Musings of a Jigsourcer

Self-Care Tips

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:39:35 GMT

Little, free things you can do for YOU, no matter how busy you are

You know what, life as a grown up is bloody hard! There is always something more important to do than focus on yourself isn't there? Ummm, actually no. There is usually something to do, but probably not something more important. To quote whichever genius said so, "you cannot pour from an empty cup". As a mum and a business owner, if I'm not good, ain't nothin' good! I can't be my best mummy-self or my best business-self if I am always putting everything else before my own wellbeing. But, we're busy, right? There is no time to spend a day at a spa - maybe there is no childcare and no funds for that either. So here are a few things I have found to give me a little "aaahh!" moment every once in a while.

Have a brew
Make yourself a cuppa. Bit sit, STILL until that bad boy has been devoured. You are not permitted to put your feet down on the floor until you have finished your tea or coffee. It's only 5 minutes. Leave the kids where you can see them, move away from your desk, everything can be on pause for the time it takes for you to drain your mug.

Foot fettish
Soak your feet. Get comfy on the sofa with your feet in a bowl of warm water - with bubbles if you want some extra luxury! Wiggle your toes and let them go wrinkly! Have a towel to hand in case you need to dash off to a woken baby or to answer the door or because little George has stuck a lego up his nose, but if you can make it until the water is cooling off, we call that a win! Have a pot of nice moisturiser to finish off the effect.

Soak in the bath
You might not ever have opportunity to lounge in the bath for two hours, but you don't need that long. The relaxation can come much quicker than that for a busy woman on the go all the time. Bubble bath if you have it and light one candle if that's all you've got. Close the bathroom door. Hell, lock it if you can! No phone. Lay. Eyes closed. Maximise the effects by switching off from everything else and then if you only have 10 minutes, it's 10 lovely minutes when you embraced the warmth and the stillness and the quiet.

Paint your nails
There is something renewing about having a new look. A simple way to do this is to paint your nails. It takes minutes if you have a good fast-setting polish but it's a task that requires full concentration so you're letting go of everything else that's in your busy mind just for those few minutes. Add some colour into your view as your hands are typing away, washing up, changing a nappy, scrolling through Facebook...

Go for a walk
On your break at work or as a change of scenery, get yourself (and the kids) out of the house. Rain or shine, but preferably shine, get out in the world. It doesn't need to be a mountain hike, just a walk around the block or to the local park or shop. Take some deep breaths. Actively notice something lovely about your surroundings.

Spruce yourself
Even if you're working alone, vegging on the sofa or staying at home with the children, do something that makes you feel special. Wear your favourite lippy, put your perfume on, put your hair up.

Play music
Get a good playlist on or your favourite album from the 80's! Sing! All the better if you do it at the top of your voice and into a hairbrush "microphone"! Open the windows so the whole street can hear you! Dance! Get the small humans dancing! With or without singing and dancing, music is invigorating and mood changing. It's powerful stuff!

Face mask
Ideally, be still, with cucumber over your eyes while your face mask brings your skin and senses back to life. If you have to, you can still do stuff and face mask at the same time, but it's gotta be more renewing if you get some time out. Then spend a moment appreciating that fresh faced goddess in the mirror!

Reflect
Think if 3 things from today that have gone well, surprised you, made you smile or for which you're grateful. A bit of positivity and reflection. It may take you 5 minutes, it may take you 50, it depends on how your day went I guess! But finding the good in the day brings back those feelings and smiles.

Re-organise something
The cutlery drawer, your shirts, the toy box, your inbox, your to-do list. There is something therapeutic about organising things. And it's productive too!

Go unplugged
The unthinkable! Detach yourself from your phone, your tablet, your laptop and maybe even the TV! The phone is probably the most beneficial in terms of switching off and having a rest. Start with 5 minutes if it feels weird, but build it up so that you're getting half an hour away from the pings and beeps of messages, social media and bright screens. To begin with you might feel like you've lost a limb and you have no clue what to do with yourself, but after a few goes, you'll start to appreciate the space and mental quiet of being unplugged!

