Enhancing internal communication is a critical component of successful corporate governance. Effective interaction between team members can promote synergy and collective effort, boost employee morale, and improve overall efficiency.

To achieve this, effective communication is paramount. It aligns everyone with the organisation’s objectives and fosters a sense of trust. Moreover, it enhances overall enjoyment and satisfaction within the work environment.

What is an effective communication solution?

The term ‘employee communication solution’ refers to a wide range of apps and software that help companies keep in touch with their staff. These platforms mainly support communication through instant messages, text messages, or phone calls. They often include options for document sharing and collaborative tools such as video meetings.

By using a single platform for all your internal communications, you can make sure everyone on your team is on the same page. This applies to all kinds of work situations, whether it’s a classic office setting, a mix of in-person and remote work, fully remote teams, field workers, or any other work setup.

Why is a dedicated communication solution essential for frontline employees?

Frontline workers in retail, manufacturing, or service industries often feel disconnected and isolated from the larger organisation. Their work environment, marked by long hours and a fast pace, provides few chances for interaction with colleagues from different departments. This limited interaction restricts their access to company updates and news, making it hard for them to feel part of the organisation.

An employee communication app designed for these situations can bridge these gaps and boost their engagement by offering a unified platform for communication and collaboration across teams, departments, and locations.

By giving field employees, who usually don’t have a dedicated workstation or professional email, a reliable and easy-to-use communication method, an employee communication app can increase engagement among this vital group of employees and create a more unified and collaborative workplace for the entire company.

The main point is that the internal communication app is easily accessible on the employees’ personal mobile devices in a secure and compliant way that is fully controlled by the business.

Introducing Axonify

Easily share quick, consistent information with your team when it matters, no matter where they are, plus receive back critical insights from your employees on the ground. Whether for marketing efforts, promoting new products and services, or more, you have a constant two-way communication channel with your on-site staff through an employee communication solution from Axonify built to meet your business needs.

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Revolutionise your workplace with an efficient solution for employee communication

We’re in the middle of the busiest shopping period of the year and, with a billion active monthly users globally, TikTok offers many opportunities for SMEs to get on someone’s wish list this Christmas.

Indeed, 47% of people on TikTok have already purchased something they like on the platform, with the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt getting more than 29bn views.

But how can a small business make the most of TikTok to increase sales and grow their business with holiday shopping well underway? Try TikTok for Business.

What is TikTok for Business?

TikTok for Business offers a suite of products that help small businesses grow, target more customers, and drive results. Even though it seems late in the season, it’s never too late to begin a campaign with TikTok For Business.

Take thortful, for example – the UK’s first greeting card marketplace. Earlier this year thortful needed to attract new customers and build awareness of its wide array of cards and gifts. The brand tapped into TikTok’s popular trends and used humour to showcase their products. They reached over 1.7m users, with their videos receiving over 4.4m views.

What are the benefits of TikTok for your SME this Christmas?

People all over the UK turn to TikTok to discover trends, recommendations, and their next purchase throughout the year. It’s no surprise that Christmas shoppers go to TikTok for gift inspiration. 82% of users say they have discovered an SMB on TikTok before seeing them elsewhere. 

TikTok for Business is offering SMEs access to the Holiday Resource Hub, a one-stop shop filled with useful information to help SMEs win the holiday season, including a free playbook with a step-by-step guide to the season including their Christmas checklist.

5-step Christmas checklist:

Before the big day, here are some tips to get your marketing plan in order.

1) Refine creative strategy

Develop a voice on TikTok and determine what you want to show your audience.

It’s a light-hearted platform so it’s ideal for showing off the fun side of your business. Think tips, tricks and comedy shorts – TikTok stats show that three out of five users go to the platform for entertainment so keep that in mind when you’re doing your planning. If you want to keep it more informative, include short information in text overlays around the theme of your video. For example, how a particular child’s toy might be beneficial to their learning with five text overlays explaining why.

Remember, ads that look like native videos do well. Have a play with holiday trends – nothing too polished, though. Users like a casual, authentic image. You could offer fun giveaways or get in on Christmas trends such as decorating the Christmas tree, Christmas wish lists and easy holiday meals.

