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Best In-Class Business Insurance for Technology Firms & IT Consultants
Some of the most common questions we receive are related to Certificates of Insurance.
For many independent contractors and small business owners looking to expand their client base, there is often a moment of panic when they are asked to provide their certificate.
Do you have a certificate? Is it up to date? Is all of the correct information included?
To help demystify the Certificate of Insurance for you, we created this infographic to help you understand the information that will be required by your vendors.
Need insurance? Contact us for a free quote and start protecting your business the right way today!
On June 2nd, InsureYourCompany.com sponsored the WCBS Small Business Breakfast in Parsippany-Troy Hills, NJ. The main focus of the breakfast was the Small Business Association (SBA) and how businesses can utilize its services to help grow and succeed.
The breakfast was hosted by WCBS Bloomberg business anchor Joe Connolly, and featured Linda McMahon, the current administrator of the SBA and a widely recognized advocate for women in business. In addition to discussing the SBA, Connolly and McMahon discussed how to grow your business, as well as small business regulations.
This was my first visit to the breakfast, and our first sponsorship. I enjoyed speaking to other business owners and sharing with them the services InsureYourCompany.com provides.
One thing I liked in particular was that McMahon started a business herself and went through the same experiences many small business owners struggle with today. She is now running the SBA and actually making it work for small business owners. Having a business owner running the SBA might be a good thing for business owners like us.
Check out the gallery below to see our photos from the event!
Given the amount of importance the modern consumer places on being able to find information about products or services quickly and easily on the Web, small businesses can no longer afford to ignore the value of a strong online presence.
From making sure that local customers will be able to find your business’s location to creating a website that will draw in business from across the country, it’s critical that you build your online presence in order to grow.
Here are some helpful tips to help you not only establish your business online, but prime yourself to stand out above and beyond your less tech-savvy competition.
Recently, Google and other search engines began to penalize websites that aren’t accessible to mobile devices by not ranking them as highly in search results—even if searchers are accessing them from a desktop.
That being said, a large percentage of searches are now performed from mobile devices anyway. Customers are using them on breaks at work and need to find information fast, or they’re checking out local business options while they’re already out. As a result, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’ll miss out on a large percentage of potential business.
Have you filled out all of your Google My Business information? If you’re a primarily local company—for example, one that provides a service that can only be performed in your local area—have you optimized your page for local search terms?
Highlighting your local presence will help bring in the business you need most, especially if your business is targeted to a specific geographic area.
As a small business, you may not have the funds or the time to have an account on every available social media channel—and that’s okay! You don’t have to have a wide range of social media accounts in order to effectively build your online presence. Instead, choose the social media platforms that are right for you!
Consider where your customers are spending the largest block of their time. Nearly everyone has a Facebook account. Instagram, on the other hand, tends to be the territory of younger users. Choose the accounts that are most effective for your business.
If a specific social media site doesn’t appear to be working effectively for you, it’s fine to deactivate that account and create a new plan.
The simple reality is that the best way to make yourself visible to people who are searching for information about your industry is to create content that will appeal to your customer base.
Any keyword that you haven’t targeted for content creation is a keyword that interested customers can’t use to find your business. Your blog—and other content, including infographics and videos—will help you build the library of pages that will bring in interested customers.
Your accounts and your blog are only valuable if you use them. Posting regularly to your social media accounts keeps you in the public eye. Posting blog content helps keep you relevant and fresh—and in the eyes of search engines, fresh content matters!
Develop a content creation schedule and stick to it. Consider producing blocks of content all at once, then scheduling it ahead to make the job easier.
While you may have different people managing your blog and your social media accounts separately, you need both of them to represent your business the same way. Customers need to know what to expect from your business, and they should expect the same experience no matter how they’re interacting with you.
If several people are developing content for your business, consider developing a policy that will determine the tone of that content.
Building an online presence for your small business isn’t something that will bring you immediate success overnight, but what it can do is lay down the foundation for future growth. By being more visible online, you can tap into the way modern-day consumers seek information, products, and services and start to build something that represents your company as the trustworthy organization that it truly is.
An increasing number of small businesses are hiring college students as both paid and unpaid interns according to research from National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)—and with good reason. Internships serve as one of the most effective tools available to companies to get some extra help around the office, vet potential future talent, and provide critical training during the internship period.
