Macro Systems Blog

If you’re reading this on the day it's posted, it's Wednesday. How often have you had to rewrite the same messages, over and over, in your internal reporting and client interactions so far this week? Probably quite a bit, and certainly more than you’d prefer.

This is wasteful: not only does replicating this message over and over cost valuable time, but it also uses up mental energy… plus, simply copy-pasting can easily lead to errors and oversights. Luckily, modern email platforms provide templates that can be utilized to generate consistent and quality messages. 

Productivity is one of the most common modern business goals, with many doing everything they can to optimize it. In fact, today is officially World Productivity Day, highlighting the significant importance placed on this specific metric.

Despite this, productivity can often feel unreachable… regardless of how busy one is throughout the day. Listed below are three habits that will significantly support your work and help make the most of your time.

Business owners have to wear many hats. You're the CEO, the head of sales, the marketing guru, and often, the de facto IT department. It's understandable that with so much to do, dealing with a sluggish computer or a temperamental software program gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. A laissez-faire attitude towards your technology can have serious consequences, however. Listed below: why being lazy with your IT causes more harm than good.

The point-of-sale (POS) system has evolved from a simple cash register into the dynamic hub of your business operations. Beyond that satisfying sound it makes (if you turn on that feature) it now handles inventory, customer data, and more. Your POS is working harder than ever, but is it working smarter for you? As a mission-critical system, choosing or upgrading your POS isn't just about processing payments; it's about future-proofing your success.

It's common that people need to access the same websites repeatedly for their work purposes, including calendars, applications, and portals. Bookmarking these resources offers a simple way to quickly and easily access them on demand.

Listed below are practices that can help you take these handy utilities to the next level of usefulness. 

There are many ways that a modern small or medium-sized business can experience an issue that puts their IT out of commission in one way or another. Each one can hit one of these businesses especially hard in the wallet.

Let’s review some today and discuss how they can be resolved.

How often do you find yourself feeling the weight of your agenda stressing you out, and, counterproductively, distracting you from the task you’re currently working on? One of the best ways to power through and stay on track is to step away and take a minute to get your stress back under control. 

If you feel like you never have enough time to work through your to-do list, you’re far from the only one. If you make small adjustments to the way you tackle everyday tasks and responsibilities, you may be able to change your productivity habits for the better. Listed below are tips on how you can make the most of your workday with simple, easy tricks.

If your company has at least a couple of employees who spend part of their workday in a different location, are you doing all you can to help them be as productive as possible? While remote work is beneficial in so many circumstances, there are a lot of caveats to it that must be considered. Listed below is how you can mitigate risk and keep remote work from becoming a liability for your organization.

Every year, new malware, ransomware, and cyber threats emerge from the depths of the internet, evolving like a villain in a sci-fi movie. One moment, you’re minding your own business, and the next, your company’s data is held hostage and a hacker is demanding you pay them in Bitcoin.

Remote work isn’t a new strategy, but ever since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-office activities for all types of businesses, the amount of remote workers has grown regularly. In 2024, nearly 22 million workers would be considered fully remote, with over twice that amount working a hybrid schedule where they are remote at least one day per work week. This shift in the way that people work has required some adjustments, and this month, we wanted to take a closer look at the employees’ side of the “new normal”

To be clear, this won’t be a comprehensive list of problems that remote workers are dealing with, but we will try to go through some of the challenges and benefits that people deal with when they work remotely.

Happy New Year! This time is usually dedicated to making plans and commitments to improve oneself over the coming months in the interest of the future. In the spirit of the holiday, listed below are some resolutions that can help your career or your business’ use of technology.

If you want your business to succeed, you need to take care of your employees, but businesses sometimes let this imperative task slip in the throes of the day-to-day. Deloitte estimates that around 8 out of every 10 wage workers show signs of burnout. So the question then becomes: What are you doing about it?

Sometimes problem solving requires you to step away and think about the problem at hand. Consider any great strategist out there and you’ll understand that it takes time and calculation to make moves that will benefit you now as well as in the future. Listed below: how you can be more productive via strategic pausing.

Spoiler alert: a business that lacks productivity is unlikely to see any amount of success. One of the best ways to ensure your productivity is to practice patience. How can patience enhance your productivity?

“Toxic” is a buzzword that is often used these days, but when it is used to describe a business’ work environment, it needs to be treated with deadly seriousness.

If a workplace is a place people don’t like to be, many drawbacks will ultimately impact operations. Thus, it is to your advantage to keep your business as positive a workplace as possible.

Listed below: how to tell if your organization has a toxic workplace and, if so, how to resolve it.

Dealing with downtime is a very expensive and frustrating problem for any business. When we say “downtime,” we’re referring to periods when critical systems, processes, or equipment are not functioning properly. Listed below is a look at the negative impacts of downtime and what you can do about it.

Businesses have to deal with a variety of different types of problems, but they often don’t see many of the problems that come from within their company. Whether this comes from hackers, disgruntled customers, or unreliable vendors, every business leader constantly deals with some type of issue. Alas, sometimes these problems can come from inside your organization. Listed below is a look at two employee issues that can potentially cause major headaches for business owners.

Projects are a big part of the small business model. Whether they are projects to enhance organizational efficiency or productivity or projects that are completed for customers, strong project management is extremely imperative. Scope creep happens when a project becomes less efficient because the demands of the project keep changing. Listed below: a definition of scope creep and how to prevent it from being a problem for your business.

“Quit.” The q-word is, in a business setting at least, one of the worst four-letter words someone can use… usually. In the context you probably first thought of, yes, but there are plenty of times that quitting can directly benefit your operations.

For example, say you have a project that is eating all of your resources, with no real returns in sight. What do you do then?