So ask yourself this: What kind of image does your telephone system present to those who call your company? One of the best ways small businesses can improve their image is by switching to a voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, phone system. VoIP can help any size business project an image of professionalism and appear larger than it really is, which can help overcome any qualms customers may have about working with smaller, less established companies.

Stefan Horbonis, who owns APA Financials, a company that buys restaurants, says that caller perception is critical for his business. “For us, it’s not just about looking big—it’s also about looking professional, because very sophisticated business people and investors are calling into our phone system. We can’t afford to look small and unsophisticated.”

VoIP phone calls are made and received via an Internet connection instead of an analog landline. This provides access to more features at a lower cost, such as auto attendant, call routing and voicemail and fax-to-email. “With business VoIP, small businesses have access to sophisticated telephone features that, in the past, only big businesses could afford,” says Yaniv Masjadi, the vice president of marketing for Nextiva, a cloud-based unified communications provider.

Auto Attendant Answers and Transfers Incoming Calls, 24/7

The auto attendant and intelligent call routing features work by automatically answering calls with a recorded greeting and directing them to the appropriate contact within the company, regardless of whether or not they’re in the office. For some small businesses, this can eliminate the need for a separate receptionist, which makes it both an efficient and cost effective solution.

This feature is especially beneficial for small firms, says Jeff Palmer, a lead management specialist with Jive Communications, a provider of enterprise-grade hosted VoIP and unified communications. “Even a one-person business can route calls to different ‘departments’ like billing, customer service or sales, which creates the impression of being larger and more sophisticated,” he explains. “It gives customers the best experience when they call in—they are automatically routed to the person who can best help them.”

Horbonis’ business VoIP telephone system handles all incoming calls to his investment company as well as his West Palm Beach restaurant, the Gourmet Deli House, on separate lines and routes them appropriately. Calls from vendors, for example, are transferred to management, while calls from customers for take-out orders are directed to another service provider that relays these orders to the restaurant.

With many VoIP systems, incoming calls can be directed to employees’ cell phones when they’re on-the-go. This can be an especially valuable feature for small companies where maintaining constant communication with all customers is absolutely essential, and a single missed call can mean lost revenue.

Dr. Marc Kay, D.D.S., the owner of Phoenix-based 19th Avenue Dental Care, also cites the auto attendant as the most useful feature for his practice. Kay decided to switch to business VoIP after years of "being ripped off by the phone company," and now pays 50 percent less for his phone service.

“If all our receptionists are busy, the auto attendant automatically routes calls to my cell phone so I can talk directly to patients if there’s a dental emergency,” he explains.

Voicemail to Email Conversion Prevents Gaps in Communication

Tratt Properties, a Phoenix-based commercial real estate firm, switched to Nextiva’s business VoIP recently after what owner Jonathan Tratt called a “small business nightmare” with its old landline phone service provider. “I don’t have time to be put on hold by the phone company or passed from one person or machine to the next. It has been a pleasure to have a phone system that is state-of-the-art and offers the same sophisticated features large corporations use.”

Tratt uses a number of his VoIP phone system’s features, but says one of his favorites is voicemail to email conversion. This feature is particularly helpful for companies with staff who take frequent business trips, particularly overseas. Given the inevitable lapses in communication that often accompany travel due to time zone differences and unreliable cell phone service, voicemail to email conversion helps ensure that important messages are promptly received and answered.

“I have the opportunity to travel internationally and my voice messages are converted into emails and forwarded to me so I can listen to them on my iPhone wherever I am in the world,” says Tratt. “This enables me to be more responsive to my customers. Plus, I have an electronic copy of the message if it’s ever needed.”

By helping smaller companies appear more reliable and accessible, this feature can be an essential tool for building a credible reputation that helps both retain and accrue new clients.

Online Admin Tool Enables Quick and Easy Customization

Many VoIP systems offer an online management platform that allows users to quickly change settings. This feature helps small businesses maintain an efficient, professional appearance despite periods of rapid growth or change, e.g. adding a number of employees or positions in short succession, expanding office space, having employees who are constantly traveling, etc.

“I can log into my VoIP system on Jive’s website from anywhere and route calls and call forwards, create new lines and users, customize the auto-attendant—the sky’s the limit,” says Horbonis. “A traditional landline phone system doesn’t allow you to do any of this yourself.”

Ely Alexander, the CEO of Los Angeles-based Retrospec Bicycles, also appreciates his business VoIP phone system’s admin capabilities. “It’s easy to customize the phone system’s settings and change extensions using the online admin tool,” he says. “For a growing business, VoIP is definitely what you need.”

Don’t Neglect Your Telephone System

With so much business communication today taking place via email, social media, texting and the like, it can be easy to neglect the business telephone. Daryl Reva, the director of channel marketing for Fonality, a developer and marketer of cloud-based business and unified communications solutions, stresses the importance of your business’ core telephone system.

“A phone call is often the first interaction customers have with your company, setting the standard for the experience and quality of service they can expect going forward,” he says. “Therefore, it’s critical that small and mid-sized businesses make the right first phone impression. Implementing a business VoIP phone system enables you to do this while also presenting an image of professionalism and sophistication.”

Don Sadler is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in the areas of business and finance, which he has covered for nearly three decades. Throughout his career, Don has worked with some of the nation’s largest financial institutions, investment companies and financial publishers in the creation of content for all mediums: print, online and broadcast. Learn more about Don and his writing background at his website, www.donsadlerwriter.com.

Thumbnail image created by elminium.

