Author: precise-noor

Collecting customer data is a great way to gain deeper insights into how your customers behave, which can help you improve products and services and build stronger relationships with customers. However, collecting customer data should always be done responsibly and ethically. Here are some tips to ensure you’re doing it right. 

Be an Open Book 

When it comes to collecting customer data, transparency is one of the most important factors. It’s vital to keep your customers informed about the data you are gathering and its purpose of it. In particular, you should be clear about how you intend to use their data and why you need to collect it in the first place. Not only is this information critical for building trust with your customers, but it’s also necessary to comply with data protection laws and regulations. By being transparent, you can build a strong relationship with your customers that will help you in the long run. 

Explain Policies Without Jargon 

When discussing your data collection policies with customers, make sure to avoid jargon as much as possible. Although technical terms may make sense to you, they could confuse or scare off customers who don’t understand them. Stick to everyday language when explaining your policies so that everyone can understand them easily. 

Keep Your Data Secure 

It’s not just important to protect customer data; it’s also important to safeguard your own business data, too. Make sure all of your systems are encrypted, and use secure passwords for all accounts associated with your business. You should also have a plan in place in case of a security breach so that you can respond quickly and appropriately if something does happen. Take a look at how Precise Business Solutions can help protect you against cybersecurity threats. 

Recognize Laws and Regulations 

It is important for businesses to understand the rules and regulations surrounding customer data collection in the countries in which they operate. By doing so, they can comply with legal requirements and protect themselves and their customers. This knowledge helps to establish ethical business practices that benefit everyone involved. 

Use Key Platforms for Better Understanding 

Looking to get a better understanding of how customers interact with your business? A customer data platform (CDP) can help provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas to improve current offerings or create new ones tailored to specific customer segments. Ready to see the benefits for yourself? You can try this by implementing CDP into your business strategy today. 

Guarantee a Mutually Advantageous Exchange 

When it comes to collecting customer data, it’s important to consider the exchange of information as a mutually beneficial arrangement. Customers may be hesitant to provide their personal information if they don’t feel like they’re getting anything in return. This is where incentives come in, such as offering discounts or free shipping in exchange for their data. By doing this, not only do customers feel valued and heard, but businesses also gain valuable insights that can help them better understand and serve their customers in the future. 

 

Collecting and using customer data is necessary for businesses to enhance relationships with existing clients and attract new ones. However, it is essential to do so in a responsible manner that complies with privacy laws and regulations. By leveraging CDP platforms, companies can collect and use customer data effectively while also providing value to their consumers, leading to successful business growth.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is one of the most effective ways to grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. With millions of businesses out there all vying for the same eyeballs, it’s never been more important to advertise online, and search engine marketing is the most effective way to promote your products and grow your business.

In this guide, you’ll learn an overview of search engine marketing basics as well as some tips and strategies for doing search engine marketing right.

Search Engine Marketing – An Overview

Search engine marketing is the practice of marketing a business using paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (or SERPs). Advertisers bid on keywords that users of services such as Google and Bing might enter when looking for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.

These ads, often known by the term pay-per-click ads, come in a variety of formats. Some are small, text-based ads, whereas others, such as product listing ads (PLAs, also known as Shopping ads) are more visual, product-based advertisements that allow consumers to see important information at-a-glance, such as price and reviews.

Search engine marketing’s greatest strength is that it offers advertisers the opportunity to put their ads in front of motivated customers who are ready to buy at the precise moment they’re ready to make a purchase. No other advertising medium can do this, which is why search engine marketing is so effective and such an amazingly powerful way to grow your business.

SEM vs. SEO

SEM versus SEO: What’s the difference?

Generally, “search engine marketing” refers to paid search marketing, a system where businesses pay Google to show their ads in the search results.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is different because businesses don’t pay Google for traffic and clicks; rather, they earn a free spot in in the search results by having the most relevant content for a given keyword search.

Both SEO and SEM should be fundamental parts of your online marketing strategy. SEO is a powerful way to drive evergreen traffic at the top of the funnel, while search engine advertisements are a highly cost-effective way to drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

Keywords: The Foundation of Search Engine Marketing

Keywords are the foundation of search engine marketing. As users enter keywords (as part of search queries) into search engines to find what they’re looking for, it should come as little surprise that keywords form the basis of search engine marketing as an advertising strategy.

