March Madness Aftermath – How did your Business Fare?

Employers listen up: do you know where your staff was this March? Now, my intention of asking that question is not simply to sound like one of those old school commercials that calls-out bad parents for not knowing where their child is. The fact of the matter is this – decrease in employee productivity every March is a real issue for companies in all industries; so much so, that Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting firm, conducts a yearly survey to assess the financial impact due to lost productivity. The survey, known as the Challenger March Madness Productivity Report, estimated the financial impact as a result of lost employee productivity to surpass a shocking $192 million.

To combat this, PGi and iMeet have created their own "final four" tips to help keep productivity high in the midst of March Madness:

1. Be on time – sounds pretty obvious, right? Every office seems to always have at least one person (Tom, Dick, Harry, or whatever other name you’ve chosen for him) who's habitually late. This can pose a problem when meeting with important or potential clients. If you need Tom in that meeting on time, shoot him a reminder email, text, or IM a few minutes before the start of the meeting to make sure he gets there on time.
2. Spice up your meetings – adding user friendly features to your meetings keeps participants actively engaged. Bland, boring meetings are easily tuned out, and seem to slow to a snail's pace. Implementing content such as videos, polling, and Q&A sessions and other unexpected content keeps your meetings moving forward and participants interested.
3. Be where you are – with the technology that’s out there today, it's easy to physically be in one place while your thoughts are somewhere else. Being actively present in your meetings is important; and you can start by putting the smartphone down (unless you're using it to access your meeting, of course). Yes that YouTube video of a squirrel waterskiing is out-of-this-world adorable, but save it for after-work hours.
4. Skip the strip search – avoid the hassle and invasion of privacy the TSA is famous for and hold virtual meetings as opposed to in-person ones. Sure, you might have participants watching NCAA games in another window, but on the bright side, at least you’ll be able to get updates as you wrap-up your calls.

PGi hopes these tips will help you beat the buzzer so you can get back to what matters this March: gloating about the status of your bracket to your coworkers and friends.

Source: Conferencing Services

One Reason to Look Forward to Summer – Microsoft Office 365

Rain, rain go away,

I wish it was a summer day!

Yet another reason to start looking forward to summer: InterCall will take one more leap into the cloud by launching Microsoft Office 365. As part of the next generation of cloud services, Microsoft Office 365 streamlines the way your business gains insight, shares expertise, finds information, communicates, and enables your employees to deliver effective experiences across numerous devices – anytime, anywhere, and from any device.

Microsoft Office 365 lets you access your information wherever you go with the guaranteed reliability and proven security expected from Microsoft. Designed to meet your unique IT needs for reliability, user productivity, and security, Microsoft Office 365 combines Office applications you’re more than likely already familiar with, such as Exchange, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint Online, Word, and Lync Online. Moreover, since Microsoft Office 365 is part of the cloud, there’s no need for a dedicated IT staff or worry about upgrading your equipment or applications.

Microsoft Office 365 provides:

• Best-of-breed data centers with ISO 27001 and SAS 70 certification
• A virtual office – whether on the go on in the office your employees have secure access to their contacts, email, calendars, and documents with the latest anti-spam and virus protection
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – guarantee 99.9 percent uptime with a financial backing
• New productive ways to communicate – work together in real-time with the advantages and tools of cloud services blended with Microsoft Office
• Server upgrading, updating, and patching – eliminate your need to worry about purchasing or maintaining the latest version, hardware, or software your business requires and focus on mission-critical issues that matter to you most
• Cost-effective flexibility and predictability – pricing plan options that include the ability to pay-as-you-go, allowing you to more accurately forecast your predictable annual expenses and IT costs
• Powerful privacy standards, controls, and security; business grade, geo-redundant disaster recovery and dependability with automatic failovers and multiple data centers to safeguard your data

For over 20 years, InterCall has been a part of the cloud, dependably and safely delivering their conferencing services over their network. InterCall understands how important security is whether you’re in or out of the cloud, and has created Microsoft Office 365 from the ground up for enhanced performance, dependability, and availability; it was built to work with the devices, browsers, software, and phones you’re already accustomed to.

Source: Conferencing Services