Blue Ninja Articles
Read about articles and news related to Blue Ninja activities below
What is a user journey and how can you develop a strong customer experience?
As a business owner, it is crucial to understand what your customers go through from the time they become aware of your product or service to the point where they make a purchase or become a client. This journey, from initial awareness to final purchase, is commonly...
Getting the most out of your email campaigns
Your mailing list is one of the most important parts of your business communication. Why? Because it's a list you own. It's a group of people who are interested in your business and have actively agreed to engage with you (this is part of GDPR compliance). You have no...
How Can You Properly Test Software Before Making a Financial Commitment?
Before making a financial commitment to any software, it is important to properly test the software to make sure that it is suitable for your needs. Software review and testing can help you determine whether a particular software is worth investing in or not. Software...
How Can I Develop a Success Project With My Team?
Developing a successful project doesn't happen by accident. It takes time, planning, clarity and support. You have a vision of what you want your business to achieve, and with hard work you are well on your way. But, as you start to incorporate others into your...
What Is a Good Business Process And How Do You Achieve It?
A good process is not a chance encounter. It’s a decision of working a certain way to achieve an end deliverable. It takes time and effort to understand the key fundamentals of what the ideal process looks like, who are the stakeholders and what actions are required...
Process stakeholders: Who are they and how to identify them
As a business owner, you know that planning and managing processes are important steps to ensure optimum efficiency. But have you taken the time to identify the stakeholders who will be involved or affected by its implementation? Knowing who these process stakeholders...
How to set goals and targets to drive your business forward
As a business owner, setting goals and targets can be a key part of building the success you are hoping for. Goals ensure that the team understands the priorities of the business and something to strive for, while targets help keep everyone on track with achieving...
5 Reasons Why Induction Procedures are Important for Your Business
Induction is one of the most important stages in the recruitment process. Yet, many businesses overlook the value of a carefully planned and organised induction procedure. Induction, in fact, helps the company and its inductees start off on the right foot and reduce...
How to talk to your software provider to get what you want
Have you ever contacted a company that you have purchased software from, only to come out the other end of the conversation even more frustrated? We certainly have at Blue Ninja! You can feel like you’ve not been heard or understood. How can the company possibly not...
Choosing a CRM is like choosing a car
Choosing a CRM should feel like a positive experience We know choosing a CRM that will work for you can often feel very overwhelming. You have decided you are going to get a CRM for your business but when you first google CRM for business you quickly become hit with...
Using Your Business Experience to Tell Your Story: how to tell a brand narrative
Every brand has a story, a path they’ve travelled leading them to where they are and who they are today. Storytelling is a powerful tool that can transform your online presence and really allow you to connect with your audience. With more and more consumers craving...
Proven strategies for getting testimonials for your business
You’ve worked hard to bring in clients who are buying your products or services and at some point you need to validate that relationship with a testimonial. It can be hard to ask for a review or a testimonial of your work, but it’s worth asking for it as it...
Corona proof your business – learn how a virtual administrator can support you with great results
A Virtual Administrator (or Virtual Assistant) otherwise known as a VA is a professional who provides administrative support to businesses online, or virtually. VAs are becoming more widely known and are a strength for businesses looking for cost-saving options. There...
What is your unique selling point to stand out from the crowd?
It really is challenging to come up with a unique idea, product or service when launching your business, how are you going to be unique enough to stand out from everyone else? The unique selling proposition, also called the unique selling point is what makes you or...
Best 10 things to do when setting up your business
We know from experience setting up a business is challenging. Those that have done it before may tell you it’s easy, but there are a lot of elements that you need to juggle in order to get yourself established and your business growing. In our course, tips and tricks...
Dealing with bad data: the pitfalls and opportunities to manage it
You could say data runs the world. Need to make a decision? What does the data say. Going to invest? What is the data telling you. Starting a new business? I have no idea where to find the data! Data helps to inform good decisions, but what about when the data is not...
Congratulations on your Engagement
It’s now more important than ever to ensure you have a social media presence for your business. The business world has changed with recent global events and online activity is more important than ever. If your business didn’t have an online presence before the...
Prepare a report that WOWS your stakeholders
Have you looked at a report that a business has prepared and thought ‘I want a report like that!’! I know we have, and it can be a big attraction for potential clients as well as your current customers and stakeholders to see a well written and well-designed report....
What You Learn From Realising You’re Not Very Good (at Something)
Business owners are the world’s worst at admitting when they are wrong. Fact. This problem that has actually nothing to do with ego, but invariably has everything to do with that little Gremlin inside all of us called ‘Control-Freak’, gets worse and has even bigger...
What makes your business stand out? Find out why one size does not fit all businesses
Whenever business promotion is mentioned, businesses often get told to be unique and show your true self. You’ll often hear “Share your Why”. Simon Sinek’s well known Ted Talk goes into detail of finding the value of your why and how to find it. But in other circles...
What Is an Operating Rhythm and Why Do I Need One?
Blue Ninja Julie first came across the term ‘operating rhythm’ way back when she was working in the Resourcing Centre of Excellence at a major UK bank pre-financial crash. It seemed a very fancy term to simply define the regular things you do as part of your job. The...
How a CRM Improves Productivity and Business Growth
In the world of Virtual Business Support, the Blue Ninja team are always striving to find the best tools to streamline operations and optimise working practices for our clients. One of the most productive ways to achieve this is working with CRMs, but which software...