SEM Keyword Research

Before you can choose which keywords to use in your search engine marketing campaigns, you need to conduct comprehensive research as part of your keyword management strategy.

First, you need to identify keywords that are relevant to your business and that prospective customers are likely to use when searching for your products and services. One way to accomplish this is by using WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool.

Simply enter a keyword that’s relevant to your business or service, and see related keyword suggestion ideas that can form the basis of various search engine marketing campaigns.

WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool provides you with a range of valuable information, such as search volume for each individual keyword in Google and its general competitiveness.

In addition to helping you find keywords you should be bidding on, thorough keyword research can also help you identify negative keywords – search terms that you should exclude from your campaigns. Negative keywords aren’t terms with negative connotations, but rather irrelevant terms that are highly unlikely to result in conversions. For example, if you sell ice cream, you might want to exclude the keyword “ice cream recipes”, as users searching for ice cream recipes are unlikely to be in the market for your product.

This concept is known as search intent, or the likelihood that a prospect will complete a purchase or other desired action after searching for a given term. Some keywords are considered to have high commercial intent, or a strong indication that the searcher wants to buy something. Examples of high commercial intent keywords include:

• Buy
• Discount(s)
• Deal(s)
• Coupon(s)
• Free shipping

Read more about commercial intent keywords in this blog post.

Keywords and Account Structure

Another crucial aspect of keywords that is essential for the success of a search engine marketing campaign is account structure.

Logical keyword grouping and account structure can help you achieve higher click-through rates, lower costs-per-click, and generally stronger overall performance, and keyword research can help you think about how to best structure your account.

AdWords and Bing Ads accounts should be structured in the following way for optimal results:

 

As you can see in the figure above, an optimally structured account is comprised of five distinct elements:

• Ad campaigns
• Ad groups
• Keywords
• Ad text
• Landing pages

Ad campaigns can, and should in many cases, focus on similar products or services. For example, if you run a hardware store, one ad campaign could focus exclusively on autumnal products such as leaf blowers, rakes, and leaf bags, whereas another might focus on power tools and so on.

Ad groups allow for each campaign to be further subcategorized for relevance. In our hardware store example, one ad group could be for different types of rakes or varying models of leaf blowers. For the power tools campaign, one ad group might focus on power drills, while another could focus on circular saws. This level of organization might take slightly longer to set up initially, but the rewards – namely higher CTRs at lower cost – make this effort worthwhile in the long run.

The Search Engine Marketing Ad Auction

One of the most enduring misconceptions about search engine marketing is that whomever has the largest advertising budget wins. Although a larger advertising budget can certainly be advantageous, especially when targeting highly competitive keywords, but it’s far from a requirement for success with search engine marketing. This is because all ads go through a process known as the ad auction before appearing alongside search results. For the purposes of this explanation, we’ll be focusing on the ad auction in Google AdWords.

How the Ad Auction Works

The ad auction process takes place every single time someone enters a search query into Google. To be entered into the ad auction, advertisers identify keywords they want to bid on, and state how much they are willing to spend (per click) to have their ads appear alongside results relating to those keywords. If Google determines that the keywords you have bid on are contained within a user’s search query, your ads are entered into the ad auction.

How Ads ‘Win’ the Ad Auction

Not every single ad will appear on every single search. This is because the ad auction takes a variety of factors into account when determining the placement of ads on the SERP, and because not every keyword has sufficient commercial intent to justify displaying ads next to results. However, the two main factors that Google evaluates as part of the ad auction process are your maximum bid and the Quality Score of your ads.

Maximum bid is the maximum amount you have specified you are willing to pay for a click. Quality Score is a metric based on the overall quality of your advertisement. Google calculates these metrics during the ad auction to determine placement of advertisements. The result of this calculation is known as ad rank.

 

The Importance of Quality Score in SEM

Given that Google AdWords’ Quality Score comprises half of the ad rank formula, it is one of the most crucial metrics search engine marketers can focus on. High Quality Scores can help you achieve better ad position at lower costs, because Google favors ads that are highly relevant to user queries.