Internships also enhance productivity, improve employee retention rates, and lower recruitment costs. The clear benefits to business of internships are borne out by the fact that on average, 35.3% of new business hires come from internship programs.
Internships are also highly beneficial to the students who participate in them. It allows them to test drive a position, refine their career choices, and in many cases, obtain their first job.
Further research from NACE indicates that more than 2 in 3 interns were offered a full-time position directly related to their internship, and 83.6% of those positions were accepted. Given the mutual benefits of internship programs for both businesses and students, the question is not “Should we initiate an internship program?” but rather, “What’s the best way to do it?”
Some internship programs are more successful than others. Those which achieve optimal results follow best practices, some of which are outlined by Caron Beesley for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Beesley is a small business owner, writer, and marketing communications consultant who advises SBA on ways to promote essential government resources that help small business owners and entrepreneurs succeed.
Here are 4 best practices she recommends to create a winning internship program for your business:
Hiring a mechanical engineering student to perform clerical work or a communications major to do bookkeeping doesn’t particularly help either the student or your business. It’s important first to carefully assess your current needs and clearly and precisely communicate those needs to college placement offices.
According to Beesley, before advertising for an intern, ask yourself these questions:
The best internship programs treat the hire of an intern with the same seriousness they bring to the hire of a regular, full-time employee—this is important, since many interns will eventually join the company. That means creating a meaningful and thorough job description and posting those job announcements with college career services offices.
College placement offices develop relationships with businesses that regularly hire their students as interns, and ramping up can take some time. To begin, identify schools in which majors relevant to your business are prominent and internship programs are robust and thriving.
Each year, the Princeton Review lists the best internship programs in the country—schools like Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, Claremont McKenna College in California, and Wabash College in Indiana. Find the best colleges for internships in your area and schedule introductory meetings with the college placement officers at those schools.
Unpaid internships will provide your business with free labor, but they also limit your options. For example, unpaid interns can’t perform work that directly contributes to your company’s operations—things like answering emails, filing papers or documenting inventory. Paying interns substantially expands the duties they can perform, adding to your productivity and better positioning them to assume full-time, paid positions in the future.
The most talented students have multiple options for internships. To attract top talent, consider offering benefits which will make your company stand out from the competition. Some of the best internship programs offer benefits like participation in social activities, paid holidays, scholarships, flex time, and one-on-one formal mentoring and training.
Creating an internship program from scratch can be a challenging proposition. Fortunately, there are leading companies whose business is to help your business grow and steer clear of legal entanglements. To learn more about the ways our insurance and employee benefits services can help you run your business more efficiently, contact us today.
Many small businesses are experiencing the benefits of incorporating more technology into their business model. It is without a doubt that technology has propelled business owners into new markets, expanded their marketing opportunities, and helped their business run more efficiently.
More specifically, there are various apps that have been developed specifically to aid in the success of small businesses and their owners.
One of the best ways to increase productivity in the work environment is by staying organized. Evernote is the perfect app for small business owners looking to organize their day by compartmentalizing their thoughts and ideas.
With Evernote, it’s easier than ever to create a project to-do list or write down a quick reminder. One of the best things about Evernote is that the notes you create are immediately available to all of your other devices, making it easily accessible on-the-go.
Staying on top of your finances is integral for every small business owner. Expensify provides automatic reporting and submitting, reimbursement, approval, and account sync. An excellent feature of Expensify is their use of artificial intelligence.
Expensify’s Concierge tool automatically reaches out to users if there are any issues, such as a problem with a receipt or report. Essentially, the concierge tool acts as a virtual assistant to small business owners, allowing a more efficient workflow.
With the various opportunities that the internet has created, it is no wonder that social media has played a key role in the success of small businesses. Social media has essentially created new opportunities and increased visibility for business owners, ultimately resulting in increased revenue.
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social networks, connect with customers, and grow your brand. Instead of trying to manage each individual social networking site on your own, Hootsuite will handle all of your accounts through one dashboard, allow you to quickly respond to messages and comments, and track your performance across the board.
Slack is a unique app in that it provides a better way for you and your team to communicate. Slack is an instant messaging service for business that allows you to not only instant message, but also send large files and video call.
This convenient app will most certainly save time, increase productivity, and ensure that a line of communication is always present among you and your team. It’s especially useful for remote teams.
It’s important for small businesses to stay up-to-date with current trends in technology. It’s also important for small businesses to have multiple payment options for customers. Square is certainly a way to do both.
