What is Airtable

With Airtable, teams easily design and deploy flexible and engaging apps that power critical workflows and make valuable data actionable across the enterprise.

It is a collaborative online platform for creating and sharing relational databases.

Unlike SQL and MySQL Databases, AIRTABLE provides a user-friendly interface, making collaboration and visibility easy compared to other available PMO and Workflow systems.

Airtable uses a spreadsheet format to organize data with a colourful easy to use interface.

This solution appeals to businesses of all sizes.  

At Smarter Business Processes we offer Airtable Consultancy, Design and Build, Self build Support, Training and Integration with other systems to maximise your Airtable workflows.

AIRTABLE is the Cloud based Relational Database we have ALL been waiting for

Airtable Service Partners

While Airtable is easy to use for standard functionality and data storage, we can offer specialist Airtable consultancy to help you maximise your use and proficient adoption of all the Airtable services and tools.

To make contact with our Airtable consultants click here and request a consultation

Airtable Integration

One of the reasons our customers return time and time again to ask our consultants for support is for projects enabling Airtable integration with their in-house and legacy systems across different departments.

For example, whether you need to integrate sales and marketing systems creating a joint reporting interface, or a sales and finance integration with cross functional data entry and reporting, our Airtable consultants can help you build a solid integration for optimal use of your ready data.

Airtable Database

While an Airtable database is simple enough to construct, because the company’s philosophy is to democratize software creation by giving everyone the power to create, sometimes your needs for a relational database are a little more complicated.

If this is the case, request a consultation from one of our accredited Airtable consultants.

Airtable Project Management

The beauty of a software tool like Airtable is how easy it can be to use the PMO functions. By using the Airtable project management for task management, time management, content management and reporting management you will find that it has an easy-to-use interface.

However, should you need more detailed and integrated cross-functional workflows with legacy system integration request a consultation with one of our Airtable consultants.

Do you need Airtable Support to get the MOST out of Airtable

We Can Get You to Where You Want To Be in No Time

At Smarter Business Processes we can help you extract maximum value from your decision to adopt project management with Airtable for your organisation. We offer Airtable support through accredited Airtable consultants.

Contact us for Airtable Support

Do you need Airtable Support to get the MOST out of Airtable

We Can Get You to Where You Want To Be in No Time

At Smarter Business Processes we can help you extract maximum value from your decision to adopt Airtable project management for your organisation. We offer Airtable support through accredited Airtable consultants.

Contact us for Airtable Support

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In 2023, ranked on GDP per hour worked, the UK came fourth highest out of the G7 countries but was still around 18% below that of the US.

One of the reasons for UK productivity being low is described by the University of Warwick as “businesses failing to adopt and use productivity-enhancing technologies and practices” and this is an area with which we are familiar at Smarter Business Processes.

Over the years, we’ve helped hundreds of clients to streamline their workflows, automate time consuming processes and integrate their systems seamlessly, working closely with the functionality offered by Smartsheet and Airtable, working with both platforms as an accredited partner.

We’ve seen the evidence that productivity-enhancing tools are the key to transforming the efficiency and success of your operations. This, in turn, is a clear way to improve productivity, in short by working smarter, not harder.

Our bespoke app solutions offer an additional layer of enhancement by making these tools even more user-friendly and effective. Through a range of tools, trainings and smarter controls, we help our clients to drive their business operations and use data analysis to reinforce decision making and guide strategy. 

Start by simplifying things…

Smartsheet and Airtable are pivotal to transforming your business to be more productive. They simplify project management and data organisation and dramatically increase your ability to work collaboratively, even from different locations. 

If you’ve not come across them before, here’s a very short summary.

Smartsheet offers a dynamic platform designed to streamline workflows and enhance productivity. It allows teams to manage projects, automate tasks, and collaborate in real time, and is particularly effective in transforming complex processes into manageable, trackable tasks.

Airtable changes the way your business handles data by offering a flexible and user-friendly platform that combines the power of a database with the familiarity of a spreadsheet. Its versatility allows you to organise, track, and manage data with ease, making it an ideal solution for teams that require robust data management capabilities without the complexity of traditional database systems.

Smartsheet were named as a top brand in the Most Innovative Companies awards in 2023. This autumn, they announced an overhaul of their user experience and an expanded project management functionality, both aimed at simplifying the platform and savings users even more time.

Tools like Smartsheet and Airtable not only boost individual productivity, but also contribute to overall business growth. 

