Mainspring.Solutions

We have noticed numerous articles written about the general concern that jobs will soon be replaced by robots and automation, but how much should we really be concerned? CNN brought up an interesting point: nearly 100 years ago, the United States horse population hit an all-time high at nearly 23 million. Soon, the mass production and availability of the automobile soared. The population of horses have since steadily declined over the years. However, horses used for means asi

For small online businesses, many find that shipping their products is the biggest hassle of their job. You've created a great product, you've put together a marketing plan to generate demand, and you've even made sales - why is getting the product to your customer such a pain? Introducing ShipStation: an online shipping software that takes the pain points out of shipping. ShipStation acts as your main hub for all order fulfillment. Their intuitive dashboard design makes it e

One of the driving forces behind the Industrial Revolution was to equip factories with the machinery and infrastructure necessary to mass produce new commodities. Vehicles were becoming to exponentially gain demand, and they needed to be created quicker than the manufacturing industry was prepared for. In today's world, on the contrary, is deviating from the purposes the assembly line and mass production were created for, and is beginning to focus on a new manufacturing model

TravelBank is the perfect application for small to mid-size enterprises with no expense tracking tool in place, or looking to simplify their tracking. TravelBank provides a myriad of features that offer an clean, efficient solution to expense and travel tracking, including: flight booking, receipt tracking and collection gallery, expense submitting, reimbursements, predictive trip budgets and much more. This application is perfect for managers as well, utilizing the predictiv

Mainspring Solutions was founded on the idea of improving business processes. It leads to more efficient operations, enhanced product/service quality, satisfied employees, and a larger bottom line. Every firm contains many different processes with in it - many of which are preformed on a daily basis. There are operational process, IT process, managerial processes, etc. Each individual component of these, theoretically, has the capacity to be improved. This is where benchmarki

2018 has brought new pieces to the ever-expanding puzzle that is a company's supply chain. Digitization and consumer desire for mobility and immediacy has caused dissonance in the logistics industry. Considering the brick and mortar shop is slowly approaching its final decline, logistics remains the backbone of a good company's supply chain and operations. Based on the past technological advancements of the past few years that are finally starting to emerge as the "norm", her

We all try to work as productive as we can. "Work smart, not hard" many say. However, what does that exactly mean? The New York Times defined the three main contributors to what it truly means to be productive in a recent article. 1) Accountability for your KPI, whether personal or for your projects, must be met and all of your effort should go into actions that help meet these metrics. 2) Trust the process of time. Small, incremental chances pay off in time, whether if this

This photo starts the story; where the two cogs of process and automation meet. A few months ago, we published an article that spoke about the top trends that will influence organizations heading into 2018. As you could imagine, automation was one of the trends. Many businesses are shifting towards automation to minimize costs, mitigate human error, streamline processes and allow human capital to focus on creative/innovative improvements for the company. Now don't get this mi

Gamification: the application of game mechanics to non-game environments to motivate people and change behavior. For years, the concept of playing a game was typically intended for leisure or entertainment; detached from the professional world. However, a recently growing trend within businesses is the concept of gamification. The predecessor of this idea was contests within the office; i.e. a chart tracking individual performance that would eventually award something to the

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