Establishing a successful startup does not end when you acquire the funds to get your business up and running. In fact, securing the financial backing to make your dream product or service a reality is only the beginning of a prosperous startup endeavor. If funding represents the seed of a startup, how you manage your business can be likened to water, sunshine, and nutrients—all of which are required to grow the sprout of a venture into a mature enterprise. All of this is to say that your approach to managing your business can make or break it—and low to no return on investment can make for very unhappy stakeholders. A vital component of creating and maintaining a successful startup, whether your industry is a creative one or tech-driven, is providing your team with tools that enable them to communicate effectively, collaborate efficiently, and overcome the variety of challenges that are likely to arise.

Recent data underscores the importance of stellar management throughout the early years of a startup’s life. According to data published by the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, 100 million businesses are started annually across the globe, and two-thirds of adults believe that entrepreneurship is a viable career choice. Yet while the world of startups is a rapidly growing one, nearly as many startups fail each year as are created. The four-year success rate for startups ranges from 37% to 58%, which means that for startups in every industry, productivity and fiscal responsibility should be top priorities from the get-go. Thus, to prevent your business from being reduced to a mere statistic, it is vital to identify and avert potential time and money sinks.

In the digital age, email has become the privileged mode of communication among organizations small and large across the globe. Yet despite its perceived convenience, email has its downsides. Most notably, email represents a substantial barrier to worker productivity. According to data released by the McKinsey Global Institute, in fact, more than 25% of the average worker’s week is dedicated to email. Given the numbers, this is hardly a surprise: in 2014, in excess of 108 billion business emails were sent and received per day; this amounts to 121 emails per person daily. And not all these emails are legitimately work-related: many are time-wasting spam messages and so-called “graymail” (which account for 14% of all received mail). The outcome for businesses is an estimated $650 billion lost each year solely to unnecessary emails. In light of these facts, one of the first and most important tactics a startup should deploy is adopting a more efficient means of communication. The optimal solution to this conundrum is web-based collaboration software designed to manage individual projects, teams of talent, and the business as a whole.

Web-based project management tools such as ConductorLIVE dramatically minimize noise so that you can maximize productivity. Rather than having to sift through an endless stream of emails to locate a certain correspondence or file, team members working on a common project can communicate, collaborate, share files, and organize through a single easily accessible, distraction-free web-based location. They say the defining factor in achieving success is not so much access to resources but, rather, resourcefulness. Web-based collaboration software demonstrates this adage, combining utmost convenience with a powerful, streamlined approach to project management. And for startups, this can translate to a more effective use of funds and employee knowledge and skills, as well as an increased speed to market—both of which are key ingredients to business success.

Moreover, the infrastructure of ConductorLIVE’s collaborative software enables members of any and all departments of a startup—product management, marketing, operations, engineering or programming, and business management—to connect with project leaders. By providing an efficient line of communication, web-based project management enables quick decision-making, problem-solving, and strategy formation among individuals located across multiple sectors of an organization, and even across different geographical locations. By fostering direct information exchange, collaborative software also empowers managers to respond quickly and in an informed manner to the needs of both the organization and its clientele. And most importantly, this matrix-friendly structure provides an efficient means for organization members to work in tandem to produce the product or service your startup offers.