Weighing all the costs and benefits can also be difficult—Google “should you get a PMP certification?” and you’ll get tens of thousands of results. Some say that obtaining the certification is an excellent career move because it validates your project management skill set. Others advise project managers to stay on the job and get a few more years of real-world training under their belt, since many employers like to see on-the-job experience.

So, should you get a PMP Certification? I posed this question to several project management and hiring experts to get a better sense of who should get a PMP, what it takes to get one and the potential payoff. Here’s what they had to say.

To Get a PMP Certification, You Need Real-World Experience

The first thing to understand about the PMP certification is that it’s best-suited for individuals who already know they want to pursue a career of planning and executing projects across functional teams from beginning to end.

In other words, if you want to pursue a career that isn’t focused on project-based work (e.g. a sales career), then the PMP isn’t for you. As Kevin Archbold, Consulting Manager at Key Consulting, puts it, “It’s not really appropriate for individuals whose work is individually based and doesn’t depend on others for completion.”

In addition to wanting to pursue a project management career, you need to have professional experience managing projects. The PMI recognizes two education-based paths to PMP certification, the requirements for which I detail in the table below.

All of this experience must be accrued within no more than eight years prior to submitting your application. PMI also specifies that your professional experience must be non-overlapping, meaning that if you managed two projects at once, you can only count one of those projects toward your project management experience. Furthermore, this experience must align with the tasks, knowledge and skills outlined in their Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline.

If you don’t meet the project management education requirements, don’t worry—there’s another way. Archbold, who teaches a PMP exam prep course, says that the project management education requirements can usually be met within three to four months. Courses generally range from $1,500 to $4,000.

Once you meet all of these requirements, you then must take a rigorous 200-question exam, which costs $500. If you pass the test, you become a PMP certified project manager. It sounds like a lot of work—and it is. But, according to the experts I spoke with, the payoffs can be considerable.

A PMP Certification Makes Your Resume More Attractive

If you’re looking for a job as a project manager—or are still early on in your project management career—a PMP certification is a great credential to add to your resume. If you’re a project manager with a proven track record for managing projects, your professional experience likely speaks for itself, but a PMP certification can still help. Why? Recruiters often use certification to narrow their candidate pool.

To filter applicants, says Archbold, “many recruiters divide their resumes into two piles: those with PMP certification and those without.” While this means that talented project managers without a PMP will inevitably miss the cut, this isn’t a big concern for recruiters. “Today there are enough good project managers with their PMP that [recruiters] don’t have to sift through the uncertified ones,” he explains.

Some recruiters even value the certification over a master’s degree. According to Rosemary Guzman, Executive Recruiter at Hook The Talent, “The master's is a nice to have, but the certification lets the hiring director know you already have proven experience and you've passed rigorous criteria approved and accepted by a national project management community [as opposed to] a lone university.”

While the PMP credential applies to managing projects in any industry, some industries weigh it more heavily than others. “Highly regulated industries (e.g., financial services, pharmaceuticals, defense and aerospace) wouldn’t consider anyone without that foundational certification,” says Tim Wasserman, Program Director of Stanford’s Advanced Project Management Program. He explains that these industries value PMP certification because it shows an ability to adhere to strictly defined processes—a valuable skill when overseeing extremely sensitive and regulated projects, such as creating a new drug for public consumption.

Wasserman is careful to note that, in his experience, only about half of the general project manager job postings he sees today require a certification. However, even if the PMP isn’t a requirement, he still thinks it can give your resume a boost.

PMP Certified Professionals Earn Higher Salaries

Once you get past the resume screen, there’s a good chance that (if hired) you’ll earn more with the certification than you would without it. In a 2011 survey of 30,000 project management professionals, PMI found that project management professionals in the United States earned an average of $111,824 per year with a PMP certification. In comparison, the average compensation of project managers without the certification was $97,829—nearly $14,000 less a year.

Project management professionals also tend to feel secure in their earning potential. The same study found that 76 percent of project management professionals expected their salary to increase in the next 12 months, while only two percent expected it to decrease.

In lieu of certification, sometimes merely having PMP training can be enough to boost your salary. Maggie Donovan decided to take a PMP training course while she was working in the financial services department at Apple. After completing the course, Donovan landed a position as the Program Manager at Dell Storage Marketing, where her salary immediately doubled.

Donovan says that being able to put PMP training on her resume helped her “gain instant credibility and attention for a role [she] otherwise wouldn’t be considered for without a four-year degree.” In her mind, it immediately put her on equal footing with candidates that had more prestigious educational backgrounds.

PMP Certification Helps You Learn a Common Language

In addition to improving her job prospects and salary, Donovan feels that the PMP training taught her to speak a language that resonates both with executives and fellow project managers. Prior to the training, she felt unable to clearly articulate the most important aspects of a project charter: the project goal, resources needed (human, material and financial) and project assumptions, risks and constraints. Donovan says that her PMP training has given her a framework for effectively conveying all of this.

David Wakeman, a PMP certified professional who sits on the Board of Directors at the Employment Support Center, echoes this sentiment. “Having an understanding of an accepted project management framework gives me the opportunity to speak with and communicate with clients and vendors on a level playing field,” he explains. This common language can cut down on the need for explanation when discussing, for example, the scope baseline of a project plan and brainstorming the best way to move forward.

Of course, it’s possible to learn these skills and best practices without formal training. However, there’s something to be said for the standardization that formal training brings. As Archbold notes, “Often times project managers will work with PMP certified individuals who are going to use terms in a certain way, so it’s useful to understand their language.” Starting from a common set of definitions and set of best practices, as good project managers will tell you, is critical to successfully managing and completing any project.

