Three Ideas to Simplify Your Digital World

Information management courses with avptglobal

Sharing a Little Bit of Magic that we have just found

By Tim T Dingle BSc (Hons) MIBiol PGCE MBA

Chief Development Officer at the Academy of Vocational and Professional Training

If you are a small business owner or a serial entrepreneur then I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of time on your hands because you wear too many hats and juggle too many tasks. Agreed? So, in order to be really successful, you have to be both efficient and effective. You should try to set your mind free of mundane tasks and be dedicated to being high on creativity, innovation and execution. The three areas in which I spend the vast majority of my day are communicating, analysis and researching information. If you can streamline this management of information, learn to adapt quickly to the changing digital world and work effectively, then you have the key to efficiency. Here are my top 3 ideas for improving your efficiency:

1. Learn to schedule emails.

If you truly understand email marketing, you know that there is an optimal time to send an email, depending on who is getting it. In order to ensure your email is actually read (rather than ending up in the bin) you need to send it when the recipient is most likely to read it.  The solution is to crank out the email, and then queue it up to send first thing in the morning. I no longer have to remember to send the email in the morning, have less concern that the email will be buried in the inbox and don’t ruin anyone’s evening with an email request from me.

2. Online Training Courses

Save time and simplify- train online. Today there are mnay thousands of eLearning (and more importantly mLearning, m for mobile) courses for everything from painting to digital photography and journalism. There is a plethora of online training courses for various aspects of business, from building a web enterprise to business accounting. These courses have benefits for existing organisations and for people dreaming of starting up their own business empire. The phenomenon of the internet means that people can be trained online as easily as they can learn at a training centre saving time, money and energy. But make sure it is a proper accredited course. To gain access to an online course all you need is to subscribe and have an internet connection. This means you can learn new business skills from your office, your armchair at home or perhaps, for a few lucky people, from a beach front café.

The variety of business courses available continues to increase and this is great news if you want to eLearn, anytime and anyplace. Some course providers offer training in financial reporting for people requiring time management and everything from writing reports and proposals to How to be an entrepreneur. The excellent range of online courses means that prices are generally quite competitive.

3. Cloud Magic to find and retrieve information.

For many years I have used my inboxes as catch all storage repositories, only to find the search and retrieval process cumbersome, if not impossible. How frustrating is it, knowing that you stored some digital notes about a client meeting, but you have no idea where?  I have starting using the excellent CloudMagic (www.cloudmagic.com ) where you have one interface to search through all of your personal data repositories like Gmail, Outlook, Evernote, Dropbox and more. If you’re one who worries about your digital privacy, this service may not be for you.  Of course, make sure you read and are comfortable with their privacy policy before proceeding.

 In a small or medium size business it is clear that the amount of information created will continue to grow exponentially. Without tools, training and technologies helping you cut through the digital noise, you will damage your ability to innovate and grow your business.

Don’t let yourself drown in information or let the world change before you very eyes. Organise and improve the structure of your digital communications, digitial learning and retrieval with these three ideas.

Mobile Learning, Mobile Earning