When tasks become repetitive, it pays to automate them. When certain data points are regularly required, it makes sense to build a report. When you are a data-rich organisation, it’s safer to hold it all in a system that can slice and dice it to help you make decisions and grow your business.

…then add some SBP magic

Our custom apps – known as Smarter Apps within SBP – further tailor these platforms to your unique needs, ensuring maximum functionality and user-friendliness. 

We know, from our expert developers and from the feedback received from our clients, that our apps provide users with significant time savings, improved visibility of data, better collaboration and greater automation. Put simply, they sprinkle a little extra magic on something that’s already impressive.

UK businesses need to do more to bridge the productivity gap and set themselves up for a competitive edge in the global market. 

If you’d like to be a part of that, and lead the way with efficient and effective working practices, get in touch with us here at Smarter Business Processes for a free initial consultation.

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(By cold data, we mean data that is held offline, ie not in the cloud. Cold storage is generally recommended for data that needs to be stored long term, or sensitive data that needs to be kept offline for security purposes)

The statistics on Big Data are staggering. According to a recent report by Domo, 90% of all data today was created in the last two years. The number of internet users has grown by a billion in the last five years. As digital storage continues to become cheaper and faster, the volume of data in the world is set to continue to rise.

If you or your organisation are relying more and more on data analysis to inform your strategy and enhance performance, now is the time to start thinking about strategies for efficient data management.

Effective data management is important for a number of reasons. Automating your data management can be extremely cost effective, and save time by streamlining your processes and reducing manual labour.

Aside from the financial benefits, proficient data management also helps businesses easily access and analyze their figures to gain valuable insights, which leads to better decisions and improved customer satisfaction.

Companies are recognising the benefits of having a data driven approach their business model. Recent studies show that data driven companies are out performing their competitors by as much as 22%.

Good data management also means improved security. Managing your data effectively can ensure you keep your sensitive information secure and confidential, and improve your protection against data breaches and security threats.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, robust data management can help towards sustainable business. According to Carbon Accounting Platform Greenly, data storage centres are responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions, when you factor in all devices that use data storage. Data storage now accounts for more carbon emissions than the airline industry, and a single data center uses the same amount of electricity that can power up to 50,000 homes.

Here’s our five tips for getting efficient with your data management;- 

1. Find the right storage solution

There are two main types of data storage;-

Direct Attached Storage (DAS) This is storage that is attached directly to a specific computer. This can either be the storage space on a PC hard drive, or it can be a removable portable storage medium, such as an external hard drive, CD or DVD, USB drive, or flash drive.

Network Attached Storage (NAS) Data stored via a central, file server, which allows multiple users to store and share files over a network via Wifi.

Within these two categories there are a range of data storage options, such as cloud storage, hybrid cloud storage, disc drives, SSD and flash storage. Whichever option you choose for your data management depends on several factors, such as your budget, scalability, ease of access. No matter which solution you use, the two golden rules of storage apply.

• Where possible, only store what you need to keep.
• Store crucial data in more than one secure location.

2. Understand your data

As already mentioned, your data management should be appropriate for the amount and type of data you need to store, as well as how often you need to access it. According to a recent article in Forbes, the over retention of data is a growing concern among businesses. Retaining unnecessary data for long periods can cause security risks and compliance issues.

Keeping track of key metrics such as the type of data in storage, it’s age, how often it is being accessed, can help you keep a handle on what you are hoarding and help you assess whether you really need it.

3. Archive and back up

While this may not always seem like a priority, having a comprehensive archiving plan can help you stay ahead of the game. It can also keep you covered in terms of legal and GDPR compliance.

Consider automating your archiving process, to ensure out of date files are reviewed and archived on a regular basis. For backing up your data, we recommend our Backup Manager solution, which allows you to schedule back ups of your Smartsheet assets, retaining all links and formulae. Backup Manager auto replaces the data you are backing up, and may not always be suitable for archiving; for more complex archiving in Smartsheet, we can create you an API solution that will back up and store your data in a separate sheet or sheets and keep it secure.

4. Data cleaning

Data cleaning is the process of fixing incorrect, incomplete or duplicate data. Identifying data errors and then changing, updating or removing them is an important part of effective data management. We find our Smarter Search and Replace tool for Smartsheet users is invaluable for this kind of operation. Smarter Search and Replace allows you to automatically amend errors and submit updates across multiple sheets. Accurate, well organised data is easier to manage and store and gives you a clearer, more complete picture of your business. 