In the table below, you can see that although Advertiser 1 has the lowest maximum bid, they have the highest Quality Score, meaning their ads are given priority in terms of placement during the ad auction:

Quality Score is arguably the most important metric in search engine marketing. To learn more about Quality Score and the impact it can have on your campaigns, read this resource at PPC University.

Succeed at Search Engine Marketing with WordStream

At WordStream, we eat, sleep, and breathe search engine marketing. Whether you’re a newcomer to paid search marketing or a seasoned professional, we want to provide you with everything you need to succeed at search engine marketing.

Our integrated PPC management platform, WordStream Advisor, makes managing your search engine marketing campaigns easy and efficient, leaving you more time to focus on what really matters – growing your business.

WordStream Advisor and the 20-Minute Work Week

WordStream Advisor’s 20-Minute Work Week has revolutionized paid search management for thousands of businesses. Our intelligent, customizable alerts highlight areas of your AdWords and Bing Ads accounts that are performing strongly, and identifies areas in which improvements can be made for immediate results.

WordStream Advisor is the only PPC management platform on the market that is fully integrated with Google AdWords and Bing Ads, making it easier than ever to manage your search engine marketing campaigns from one intuitive, centralized dashboard.

WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader

One of the most challenging aspects of search engine marketing is understanding which parts of your campaigns need attention and which are performing well. To find out how well your account is doing, try WordStream’s free AdWords Performance Grader.

 

In 60 seconds or less, the AdWords Performance Grader performs a comprehensive audit of your search engine marketing account and identifies areas in which immediate improvements can be made. Accounts are graded against 10 key search engine marketing benchmarks, including:

• Wasted spend
• Click-through rate
• Quality Score
• Negative keyword usage

The WordStream AdWords Performance Grader is absolutely free, so get your grade today and start making immediate improvements to your search engine marketing campaigns.

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Each year we talk with tech leaders about the biggest problems they’ll face in the near future, and we’re starting to see some subtle and not-so-subtle shifts from the worries of 2018.

Data overload, a major concern 12 months ago, has evolved as new data-hungry tools and AI help make sense of data and drive business decisions. This year CIOs say they’re more concerned with how to protect that data, as organizations grapple with new privacy regulations.

As the economy continues to improve, CIOs are less hampered in 2019 by tightening budgets. And worries about moving to the cloud are less of an issue, since many companies have already made the jump. Executives put more emphasis now on securing their cloud-based assets across multiple cloud environments.  

Read on to see what experts from the C-suite, recruiters, and those in the trenches say are today’s top-of-mind concerns — and how to deal with them.

1. New security threats

Headline-grabbing recent events may spark surprising new security threats, says Rick Grinnell, founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures.

“The government shutdown helped contribute to a great cyber threat to the U.S. government, critical infrastructure and other public and private organizations,” Grinnell says. “With the shutdown, many of the security professionals watching for threats at a national level were not on duty, creating a bigger hole for attackers. Time will tell if a month of lowered defenses will have deeper repercussions in 2019 and beyond.”

Tech leaders are also gearing-up for next-generation, AI-driven cyber attacks.

“Security professionals must be extra vigilant with detection and training against these threats,” says John Samuel, CIO at CGS. “This year, companies will need to introduce AI-based protection systems to be able to contain any such attacks introduced by this next-gen tech.”

Grinnell says AI wasn’t a factor in the most notable attacks of the last year, but he expects that to change.

“I believe 2019 will bring the first of many AI-driven attacks on U.S. companies, critical infrastructure and government agencies,” he says. “Let’s hope I’m wrong.”

2. Data protection

Forward-thinking organizations are now implementing privacy by design in their products, but making sure those efforts meet GDPR standards is an ongoing concern. Google, for example, just saw a record fine by French regulators over how the company collects data.

“U.S. businesses will need to consider a GDPR-type policy to protect citizens even before any regulations are enacted,” Samuel says. “Ultimately, there must be international guidelines to ensure customer privacy and protection on a global scale to allow for easier compliance.”

Jacob Ansari, senior manager of Schellman and Co., says IoT security got a lot of attention last year, but it led to little practical change in the industry.

