) or online (over the world wide web). They're often transmitted via the Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP). Or, if not, via the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol. The latter is simply an encrypted version of the former. This stage of the process is like a postman picking up your envelopes and taking them to the destination.

The data packets reach their destination almost instantly. They then need to be decoded and decompressed. This is handled by codecs. They take the digital data and convert it back to audio signals. The recipient of your call heard your voice as they would down a normal phone line. The codecs at their end of the transmission open the envelopes for them to read.

Away from the technicalities, the process of making a VoIP call doesn't have to be much different to a standard phone call. To make the calls, you can either use hardware or a software-based VoIP phone.

The former is very much like a traditional desk phone. It will look almost identical and can be used in all the same ways. That doesn't only mean making calls. Most VoIP phones also let you use voicemail, make internal calls, and call transfer tasks. If no one told you, you might not know you weren't using a regular phone.

Software-based VoIP phones are often called 'softphones'. They're apps or programs installed on a mobile device or computer. The interfaces of those apps or programs replace a traditional phone handset. They're often designed to look similar and can be used either via a touchscreen or keyboard. Calls through these phones typically use a headset and microphone.

A 'softphone' curtesy of RingCentral

Getting started with VoIP

So...that’s everything you need to know about VoIP (for now).

All of that may have been enough to convince you that VoIP is the way to go. If so, you’ll be wondering how to switch to the more modern system. Well here's another advantage - it’s super easy to do so. Your first step is always to contact a trustworthy provider who can talk you through the rest of the process. That's where we come in.

I hope it's been an interesting read and it hopefully wasn't too technical - again, if any of it was, just drop me a line and I can explain with some pretty pictures maybe.

Get Started with VOIP

DIY Website Design

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:37:07 +0000

Not so long ago, there would have been no question of hiring a pro to get website up and running for your business. It was only the quirky folk with severe acne and an energy drink drip-feed that could produce a website on the internet and it was often an expensive ordeal.

Thanks to the rise of online tools like website builders, it has become much easier for the non-techies among us to build a more-than-decent website. Just because you can, though, doesn’t always mean you should. It’s a decision worth weighing carefully, since for some projects a professional cannot be replaced by a tool.

Now I know what you are thinking. "Lew isn't this post going to be a tad biased since you offer website design as a service?" YES. It will be shamelessly biased. That being said, you can only hire a web design company if you can actually afford to. If you don’t have the money yet to hire someone, then designing your own website may be the only option for now. In many cases, having a basic website with helpful content is better than having no website at all.

Anyways, let's get to it - a few points to bear in mind during the design of your website.

Design

Design is not something you can pick up in an afternoon. (Maybe a few afternoons?) Without an understanding of design, you could get it wrong. Your competitors on the other hand, might choose to hire a professional web designer and avoid the mistakes.

It's about:

User experience
How it looks
How it makes people feel
How it makes people act
The character of your business
Your message to the world

You could end up saving yourself a lot of time and hassle by getting a professional to help you create something that looks well-designed and established.

SEO Knowledge

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an ever changing landscape. It's the constant battle to keep your website being found on search engines and most importantly to keep you above your competitor listings when potential customers search for your services. Search engines change their rules all the time and what worked last month might not work this month.

We've been helping clients with SEO for years and still (like a lot of aspects in this industry), we are learning more efficient ways to get the best result. SEO requires constant listening, watching and testing to see what’s changed with Google and the other search engines.

Some key technologies in the world of SEO:

These are the basic fundamentals of SEO and so if they look alien, either get reading or get in touch with a web designer. We plan to release an article soon with a quick overview of these technologies, so keep an eye out for that.

You are not your customer

You live and breathe your business everyday and it’s fair to say you know your customers. We like to think we’re the same.

The problem is that when you’re so involved with running the business, it’s sometimes difficult to see things from your customers’ perspective. It’s difficult to imagine what it might look like seeing your website for the first time, by a prospect for example. This is known as 'the curse of knowledge'.

That’s where a professional designer can help. They can see the things you’ve missed because they are looking from a different direction. Here are a few common mistakes caused due to this 'curse':

No prominent contact details
No clear call to action
No statement explaining succinctly what it is you do

Not every web designer will consider how your site will lead to more contact and sales because they may just be focused on creating a website for you. So admittedly this point you could look at as a possible benefit of creating your own website - you know what you want from it.

We are a little different. Here at Ostratto, your interests are our interests. Everything that comes out of our door is with our principles in mind, and they exist only to boost your business.

You might need help along the way

Building a website isn't a walk in the park. You might be able to pull something basic together with some guides and the power of YouTube but what happens if something goes wrong?