Square is a mobile-payment processing app. It’s excellent for businesses because it provides fast-processing, analytics, and a flat-fee option of 2.75%. You can view your Square dashboard to access real-time data and check your sales no matter where you are.
In addition, you can get deposits as soon as the next day thanks to Square sending payments directly to your bank account (typically 1-2 business days).
Small businesses make up a large part of the economy, and thanks to the many advancements of technology, they are running more efficiently. If you run a small business, it’s important that you have the right tools if you want to remain organized, increase productivity, and reach your ultimate goal of success and growth.
The latest wave of cyber attacks have put many small business owners on edge—and rightfully so. According to Small Biz Trends, 43% of cyber attacks were targeted at small businesses as of 2016. And 2017 has already seen a number of alarming attacks across the world.
What if next time, it happens to you?
Despite your best preparations, you can’t always prevent your business from being hacked—but you can be sure that you’re prepared.
Whether you’ve been locked out of your vital data by a ransomware attack or your website has been brought down by a denial of service attack, you want to get back to normal functionality for your customers as soon as possible.
Having solid backups of your data is one of the most critical ways to make this happen. You should also have a backup plan in place that will allow you to bring your business operations up remotely, keeping functionality as smooth as possible while you work out what’s happened and how it will continue to impact your business.
With so many companies facing dramatic consequences from cyber attacks, cyber insurance is a logical investment for your business. Being hacked carries costs that add up fast. Cyber insurance will help you recover from the attack and get your business back to normal sooner.
The company you get your insurance through will likely also provide you with an attorney who will help you navigate the complicated waters of rebuilding customer trust and handling legal obligations following the incident.
How many machines were impacted? What data was stolen? Are there any programs or files that you are unable to access? It’s difficult to bring your business back to normal before you completely understand the ramifications of the attack and how it will continue to impact you later.
This is particularly critical if you’re dealing with private customer information that may now be in the hands of hackers. Letting your customers know what’s happened and what you’re doing to deal with it is critical to maintaining their confidence and keeping them protected.
How did the hackers get into your business? Were you the victim of a social engineering scam, or did they gain access through a third party? By learning how hackers gained access to your business data, you stand better odds of closing up the security holes so that future attacks don’t get in the same way.
Tracing your attack to its source may also help you discover what steps you need to take to make your business safe again. Do you need to shut down an infected machine and remove it from the network? Is there a program in need of a software patch or update? Understanding where the attack originated and how it has spread will help determine the steps you need to take in the future.
It’s not just about patching software holes or removing an infected machine. It’s also about learning what caused the breach and taking steps to prevent a future one.
Do you need better training for employees on how to recognize phishing scams? Is your company in desperate need of an update policy that keeps all of your software updated?
As you learn from your mistakes, you’ll discover that you can create a tighter security net that will go further towards protecting your business.
When a cyber attack hits your business, you need to be prepared. If you’re in need of cyber insurance that will help protect you if your business is hacked, contact us today to learn more about the services we offer and how they can help you weather a cyber attack.
Customer service is one of the most critical parts of your small business. You want to be sure you’re able to connect fully and honestly with your customers, providing them with the high-quality service that they expect and deserve.
Keep in mind that customers are twice as likely to share a bad customer service experience as they are to share a good one, which means that a negative interaction can have serious ramifications for your business.
For that reason, building a great customer service team is an ongoing process that is well worth the effort for your business.
For some people, good customer service seems to come naturally. Others are prepared to provide everything they can for your customers, but they might not know how to go about it. By providing regular, ongoing customer service training for your employees, you can help provide them with the tools they need to give your customers their best.
Today’s customers are short on time and short on patience. Many of them don’t even like communicating with people over the phone. For this reason, online customer service is critical. Over 50% of your customers likely describe online customer service as being one of their preferred methods for contacting your team—and that means you need to be providing it.
If you want a good example of this, check out the live chat feature at the bottom of our own site during business hours!
80% of Twitter users and 50% of Facebook users expected a response to their query within a business day in 2012—and that number has only continued to grow since then. When you make a fast, accurate response a hallmark of your customer service experience, you ensure that you’ll keep bringing satisfied customers back to your doors.
Providing employees with customer service training might fill in some gaps, but it’s important that your team be filled with people who are dedicated to solving the problems customers experience.