A PMP Can Help You Cash In on Demand for Project Managers

Beyond all this, project managers are currently in high demand. The Anderson Economic Group predicts that 1.2 million project management positions will need to be filled each year until 2016. The market is especially strong in the IT industry, where, according to a ComputerWorld survey, 40 percent of IT executives say they plan to hire a project management professional in the next 12 months. One way to bolster your resume and position yourself to cash in on these job opportunities is to plan ahead and obtain your certification.

If you already have the project management experience required, you can obtain your certification within a few months. If not, Donovan recommends starting with a training course. “You’ll be so much more effective at your job and understand why things get done in a certain way if you start with formal training,” she says. Once you’ve acquired enough professional experience, you can then go for the certification.

In some ways, asking whether a project manager should get their PMP is similar to asking if an accountant should obtain their Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license. You don’t need to be a CPA to manage accounts, but it’s a good career move and employers value the affirmation that comes with the certification. In the same way, you don’t need your PMP to be a project management professional, but it can help you land a job more easily and will likely result in higher compensation for the time and effort invested.

The thumbnail image for this post was created by Trinity Adam.

1. Create a 10-year plan, even if it doesn't play out.

You need to focus your search by determining where you want to be in ten years. Then apply for roles that will help you get there. This is important personal introspection that will help you develop career goals. However, I don’t suggest you contemplate your options in isolation; reach out to people who you admire and get their opinions on potential career paths. Understand that hiring managers want to see that you are career-oriented and forward-thinking. Working out a ten-year plan – and being able to tell a story about your plan – will help you impress employers with your thoughtfulness and ambition. Whether or not a job you interview for is what you want to be doing in ten years, show the interviewer that it is a step toward achieving your long-term vision.

2. Identify one to three categories of jobs that you want.

If you know you want to be a lawyer, your post-graduation job search is relatively simple: Go to law school, or take a position as a paralegal, and then go back to law school. But if you’re not sure what you want to be when you grow up, narrowing your options to three categories will help you focus your career search. Look for job categories that are economically stable, growing and creating opportunities and are of some interest to you. I mention personal interest last on purpose. Only a small percentage of people find a career in a field they are truly passionate about. For such exceptional cases as these, I do believe in the saying, “Follow your passion and the money will follow”. But the problem with advice like Steve Jobs gave in his Stanford graduation speech is that, frankly, most of us aren’t Steve Jobs. Whether you are pursuing your passion or not, I strongly believe that you can find great fulfillment in career momentum and goal attainment. Much like driving a car, it’s the rush of acceleration that makes it exciting to go to work each day. So identify three areas in which to focus your search, get a job in one, and then put your head down and work hard to gain momentum. It works. And if you communicate this strategy to hiring managers, they will appreciate your pragmatism and will perceive less risk in hiring you.

3. Seek foundational roles, and explain why you want one.

A foundational role is a position that serves as a foundation for a great career. Foundational roles are demanding and make you work hard. They also teach you the fundamentals of professionalism: attention to detail, meeting and exceeding expectations and interacting with professionals, both clients and colleagues. These foundational roles are similar to the foundational experiences one has in a rigorous academic program, competitive sports or military service. This sort of invaluable life experience will prepare you to achieve your career aspirations. And again, if you can explain to an interviewer why you want a job like this, they will be impressed – just be prepared to “suck it up” if you do get hired. My first foundational role was as an investment banking analyst. I worked 80 hours a week, and it was grunt work. A lot was demanded of me, it was stressful and sometimes it wasn’t very fun. However, it gave me a solid career foundation and prepared me for what came later, including starting my own business… and frankly, I haven’t had to work quite that hard again.

4. Develop an “elevator pitch” that tells your story.

Interviews can be as brief as 20 minutes or as long as several hours. Either way, it’s a short period of time in which strangers are trying to learn all they can about the 20 some years that defined who you are – they are looking for the answer to the question, “What’s your story?”. “Elevator pitch” is one of many business buzzwords you’ll hear throughout your career. Essentially, it is the story you could tell about yourself in the time it takes to travel by elevator from your starting floor to your destination. As a recent grad, your elevator pitch should focus on your talents and energy rather than your experience. Generally, hiring managers are less interested in an internship at your uncle’s insurance agency than they are with, for example, the fact that you learned hard work growing up on a farm in Missouri; that you learned discipline on the varsity cross country team in high school; or, that you gained great organizational skills balancing the most intensive course load your university had to offer. Tell a story that speaks to your core personality traits – and if you happen to have experience that aligns with your career goals, this just serves as proof that you are on the right track.

5. Practice responding to common interview questions.

In the interview process, there are many questions that you’ll hear again and again: “Where do you want to be in five or ten years?”, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” and “Why should we hire you?” are some of the most common. Make a list of the top 20 interview questions and write out detailed, thoughtful responses. Practice delivering your answers in the mirror, or with a friend or family member – even if you don’t memorize everything, practicing will make you more articulate and allow you to express yourself more intelligently in the interview. If you can nail the basics, you’ll have the confidence to answer the more difficult questions.

6. Let your personality come through.

Just as you shouldn’t write like a robot, you shouldn’t interview like a robot, either. If you get the job, you’ll be spending a lot of time around these people, and they’re going to want that time to be enjoyable. Being overly formal is less likely to endear you to potential co-workers. Be friendly, seek to be liked and let your true self come through. Show others that you’ll be a fun and dynamic person to work with. Of course, make sure to remember these aren’t your college buddies – you don’t want to be overly casual. Speak in appropriate language, be professional and use those good manners you were taught as a child.