5. Have a robust data retention policy

A data retention policy is a business’ established protocol for maintaining information. Your business may have regulations is it required to follow, for example when dealing with sensitive or financial data, or you may be able to set your own protocol depending on your requirements.

Typically, a data retention policy will define:

• What data your business needs to retain
• How long you need to store it for
• The most appropriate storage format
• Whether it should eventually be archived or deleted
• Who has the authority to dispose of it
• What procedure to follow in the event of a policy violation

This makes it easier when reviewing what to delete and what to keep. Is your data being held in accordance with GDPR? Do your shareholders, investors or clients have their own data strategies you should adhere to? By ensuring you follow any necessary retention requirements, you can always be clear on your legal rights when it comes to ownership.

In Summary

Data management continues to be a hot topic as the volume of data in circulation continues to increase. With cyber attacks on the increase and changes in laws and regulation there has never been a better time for your business to get to grips with it’s data security and retention.

For further reading on how we can help keep your sensitive financial data secure, read about our Smarter Accounts Solutions.

You can watch a demo video of our Smarter Backup Manager Tool below.

Or if you’re looking to review your data strategies and you’re unsure where to start, drop us a line today. We’re here to get you through it!

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Read on to learn more about how Smartsheet, Smartsheet Dashboards and Smartsheet training can help you and your team succeed as Director of Sales.

What are Smart sheets?

Smartsheet is a software as a service offering for collaboration and work management. It is used to assign tasks, track project progress, manage calendars, share documents, and manage other work, using a tabular user interface. Smart sheets are used to collaborate on project timelines, sales and marketing workflow management, calendars and other tasks.

It is a practical tool used as part office productivity, part project management, part document sharing. Considered by many to be a central hub for how people work in knowledge work, project, sales and marketing a management .

Our 5 Top Tips for success as a Sales Director using Smartsheet

An effective Director of Sales needs skills such as excellent communication and leadership, both of which are are highly transferrable. This makes Sales a diverse career path, ideal for candidates who don’t want to be limited to one industry. A Sales Director role can be a very common stepping stone to more senior positions, such as VP of Sales and potentially, CEO.

To be a highly effective and successful Director of Sales you need to show leadership in the latest technology that gives you market insights. In addition you must be able to adopt and work with data tools that give you insights into customer and prospect data to create timely and actionable opportunities for you and your team.

Your time and workflow management needs to be well honed and ready to act on opportunities. You need to be able to inform and motivate your team of customer and prospect opportunities. And Smartsheet can help you do all that, perhaps with the help of a Smartsheet consultant.

Leadership

A successful Sales Director must exhibit good leadership, to ensure their team can sell to meet the organisation’s sales targets in a timely fashion.

More important is the leadership of the team and across the business, by shaping, coaching and motivating the entire team to success. Another part of the job of a Sales Director is providing access to customer and prospect data, ensuring that the data has integrity and is actionable. Using tailored Smartsheet Dashboards is a great way to do that.

The role is not without its challenges. Working with Sales Directors and Sales Managers across a wide variety of industries gives us at Smarter Business Processes real insights into the challenges and common pitfalls. Here below are the five top tips we offer you to be an highly effective Director of Sales.

Excellent Time Management

When it comes to running a Sales team, it’s not just your own time you need to be managing. Prioritising important tasks and ensuring your team are sticking to planned schedules and workflow management is critical when it comes to hitting targets and getting ahead. Whether you are a natural born planner or need more structured support, we are here to help. Smartsheet can assist you in that.

We can’t understate the impact that tracking and automating tasks can have on your workflow. And workflow management is one of the areas where Smartsheet excels, and we can help you with that.

For example, we can set up a Smartsheet Form to create a tailor made activity log. Team members receive automated reminders for each task, and Sales Managers can use this to capture all your team’s tasks in one place and use automated notifications to stay on track with deadlines.

Speeding up communication and reducing your reliance on email should help you to keep your team’s workflow (and yours) running smoothly.

Know Your Market

Whether you are selling software or soft toys, houses or house plants, an understanding of your industry, and clients’ needs is crucial!

While some Sales Directors may have a marketing team to work alongside them, it is still beneficial to be across industry and product trends, and to have a solid understanding of how to analyse and interpret the latest marketing data. That’s where we come in.

It may sound obvious but clients frequently tell us they can’t always see the wood for the trees when it comes to marketing data. Using our Smartsheet Dashboards can help you stay on top of the statistics that matter, and help you present them in a graphical, management-friendly way.