Be kind to someone else
Hang on, isn't this about being kind to MYSELF? Yes, but this has mutual benefits. Send a "Hey gorgeous lady, miss you!" text to a friend or sister. Or let someone you care about know you're thinking of them. Make the effort to say, "Oh, I forgot to say, that outfit last Friday was killer!" Knowing you have made someone else smile, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling and it might just start a convo with someone you've been meaning to contact for a while. And you never know, they may have something lovely to say in return!

Have some additions to this list? Comment and let me know!

How did I get here?

Wed, 29 May 2019 19:19:06 GMT

A journey to self-employment

I was 7 months pregnant and at risk of redundancy. I had a mild panic about how I could find another job anywhere when I was clearly going to be going on maternity leave in a matter of a few months. Who would hire me? How was I going to support this child? What kind of future were we facing with me unemployed? The joys of "big business". To be clear, my redundancy and my pregnancy were not linked! I was one of many people being ousted. It felt personal, to all of us, but it wasn't. It was a decision made far away from us by people who didn't know us and suddenly things had never felt more impersonal . I had had a fantastic journey there though - you know, except for that last bit! I had acquired so many new skills and specialised in areas I had previously had no knowledge of, so I can't entirely look back in anger. What a plethora of experience I had gained and could now transfer to another business. But the timing sucked ass!

So I was resigned to the fact that I was unemployed and embraced my new role as "Mummy". What a job that is! I've never worked harder or had more job satisfaction. My little girl, Saffia, is a daily marvel. I spend a lot of time staring at her in awe. While I don't want this to be a mummy diary, I can't explain how I got to Jigsource without acknowledging that Saffia is the inspiration behind pretty much every decision I now make.

Maternity leave (and pay) was running out and Saffia was ready to be properly socialised with her peers, so it was time to consider a nursery for her and a job for me. Both were T E R R I F Y I N G concepts to me. I wasn't really ready to face either reality. Couldn't we just stay in our bubble all snug and cute? Well, Shaz, no. Not really.

I had no idea what role I was looking for. You know how it goes in a big organisation; you start doing one job and it gradually morphs into other things. As an Operations/Quality Management Systems Support Manager, I had my finger in many pies; CRM, quality, auditing, change management, risk management, project management, data analysis, continuous improvement.... A cursory glance over my CV would have you believe I was a Jack (or Jill) of all trades but a master of none because how can one person possibly cover all of those areas with any level of expertise? But I was the CRM expert, I was the QMS expert, I did all those things and I don't mind telling you, I was bloody good at them! But, and this was my point, there was no way I could apply for that job anywhere else, because it didn't exist! I could potentially find a CRM job, or a quality job, or an operations job, but not one role that would encompass everything that I had done in my last. And, also important, the likelihood of finding any of those jobs part-time to fit around Saffia - pffffff! Not likely.

Should I go and work 3 days a week in Tesco? I'd be happy with that. No stress, clock off and forget about work each day. Be available to focus on Saffia. It was a possibility. And, still is.

So, to recap; I've had no work experience in a year, I have no idea what I want to do but I know I need part-time hours and flexibility. I have little personal confidence as "Sharon" (as "Mummy" I was all good but she was almost a different person) and zero professional confidence at this point. Then a friend said to me, "What about your project management stuff? People do that freelance and then you can pick your hours. And projects can be about any area of a business so you might still get to do some ops, or some CRM or whatever."

Hmmmm.... freelance. Seed planted.

I searched and searched local jobs on a daily basis and got more and more stressed. The jobs I was suited to were all full time. Some involved travelling. I didn't want that! It was so important to me to still have a few days a week with my little girl while she's still so young. I didn't want to be travelling any distance and not getting home to put her to bed. If there had been the perfect role, then maybe I would compromise on the hours, but none of them jumped off the screen and made me want to imbalance the family/work life I had planned. Was I just being too picky because I didn't want things to change?! Very possibly. At about 3am, while sleepily rocking my little girl back to sleep in the nursery chair, it hit me. Maybe I could pick my days/hours and maybe I didn't have to choose what I should do. Maybe, I should let people know what I CAN do, and let them decide what work they need me to do. Suddenly it started to sound quite exciting. All I needed was some time to look into it and some balls!