7. Have someone detail-oriented review your resume.

Hiring managers are looking for someone who is professional and detail-oriented, and one of the few things they have to go on is your resume. They will be checking your grammar, punctuation, organization and formatting. Your resume is an example of how you would represent the company when creating documents for them – and just as you would in the workplace, you have other people to rely on for help when creating this document. Consult your school’s career center, your teacher, a sibling or a trusted friend and have them review your resume. A fresh set of eyes will catch mistakes yours won’t. I know this sounds like cliche job-hunting advice, but I consistently find typos in the resumes of candidates I interview.

8. Buy a nice suit and groom yourself.

Hiring managers realize you may not have much money – after all, you don’t have a job yet. Still, there is some truth to the saying “Dress for success.” If you dress like a professional, people can’t help but envision you in a professional role. But this doesn’t mean your clothes have to be expensive, and you don’t want to wear anything too flashy. You can’t go wrong with traditional, conservative business attire; and it’s hard to distinguish a basic suit or dress bought at Target from one bought at Neiman Marcus. And while many firms are now “business casual,” I don’t think you’ll get docked for being overdressed. Err on the side of formality, but stop short of a tux. I also suggest reaching out to someone you know who understands “business attire” for help. I had to learn the hard way that you can’t rely solely on your own intuition. When I started my first real job, I bought two very conservative, two-button suits, one blue and one gray. I also bought one fancy suit: It was a little shinier, with some funky stripes and big, double-breasted lapels, and I bought suspenders to go with it. I thought I was going to be Gordon Gekko. But in my first week, my younger co-workers made a number of jokes – and I never wore that getup again.

9. Clean up your online reputation.

What was cool in college – pictures of yourself doing keg stands or playing beer pong, status updates about binge drinking, or references to 4/20 – is most certainly not cool in the professional world. No manager wants to hire someone they expect will be hung over every Monday. Don’t let your Tweets and Facebook posts reflect poor grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. And don’t make comments about excessive partying, waking up late or not having a care in the world. Hiring managers want you sober, ambitious and in the office early. By following these tips, you can find more than just a job after graduation – you can find a career.

Intuit's QuickBooks system dominates the small business accounting software market. QuickBooks Online, Pro, Mac, Premier and Enterprise editions come with inventory management features, but enhanced functionality requires integration with third-party inventory management systems.

Here, we analyzed four inventory management software solutions that integrate directly with QuickBooks. We’ll look at how these systems compare in terms of commonly desired features, supported QuickBooks versions and natively-supported operating systems.

Fishbowl Inventory

The newly-released Fishbowl Inventory 2013 simplifies the shipping process with integrated UPS and FedEx shipping and online inventory access on mobile devices. The software’s Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) integration is geared primarily towards manufacturers and wholesale distributors.

We really like the additional modules Fishbowl offers to assist employees on sales, marketing and customer service teams. Fishbowl’s cloud-based SalesPoint software integrates with Fishbowl Inventory to provide point of sale functionality, while their customer relationship management (CRM) system, Fishbowl Pipeline, can be integrated to offer tools such as customer, lead and conversion tracking. Fishbowl also partners with software developers to offer add-ons such as hosting solutions, merchant services and shopping carts via Fishbowl Marketplace.

Like the other solutions we look at here, Fishbowl can track tens of thousands of stock items across multiple warehouses. Custom reports are also available for an extra fee.

IntelliTrack

IntelliTrack prides itself on innovative barcode and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for small and medium businesses, especially manufacturing, distribution, wholesale and third-party logistics (3PL) operations. Their core market is warehouses, retail stores, restaurants, schools, hospitals and companies that use vendor-managed inventory.

IntelliTrack offers a suite of Web-based, hosted inventory management software programs: StratusISRP, StratusStockroom, StratusInventory and StratusVMI. These software as a service (SaaS) options give businesses an alternative to expensive hardware and IT support. The company recently announced that it’s adding the Android operating system to its mobile platform to enable data collection via integrated scanners.

IntelliTrack also offers warehouse control systems and supports handheld barcode readers. Inventory can be tracked across multiple sites and data can be collected using both standard and user-defined fields.

CoreIMS

CoreIMS manages purchasing, receiving and shipping for small to medium warehouses and comes in Standard, Enterprise and Government editions. Each includes barcode scanning, barcode label printing, vendor and customer contact management, integration with Sage software (in addition to QuickBooks) and easy installation. Core’s ability to track inventory on pallets, containers and cargo ships makes it a good solution for international warehousing.

The CoreIMS Standard edition takes over the tracking and workflow operation after the user enters sales and purchase orders. The Enterprise edition adds item ownership, batch order processing and warehouse charge accumulation and reporting for third parties (such as shipping service providers).

CoreIMS Government Edition offers U.S. federal government verbiage in its operations and reporting features. It also provides user permissions to grant different access levels for employees.

All Orders by NumberCruncher

NumberCruncher released the first true QuickBooks-integrated inventory software more than a decade ago. Their affordable, easy-to-deploy All Orders software comes with tools designed to handle multiple warehouses, bins and lot numbers.

With All Orders, a customer purchase order triggers a process to determine what’s in stock and what needs to be ordered to create the necessary shipping documents. The software lets you perform a detailed analysis of profit margins, quantities on hand, work orders and costs. You can also get around QuickBooks’ item, customer and vendor limits with the All Orders "proxies" feature. When synchronizing with QuickBooks, the feature allows you to add an item, then use another item as a proxy.