Look for problem-solvers who are willing to go the extra mile or who will work hard to figure out how to make a customer happy. This mentality will create a shift throughout your customer service department, especially if you treat them like a coherent team.
This isn’t just about a fast resolution to a problem. It’s also about respecting the time and effort that customers need to put into their queries. They don’t want a complicated customer service process that takes up half of the day. In most cases, that will result in customers who give up on the process—and in many cases, they may give up on your company altogether.
Chances are, your customers are already telling you what they want, both from your company as a whole and from the customer service experience. By listening to them, you can increase your customer service efforts and provide exactly what they’re looking for.
Pay specific attention to complaints or concerns that you hear from numerous customers. In many cases, it could be the key to more effective customer service.
A customer service team that knows they’re appreciated will be more likely to go the extra mile for your customers. Appreciate them when they do something right. Recognize them when something outside their control has gone wrong and they’ve had a lot to deal with. Proper recognition for all they do can be the difference between a customer service team that doesn’t care about the company and one that genuinely wants to make the best of every customer interaction.
With as many as 40% of customers admitting that they have left a company over a bad customer service experience, it’s critical to get your customer service team up to standards. By following these recommendations, you can take your customer service—and therefore your small business as a whole—to the next level.
After working hard to grow your small business, getting robbed can come as a shock to the system. Whether it’s property theft or cash being taken directly on site, it could place you in major financial jeopardy within a few short hours.
It’s typically more fortunate if a robbery happens off-hours. When it does, it prevents any possible threat to human life, like customers or employees. Then again, you never know when a robbery might occur in broad daylight. We all know it can happen to any business and not just financial institutions.
When a robbery does occur, you may feel stunned about how to proceed. The important thing is to call police first. Then you’ll want to look at your insurance policies to see what’s covered.
A robbery might leave more than just stolen items missing. The thieves who broke in perhaps damaged your property as well. Maybe they destroyed an interior door to gain access to a safe, or trashed your business just to wreak havoc.
These damages could cost you even more than the inventory losses you experienced. Having commercial property insurance is going to help you out of this jam. In most cases, property insurance policies help with damage to furniture and your inventory.
While you’ll incur a deductible here, a comprehensive commercial property insurance plan gets you back on your feet quickly. This might include your entire building if the thieves did extensive damage to the exterior as well as interior.
The dreaded scenario of someone being injured or killed during a robbery is likely a recurring nightmare. Liability insurance is a must in these scenarios to help in case you receive a lawsuit.
Commercial general liability insurance is one of the best policies for this because of its comprehensibility. It covers not only property damage, but also helps when dealing with injuries on your property. You’ll want this insurance when going through the pressures of fighting lawsuits.
Robberies definitely cause troubling interruptions in your business. Due to the property damage mentioned above, you may have to shut down for several weeks.
Business interruption insurance is going to help you through with typically three steps. They’ll help you with income you’ve lost during the interruption. Also, they’ll help you deal with expenses you’ve accrued while shut down. And many policy providers additionally offer payroll coverage so you can continue paying your employees during inactive time.
Having a policy like this helps you prepare for the ripple effects typically caused from just one robbery.
It’s possible to find insurance policies directly under the crime category. While you should try to make your insurance as comprehensive as you can afford for all possibilities, crime insurance is one to consider first.
Most policies here are going to help you recover financially if you experience a financial loss due to theft. They also help in cases where you experience inside theft from employees.
The latter is one to take seriously since it happens far too often. Another thing to take seriously is cyber theft being just as prevalent as a physical robbery. Many general liability policies don’t cover cyber crime, so you may need a separate cyber theft policy.
Even though you may have safeguards to withstand robberies, always expect the unexpected, since nothing is completely fail-safe in today’s world.
Planning a data backup strategy for your small business might sound like a simple process, but there’s more to think about to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future.
In this unpredictable world we’re living in today, all documentation needed to keep your business functioning could still easily disappear in a second. A natural disaster may wipe out your business within minutes, even if you have some data backed up.
The above usually occurs when relying on an on-site database for all data storage. While it’s better than nothing, what happens if your entire building is destroyed—along with your server where your backups are stored?
This is just one thing to think about when backing up data. You also need to think about the methods you’ll use to save data, what to back up, and how often you’ll save it.