Thankfully, I have a very clever sister. Well, I have two, but one in particular was my go-to for self-employed questions. After seemingly a million questions, my mind was eased that it was possible. I felt like I had a tangible idea. And Tesco isn't going anywhere so while I didn't have a salary to walk away from, I technically had nothing to lose. In some respects, that's a blessing because I would have needed considerably larger balls to take the plunge if I had been leaving a regular pay cheque, sick pay, holiday pay and "security". I have that word in inverted commas, because as you may recall, I had "security" before, or the illusion of it, and it was whipped away in an instant.

I started talking to friends about the idea. Varying results there! Some thought I was mad, some thought I was brave, and others thought that it was the best idea I had ever had. Like the angel and the devil on your shoulder, or the differing opinions of the voices in your head (ummmm, I'm NOT mad, honest!) you have to pick a side. You have to believe in it yourself. You have to believe that it's the best idea you've ever had. Then, out of nowhere, someone I hadn't spoken to in years contacted me to say they'd heard of my plans and would be interested in working with me. Really...?! I spent a good few weeks thinking that was too good to be true, but then we met up, it seemed like a legit offer, I started to get that feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know the one, where you're excited and nervous and you might throw up but it still feels good?

Still I doubted myself. What if I can't make it work? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I do this work and then no one else wants to hire me? Well, so what?! If I only do these few projects with this one client, it's still work, it's still money, it's still recent and relevant experience on my CV and that all helps to ease me back into the world of work. I can provide for my girl, work around her as a priority, and have a boss that understands the importance of balancing family and work lives. And if it does work out, what an example of bravery and ambition I could be to Saffia. That must be worth a shot. I drafted a website and sent it to a few people to look over, still only half believing that I would actually go ahead and face the world with my own business. A wonderful person, the most wonderful person the likes of which I have never met before and probably never will again, pushed by Brave Button. It wasn't a pep-talk, it wasn't smoke being blown up my ass, it was three words. Just. Do. It.

Website launched. Business cards ordered. Various groups and networking sites joined. 1 client. And so it began.

Is it easy? No.
Is it stress-free? Hell no.
Will it last forever? Who knows.
Do I know where my next pay cheque is coming from? Not always.
Is it the best idea I ever had. Yep.

Top 10 reasons to have a QMS

Thu, 23 May 2019 20:28:03 GMT

Just some of the reasons why every company, no matter the size, can benefit from an embedded Quality Management System

1. Structure and Control
A QMS should be the manual for how to run the business. It should provide the framework for how each business area is executed, the definition of authority and responsibilities for each function, the method and criteria for the effective completion of them and the process of monitoring and measuring the success of them. Structure is so important, especially if you want to grow your business. A model of "how we work" is a solid base from which to introduce new roles, new business functions, new product lines etc.

2. Consistency
By definition, a QMS is a collection of interrelated business processes that provide the structure and control to achieve repeatable results. Through proven processes and procedures, training and buy-in, a business can achieve greater consistency in their products and services, and in the activities involved in providing them. Consistency means better, more reliable results. Consistency means less error, less waste, less expense. It improves reputation, can encourage repeat business and sets a bar by which your competitors could be measured.

3. Improve Customer Satisfaction
A QMS helps you to better understand your customers' needs, benchmark your products and services against their requirements and meet or exceed those expectations. In order to obtain all this information, a business is forced to engage with customers about their opinions, which builds better relationships and can really impact reputation. Customer satisfaction is at the heart of a QMS. Customer-centric processes mean the whole company focuses on what the customer wants and how the customer is affected by every action and decision in the business.