“The makers of IoT devices still use vulnerable software components, poor network and communication security, and are unable to supply software updates in the field,” says Ansari. “They’re still making essentially all of the mistakes everyone else made in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Oh, and your voice-activated home device is spying on you and the company that makes it will give your data to the wrong person by accident with little oversight or accountability. This also suggests that better data privacy legislation — at least in the U.S. — is a potentially hot topic for 2019, particularly in light of the events of recent elections. Nobody loved implementing GDPR in Europe, but its protections for ordinary people are decent.”

3. Skills gap

More than one of our sources mentioned the much-discussed skills gap in IT, but with a twist — some tech leaders now see the problem more self-inflicted than intractable.

“If you’re only looking at college graduates with computer science or electrical engineering degrees from the top ten universities in the U.S. then yes, there are hardly any candidates, and most of them are going off to the five largest employers,” says Tod Beardsley, director of research at Rapid7. “But the potential talent pool is so, so much larger than this, and companies would do well to explore this space a little more liberally.”

Sandra Toms, vice president and curator of the RSA Conference, says IT departments would help themselves by “plugging their skills gap with more diverse employees, and not just in terms of race and gender. Most IT hiring groups fail to look at diversity in life experiences, religion, backgrounds, sexual orientation, and education. Viewing diversity in a more holistic manner should open up a broader field of candidates and lead to higher levels of productivity.”  

For a more in-depth look at the hiring market, see “IT skills gap: Facts vs. fictions.”

4. Multi-cloud security

When exploring new cloud-based services, CIOs now need to ask about security across multiple platforms, says Laurent Gil, security product strategy architect at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

“Traditionally, multi-cloud leads the enterprise to manage many different, often incompatible and inconsistent security systems,” Gil says. “We think that selecting cross-cloud, cloud-agnostic security platforms is now fundamental in ensuring consistency, and most importantly completeness of securing enterprise-wide assets regardless of where these assets are living.”

Find out the “7 secrets to a successful multi-cloud strategy.”

5. Innovation and digital transformation

According to Gartner data, about two-thirds of business leaders think their companies need to speed up their digital transformation or face losing ground to competitors.

Most companies will continue on the same path until they’re forced to do otherwise, says Merrick Olives, managing partner at cloud consulting firm Candid Partners.

“Tying IT spend to strategic business capabilities and answering the question ‘How will this make us more competitive?’ is essential,” Olives says. “Value stream-based funding models as opposed to project-based funding are becoming more and more effective at tying board-level objectives to budgetary influences. The cost structures and process efficiencies of legacy vs. a nimble digital capability are much different — nimble is less expensive and much more efficient.”

See also “6 secrets of highly innovative CIOs” and “Insider tips on how to get digital transformation right.”

6. Finding new revenue streams

Ian Murray, vice president of telecom expense management software firm Tangoe, says that while the business landscape is ever evolving, the basic premise of making a profit is the same.

“The process to finding and exploiting revenue opportunities hasn’t fundamentally changed — find a problem that we can solve that is common, prevalent and that people will pay to solve,” Murray says.

What has changed is the emphasis on direct revenue generation landing in the CIO’s lap, says Mike Fuhrman, chief product officer of hybrid IT infrastructure provider Peak 10 + ViaWest.

“Maybe I’m old school, but I don’t think the CIO should be worried about directly generating revenue,” Fuhrman says. “I’m starting to see this pop up more and more among my peers. To stay relevant as a CIO, many are working to try and productize themselves. While there are benefits to thinking that way, I think it can also be a recipe for defocusing the team and the boardroom. When it comes to revenue-generating opportunities, the place the CIO belongs is focusing on those projects and digitizing the business into an automated platform at scale. We need to stay focused on driving costs out of the business and scaling from a go-to-market perspective. That’s how a CIO should focus on revenue.”

For more insights, see “6 secrets of revenue-generating CIOs.”

7. Lack of agility

Organizations that aim to incorporate agile methods sometimes end up limping along in a sort of hybrid model that incorporates agile practices but also more linear “waterfall” methods. In short, the worst of both worlds.