All Orders is popular with businesses in the manufacturing, wholesale and distribution sectors, and their quick, helpful customer service is frequently praised by users. It can be used as a standalone system, or integrated with QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise editions. All Orders Mobile enables on-the-go inventory management complete with barcode label printing, and All Orders Web allows interactive, online data tracking.

Features and Functionality Comparison

Inventory management varies greatly from industry to industry. All four solutions include manual and automatic data import/export to and from QuickBooks. The chart below looks at additional core features of each solution.

	FishbowlDemo	IntelliTrackDemo	CoreIMS	All Orders
Tracks costs
Monitors third-party vendor activity
Tracks shipments
Creates work orders/manufacturing orders
Tracks inventory across multiple locations
Tracks equipment, parts and hardware at distribution points
Cloud-based platform
Barcode scanning and printing
Integrates with third-party logistics (3PL) operations
Creates sales orders

Supported QuickBooks Versions

Finding the right software means integrating with the tools you already use. The chart below provides a breakdown of how each solution integrates with QuickBooks products. Although all four solutions have cloud integration, none of them function as add-ons to QuickBooks Online Edition.

	FishbowlDemo	IntelliTrackDemo	CoreIMS	All Orders
Pro
Premier
Enterprise Solutions

Supported Operating Systems

The chart below looks at the operating systems natively supported by each solution provider. However, it’s important to note there are some workarounds users could pursue. For example, Windows-based solutions can be run on Apple computers using multi-boot utility programs should as Bootcamp or Parallels.

	FishbowlDemo	IntelliTrackDemo	CoreIMS	All Orders
Linux
Mac
Windows

We’ve skimmed the surface of four of the more popular software solutions. If you have experience with another solution, or if you want to add something about one of the solutions we’ve already discussed, please take a few minutes to leave a comment below.

We developed this survey in partnership with Buildium and AppFolio to gauge how property management companies are using technology, and what business benefits they’ve seen from implementing a property management software solution.

We encourage feedback from property managers, whether or not you’ve implemented a property-specific software system.

Our Survey Partners

The One Fund’s simple website reflects its sudden, unplanned entry into the world. Its sparse contents include a short, to-the-point paragraph explaining its mission and a single “Donate Now” button linked to a PayPal account—a far cry from the colorful, community-driven websites that new, high profile nonprofits more commonly launch.

So how does an impromptu nonprofit organization formed around a sudden tragic event use social media to raise much-needed funds?

One particular strategy—crowdfunding—helped The One Fund Boston raise over $20 million in less than a week and attract considerable attention. The nonprofit has received an outpouring of donations from organizations including shoemaker New Balance, Major League Baseball and Simon Property Groups, among many others.

The simple layout of The One Fund homepage

Crowdfunding with Teespring and Pinterest

Here’s how it worked: a handful of individuals used a website called Teespring to design custom t-shirts. According to the site, Teespring, a Rhode Island-based startup, helps you “sell shirts that you design, leveraging crowdfunding and social media to help you sell your shirt and make money.” Forbes has called the company “the future of custom apparel,” and VentureBeat dubbed it a “kickstarter for t-shirts.”

Once several Boston-themed t-shirt “campaigns” had been launched on Teespring, online influencers stepped in to help spread the word. One of those influencers was Joe Waters, the author of Cause Marketing for Dummies and founder of Selfish Giving, a blog that teaches nonprofits how to fundraise using social media.

On April 18th, Waters’ blog featured a post titled “Pinterest Roundup: Support the Victims of the Boston Marathon.” In it, he pointed readers to a newly-created Pinterest board he’d set up to feature Teespring t-shirts and marathon-fundraising items available for purchase.

Waters’ Pinterest board has 679 followers (and counting), which led some of the featured items to spread like wildfire. In less than a week, a t-shirt campaign created by Emerson college students raised more than $40,000. Another campaign featuring a “Stay Strong Boston” t-shirt sold over 5,000 shirts and raised $98,000 in the same amount of time.

Waters' Pinterest board

Waters believes Pinterest has a powerful role in nonprofit fundraising, but warns that nonprofits need to understand the site’s specific function. “One thing that’s important for nonprofits to understand about Pinterest is that it’s aspirational,” Waters says. “People tend to pin things that aren’t about what they’ve done or what they’re doing—they pin things that represent who they want to be. You wouldn’t want to use Pinterest to post 500 pictures from your fundraising gala. That’s just not a good use of the site.”

Here, we’ve put together five simple tips your nonprofit can use to successfully crowdfund online:

1. Act Quickly.

The time to act is right after what nonprofit strategists call a “focusing event,” or one that stirs people’s emotions and inspires them to give. According to a report published by The Network for Good, an online platform for nonprofit donations, “By enabling people to react immediately—when they feel moved by the unfolding story—online giving likely increases the rates at which feeling is converted to charitable action.”

The window for action is small, however: online donations following a disaster quickly spike and drop within the timeframe of just a week. The more time that goes by, the less proactive and passionate people tend to be about giving, and so the first few days following major disasters and tragedies are crucial for setting up a platform for people to contribute to.

Individuals who cared deeply about the Boston tragedy wasted no time launching campaigns on Teespring. The One Fund Boston was created a mere day after the marathon bombings occurred, and the $20 million the organization raised in the week following indicates the effectiveness of quickly getting the site up and driving people to it.