Turn the sound on too, so that users will feel more engaged!

2) Find and define your audience

TikTok lets you set your parameters to target new users using Ads Manager. Ads Manager can guide the ad formats you use and target your audience based on age, location, gender, interests and other unique variables.

What’s more, you can create custom and lookalike audiences (that share commonalities with your current audience) to expand your range.

3) Set your budget and bidding strategies

Minimum ad spends apply but be clear from the start on how much you want to spend for your ads. If you’re satisfied with your performance, it’s recommended you increase your budget by 20-30 per cent every day.

You set your bidding strategy when you set up your ad group. Find out more about bidding strategies here.

4) Build your ad format strategy

52% of TikTok users that have come across SMB content on TikTok have gone on to make a purchase.

Ads can take many forms on TikTok:

In-Feed Ads:  The standard ad format, embeds a video that plays automatically in the For You feed. This format runs up to a max of 60 seconds.

Spark Ads: A native ad format that allows businesses to boost posts from their own Business Accounts or Creator profiles as In-Feed Ads. Unlike other ad formats, users can interact with Spark Ads, just like organic videos. Users can comment, like and share but also visit the brand’s or the creator’s profile associated with the video.

Collection Ads: Enable people to seamlessly discover and browse products in a full-screen mobile experience. Collection Ads lead to an Instant Gallery Page where people can explore a curated collection of your products.

Lead Generation: Allows you to create interest in your business and collect information to convert prospects into customers. Lead Generation Ads deliver qualified leads directly to you, saving your business time and money.

E-Commerce Integrations: TikTok integrates with e-commerce merchants allowing you to add TikTok as a sales and advertising channel to your website. The Integrations streamlines the process of creating or linking your TikTok Ads Manager account, syncing your product catalogue, and installing the TikTok pixel to enable paid and organic visibility features.

5) Optimise

Allow your campaign time to adjust before rushing into optimisations. Refreshing your creative can help, every 7 days ideally.

Make incremental changes to your bid and budget when you make adjustments. Don’t change your budget more than 30% from the previous budget setting and don’t change your bid more than 20% from the original setting.

Try and optimise before your Christmas ad campaign begins. Check you’re targeting the right audience, re-jigging your ads based on how users interact with them and test constantly to see what does and what doesn’t work.

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This Christmas, TikTok can help you reach even more customers

The rapid growth and convenience of buying online is one pandemic habit that looks set to stay for the long term.

While the shift to e-commerce has been gradually building over the past decade, it grew exponentially over the past couple of years, with online sales representing an increasingly large part of many businesses’ operations.

According to the ONS, internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales was the highest it’s ever been: at 37.7% early last year.

Dan Edelman, General Manager, UK Merchant Services, American Express explains that as a result, ensuring your e-commerce operation is running seamlessly is more important than ever before. This is particularly the case for smaller and independent retailers, which often don’t have the resource to open multiple stores but can reach new customers and grow their business by selling online. In fact, the American Express Global Business Spend Indicator revealed that for Q3 2021, some 44% of UK businesses planned to increase investment in e-commerce technologies.

Against this backdrop, it’s vital that all businesses selling online are aware of the new industry-wide requirements coming into force very soon. Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is being introduced to help increase the security of online payments. With a technical name and imminent enforcement deadline for e-commerce of 14 March, it may feel an intimidating prospect. But solutions such as SafeKey, American Express’ checkout security technology, protects customers against fraud when they pay online.

There’s no time for delay, so read on for what you need to know about on SCA:

What is Strong Customer Authentication?

SCA features a two-factor authentication process designed to add an extra layer of security when anyone makes a payment online. Its implementation requires merchants and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to work together with technology suppliers, Card issuers and many others to deliver SCA in a way which works well for customers.

When do I need to implement it?

The enforcement deadline for e-commerce is 14 March – but the rollout has already begun and is rapidly ramping up. This means that more and more of your transactions risk being declined in the coming weeks if you don’t have an SCA-compliant checkout – which could result in valuable lost sales.

Why is it being introduced?