Branding and Brand Consistency: Why is it Important?
Branding and brand consistency is not just about choosing the right logo and other graphic elements to represent your business. It goes along with customer experience and the way you handle both expected and unexpected circumstances that involve your brand. To put it...
Maximising Reporting Tools: How to get the information your business needs
As small business owners, we carry the world (i.e. our businesses), on our shoulders. Decisions that will help our businesses stay productive and profitable are critical to ensure sustainability. But to make good decisions, we need to have good information, right? And...
Successfully manage project assumptions – a how to guide
“Assumptions are the mother of all mistakes” Eugene Lewis With sayings like this, it’s no wonder that the mere mention of the word ASSUMPTION has you running for the hills. Whether in our personal lives or at work, we’ve all experienced the undesirable consequence...
Established business processes can inspire confidence
We may not realise it, but processes exist everywhere; they are all around us. There is a process involved in everything that we do: from the simplest of tasks, like preparing a hot cup of coffee, to the more complicated ones, such as preparing financial reports or...
Analyse your information to make informed decisions
Tracking business data allows an organisation to make an informed business decision to help improve efficiency in its operational, financial, marketing and human resource management. Tracking and analysis not only provides insights on how the business has performed...
Identifying Pain Points and How They Can Drive a Business to Success
When we run a business, we should be able to impart how our product or service may help in resolving our [potential] customer's needs. In client delivery it’s called pain points – it refers to various problems or issues that your customers face and what you do in...
How Videos Can Be Part of an Effective Business Strategy
If you are considering leveraging the power of video content to boost your business, you are on the right track. In fact, videos attract 62% of internet users, followed by news articles and multimedia articles. Why are we telling you this? If you have put all that...
4 Ways to Conquer Your Filing
It is common for businesses to struggle with filing documents. As your business grows and documents pile up, it may take time to retrieve your files especially when you don’t have a good filing system in place. Not to mention the loss of productivity and the risk to...
Process Management Can Be Your Secret Weapon – here’s how
Organisations may face a variety of challenges in their effort to achieve their business goals including productivity, financials and customer relations. These challenges need to be overcome to ensure that the business will continue to thrive and grow. Often, these...
How to Run Effective Conference & Video Calls Remotely
Working from home has become the new normal and businesses have had to adapt quickly to a new environment for their teams. One of the critical areas to be redeveloped is communication. There are a lot of different communication tools available and many are free to...
How to write a SOP – Standard Operating Procedure
A standard operating procedure or SOP details the steps or instructions needed to be performed to carry out a process, as well as the scope and who performs the specified task. Your SOP document, therefore, needs to be well written: simple, clearly worded and labeled...
Who Are The Stakeholders In A Process And How Do You Identify Them?
In designing a business process, it is vital to consider other stakeholders who will be impacted or have an impact during the course or as a result of its implementation. It may be easy to focus specifically on the individuals or groups who are directly involved in...
What does working virtually mean?
What is virtual work? What does working virtually mean? One of the first questions Blue Ninja are usually asked is where are we based. The second question is what does virtual mean. In the world of working virtually, or remotely from an office, location is almost...
If archiving is the answer – what’s your policy?
As your business documents begin to pile up, your organisation needs to have a proper records management policy and archiving in place. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing your data and enduring weeks of downtime due to catastrophic events like fire, flood, hardware...
Looking for a Cloud Storage Service Solution? Check out these options
There are a lot of things going for cloud storage when compared to traditional storage devices like hard drives and USB drives. Foremost is the ability to access your files from anywhere, at anytime, from any device, as long as you have an internet connection. That...
What you should know about keeping business and accounting records
Limited companies or limited liability partnerships are required to keep (where applicable) statutory records, financial and accounting records to be made available for public inspection at the company’s registered office address or its SAIL address. A SAIL address is...
What are the Differences Between Processes and Procedures?
Processes and procedures can be confusing and many commit the mistake of using them interchangeably. A process provides a high-level view of the different tasks needed to get things done while a procedure is lower level and adds details to the elements that go into...
Why Businesses Need To Have Proper Processes In Place
Running a business is challenging and as your business grows, you need to have proper business processes established to guide everyone in the organisation on how things are done. If you fail to do so, you run the risk of having many unsatisfied customers, missed...
The Kanban Board: A Simple yet Effective Project Management Tool
Managing a project can sometimes feel overwhelming, with so many moving parts, disaster can strike at any moment if you fail to spot and address potential problems promptly. This is where project management tools such as Kanban Boards can make project management run...
Here’s The Project – Where Do I Start?
A project can be as small as one task, a piece of standalone work or part of a bigger programme of work. They can all be approached in the same way using the following methodology which helps to understand the size, complexity, stakeholders and very important - the...
How Do You Ensure Your Information is secure And Protected?
Protecting Your Data How do you ensure your information is secure and protected? Picture this. You’ve been working for weeks on a piece of work. You’ve spent hours and hours drafting, redrafting, tweaking, refining and redrafting again. You have that piece of work as...
How to manage assumptions successfully
“Assumptions are the mother of all mistakes” Eugene Lewis With sayings like this, it’s no wonder that the mere mention of the word ASSUMPTION has you running for the hills. Whether in our personal lives or at work, we’ve all experienced the undesirable consequence...