Tangoe’s Murray lays it out: “Developers are coding to specific spec sheets with little conceptual understanding of how this button or feature fits within the overall user experience. A disciplined approach is needed to pull this off, where the solution to specific problems are addressed within a certain release. Each release is then coordinated for a set of sprints so that a comprehensive solution that adds to the UX is achieved with every release and not just a collection of requested features that may or may not support one another.”

See also: “5 misconceptions CIOs still have about agile.”

8. Outsourcing risks   

The skills gap will lead many organizations to seek outside help. But these sometimes-necessary solutions can lead to concerns with reliability and security.

“Our main focus is to deliver on the promises we make to each customer,” says Sanchez. “You build your reputation and business on this one critical thing. In outsourcing your work, the quality of the deliverable is sometimes at the mercy of the firm you outsourced to. Given the sensitive nature of the projects we manage, we utilize strict third-party vendor assessments to evaluate partners in the event a project requires us to consider outsourcing some or all of the required tasks.”

In addition to quality concerns, outsourcing opens up security threats that are well known. “The specific threats for CIOs that should be top of mind are the insider and the contractor,” says French Caldwell, chief evangelist with MetricStream and a former White House cybersecurity advisor. “Until we move away from passwords for credentials, humans will continue to be the biggest threat.”

For more, see “11 keys to a successful outsourcing relationship.”

9. Business results

Matt Wilson, chief information security advisor at BTB Security, says there’s a disconnect between what’s set aside for the IT budget and measurable results for the business.  

“Most organizations haven’t taken a hard, brutally honest, look at their current spend,” Wilson says. “There’s often too much momentum behind the way things are currently done, the solutions already acquired, and the processes built over a decade to allow for any meaningful change. Instead, organizations may cobble together partial solutions that can’t ever fully address the root of the IT challenge — for example, Equifax not patching a known vulnerability. We live with IT pain. We waste dollars. We frustrate our talented resources with solvable problems that are rendered completely impossible in our companies by momentum. For 2019, we should refuse to be captive to history.”

See also: “The new rules of IT-business alignment in the digital era.”

10. Tools for a digital native workforce

Christian Teismann, SVP of global enterprise business at Lenovo, argues that a new workforce of employees who grew up with digital technology demands new ways of working that will boost the bottom line.

“Gen Z, for instance, expects control over the types of technology available to them,” Teismann says. “They favor the technology they grew up with and use in other spheres of their lives in the workplace — as well as a recognition of personal and cultural elements. Tech-enriched, assistive spaces that are configurable and flexible will continue to trend.”

11. Rebuilding trust

Isaac Wong, software engineering manager at Retriever Communications, calls 2018 a “bad year for IT publicity,” based on a number of well publicized hacks of large companies and questionable sharing of customers’ online habits.

“Issues such as privacy, security and device addiction must be addressed immediately by big and small players in the industry,” Wong says. “As a sector we have to be responsible corporate citizens. We need to show that we care about the people we claim to be serving and act in their best interest. People trusted us and we should be very respectful in honoring that.”

Next read this:

Copyright © 2019 IDG Communications, Inc.

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It’s tough getting noticed on the Web. A Web page can provide useful information about a popular subject in an interactive and engrossing way, yet still attract few visitors. One of the most reliable ways to improve traffic is to achieve a high ranking on search engine return pages (SERPs).

Imagine that you’ve created the definitive Web site on a subject — we’ll use skydiving as an example. Your site is so new that it’s not even listed on any SERPs yet, so your first step is to submit your site to search engines like Google and Yahoo. The Web pages on your skydiving site include useful information, exciting photographs and helpful links guiding visitors to other resources. Even with the best information about skydiving on the Web, your site may not crack the top page of results on major search engines. When people search for the term “skydiving,” they could end up going to inferior Web sites because yours isn’t in the top results.

While most search engine companies try to keep their processes a secret, their criteria for high spots on SERPs isn’t a complete mystery. Search engines are successful only if they provide a user links to the best Web sites related to the user’s search terms. If your site is the best skydiving resource on the Web, it benefits search engines to list the site high up on their SERPs. You just have to find a way to show search engines that your site belongs at the top of the heap. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in — it’s a collection of techniques a webmaster can use to improve his or her site’s SERP position.