4. Learning and Improvement
There is an opportunity to create a cycle of learning and improvement. By recording, analysing, resolving and reviewing the problems that occur, lessons can be captured and products and services can be continually improved. A QMS promotes solution-focused thinking and evidence-based decision making. It's easy to assume that we know why something has gone wrong and what caused it, but it's a costly mistake to put time and money into a solution for an assumed fault. Better to work on investigation, root cause analysis and fact, to be sure we're actually correcting the problem.

5. Better Morale

Staff need to be motivated to perform at their best. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities, established training plans and a clear understanding of how their roles affect the quality and the success of the business are all key features of a QMS. Setting an expectation of your staff and then setting them up to surpass that expectation with the proper training and awareness is of benefit to the whole company. If staff are given a voice in the creation of procedures used in their roles, they feel valued. If, in following those procedures, they can achieve consistent, quality results every day, they feel satisfied and take pride in their work. Engage and empower staff to build quality in to every aspect of their work.

6. Performance Management
An important part of running a QMS is the continued monitoring of every element of it. This gives a holistic, objective review of the business at a given point in time. The ability to analyse the big picture and the minutia, offers a unique insight into the state of play. Fact-based decisions can then become realistic action plans - and so the cycle of continuous improvement goes on.

7. Risk Management
The standard business risk register is often a bit vague, out of date, and not looked upon from one review until the next. The principles that underpin a QMS force a business to actively use risk assessment techniques at a more practical level. This can only be a good thing! Risk assessing helps us to prioritise, to focus, to create a business case and to create sustainable, positive change. Identifying risks can lead to preventative controls that minimise negative effects for the business and the customer.

8. Better Relationships
A QMS requires engagement and relationship building across multiple stakeholders. Customers, suppliers, staff and other interested parties all contribute to a QMS. To ensure quality exists across all of these stakeholders, relationships need to be nurtured and communication needs to be strong. If you can establish trust and confidence and mutual respect, these relationships can add value to your business, encourage loyalty and maintain a status quo.

9. Increase Profitability
Ultimately, all of the reasons we have seen above all point to financial benefit. Doing things right the first time, streamlined and efficient processes, fewer problems, less waste, fewer refunds, customer satisfaction, better relationships, repeat business... Lower costs, bigger profits!

10. ISO9001 Certification
While a QMS does not have to be implemented solely for the purpose of ISO9001 certification, it is usually why it is done. ISO9001 is an internationally recognised mark of quality management, making a business appear reliable and trustworthy. It helps to establish credence and may open up new markets or new customers within your markets who will choose only to trade with certified entities. If a business is certified themselves, they may wish for their supply chain also to attain the same standard. If a market is particularly sensitive (in terms of safety or regulation perhaps) then being certified may be a required, and if not, certainly a desirable trait of any company wanting to trade therein.

There are so many reasons to implement a QMS and, more importantly, reasons to maintain that QMS; work at it and reap the benefits.

Top 10 benefits to CRM

Wed, 15 May 2019 13:08:56 GMT

Just some of the many reasons to use a CRM system in your business

1. All of your customer data is stored in one place, neatly organised and available for review and analytics. All customer dealings, transactions and contact is recorded in the same system so you can always see the full picture without swapping between IT packages, even from your phone.

2. With ease, you can assess which of your customers need your attention and find focus for your business activity.

3. Your team are naturally inclined to create and follow customer-centric processes, improving your customer service and reputation.

4. By analysing your customer history you can profile their behaviour and better tailor your approach to your interactions with them.

5. Knowing your customers so well means you can optimise your marketing strategies and target customers with specific and relevant content.

6. Building a picture of your customer and their business maximises cross- and up-sell opportunities.

7. Your business's successes and lessons are captured for future analysis, to improve your methods and build more success.

8. Automation in CRM allows for much increased workflow efficiency with fewer 'human' delays and omissions.

9. Performance tracking for individuals, teams, and the business as a whole is click-of-a-button and real time.

10. CRM provides an excellent audit trail for all your quality, control, GDPR and other required standards.

There are, of course, so many other benefits to using a CRM. Knowing what you want to get out of a CRM system can help you to focus your development and implementation, and help you measure the impact of your CRM system on your business.