Source: Network for Good

2. Leverage Online Influencers.

Once you’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign, identify allies with large social media followings. There are multiple Pinterest users with cause-related boards. Locate and email them about your campaign, asking them to pin an image with a link to your crowdfunding campaign.

After the Boston Marathon bombings, Waters said he was contacted by approximately two dozen people who wanted him to share items on his Pinterest board. The tweet below provides an example of a “pitch” nonprofits can use to entice online influencers like Waters to feature their crowdfunding campaigns.

Twitter user @iheartgarments used this short but sweet method to reach out to Waters

3. Use a Multi-Channel Approach.

Although Waters’ blog pointed readers to his Pinterest board, he also tweeted about it and asked others to retweet and blog about the boards that had been set up to support the Boston Marathon victims.

“The important thing to understand about Pinterest is that it’s not a standalone site,” says Waters. “It needs to be used in conjunction with Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media sites. If you’re new to social media, you don’t just ‘start’ with Pinterest. That’d be like waking up in the morning and saying, ‘You know what, I’m going to get dressed and I’m going to start with just socks. Socks are pretty much all I need.’”

Two examples of Waters’ tweets pointing followers to Pinterest

4. Use Hashtags.

“I drove traffic to my Pinterest board with hashtags,” Waters said. “Interestingly, a lot of the fundraising that happens on social media for nonprofits happens around hashtags.” By serving as bookmarks that let people easily locate tweets about a particular issue or topic, hashtags are an effective way to raise awareness and consolidate online conversations.

Hashtags can also be used to raise donations to a cause or organization every time an agreed-upon hashtag is used. One such example is is #TeamAutism, which was used by Samsung and the Dan Marino Foundation in 2011 to promote the “Team Up for Autism” campaign. Every time someone on Twitter tweeted #TeamAutism, Samsung donated $5. This, together with additional efforts, helped raise over $100,000 in just three days.

An example of Dan Marino encouraging people to retweet #TeamAutism to help raise donations

5. Get Visual.

To fuel fundraising success, Waters suggests focusing less on social media tools themselves and more on the strategy being executed. Visual content strategies, for example, can be key. Why? Studies have shown that 83 percent of human learning occurs visually. Content communicated in a visual format is four times more likely to be shared and 43 percent more persuasive.

Consider the following example of the same message from the Surfrider Foundation's "Rise Above Plastics" campaign, as told through plain text and text imposed over an image. Which is more compelling?

An example of a tweet from the Surfrider Foundation’s “Rise Above Plastics” campaign

An image from the Surfrider Foundation’s "Rise Above Plastics" Campaign

“People love visual content,” Waters said. “What matters for nonprofits is that they understand the types of visuals that work best on all the different sites. Pinterest is a place to store things, to showcase collections. Not all sites work that way. It’s important to pay attention to these different nuances.”

Crowdfunding can be a powerful fundraising strategy for nonprofit organizations that form in response to a crisis, and tools like Pinterest and Teespring can amplify individual fundraisers’ efforts. Has your nonprofit used Pinterest for crowdfunding? If so, we’d love to hear about it. Share your experience in the comments below.

Now that the excitement is beginning to die down, it’s time to take another look at hosted vs. on-premise systems. Here, we break down the top five considerations to keep in mind when selecting a PBX system for your small to medium-sized business (SMB).

1. Total Cost of Ownership

Arguments in favor of hosted PBXs typically include a cost analysis, as SMBs are more likely to operate on a smaller budget. A small business owner may not have the $75,000 PCG Telecom & Data Network estimates is required to fund the upfront cost of a premise-based PBX for 75 extensions, and will thus consider the much lower $22,500 required for a hosted PBX system to be favorable. However, this comparison ignores the total cost of ownership (TCO). When calculated over the projected life of an on-site PBX system, the cost variance is much greater.

No Jitter, a website that provides commentary and analysis on telephony, communications and networking, featured an in-depth analysis of available PBX deployment strategies. A mock request for proposal (RFP) was issued for 2,000 seats and a 75-person call center, which received responses from 16 vendors offering 24 solutions for consideration.

To assess the TCO for each solution, study authors normalized the data received from the vendors. In comparing the on-site versus hosted PBX solutions over five years, there is a clear crossover point where the hosted solution becomes more expensive over time.

The data shows that cloud-based PBX is considerably less expensive in the first year, as it requires no upfront capital investments in hardware, software or infrastructure build out. By year two, however, the cost becomes equal with the on-premise solution. And in years three through five, the cost of the cloud-based solution continues to increase at the same rate, while much of the on-premise PBX cost was absorbed at deployment. As a result, the hosted solution is more expensive overall.

The perpetual monthly payment typical of hosted solutions sounds more affordable in theory, but when tracked over time, can become very expensive depending on the vendor and features offered. SMBs therefore need to identify both the up-front and long-term costs when researching PBX solutions.

2. Specific vs. Bundled Features

Let’s assume that money is no object and the goal is to find the PBX solution that best meets an organization’s needs. The technical capabilities of on-site versus hosted PBX solutions tend to be about equal, making this less of a deciding factor.

One constant, however, is that hosted PBX providers tend to offer bundled features for a set price per user. As a result, if you simply want, say, an auto attendant and conferencing services, but don’t need call-forwarding or three-way calling, you may end up paying for these extra features anyway. Buyers may therefore need to spend more time shopping around to find a hosted solution that offers a set of features that best fits their needs.

With on-site PBX, on the other hand, SMBs have greater flexibility to choose user-specific capabilities, ensuring they’ll only pay for those they actually require.