In this article, we’ll look at two SEO philosophies: the white hat approach and the black hat approach. We’ll also learn about some of the problems webmasters can encounter when trying to satisfy both the visitors to the site and search engines.

We’ll take a general overview of what SEO really means on the next page.

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The beautiful city of Dallas, TX is a hub for business, creativity, and inspiration. Since many corporations, large and small, are scattered in and around Dallas, there are many opportunities for businesses here, as well as some healthy competition. Now, picture this:…

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You’re likely to continue using the management tool you choose for a long period of time. So it’s worth carefully considering your choice. Factors you should keep in mind include:

Vendor Compatibility

Yes, you may be satisfied with your current hardware provider. But as you upgrade and renew your machines you may change providers or introduce a mix of providers. Don’t choose a server monitoring tool which restricts you to a specific provider. Even if all your equipment is from a single vendor, try to ensure long-term flexibility via a tool compatible with multiple vendors.

Server Monitoring Overheads

Every piece of software consumes resources, including server management and checking software. In most cases, a tool is likely to fit clients with operations that are a certain size. Importantly, you should avoid getting a tool which slows down your operations. Or which generates too much traffic on your network. Not sure what the resource impact of a tool will be? Many vendors offer trial periods on their software – just try it out first.

Match Your Server Administration Requirements

Different software come with different features, so try to match the tool you buy to your company’s oversight needs. Thought an extremely comprehensive package may look attractive, you should be careful not to buy software that you will never use. For small environments, buy a simple tool. For larger environments, consider a tool which can deal with complexity and which includes group-management functionality. However, never buy a tool that’s so complicated you end up not using it.

Server Management Roles

It’s useful to be able to grant restricted access to management consoles. Even if there’s just a single sysadmin looking after servers. You can, for example, give management staff the ability to directly view reports so that they can draw their own conclusions. Or, you may in future employ an assistant in which case you would need your junior employee to access functionality without giving full control to your assistant.

Scaling Server Monitoring

Your computing requirements may change in future. Smaller outfits should consider buying a cut-down edition of a tool which is made for large operations. Should you need to upgrade you can simply step up inside the product family, so you don’t need to retrain. Packages which only work with smaller environments may mean that you will need to switch vendors later on which can involve a learning curve.

Automating Server Management Processes

With the complex server environments so common nowadays, the mere ability to perform checking is no longer enough. Instead, you need to be able to automate the regular server administration tasks that are time-consuming. Good software can reduce much of the server administration tasks down to simply checking logs. It’s a job that gives the opportunity for interns to gain knowledge while freeing up the time of expensive sysadmins.

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By

F. John Reh wrote about business management for The Balance, and has 30 years of experience as a business manager.

Read The Balance’s editorial policies

F. John Reh

Updated October 31, 2019

Project management is one of the most critical components of a successful business. It affects revenues and liabilities, and it ultimately interacts with customer or client satisfaction and retention. Your company might have only one project in the works at a time, while other larger corporations and entities might juggle several projects at once. By their very nature, projects are temporary.

Projects are a means toward a goal, and the goal will eventually be reached. Your business might move on to another project…or not. It might have been a one-time objective. 

Projects prompt a burgeoning need in the workforce. The Project Management Institute estimated that, during the 2010–2020 period, more than 15 million new project management positions would be added worldwide.

Project management is not the entire operation of your company. It’s just one segment, a specified project with a detailed plan as to how you and your business are going to achieve that goal. It’s a plan detailed in a series of steps, each of them as important as the others. You must achieve one to properly move on to the next.

Think of project management as a ladder you must climb. You can’t leap to the top. You must take it rung by rung for utmost efficiency. Your team must apply the tools made available to them as well as their expertise and knowledge to execute each step and move on to the next.

It’s easy enough to say you want to get to Box A, so you’re going to take 25 steps in that direction. But you must also factor time considerations into your project plan, and you most likely have to work within a budget. You might crawl those 25 steps or you might jog. It depends on how quickly you must get there for the successful completion of the project. You can save money by traveling on foot, or you can hire a driver. It depends on the budget you’ve dedicated to the project.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach, system, or plan. Each project you and your company tackle will most likely have its timeline, goal, and budget. That’s why it’s so critical to have a savvy, talented project manager in place to run the show. 