Witnessed some other big benefits to CRM? Let us know!

Top 10 reasons to outsource

Tue, 14 May 2019 12:53:02 GMT

Why it makes sense to outsource functions within your business

1. Reduce costs
Recruitment is expensive. On-costs soon add up. Desk space, equipment, training... having employees is not cheap. Outsource on an as-needed basis and you pay for the skills and the time with none of the rest of the costs.

2. Retain business focus
Most outsourced tasks are time consuming. Handing them over frees you up to focus on the business functions, strategy and ideas that keep your business working and growing. Handing them over to an external resource rather than delegating to your staff means the whole team maintains focus and can work hard at what they were hired to do.

3. Manage risk
Sometimes, it pays to NOT have all your eggs in one basket. Outsourcing is a contract; it is time limited and there are fewer liabilities. If you find you need to downscale your business suddenly, you don't have the same obligations that you would with employees.

4. Bigger talent pool
Consultants and virtual assistants often have a wide range of expertise and can offer multiple services. Even if they only have one speciality, you can contract them for that one service and then find a new contract for the next skill you need. Businesses rarely have all the talent they require in-house.

5. Flexibility
Be responsive to the changing demands of your business. Instead of finding work for employees to do when business is quiet, just hire external resource as you need them. You can still have continuity if that's important to you, as you build relationships with the consultants and virtual assistants that you use time and again and these dynamic professionals are used to dipping in and out of businesses seamlessly.

6. Fresh eyes
An independent view point is essential for some projects and improvements to really have their maximum impact. You and your staff, skilled and knowledgeable as you are, are often too close to a scenario to view it objectively. The benefit of buying in fresh eyes can not be underestimated.

7. Learn from external experience
An outsource professional has worked with many businesses and comes with knowledge of the learning experiences of all the contracts they have undertaken with all their clients. They have seen so many mistakes and so many successes that they are well equipped to successfully guide you through the contract with the benefit of all those lessons already learned.

8. Try before you buy
Sort of... You can often get access to reviews and testimonials from other clients and have a sense of what kind of service you will get before you contract an outsource professional. That's a better picture than the references on an employee CV which are often impersonal and provided by someone who didn't even know the individual in question. Depending on the type of work you're outsourcing, you could also have access to a portfolio of previous work that evidences ability and gives you even greater confidence.

9. Beat the budget
Oftentimes, external consultant services are from a separate budget to your staffing and recruitment ones. The costs of outsource contracts can also sometimes be absorbed within project budgets, so even if you don't have any room in the employee budget, you don't have to go without the skills you need.

10. Build partnerships
Forging relationships with outsource businesses creates mutual benefits. Business supporting business is exactly what the economy needs and the more businesses you interact with, the more awareness there is of your business "out there". Recommendations, promoting each other, raising each other's profile; strong business partnerships can benefit us all.

Top tips for CRM

Tue, 14 May 2019 10:38:35 GMT

Some observations from my 8 years in CRM management and development

1. Future proofing
When choosing a CRM system, research the level of development and flexibility you can get for your money. Most systems on the market at the moment have differing licence levels to make basic CRM affordable to every size of business. Unfortunately, in terms of functionality, you do usually get what you pay for. I'm not saying you need to get the top, shiny, unlimited level of licence but check about how much development is possible before you commit. You want to be able to build a few custom objects or modules within the system and be able to add fields to the modules that already exist. The ever-changing landscape of business means that you just don't know what requirements you will have of your CRM in a year or two down the line. Particularly important if you're committing to a multi-year licence for example.

2. Data out!
Read the small print. Look into how you can leave the CRM service if you need to. Find out how your data can be extracted, in what format and what, if anything, is not exportable. I have recently come across examples of clients having to pay for data exports and learning at this late stage that emails within the CRM system are not exportable at all! Email history is fundamental to the customer relationship so it's important to be able to take all that content with you when you leave! Most exports are csv. files. It tends to be one file per module (so, a Contacts export, an Opportunities one etc) and will need a bit of SQL reformatting to manually load into a new CRM system. These days, a lot of the market leaders have data import tools to magic your data from your legacy CRM to your new one, and that's great as it does all the hard work for you!