A web designer would take care of all this for you. You won’t need to fix anything or find answers to complex tech questions. We do everything for you. We've spent years educating ourselves on the technicalities of designing websites and have come across plenty of problems and solutions over that time. There’s not really any need for you to do the same.

However, that being said, here are some fantastic resources for web design tips:

The right tools for the job

Like any creative skill it requires a number of tools to ensure the job is done correctly. If you don’t have these tools and/or know how to use them, then you might not get the result you’re hoping for. Here are a list of tools we use to build successful websites:

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
G Suite
Rank Tracking Software
Competitor analysis software
Landing page software

These tools can be expensive but they are necessary. Especially if you want to create high impact websites for users that perform well in search engines.

It took us a few years to learn how to use these tools and even longer to use them effectively.

LOTS of time

Learning to build a website from scratch can take a long time, especially if you aren’t very technical. Even if you’re using some super-simple website design tool you may need to do a lot tweaking to get it right. Not to mention all the image editing and resizing to make it look good and load quickly. You will also need time moving forward to update the website often to keep it fresh and looking professional enough to show to the world.

Time is money and whilst you’re learning how to build a website, you’re not managing or marketing the business.

Time - you are going to need it.

Your competitors

Even if you do have the time to create your own website, there is a high chance your competitor has paid a pro. If they have paid for a professional website to be designed and you haven’t, the likelihood is that theirs will work better.

If you are trying to stand out then you’ll want to a high quality website that looks better than your competition.

My tuppence

I know it’s tempting to try and design a website yourself, even more tempting when drag and drop software now looks so easy. Considering the points I’ve covered above, think carefully whether or not you have the time, the skills and the patience to create a showstopping website. Quite a few of our current clients have asked us to build their website after they tried to do it themselves.

At some point you’re going to have to pay a professional. It’s up to you whether you do it now or later.

Get in touch with us today for a friendly, no pressure chat about what we can do for you. And if we think you don't need to pay for a website yet - we'll tell you.

Free email: It's not good business

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 17:42:28 +0000

@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @live.com, all touted as FREE email addresses. Great for a new business that wants to keep costs down right? Let's have a look at why your business should stay clear of a free email address.

With email communications being a key tool for your business, it’s important to make sure that your credibility surrounds that communication and that your email address is one that speaks 'professionalism'. After all, it’s for business.

When people see your Email address, if you have a Yahoo or Gmail account, you may be giving the impression that you are not as serious about your business as you should be. It's all about the perception, especially for a small business. Free email addresses definitely serve a purpose but when it comes to your business, you should steer clear of anything that takes away from your credibility and potentially detracts from your professional reputation.

"It's all about the perception, especially for a small business."

Let's dig into what exactly is 'wrong' about using a free email service for your business. All of these points are assumptions on the customers behalf and for the most part theoretical.

It's unprofessional

When people see an email account that is from a free service, they may assume that you are reluctant to spend money and therefore the products and services that you offer may not be of the highest quality. How people perceive you and your business is critical to the success of your business. Having a free email address may make those who are considering doing business with you think twice before they enter into a relationship with you. As easy way to remedy this is by registering your business domain name so that can have business emails. Our partners have confirmed to us that since using professional email addresses they have been treated as a much more established business than they did before. You may see that this will open up a large amount of new business opportunities for you and your business - and at such a small cost.

No domain? No business investment

Registering your domain name is very inexpensive and so if you don’t register yours, it will be seen as a direct lack of investment into the business. Customers may wonder where else money has been saved on your business. This of course also spreads to the perception that your products or services are of inferior quality.

Are you here to stay?

So you aren't investing in one of the most inexpensive purchases a business can make and so the question may come up in the minds of potential clients as to whether your business will actually be around in the long term.

The people with whom you do business need to totally trust that you will always work with their best interest in mind. It needs to be seen that you are willing to invest their hard-earned money so they the customer can trust that your business will be around for a very long time. Having a legitimate business email address and email system will help them to feel comfortable with that and it's a very evident investment into your business.

'Free' means 'No technical support'

When you are using a free email service, and your email goes down, to use a popular phrase "Who You Gonna Call?!”

Well Google or Microsoft won’t be answering your phone call and millions of others when they are having problems. They would go out of business if they did that for free. With a true email hosting service, you will very often get technical support (you certainly would with us). So, if your email service stops working at that critical time, and remember in running a business communication is a top priority - you will be able to get the help you need.

It's not for a business

Although a free email address might be enough for your business now, it will definitely not be in time. The free email services offer a consumer-grade set of products and so the clever features offered in a business-standard email platform are immediately missed out on. Basic features such as mailbox sharing (instead of all using the same set of logins, read: major security risk) or even email deliverability authentication (this is a measure to ensure that your emails are actually delivered to your recipients and not to their spam folder).