A Smarter dashboard can help you slice and dice your data in live dashboards. Our analytics smart sheets can also be customised to offer performance metrics reporting live data in real time through API integration.

Motivate Your Team

 A successful Sales Director needs to lead a confident, well trained and innovative team. According to one Article in Sales Readiness Group, Effective sales managers should spend 25 – 40% of their time coaching their staff. But is coaching the only way to motivate a team?

In short, no it isn’t. We’ve learned that listening to your team is as important as coaching and training. Not just to get their feedback, but to hear their ideas on how to improve. We’ve seen time and again with our clients that tools and apps which enable collaboration and creative thinking across departments can help solve problems and streamline work processes.

Enable tailored views of your customer and prospect data. Using Smartsheet you can tailor the views that individual team members have of their customer and prospect data. You can ensure these Smartsheet dashboards integrate with SQL and Oracle databases to ensure your Sales dashboards have real data integrity.

We realise this can be easier said than done on a busy week juggling meetings and sales targets. Talk to us today about how we can help you create Smarter Dashboards.

We will design a Smartsheet Form to help share ideas and gather feedback from your team. We work with Cloud based solutions to ensure all your data is available to you in real time.

Communicate Efficiently With Your Clients

Any good Sales Director will tell you that client relationships are key. However, in your role of a Sales Director, finding the best way to keep track of client communication is an ongoing challenge. Industry estimates show that over 91% of companies with more than 10 employees use CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) software.

Do you use a CRM tool?

A CRM is a tool to record and analyse any and all interaction between a Sales Director, their team and their customer base. This can be in the form of calls, emails and meetings, whatever client interaction you feel is relevant to your business.

Any basic CRM system can provide this for you, but what if your needs change over time? Or if you need something more bespoke?

Our team of consultants can build you a customised CRM in Smartsheet. Need it handle large amounts of data? We can build a Smarter Dashboard implementation that uses a SQL database to store as much as you need. We can also create and implement tools that help to…

Track Your Client Journey

From initial contact, to after sales care, it is important to have a clear understanding of your customers’ experience, and be able to track their journey with you from start to finish. Are you delivering on your client’s expectations? Does your team provide satisfactory after sales care?

By working with cloud based platforms, we can help build systems that provide data in real time. This means you can manage multiple teams from one location, enabling you to track progress and identify weaknesses in your pipeline.

Case Study – Project Tracking Solution

Read our case study here for one example of how we provided a project tracking solution to the team at SIP Build UK.

Succeed as Sales Director with Smartsheet

Whether you are managing a large team and need to organise Smartsheet training workshops or just starting out, never underestimate the importance of having the right tools for the job in hand. From managing client relations, to tracking sales targets, don’t be afraid to find creative solutions to streamline your workflows and get the results you need.

CONTACT US – today for support as your Smartsheet Consultants.

Further Reading

Looking for more inspiration on the most effective tools to meet your goals?

Take a look at our blog on the best tools for Project Management.

We reflect on the importance of Productivity in a previous blog.

Remember you can also join our Tips and Tricks mailing list

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for product demos, webinars, and all the latest from Smartsheet.

Want to learn how to create webforms in Smartsheet? Have a look at our Webinar video below.

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When it was first introduced in 2010, the Quick Response code didn’t make much of an impact. While slick, easy data gathering might have been be appealing, not enough of us had the Smartphone technology to make it work. For those of us who did give QR a try, it required downloading a third party app, by which time you could have just found the link online.   

Today QR code creation is common place and every day practice in most businesses and communities.

What did QR stand for?

A quick-response code is a type of two-dimensional matrix barcode, invented in 1994, by Japanese company Denso Wave originally for labelling automobile parts. 

What is a QR code?

A barcode is a machine-readable optical image that contains information specific to the labelled item. In practice, Quick Response codes contain data for a locator, an identifier, and a website visitor tracking. To efficiently store data, QR codes use four standardized modes of encoding (i) numeric, (ii) alphanumeric, (iii) byte or binary, and (iv) kanji.

Creating a QR code

A Quick Response code consists of black squares arranged in a square grid on a white background, including some fiducial markers, which can be read by an imaging device such as a camera, and processed using Reed–Solomon error correction until the image can be appropriately interpreted.

The required data is then extracted from patterns that are present in both horizontal and vertical components of the image.

