

App of the Month: Slack
Speed up your communications with one of the most intuitive enterprise communication tools on the market. Slack is a messaging application designed specifically with businesses in mind, bringing all of your communications and files together in one hub. It has been proven that organizational teams benefit from having communication hubs that can act as a database for all activities, especially when it is all searchable on your desktop or mobile device. Not only can you take Sla


2018 Budgeting - Strategize & Review
It is that time of year again... The time when you ask yourself, "we have to plan for 2018 already"? Aside from making a clichés remark that "good managers should always be planning for the future", I too felt like the year went by quickly. Nevertheless, budgeting season is upon us. A time to evaluate our 2017 goals and formulate a strategy for the new year. So why do we budget anyways, besides to keep our accountants happy? It seems like a fairly simple answer: because we ne


Mainspring Insights: The 'Big Data' Phenomena
Technology is changing so rapidly that in nearly every industry, companies must either adapt to the challenges ahead or be rendered obsolete. To address this exact issue, Gartner (an American technology research and advisory firm) wrote an article that discusses six forces that are changing the face of the business world, and will define business by the year 2030. In this edition of Mainspring Insights, we will discuss the fifth trend that Gartner defined, which focuses on ne

App of the Month: Sprout Social
Everybody is on social media... no really - everybody. I'd actually be willing to wager that if your enterprise is larger than 50 people, it has some sort of social presence. This is because social media is increasingly becoming the number one way in which mobile users interact with brands that they are interested in or relevant to them. However, just consistently posting on social media isn't enough anymore for your company to make a splash. A well thought out and formulated


Operational Playbook
The NFL season is officially underway! America's favorite sport kicked-off in the beginning of September, thus effectively driving down all Sunday afternoon productivity. But with all of this football consistently on the TV, we at Mainspring Solutions have been thinking about the parallels that can be drawn between what takes place on the gridiron, and what occurs within your enterprise. If you're unfamiliar with the game of football, the quarterback is the most important pos

App of the Month: Todoist
You have a lot to do each day. Many of us do. Keeping track of it all... not so easy. After plenty of searching for the best task organizer, we find here "Todoist". Perfect for helping you keep life in order. Todoist is an intuitive online and mobile application that can be used as a real-time task manager, helping you prioritize your daily tasks/projects on the go. You can organize each of your tasks by different colors, set 3 priority levels, and share your list with anyone


Healthcare Spotlight: Physician Preference Items
In recent years, supply costs have been the mitigation target of many healthcare institutions. Opposed to more fixed costs such as overhead and labor, supplies are rather discretionary and has less impact on outcomes, and thus, patient satisfaction. The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management is now predicting that supply costs will surpass labor as the largest expense in hospitals in only 3 years. Though there are many initiatives and groups that help redu

App of the Month: ReportPlus
Data Analytics for all. Keeping consistent with the theme of utilizing KPIs, ReportPlus is an intuitive data visualization dashboard that can help you gain new insights and make smarter decisions faster. This application was built by user experience experts specifically for business users. The software is touch enabled to make it incredibly simple to create unique dashboards in minutes that lays out all of the metrics you need to see. Perfect for sharing data with clients in


Adopting a Culture of Adaptation
Evolution is a scary thing. Why abandon the comforts and security of methods that have always worked for your enterprise? They would consistently yield a sufficient ROI and seemed to provide room for organizational growth. As a manager, why would I look to any other business solution? Simply put: it may not last long. Technology is increasing an an exponential, and for managers, daunting rate. To quote Moore's Law, which can essentially be boiled down to, technology and proce


The Impact of Effective KPI's
At Mainspring Solutions, we consistently harp on improving business processes to yield the greatest output with your given resources. As we have discussed previously, implementing lean operations or identifying/removing defective processes are both effective ways to help your business prosper; but, at the heart of this lies the concept of KPI's. KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) are company goals that are often derived from an organizational strategy, then measured through p