You’ll obviously want a local backup system, one you can turn to within your location to access data again. It doesn’t mean you should keep this within your business property. Using a backup source within a short drive in your local city can mean being able to rescue your business without driving hundreds of miles to another place.
In cases where there are mass power outages, a local backup system isn’t always feasible. Choosing an offsite, third-party backup provider is a smart strategy to keep things going if you need to go elsewhere to find electricity. Many small businesses still use tape backup with offsite rotation, giving multiple options for data access locations.
However, the cloud is truly the best method for more than a few reasons.
While not all small businesses are perfect candidates for using the cloud, it’s something to consider first as the most reliable backup method. Considering you can safely store almost the entirety of your business contents in the cloud, you can literally save your business from a major disastrous event.
With the cloud being easy to access on any mobile device, restoring important documents instantly (even from home) can keep your small business from going under.
Of course, cost is probably a concern. Online sources show many great cloud providers for small businesses that don’t cost a fortune, yet still bringing strong reliability.
If you’re essentially a startup and have minimal data, a USB-based drive can keep your data relatively safe. Also consider a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) system, distributing your data across multiple hard drives. RAID technology is more tolerant to failures, so it’s a good sideline backup to using Time Machine (if you use Apple computers).
Any continuous backup system is better than one only backing up once or twice a day. If your small business has continually changing data every hour, you absolutely need something continuous.
Redundancy is important here so if one data backup system fails, you’ll have other sources available. In this regard, it’s worth remembering continuous backup won’t always be completely reliable in just one location.
Any documents you need to keep your business running require continual backup, including a backup test to assure it’s all being saved properly. Insurance papers and business operation documentation should get particular protection since you’ll need these if your business experiences a disaster.
Plus, all documentation proving compliance needs extra focus on backup. Forgetting to back this up could place you in more financial jeopardy and legal trouble than you may already experience after something unforeseen occurs.
One of the most important parts of running a successful small business is building a team that works well together and cares about the company reaching its goals.
But business owners can’t simply throw a group of people together and expect them to function well as a team right out the gate. In order to create a team that works like a well-oiled machine, you must invest some time and money into team-building activities.
Many employees may find traditional team-building activities like ice breakers forced, boring, and a waste of time. This is why the following 4 activities are a great starting point for business owners looking to strengthen their team.
Employees never want to feel like their time is being wasted. A great way to prevent them from feeling this way is to plan events where employees can team-build while learning new skills and gaining valuable knowledge about their profession.
Take employees on field trips to conferences, exhibits, or unique training opportunities so they can simultaneously get a break from the office and socialize while gaining valuable new knowledge.
Another great way for employees to connect is by organizing team volunteering events. Habitat for Humanity is always looking for groups to help build houses for families in need. Animal shelters are happy to have volunteers to help walk dogs. If it’s the holidays, employees can go out in teams to deliver presents to children’s hospitals.
Volunteering is a great way for employees to strengthen their communication skills and learn how to accomplish tasks as a team. Volunteering is also shown to be good for a person’s health, and can contribute to fulfilling his/her purpose.
Another goal that you should accomplish with team-building is getting employees out of their normal routine. This is especially true for those employees who spend much of their working day behind a desk. Sitting for long periods of time has a negative effect on a person’s health, so team-building activities should get them out of their chairs and up and moving.
Make a list of different physical activities and have the staff vote on which ones they would be interested in doing. This will prevent asking employees to participate in an activity they may not be comfortable with (someone not being able to swim, for example). Encourage these activities to be about how the team works together, rather than making it a competition.
The best way for a group of people to bond is for them to participate in activities that may be out of their comfort zone. These types of activities may push otherwise shy employees to interact more, and if everyone has a chance to do something they thought they would never do, they may feel more comfortable in future interactions with the rest of their team.
Some great team-building activities to get employees out of their comfort zone include karaoke nights, zip-lining, or escape rooms.
By providing employees with the opportunity to build and strengthen relationships with co-workers, small business owners can keep their team happy, while ultimately growing their business.
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InsureYourCompany.com has been treating clients like family for over 15 years. You’ll never have to talk to an automated phone system—we have business insurance experts ready to provide personalized customer service, not only helping you with your insurance and employee benefits needs, but showing you how to be a smarter business owner.
If you are in the IT industry InsureYourCompany.com is the insurance agent you want to work with, we are technology insurance experts and have changed the way you do business. See below a list of professionals who we help today.
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