Your business services need to be able to scale actively with your business success. You don't need the stress, and potential downtime, of having to change email services when you get busy - trust us.

You are missing out

Using your domain name in your email address is similar to how product placement is used in the movies to get people to remember that product even after the movie is over.

When you use your business domain name in your email communications, you are continually presenting your company name over and over again. It’s like free marketing. And if you don’t take this opportunity to market your own business, and you use a free email service like Gmail, you are essentially putting a sign for somebody else’s business over your front door. In other words, you are advertising for Gmail and not your own business. Granted Google appreciates the free advertising and they do offer some fantastic products, but you shouldn’t be doing that for Google. They have a much larger advertising budget than you likely do!

If your email has your domain name in the email address, you are cementing the name of your company into your potential customer’s mind. Do this over and over again and the customer will remember your company before any other company when they are about to buy your products or services.

A custom domain is a pretty cheap billboard...

In Closing

It's worth spending a small amount of money so that you can register your domain and so that the perception that other people have of your business is one of credibility and trustworthiness.

It is also important to remember that nothing in life is really free. You may not always know when you sign up what the price is going to be. Generally the cost of a business email system is a lot less than the cost of a customer facing issues anywhere from deliverability problems to customer service problems (because your email has gone to your customers spam folder). The relationships that you share with your clients should not be short ones but should endure for a very long time - invest in your business email system to show that you will be around for a long time.

To find out more and to get started with professional email addresses, let's chat, we're all ears.

What is hot-desking?

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:13:22 +0000

When hot-desking was first muttered at the office water-cooler everything was thrown into disarray. As well as office walls (with the introduction of open offices), office workers now had to ditch their desks, take their personal items home and *gulp*... start to share spaces with their co-workers.

The premise of hot-desking is not as simple as asking co-workers to share desks. It is a delicate process that usually requires a solid strategy and expert guidance. If not approached correctly, the office ethos is at risk.

The benefits of hot-desking

Frees up space for other perks, like comfortable break-out areas, fitness spaces and games rooms.
Encourages cross-departmental communication and collaboration.
Encourages agile working - more movement between environments.
Less demand for staff to come in to the office, encouraging remote-working.
Cuts cost of permanent running workstations.
Stimulates health and productivity as staff are no longer rooted to the same spot every day.

How to do it right

Plan plan plan
As with any business decision, plan every move - the time it'll take, the resources needed and the budget you have. How will you communicate the change to staff? How will you support them and manage their needs? How will you redesign the space? What is your your time limit? What is your desired outcome and how will you measure its success?

Be open about things
We're all human, we're all creatures of habit and change can be unsettling. Hot-desking takes away the comfort and familiarity of an 'owned' workstation. This is why it's important to be transparent with your teams. They need to be in the know or rumors and negativity will spread. Hold a company-wide meeting, print posters, send emails with plans, ask for feedback and ideas. Getting staff involved creates a more inclusive, democratic culture.

Be equipped
As we are trying to introduce an idea that may face some initial resistance, it's important to remove any possible reasons for users to be unhappy. And what do business users love to complain about? Yes you guessed it - IT. Ensure the correct equipment is available at the desks, whether that's a plug-in monitor, power sockets, network sockets or even a nearby printer. Providing your users with everything they need to do their work is key to implementing a successful hot-desk policy.

Create a variety of spaces
If teams aren't sitting together on a daily basis then it's important to provide plenty of places to hold meetings. Break-out areas with a more relaxed lay-out can be effective. Sofas, armchairs - even swing chairs or hammocks can provide a change of environment that stimulates creativity and collaboration.

Make hot-desking part of an agile working strategy
Think about the bigger picture. Hot-desking is just one element of agile working. Have you prepared a home-working policy? Are you going to consider sit-stand desks and other physical activity initiatives? Hot-desking only works if you see it as a deeper, holistic change. It is about freeing your workforce, unshackling them from their desks and allowing them to use best judgement when it comes to the day's work environment.

Planning well, communicating clearly and using space intelligently is the key to effective hot-desking. We would love to hear about your experience with hot-desking.

Do you think it's a good idea? Are you thinking about making the transition? Get in touch with the team for a chat about how we can help you introduce a new way of working.

Why should my business exist in the cloud?

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 11:08:54 +0000

'The cloud' - what is it, where is it and what can it do for your business.

Like the name suggests, the idea of the cloud feels lofty and hard to grasp. Simply put, cloud computing is the practice of using a network hosted on the Internet, or 'the cloud', to store, manage, and process data. This means you won’t have to maintain or own any hosting equipment locally as you pay someone else for this. Often the label of 'Cloud' is interchanged in different contexts but the basic premise is that instead of systems operating on your business premises, they are operating in a managed data centre for you.