SCA is part of the Payment Services Directive 2 impacting all merchants European-wide that accept card payments. The latest figures from UK Finance reveal that the level of fraud and economic crime is on the increase – so SCA will play a crucial role in not only protecting your customers from fraud, but your business, too. Implementing SCA protection, such as SafeKey, transfers liability for fraud chargebacks on SCA-authenticated and attempted transactions to the Card issuer (us at American Express).

What can I do to be SCA-ready?

The time to act is now, with the first step to talk to your Payment Services Provider or Payment Gateway to ensure that you are using American Express’ SafeKey, which leverages the global industry standard, EMV® 3-D Secure, to detect and reduce online fraud. This enhanced protection may give customers more confidence with their online spending. It will also save you time and resources – which we know are crucial for many small businesses.

I’m concerned about making the checkout process too complex

The checkout process is kept simple as American Express’ smart anti-fraud technology works in the background and checks each online transaction against hundreds of data points. This means that the levels of challenge rates can be minimised whenever possible – ensuring a friction-free purchasing journey and, in turn, reducing basket abandonment.

How will this affect my regular customers?

We know the importance of maintaining and preserving good relationships with your most loyal customers. SafeKey allows customers to add their favourite merchants to their ‘Express List’ via the Amex app – meaning they don’t have to spend time verifying their purchase, allowing them check out faster without compromising security.

To find out more about how American Express can help your business get SCA-ready, visit: https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/merchant/safekey.html

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Get ready for Strong Customer Authentication: What you need to know about the new online payment rules

Behind today’s digital network infrastructure, whether that’s cloud services, Big Data, edge computing, internet of things or traditional databases, is a growing need for servers to store, process and send enormous volumes of data.

And during the last 12 months, a period that has seen an unprecedented global shift towards consumption of online content through working, learning and entertainment at home, that demand for data has spiked beyond anything that was ever possible to forecast.

While it may not be apparent to the user when they click the button to stream video on YouTube or Netflix, listen to music on Spotify or send a message on Facebook, a server within a data center somewhere has to host and send that content to them. With exponential growth in the use of all digital services, that means more servers and data centers are needed than ever.

Perhaps remarkably, most people use and enjoy online content without ever needing to understand the complexity of the backbone that allows it to arrive on their screen or are even aware it exists. To them, the movie simply starts playing when they click the button.

At Kingston Technology, we’re extremely proud to play a major role in providing the digital backbone that makes this possible. Our enterprise storage and memory products are used around the world in servers and data centers, enabling the digital services that are now part of daily life for all of us.

Datacenter Storage

In particular, our solid-state drives (SSD) are deployed in millions of client computers such as desktop and laptop PCs, as well as enterprise computing. In both situations reliability, security, high performance and low latency are critical for any application to perform well.

The steady migration away from the hard disk technology that has been the basis of computer storage for decades, towards solid state drives, enables systems to boot faster, load applications quicker and improve the entire computer’s responsiveness.

In data centers, where vast arrays of storage drives are needed to store and process large volumes of data, the improved performance and reduced power consumption of SSDs over traditional hard disks enables new applications that depend on ultra-fast performance.

It also means providers can greatly expand hosting capacity within their existing infrastructure, without necessarily needing to increase the physical footprint of the datacenter, its power, thermal or maintenance requirements.

However, while all SSDs are based on similar principles, different digital services and applications have a variety of requirements, and this affects the type of SSD that is selected for that role.

For example, in a data center it’s crucial to be able to predict performance when under load, where 24/7 uptime and reliability is expected.

Going further, some digital services such as movie and music streaming services focus almost entirely on making content available to the users. At their basic level, content sits on SSDs in a data center, the user chooses a content on a streaming service, which sends the request to the server to load the chosen content and start streaming for the user. The ideal SSD for this type of usage would be one that has been optimised for read-centric workload as a large data set – multiple contents (music, video, etc..) which is loaded once and accessed by multiple users at the same time.

But that is not true for other services, particularly those that are dependent on user-generated content like Facebook, Flickr and Pinterest, where users post their own content besides viewing content shared by other users, so there are not only reads but also writes. For data centers that are used for similar kind of applications a mixed workload SSD is a better choice.

