This is an account of how one office manager prepared her team for the festive season rush.

SMBs have their own kinds of challenges and can prove highly sensitive to fluctuating market conditions. They can also be dynamic, fast-growing and innovative. Whatever the circumstances, they require great leadership – yet many business owners come close to sinking their own ship.

Small and medium-sized enterprises need all the tools in their utility belts to optimise efficiency and grow. With a small taskforce the work of every employee is magnified. This being the case it’s vital that each member of a team is not only satisfying their role but excelling in their position. To do this, companies need to be using the best available tools and on the market.

Security is very often at the forefront of concerns when moving over to a cloud computing solution. Here, it is a common misconception that cloud storage, though practical, requires some kind of compromise over security.

The ease of life brought to us by online management software is a relatively new luxury. Its nascent relationship with companies means that CEOs are still working out how to best integrate these new tools into their companies.

When planning any important activities, projects or the future of our organisations, the historic approach has always been to set long term goals. We determine where we want to be in say, 3 or 5 years’ time, and set our plans accordingly.

Project Management, sounds easy enough right? Just keep track of the work of a bunch of staff members, communicate with clients and create nice looking report – easy.

A teacher who only accepts their own way to solve a task. A supermarket manager who has to double-check every item that you’ve stacked. A leader who stifles the creative freedom of his or her staff. Whether in the classroom or at work, leaders who micromanage do more to hinder development than drive desired outcomes.

Project management tools offer teams effective ways to collaborate on projects, quickly communicate and see deadlines and work assignments. Instant chat can do away with those cumbersome email chains, while a large pool of talent from all over the world can be brought in to achieve high levels of productivity now that your processes and file sharing are cloud-based.

The Olympics project only happens every four years, but involves thousands of people exchanging information across the world. In 2016 the Olympics involves people from 206 countries, 10,500 athletes, more than 25,000 journalists, heads of state and thousands of tourists who will be attending the Olympics and visiting Rio for the first time. Not to mention the thousands of local people making it all happen in Rio.