With more than three quarters of companies making use of cloud computing, you’re probably no stranger to the idea. But have you considered moving your business IT to the cloud?

The Good

Cost

Cloud computing works on a pay-as-you-go basis. You only pay for what you use, similar to a utility bill. This eliminates the need to spend money on the expensive (and ever-changing) hardware that comes with hosting on a server. Instead of worrying about servers, you’ll be able to focus on your business.

Quick Accessibility

Many cloud computing services come on-demand, so increasing computing resources can happen efficiently. No more complaints from your users that the X drive is down, or that the business-critical services are running slow.

Scalability

This is a big one. With cloud computing, you have the ability to scale 'elastically'. In other words, your website or app receives the right amount of resources (bandwidth, storage, etc.) when it needs them. And when it's time to take on more employees as your business grows - there's no concerns whether your infrastructure can handle the additional users. Also - when your business decides it's time to move into a larger building - no more weeks of planning on how servers and equipment are going to be moved. It all moves with you without lifting a finger!

Optimal Performance

Most cloud computing services providers (definitely Google) run through secure local data centers that are maintained around the clock, to a much higher standard that is generally possible when IT is done in-house.

Easily Shared

The easy accessibility that comes with the cloud computing makes it very simple to share information across the globe. Data replication technologies are used to ensure that a user is always retrieving the closest copy of any data, from anywhere in the world.

This all happens automatically, with no need to configure peer optimisation of any sort.

Reliability

In cloud computing, data backups occur routinely making disaster recovery easy and inexpensive. With the before-mentioned data replication technology, data can be found on multiple devices at redundant sites on a cloud provider’s network.

Often providers guarantee 99.9% uptime - a number often not achievable in conventional business IT.

The not so good

Security & Privacy

Although cloud service providers often implement high security standards and industry certifications, storing data and important files on external service providers can introduce risks. Any discussion involving data must address security and privacy, especially when it comes to managing sensitive data. We must not forget what happened at Code Space and the hacking of their AWS EC2 console, which led to data deletion and the eventual shutdown of the company. Their dependence on remote cloud-based infrastructure meant taking on the risks of outsourcing everything.

Of course, any cloud service provider is expected to manage and safeguard the underlying hardware infrastructure of a deployment. However, your responsibilities lie in the realm of user access management, and it’s up to you to carefully weigh all the risk scenarios.

Though recent breaches of credit card data and user login credentials are still fresh in the minds of the public, steps have been taken to ensure the safety of data. One such example is the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR), which was enacted in the European Union to provide users more control over their data. Nonetheless, you still need to be aware of your responsibilities and follow best practices.

Vulnerability to attack

In cloud computing, every component is online, which exposes potential vulnerabilities. Even the best teams suffer severe attacks and security breaches from time to time. Since cloud computing is built as a public service, it’s easy to run before you learn to walk. After all, no one at a cloud vendor checks your administration skills before granting you an account: all it takes to get started is generally a valid credit card. This is why training on your business system users is vital.

Limited control and flexibility

Since the cloud infrastructure is entirely owned, managed, and monitored by the service provider, control is inherently removed from the customer.

To varying degrees (depending on the particular service), cloud users may find they have less control over the function and execution of services within a cloud-hosted infrastructure. A cloud provider’s end-user license agreement (EULA) and management policies might impose limits on what customers can do with their deployments.

Customers retain control of their applications, data, and services but may not have the same level of control over their back-end infrastructure, at least, often not to the same level of control provided with an on-premise system.

Vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in is another perceived disadvantage of cloud computing. Easy switching between cloud services is a service that hasn’t yet completely evolved, and organizations may find it difficult to migrate their services from one vendor to another. Differences between vendor platforms may create difficulties in migrating from one cloud platform to another, which could equate to additional costs and configuration complexities. Gaps or compromises made during migration could also expose your data to additional security and privacy vulnerabilities.

Luckily this is becoming less of an issue as more migration tools are provided by providers such as Google's extensive migration suite.

Where is the cloud?

Cloud storage generally relies on hundreds of data servers across multiple locations around the world. This provides redundancy (should an entire data center fall over) and also optimal performance (always able to provide data from a close location). This means that your emails and business files are stored several times-over, across the globe in super secure data centers, waiting to be opened or written to.

Generally the Google data center in Ireland is most commonly used by our Ostratto partners as this is the closest full data center.

In closing

Cloud services are now fully available in today's business environment and the options of providers are vast. Ostratto are a firm believer of cloud technologies - they enable our partners (especially the smaller businesses) to scale freely and at a low cost which is vital during the early life of a business.

If you are interested in speaking to someone about how cloud technology can empower your business, get in touch with us today.