3. Engage users in development

Engage users in development and they will “own” the system, feel invested in it and want to use it! It sounds obvious but it’s been the downfall of many a CRM implementation. Change is hard. CRM can be easily misunderstood as a management tool. Get staff on board in the beginning, allow them to consult and contribute their needs and ideas and they will be more inclined to help you make a success of CRM. You might not use all of their suggestions, but as the user group and the people "on the ground" they are better placed than most to tell you what your CRM should aim to do. Some staff won't input a thing, but at least they will have had the chance and will better understand what the CRM is likely to do.

4. Create USER benefits
It's often easy to see what the benefits could be to management of a CRM system. What is not always so easy to demonstrate, is benefit to the user of putting in all this work and making the system a success. "We'll make them use it" is something I've heard too many times! I'd prefer "We'll make them want to use it". Take a moment to consider what would encourage your staff to use the system properly and as a business tool that is integrated into their processes and their every day functions. Saving time, transparency, team work, cover while you're out of the office, customer behaviour insights and learning, understanding where relationships are going wrong and being able evidence successes too. Think about these things when you're building a system that you ultimately need your staff to use. So make it intuitive, easy and efficient, make data visible and accessible etc.

5. Create a CRM culture
After all the engagement has happened and user benefits have been defined, create a culture within your business and your teams that gives value and kudos to the system and what it can do. Explain, educate, make it understood what the CRM is really for. Break down the barrier of CRM being just a "big brother" tool that the boss uses to spy on their staff and monitor performance. Honestly, for some managers, it is that, but if that is the case, it should only be a small part of what the CRM is for. Emphasise the increased efficiency, the customer-centric focus, the simplified processes, the automation.

6. Good training materials
Training is essential. With the exact same layout, 2 different businesses could still use a system 2 different ways so it's important to define what this term means to your business, why this action is important, where this step fits into the business process, what this part of automation is doing for you and why. I have found that a baby step training guide with screen shots and instructions is a good option for staff to have in their desk drawer for when there is no one to ask or for when they're too embarrassed to ask again! People learn differently so do a mix of group sessions and one-to-one if needed. Let people have their laptops and use the system at the same time as your demonstrating a step.

7. Identify some "Champions"
Some staff will pick it up quickly and immediately warm to the system. Identify those people and train them to a level where they can help out their team members. This saves you some time and money on more training sessions and gets greater engagement from those users and who can in turn help you build the CRM culture.

8. Development strategy
Have an annual review of your CRM system to ensure its continued fitness for purpose. Review what is working well, what is not, what users are not buying into and what new elements within the business now need to be reflected in CRM. However, if it ain't broke at your annual review, don't fix it! And....

9. Don't over-develop
Development is a double-edged sword sometimes and making changes just because you can is change for change's sake and not for benefit to the business. It is easy to over-complicate something which needs to be streamlined and efficient at it's very core. Focusing on using the system better rather than constantly changing the system itself can sometimes be a more effective use of your time.

10. Avoid email blindness
Avoid every email ever sent being tagged to CRM. If possible, don't use the CRM as your email client, rather have the ability to send specific and relevant emails from within the system (Quotes, proposals etc) and then have the option to associate other emails with your records if they're needed. IF THEY'RE NEEDED. What you don't want is every single email ever sent to a customer attached to their record. If that happens, you will never be able to find the important stuff that you actually need for all the "Great, thanks!" and "Ok" emails that are there unnecessarily. Relevance is key. "Will someone need to see this in the future?" and "Does this evidence a step in our process" are good questions to ask when thinking about whether the email belongs in CRM.

So, there we are, some of the lessons I have learned - some the hard way! Go forth and CRM worry-free! :)

By all means, send me your top tips for CRM and some of the bloopers you've witnessed over the years!