Our product lineup reflects these diverse requirements. Our DC500 Enterprise SSD comes in DC500R and DC500M versions, with specific configurations designed for different applications based on read-centric or mixed workloads. And in a datacenter where reliability is crucial, in the wake of power loss, our enterprise SSDs use protection circuits to prevent data loss in the event of server downtime.

Independent opinion and support

Additionally, Kingston Technology is a leading supplier of memory, another crucial aspect of data center configuration that is a key driver of system reliability. With the option of both ECC and non-ECC DRAM memory modules, again, we value performance and data reliability.

However, it is easy to purchase inadequate DRAM memory modules, which could lead to the server not starting or to configure the DRAM the wrong way, which would impact on performance, power consumption and scalability. On the other hand, it may be easy as well to purchase the wrong type of SSD for a specific application.

That’s why we offer both pre- and post-sales advice to existing and potential customers, along with industry-leading warranty on all our products. Through Ask An Expert, we identify customers’ needs and work with them to choose the right kind of storage or memory for their application requirements and offer advice to ensure full compatibility with other components in their system.

Tomorrow’s datacenter performance

Even with the improved performance and power efficiency of SSDs over hard disks in the data center, the growing global demand for digital services has put extreme pressure on data centers.

A new SSD technology that takes advantage of the computer’s fast PCI-Express bus and use the new NVMe protocol are set to improve performance further by up to 10x in order to meet that demand without necessarily requiring large expansion to existing data center physical architectures.

In fact, if you’ve bought a laptop in the last few years, you probably already have this technology in your computer.

With such a huge performance gain to be expected in data center storage, we will be able to meet the exponential increase in demand for digital services for the foreseeable future by just replacing with newer technology.

Adoption in servers moves at a slower pace to the desktop though, where different requirements mean it’s not as simple as removing one drive and replacing with another for an instant performance gain. All systems are different and only certain servers can be used with NVMe drives.

Kingston Is With You

To many people, the world of data storage that’s at the heart of digital business may sound like a minefield of acronyms, jargon, and fast-moving technology, where a lack of knowledge could lead to a purchasing or configuration error.

This is an area where we think it’s important to help both our existing and potential customers. We offer strong pre-sales and post-sales advice, identifying customers’ requirements, checking compatibility with their existing infrastructure and making a recommendation based on application needs.

For example, a business may not need to expand its storage bandwidth now, but future growth may see existing storage systems becoming a bottleneck further down the line.

In some cases the course of action we would advise may be to wait before switching to NVMe, to ensure total compatibility and get the best value for money at the right time.

Our Kingston Is With You business philosophy is intended to let our customers know that their purchase is backed up with high quality support. It applies to the company’s full portfolio to communicate the advice, support and high quality our products offer, highlighting the pre-sales advice service and the after-sales support customers can expect and which stands up for over 30 years, helping corporate and end users in many aspects of business and life, wherever they are.

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How the world can meet growing data demand

Innovation comes in all sizes and the resealable packing bags are the best example of this statement. However, resealable packaging is an innovation which is void of the popularity it deserves.

For more than a century now, resealable packaging has been favoured by people for daily household activities. This form of packaging allows people to not only store their goods safely but also carry them, and consume them with a possibility of storing new goods again in perfect condition.

While we talk about almost everything in our routine conversations, packaging is one aspect that we hardly talk about but experience everyday. Therefore, flexible packaging has a huge role to play in our lives which has resulted in an unbelievable revolution in this area.

Even the people who are skeptical about investing in resealable packaging favour it due to numerous reasons such as longer shelf life, waste reduction, and ease of use.

The role of resealable packing in our daily lives

Resealable bag packaging comes in different shapes and forms and serves different purposes. For instance, a resealable packaging that provides an airtight container with different barrier and seal features allows the consumer to preserve food for a long period of time. With this type of packaging, harmful elements such as moisture or insects are unable to reach the product.

What we fail to recognize is that resealable packaging plays a much bigger role in our lives that exists outside the kitchen. Activities such as travelling, medical needs, or sanitation also require our utmost attention.