A successful project manager must simultaneously manage four basic elements of a project. These elements are interrelated.

• Scope: This involves the project’s size, goals, and requirements.
• Resources: You’ll need people, equipment, and materials in place. 
• Time: This doesn’t just address how much time the project will take overall. It must be broken down into task durations, dependencies, and critical path.
• Money: Have a firm grasp on costs, contingencies, and profit.

The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish and the budgets of time and money that have been created to achieve these objectives. Any change to the scope of the project must have a matching change in budget, time, resources, or all three.

If the project scope is to construct a building to house three widgets on a budget of $100,000, the project manager is expected to do that. If the scope is changed to a building for four widgets, the project manager must obtain an appropriate change in time, money, and resources. 

There are three aspects of understanding and managing resources: people, equipment, and material. 

A successful project manager must effectively manage the resources assigned to the project, including members of the project team, vendor staff, and subcontractors. He must ensure that his employees have the skills and tools they need to complete the job, and he must continually monitor whether he has enough people in place to complete the project on deadline. His job is to ensure that each person understands the task and project deadlines.

The senior member of each group of employees reports to the project manager when he’s managing direct employees, but employees might also have a line manager who provides technical direction. In a matrix management situation like a project team, the project manager’s job is to provide project direction to the line managers. Managing labor subcontracts usually means managing the team lead for the subcontracted workers, who in turn manage those workers.

A project manager must often procure equipment and materials and manage their use as well so that the team can operate efficiently. He’s responsible for having the appropriate equipment and materials in the correct location at the proper time. 

The three elements of successful time management are tasks, schedule, and critical path. 

Build the project schedule by listing, in order, all the tasks that must be completed. Some must be done sequentially while others can overlap or be done in tandem. Assign a duration to each task. Allocate the required resources. Determine predecessors—what tasks must be completed before others—and successors, the tasks that can’t start until after each other task is completed. This aspect of project management is sometimes referred to as waterfall management because one task follows another in more or less sequential order.

Project management software can simplify the task of creating and managing the project schedule.

Some tasks have a little flexibility in their required start and finish dates. This is called “float.” Other tasks have no flexibility. They have zero float. A line through all the tasks with zero float is called the critical path. All tasks on this path—and there can be multiple, parallel paths—must be completed on time if the project is to come in by its deadline. The project manager’s key time management task is monitoring the critical path.

The three considerations in managing money are costs, contingencies, and profit. 

Each task has a cost, whether that’s the labor hours of a computer programmer or the purchase price of a cubic yard of concrete. Each of these costs is estimated and totaled when preparing the project budget.

Some estimates will be more accurate than others. The project budget should, therefore, include a contingency allowance—money set aside in the budget “just in case” the actual cost of an item is wildly different from the estimate.

Profit is the money the company wants to make from the task. It’s put on top of the cost.

So a project budget is composed of the estimated cost, plus the contingency, plus any profit. The project manager’s job is to keep the actual cost at or below the estimated cost and to maximize the profit the company earns on the project.

Successful project management takes practice. These ideas can give you a basic understanding of project management but consider it only a beginning. If your job or career path includes project management, and if you want to improve your skills, talk to successful project managers, read, and practice. Project management can be a very rewarding career.

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Get help with keyword research and selecting the right terms.

Search for words or phrases related to your products or services. Our keyword research tool will help you find the keywords that are most relevant for your business.

Suggested keywords

Clothing store

Add

Fashion retailer

Add

Our keyword research tool gives you insight into how often certain words are searched and how those searches have changed over time. This can help you narrow your keyword list down to the ones you really want.

“Retail clothing” searches

8M

4M

2M

Keyword Planner will give you suggested bid estimates for each keyword, so you can determine your advertising budget.

Suggested bid

Clothing store

$1.72

Once you’ve found the keywords you like, you can add them to your advertising plan. Save your plan for future reference or share with your business team. When you’re ready, you can finalize and launch your campaign.

Keyword

Competition

Clothing store

Medium

Fashion retailer

Low

—Brad Beiter – VP Performance Content, Performics

Source