Four of the biggest challenges facing startups are competition, managing quick growth, expanding the roster of talent, and staying at the vanguard of a rapidly changing market. By instituting a foolproof system that enables efficient, effective communication and collaboration, you can rest assured that your team has the tools it needs and turn your attention to the plethora of challenges that face leaders in today’s business world. Collaboration platforms such as ConductorLIVE make it easy to maintain lines of communication between parts of the organization and the whole, eliminating the need to agonize over whether your employees are all on the same page. Moreover, web-based project management solutions for startups can help you to navigate the aforementioned challenges of running a successful business. Effective collaboration between all units of an organization is vital to staying ahead of the competition. Quick decision-making is a necessity for managing your business during periods of rapid growth. The ability to share anything and everything about a project is a valuable asset when it comes to integrating new talent into existing teams. And sales team-to-management communication is crucial to staying on top of today’s swiftly evolving market trends.
Face-to-face meetings can be nigh impossible to schedule, and have the potential to disrupt workflow. Email is often an inefficient and costly alternative. Investing now in a resource designed to optimize communications among members of your startup can yield high returns in the future. In addition to providing a convenient avenue to create, share, collaborate, and manage with ease, collaboration software such as ConductorLIVE is highly customizable, which means that it can be tailored to your particular needs. Whether you’re looking for a digital communication solution suited to an individual, a specific team, or an entire enterprise, a powerful, web-based project management tool such as ConductorLIVE can help you to bring together collaboration and productivity and dramatically increase your startup’s chances of long-term stability and profitability.

The post How Effective Digital Communication Helps Resolve Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs and their Startups appeared first on ConductorLive.

Everyone knows it, but no one likes to say it: some meetings kill productivity. According to surveys from IndustryWeek and the 3M Meeting Network, as much as 50% of the time spent in meetings is wasted. And Office Team, a division of Robert Half International, found that 45% of senior executives felt that their employees would be more productive if meetings were banned at least one day a week. Considering that around 25 million business meetings happen every day in the United States, and that members of upper management typically spend 50% of their workday in meetings, that’s a lot of lost time and a potential drain on productivity.

For many organizations, however, meetings have become a kind of necessary evil. Teams need a way to stay in touch, managers need a way to assess progress, and organizations need a way to enable collaboration and drive outcomes. Look around, and you’ll find countless lists offering tips on how to make meetings more productive, but very few ever address the idea that perhaps meetings are, themselves, the problem, and that there might be a better solution for sharing information, staying up-to-date, and empowering collaboration.

First, let’s take a look at the anatomy of an unproductive meeting: Unproductive meetings may not start on time, or may involve some participants arriving late. Late-arriving participants will need to be filled in on what they missed, which uses up valuable time rehashing things that have already been discussed, which can also lead to lack of engagement. In fact, in 2013, 92% of U.S. information workers surveyed by FuzeBox admitted that they had “multitasked” during meetings, with 41% saying that they were multitasking “often” or “all the time” during meetings, while 49% admitted to spending meeting time performing other, unrelated work.

Other times, unproductive meetings aren’t actually necessary, and are happening just to “check in,” or may involve people who don’t actually need to be in the meeting at all, leading to a lack of engagement and a loss of productivity. Unproductive meetings may be disorganized, with no clear expectations of what needs to be accomplished in the meeting, and no assigned action items by the time the meeting is adjourned. Because of this lack of focus, meetings may also run late, which not only takes up time, but demotivates workers, making it more difficult for team members to return to effective work once the meeting is over.

All these meetings cost more than productivity: they cost time and money. A recent Bain & Company survey showed that on average, 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings, a number that has gone up every year since 2008, costing organizations an estimated $37 billion a year. That’s a lot of time and money going to something that’s supposed to be an efficient solution for sharing information and increasing productivity, but that actually does just the opposite. Fortunately, there’s a better way…

One thing that meeting planners are frequently encouraged to do to make their meetings more productive is to leverage technology, but one of the best ways to leverage technology is to invest in online project management solutions that actually eliminate the need for most meetings. With project management software such as ConductorLIVE, team members can communicate, collaborate, share files, and keep in touch without the need for a lot of time-wasting meetings.

In an effort to increase productivity while still encouraging participation and teamwork, many companies are changing the way they manage projects and groups, approach communication, build knowledge, and drive outcomes in the modern age. With the help of online project management solutions such as ConductorLIVE, organizations are finding new and better ways to empower collaboration without sacrificing a lot of time, money, or productivity.

The post Anatomy of an Unproductive Business Meeting appeared first on ConductorLive.