The spread of the QR code applications

The QR labelling system was applied beyond the automobile industry due to its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard UPC barcodes. Creating QR codes was easy. Applications include product tracking, item identification, time tracking, document management, and general marketing

QR Codes in the time of Covid-19

During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, these codes came into regular use and in fact became a reliable source of data.

While the Track and Trace app has by no means had a smooth, controversy-free implementation (Excel Spreadsheet columns anyone?) it demonstrates the versatility of this type of code. With every shop and cafe asking us to point and click we’re really starting to see just how accessible it can be.

QR Use Cases

Today QR codes have become common in all areas of commerce and society, from consumer advertising, tracking in product stock taking, to supply chain management.

Typically, a smartphone is used as a QR code scanner, displaying the code and converting it to some useful form (such as a standard URL for a website, thereby obviating the need for a user to type it into a web browser).

QR code has become a focus of advertising strategy, since it provides a way to access a brand’s website more quickly than by manually entering a URL.  Not only is it super convenient to the consumer, the importance of this capability also increases the conversion rate and the chance that contact with the advertisement converts to a sale.

Now everything is automated. Instead of taking you to a third party website, the app collects all the information it needs in one simple step, and lets you go back to sanitising your cat or doing whatever it was you were doing before you had to zap the code with your mobile phone. So easy! 

This tech hasn’t just become slicker either. It can now be implemented at a fraction of what it used to cost. This makes it a total game changer, especially for anyone who needs to report progress or gather data while out on site. Find out how QR codes can drive efficiency in your business in our Appsheet with Smartsheet blog, or watch a quick demo below on how we can make it work for you.

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Smartsheet have announced this handy new feature at SmartsheetEngage 2020.

You can now apply column formulas to your Smartsheet. 

SImply create the formula in one cell, then turn it into a column formula with a click of a button, and the entire column will fall into line and only a sheet admin can edit it. 

This is a great way to protect formulae from accidental deletion or editing by collaborators. 

One click and your calculations are secure.

For more information on Smartsheet column formulas visit their website.

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‘SmarterControls4Smartsheet is a set of widgets that make Smartsheet even Smarter ‘

We’re so proud of our smarter apps that for the rest of this month we are offering 6 Apps for $1500 plus two hours free consultation to help you make the most of them. 

Perhaps you want to take advantage of Dropdown List Manager, which allows you to control drop down lists in several sheets from one place? Or Smarter Backups, for greater control of how you backup your data, or the added automation you get from Smarter Workflow Manager or Smarter Excel Integration? The choice is yours, just tell us what you need. 

Get in touch before November 30th to take advantage of this offer and discuss your needs.  

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Discuss the images with annotated comments in a single location, and collect overall approvals or change requests.

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Cross-sheet formulas fundamentally change the way you can manipulate data in Smartsheet, giving you more flexibility and power to create connections across all of your team’s work and information, regardless of what sheet that data is in.

Instead of repeatedly entering the same data into multiple sheets, or manually searching through large sheets to copy and paste or create cell links, you can enter a formula once at the top of a column and copy it into the column’s other cells. 

Additionally, when you add a new row, cells will be autofilled with the appropriate formulas. This is particularly powerful on a sheet being populated by a form, as the lookup formula information will be added to new submissions without the need to constantly monitor the sheet.

What is a Cross-Sheet Formula?

A cross-sheet formula references data in a different sheet to perform calculations or look up information in a specific cell.

Lookup formulas commonly include VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH. VLOOKUP is used to retrieve corresponding data from other sheets. For example, when using VLOOKUP you could use a customer ID to look up the primary account contact’s name and pull that info into a sheet. When used together, INDEX and MATCH offer an additional, more flexible way to look up information across sheets.

Moving forward VLOOKUP is replacing LOOKUP in Smartsheet, but all of your existing formulas created using LOOKUP will continue to work.

The Power of Connected Data

Now that you can connect data across multiple sheets, you can organize that data much more efficiently. With VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH in your toolkit, you’ll save time by using sheets as lookup tables to pull relevant information into another sheet as needed, and you’ll also cut down on the mistakes that can arise from copying and pasting or importing and exporting data.

Here’s an example of how an IT manager uses cross-sheet formulas VLOOKUP and COUNTIF to assign and track IT tickets.

Let our experienced consultants help you re-design your sheets and workflows to benefit from these valuable updates.  Contact us to arrange a free initial consultation call to discuss your needs. We’d love to hear from you!

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