3. Ease of Customization

A PBX system must be customized to meet a business’s communication, integration and interoperability needs. This customization is attainable with an on-premise system, as the IT professional overseeing deployment can set it up according to the requirements of the business. With hosted PBX systems, however, the provider has control–not the customer.

Hosted PBX providers often tout the customizability of their solutions, but vendors are often reluctant to make changes for just one customer. Additionally, the cost of customization with hosted providers is difficult to ascertain. Vendors are not forthcoming with this information and usually recommend their bundled offers instead of customized solutions.

4. Quality of User Experience

It’s often argued that the user ultimately cannot distinguish between hosted and on-site PBX calls. If all things are equal and the interaction is a standard call with no interference, this argument is true. But as soon as too much traffic starts traversing the network, this is no longer the case.

On-site PBX prioritizes data traffic to ensure voice quality, otherwise the voice and data packets fight over which gets preference–a reality that tends to occur with hosted PBX solutions. When this happens, voice quality always suffers. The hosted vendor will often offer a Session Border Controller (SBC) device to mediate the issue, but can add to the cost (by several thousand dollars) and complexity of the system. An on-site PBX system can therefore be easier to manage when controlled by an on-site IT administrator, as they can design the operation according to the needs of the business.

5. Accessibility of Tech Support

The availability of an entire technical support team is another common argument in favor of a hosted PBX system. Vendors tout that companies will no longer need on-site technical support to configure, install and maintain the PBX.

However, for an organization that manages much of its data across an internal network, implementing a hosted system won’t eliminate the need for in-house IT staff. Instead, it simply transfers the tech support responsibilities to a third party. If making the switch to hosted PBX isn’t enough to reduce IT staff by at least one employee, then it simply adds to support costs rather than reducing them.

Additionally, relying on support from individuals outside of the organization is not always in the best interest of SMBs, as they don’t have complete control over every detail. Customization is possible with a hosted solution, but is usually offered at a greater cost and only by those providers that have the capacity to do so. Relying on third party support therefore may not be an effective strategy.

SMBs looking to identify the best communications strategy to fit their needs face a complex challenge. The staggering amount of information available focuses on the benefits of hosted PBX to such an extent that viable, objective information is difficult to find. SMBs must first identify both their immediate and long-term needs, then carefully research available systems in order to decide which system will be the best fit.

Thumbnail image created by Henry Schimke.

To that end, we’ve put together this comprehensive guide to provide all of the information and resources you need to get started. It explains the benefits of implementing fuel-saving technologies, the types of financial incentives available, eligibility requirements and how to start the process to obtain funds. It also provides a comprehensive breakdown of all programs offered at a federal, regional and state level, complete with important details, contact information and where you can learn more.

1. Construction project management software produces superior outcomes. Participants who used software designed specifically for the construction industry were more satisfied with their system and delivered more projects on time and on budget than any other segment of software users.
2. Survey participants are embracing Cloud-based software. A majority of participants relied on Cloud-based software to manage their projects. This indicates that construction project managers are open to using software that is maintained and hosted off-site by vendors.
3. Preconstruction planning is a top challenge and top priority for 2013. When asked about top challenges to effective project management, participants cited issues with construction plans (e.g., working from incomplete plans) as a chief obstacle. And they consistently highlighted improving the estimating and takeoff process as a key priority for 2013.

Project Management Software Adoption

We first wanted to know about software adoption and effectiveness in the construction industry. We asked participants to define their project management system as one of four types:

• Specialized: Project management software designed specifically for the construction industry.
• Generic: Software designed to handle general project management needs.
• Homegrown: Custom software built from the ground up for the survey participant.
• Manual: No software; projects are managed using email, fax, phone or other manual means.

Given the difficulty of managing the high volumes of project documents and complex schedules of modern construction projects, we weren’t surprised to learn that 94 percent of survey participants relied on some kind of software to manage their projects. Out of all participants, 61 percent used a specialized system, 25 percent used generic software, and only 8 percent used homegrown software.

The results of our follow-up question — whether their system is working for them — clearly indicate that generic project management systems are difficult to adapt to construction processes, with only 18 percent of users reporting that these systems met their needs. In contrast, 72 percent of specialized software users reported that their system met their needs.

Our results also indicate that construction project managers are comfortable with Cloud-based systems, as 57 percent of participants access their application over the Web. Our own experience in talking to construction professionals at Software Advice is that there’s been a dramatic shift to Cloud-based systems in the last two years. This survey confirms that trend.

Project Delivery Success Rates

Participants using specialized software led the way in project delivery with 29 percent reporting that they deliver projects under budget almost all of the time. For homegrown software users, that figure falls to just 6 percent.

However, our results indicate that participants had more difficulty completing projects ahead of the project schedule. Participants who used homegrown software reported the best outcomes here, but with only 18 percent reporting that they complete projects ahead of schedule nearly all the time.

Also noteworthy is that no manual users reported finishing projects ahead of schedule almost all the time. This might be a symptom of the delayed communication that can result from relying primarily on phone, email and fax to communicate important project details.

Obstacles to Effective Project Management

To gauge what gets in the way of effective project management, we presented participants with a list of commonly-cited construction obstacles and asked them to rate the prevalence of each. The charts below are ranked from the highest to lowest percentage of participants identifying the obstacle as one they encounter.

The leading obstacles to delivering projects within budget were starting from inaccurate initial project estimates (i.e., the estimator bidding too low on the project) and working from incomplete plans. This reinforces the importance of the pre-construction phase (i.e., the takeoff, estimating and bidding processes) and demonstrates how critical creating complete and accurate bids is to staying within budget.