In this aspect, innovative products such as the resealable Schur®Star Label Bag are setting new bars of usefulness in our lives. The Star Label Bag is prominently used as a wet wipe for reasons such as refreshment wipes, medical wipes, toilet tissues, and traveling use. Moreover, the resealability of such bags is quite convenient. All the customer has to do is break the seal, take out the wipes for their respective use, and close the bag.

Conclusion

With a simplified yet effective way of resealing the bags, Schur Star Label Bag has become an integral part of the lives of people who use them. What sets them apart from other resealable packaging is the availability of security labels. Essentially, these labels allow the customers to enjoy a tamper evidence feature or use it for child-safe solutions.

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Resealable packaging innovation

In order to keep your restaurant relevant, it’s important to be on the constant lookout for possible improvements and oncoming trends.

With many new establishments being opened on a regular basis, you’ll have to try your best to keep the existing customers satisfied.

By following the next six tips/secrets, you’ll be on a good path to achieve just that.

Inform Yourself

Trends are prone to constant change, and seemingly new themes can quickly become obsolete. Take note of what’s popular among the general public. For example, this can be an open restaurant kitchen where the food is prepared in plain sight right beside the guests. These larger concepts can be somewhat harder to implement and they highly depend on the type of food you’re selling, but you’re not only limited to them.

Diet/vegan portions are highly popular nowadays, and they can be added to the restaurant’s menu in just a couple of hours. You can always find something useful to introduce, no matter small it is.

Organize Different Events

The exact same atmosphere each day can quickly get boring and deter potential guests. To break the monotony, you should frequently organize different events – this can be anything from a charity fundraiser and live music to even a birthday or a holiday party.

By doing this, you give people a reason to come back in order to experience different ambiances. Also, it’s one of the most efficient methods for generating larger revenue, especially once you start getting regular visitors.

The opportunities are endless, just try to make the events different enough each time in order to spark your guest’s curiosity.

Build Relationships With Your Team

Experienced and satisfied employees are the key to success. The better they perform, the more people you’ll attract. Work with each team member individually and show them that you care about their well-being through common interests. One way to discover those is through their social media accounts.

Spokeo, a reverse phone lookup tool can help you track down their online profiles by simply entering one piece of information. It will return all corresponding matches. After that, it’s just a matter of finding some common ground. You can also gain an insight into how they’re feeling through their social media posts. Show them that you’re not only their boss but also a friend.

Get a Solid Website

If someone needs a certain piece of information, the first place they’ll look at is your restaurant’s website. Leaving a good first impression here is going to show them that you’re serious about what you’re doing and that their satisfaction is your top priority.

They should be able to find everything here, from the menu and the individual prices to the themes and dates of the different events. Good SEO can also help it rank high in Google’s search results so that your restaurant’s website is the first thing that pops up.

Finally, focus on making it both aesthetically pleasing and functional – don’t settle only for one element.

Register Your Restaurant on EatApp

The days of tedious bookings via phone calls are gone. With EatApp, a restaurant reservation software, your guests can book a table with just a few taps on their smartphone.

Available for both Android and iOS, this convenient app will help you get exposure while making your customer’s lives far easier. The software updates constantly in real-time, reducing the amount of work that you have to do while also ensuring that your customers never get left hanging.

It tailors to the guest’s preferences and gives them an option to choose the exact date and time when they want to have a table available. Since you’re required to input both the menu and the prices, your guests will know in advance what to expect. The sheer popularity of the app will make your restaurant well-known.

Use Social Media For Marketing

A picture is worth a thousand words, and you should take advantage of that. Using a platform such as Instagram can give potential visitors an idea of how your interior looks, as well as provide an insight into what you have to offer. The images you post should look as professional as possible while also being true-to-life.

Also, the amount of registered users on different social media platforms is unparalleled by any other advertising method and it’s completely free. If you’re having trouble getting noticed, you can try using Instagram ads or even suggest partnerships to other more popular establishments. Once you get the hang of it, the only sky is the limit.

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Get your restaurant noticed with these six secrets