Management and Strategy

To operate your own business is to be a "manager" in every sense of the word. Small business owners must manage all aspects of a business, from advertising to zoning. To manage effectively, you need resources for project management, competitive intelligence, team building, management consulting and strategic planning.

Whether your needs involve basic business information and industry analysis or more advanced business dashboards, the Management & Strategy Channel was built to deliver the specific management solutions you need.

Business performance management got you stumped? Wondering what workflow management software can do the job? The Management & Strategy Channel can help you tackle these and other business performance issues:

1. Find leadership services, leadership training and mentoring resources.
2. Discover the help that's available for business process outsourcing and human resources management consulting.
3. Work with risk management firms to put your insurance needs in perspective and find other help to build your organizational structure.

Manage your projects and your time
Part of managing smart is using your time wisely. Project management software and project time tracking and billing solutions can help.

Bottom line: Targeted management resources, contacts and solutions can help your business grow and prosper.

Strategic Planning

Receive the weekly e-bulletin from MIT Sloan Management Review, featuring the most interesting articles and ideas we've developed on the art and science of developing and executing business strategies. You'll get the latest thinking on articulating a vision, adapting strategies to outside forces, and making changes stick. MIT Sloan Management Review is hosting the strategy conversation among gifted researchers, scholars, thinkers--and managers like you. Our ideas, resources, and community bear the hallmarks of MIT--fresh and exciting, but still always practical and relevant

Project Management

Project Management

Allow project managers and team members to collaborate on projects and maintain current and accurate project status, thereby allowing managers to proactively identify and resolve issues that threaten the success of an engagement. The result is an improved project completion record, more satisfied clients, and reduced non-billable work.

Deliver projects on time and within budget Team members can update project status from any computer while project managers can view project status through Gantt charts or use task completion reports to identify and drill down to tasks that might be at risk.

Increase client involvement Deepen your relationship with clients by giving them access to project status reports. Gantt charts, exceptions reports, and project status summaries give clients information they need to remain involved and comfortable with project progress.

Integrate with Microsoft Project A simple wizard lets project managers exchange plans between OpenAir and Microsoft® Project, retaining all dependencies, task assignments, and other relevant data. This enables project teams to collaborate online, track time to specific projects and tasks, and integrate project planning with resource allocation.

Management Consulting

• Organization Design/Redesign

• People aspects of mergers and acquisitions, including determining “fit” of individuals to new environment/work

• Tools to define/redefine strategy, purpose, direction of an organization

Executive Coaching and Executive Development

• Design and implement executive development systems for an entire organization

• Provide 360-degree assessments for Executives and Senior Managers along with development plans

• One-on-one coaching for individuals

Teambuilding

• Build teams using tools and methods to determine best fit of individuals to tasks

• Facilitate team activities to assure effectiveness and efficiency in accomplishing business tasks

• Provide tools and methods to evaluate team performance based on team goals and deliverables

Interpersonal and Interorganizational Conflict Resolution

• Determine source(s) of conflict(s) using proven methods

• Design and deliver situation-specific intervention

• Measure progress/results to assure management goals are met

People Assessments

Customized Assessments

• Build customized, company specific, competency-based assessments using state-of-the-art tools

• Determine fit between candidates/employees and the actual work

• Provide written reports to clients

Business Process Improvement

• Map and determine efficiency/effectiveness of specific current business practices

• Develop improved methods using internal people in the design and change process

• Roll out and measure process improvement results to the plan

• Provide continuous improvement education, tools and methods for improving customer satisfaction

Training Needs Assessments

• Tools and methods which generate usable, measurable plans
- Individuals for skill development and performance improvement
- Organizations for unit-wide plans or overall performance

Problem Solving and Decision Making Tools and Methods

• Easy to learn, fast to implement problem solving seminar for all levels of employees in any type of organization

• Tools for teaching everyone in an organization how to accurately diagnose and fix everyday problems, including how to measure when the problem is solved

• More powerful tools to resolve critical, chronic problems that affect key customers and their satisfaction

Quality Improvement for Key Business Problems

• Use of Quality Improvement Story Method (QIS) to identify and solve quality-related issues

• Quality improvement training for employees and managers

• Quality System Audits

Business Ethics

Work more efficiently. Do more with less. Take productivity to the next level.

How? In a word, collaboration. Easily, efficiently, affordably, and as often as possible. Cisco SMB Solutions can help your teams be more productive through better collaboration. Here's how:

• Don't just tell; show. Have a new product to unveil to a remote sales team? For maximum impact, show them what's new by turning a regular call into a video call.
• Easily bring people together to solve problems. Need to call an urgent meeting? With just a few clicks, quickly find out who's available and set up conference calls or online meetings. Access customer information wherever you are, so you can easily work with colleagues to resolve issues quickly.
• Stay connected to mobile workers. With multiple channels of communication always available—and the ability to see who is available and how to contact them—being out of the office no longer means being out of the loop.

With Cisco SMB Solutions, you can quickly bring people together to solve problems and meet customers' needs. Get everyone on the same page—and keep them there. When workers stay connected, they stay productive.

• Start with a reliable, flexible, secure Cisco network foundation combining voice, data, video, and wireless on one network so everyone can roam about, stay connected, and be productive.
• Add software that links your customer relationship management database to your phone system. That way, computer screen pop-ups let you instantly view data about each customer. Instantly find out if someone is available to answer a question or attend a last-minute meeting.
• Add video telephony software and cameras, allowing you to turn regular phone calls and online meetings into video calls along with phones that are designed to keep mobile workers in touch and give them anytime anywhere access.
• Add applications that deliver call control and presence features—enable workers to know if colleagues are available and how they prefer to be reached and use toolbars within common applications like Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer to enhance productivity.