We also asked participants about obstacles to completing projects on time. The two primary causes of project delays involved changing projects plans — change orders altering plans and scope creep. This again points to the importance of getting everyone on the same page before construction begins. Trailing just behind these two obstacles was unforeseen site conditions (e.g., cracks in the foundation).

Finally, we wanted to know about general project management challenges. The top challenge in managing projects effectively was getting everyone on the team to use the same project management system, indicated below as “software adoption.” Just behind that obstacle was standardizing project documentation so that project information is accessible to everyone on the team.

Satisfaction with Project Management Systems

Similar to our section on challenges, we presented participants with commonly-cited project management software benefits and asked them to rate the benefits of their system.

The chart below ranks system benefits from highest to lowest percentage of project managers who say they have realized each software benefit. Standardizing project management processes, improving access to documents and enhanced collaboration led the way as the top benefits of project management software.

We also wanted to know how satisfied users are with software functionality and software vendor service.

From a functionality standpoint, survey participants showed the highest satisfaction with how their systems tracked and managed project documents (e.g., RFI tracking and submittal management).

Participants indicated they are least satisfied with their systems’ job costing and resource management features. Strengthening these features would help with budget tracking and could lead to delivering more projects within budget.

On the services front, participants were most satisfied with the email and phone support and training services provided by their vendors. But survey participants indicated that they were least satisfied with product enhancement updates, software version upgrades and user conferences.

Project Management Priorities in 2013 and Beyond

At the end our survey, we gave participants the opportunity to tell us about their top project management priorities in 2013. Naturally, improving company profitability and getting more work were cited frequently. However, four common themes arose that aligned nicely with the top challenges participants cited earlier in our survey:

1. Create more accurate, detailed bids by improving the estimating process.
2. Standardize project management processes and documentation.
3. Get all project team members to use the same project management system.
4. Improve cost control and job costing to help project stay within budget.

Participant Demographics

We heard from 230 construction professionals who represent a diverse cross-section of company sizes, industries and trades and types of projects. Below is a breakdown of our survey participant demographics.

If you have any additional insights to add to our survey results, please leave me a comment below. Or, feel free to connect with me by email at derek@softwareadvice.com.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to Procore, Paskr, Viewpoint and Prolog for their help in driving survey responses.

Designed to meet the growing demand for one- and two-person households in urban centers, micro-apartments target middle-class, single, and Generation Y residents, who may otherwise be unable to afford housing in these prime neighborhoods. Often smaller than existing city codes allow, the rise of micro-apartments has driven some mayors, like Mayor Bloomberg, to modify minimum living space ordinances.

Investors see micro-apartments as profit opportunities, while property developers are creating entire micro-apartment developments. Property managers in densely-populated cities have the opportunity to capitalize on this trend. Managers should take the time to understand this new market opportunity and work alongside property owners and developers to execute a plan with long-term profit potential.

The Case For Micro-Apartments

If you own properties in population-dense cities, this could be an opportunity to convert existing units into micro-units. This gives you more rentals within your portfolio.

For example, New York City sets its minimum square footage to 250, and the average square footage of a one-bedroom apartment there is 750. This means you could create three micro-apartments out of one average-sized apartment.

These units will command lower than average rent, but of course you now have more units. For example, 300-square-foot units offered by Smartspace in San Francisco are going for $1,600 a month. While still pricey, this is considered a bargain in the city, where the average rent was $2,741 in Q4 2012.

If one traditional unit equals three micro-units, this scenario would yield $4,800 in a month’s rent–two thousand dollars more than the income from an average rental.

Micro-apartments are competitively priced and access an underserved tier of the rental market that really wants to live in these neighborhoods. The target demographic for micro-apartments wants to live in urban centers but struggle with the high rent common in urban neighborhoods. The lower rents of micro-apartments give renters a way to live centrally as long as they are willing to sacrifice square footage.

Furthermore, existing apartments aren’t the only kind of building that can be converted into micro-apartments. Developers in Chicago have been flipping foreclosed flophouses into micro-apartment development projects since last year.

And just this month, architects in Providence, Rhode Island, converted a historic mall that was on the Providence Preservation Society’s “10 Most Endangered Buildings” list into a micro-apartment complex with 48 apartments. Opportunities for conversions of structures like these are plentiful.

Considerations for Property Owners on the Fence

There are, of course, many things to keep in mind before determining whether this is an optimal decision for your portfolio. For example, more units will require more maintenance, and having more tenants can lead to more administrative duties. Determining your bandwidth to manage more properties is essential in the planning phase.

The cost of either converting or developing a micro-unit community is also something to consider. Smart design is necessary to ensure all a resident’s needs are encompassed in a mere 250 square foot space (or less–in San Francisco, the minimum square footage is 220 square feet).

It’s a bigger task than simply chopping an average rental into two or three units. And in addition to design fees, there will of course be sizable construction costs and lost rental income while units are being converted.

It’s also vital to assess your market opportunity. Are your properties in a prime or up-and-coming neighborhood? Does the right demographic–single and two-person households seeking an affordable, urban lifestyle–live there now, or aspire to live there? And will this neighborhood and demographic profile remain in place for several years?

As a property manager, how do you feel about this trend? Is it one your management company has considered becoming a part of? Or, if you have experience managing such properties, what advice would you give other managers considering this? Feel free to share your thoughts below, or email me: ashley@softwareadvice.com.

Layout image was provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office via CBS New York.