Any business would rely and rest on communications be they for official purposes or for enhancing and upgrading their client base and support to flourish their business. For ANY business to develop there has to be a regular, proper as well as a transparent channels of communication hierarchy so that the work flow does not in any manner get hampered and the business happens as a regular occurrence. And business communication is a continuous and an ongoing process- one that speaks volumes about the How’s as well as the Why’s of communication and communication hierarchy both within as well as outside the business enterprise so as to facilitate and augment the work flow even better and faster. As, without an effective, efficient and eloquent channels of communication between the Managers and the staff, or the employees and the external clients, the very business matrix would get null and void. So, in other words, Business Communications form the fundamental edifice of any business functionality.

HOW DO WE ENSURE A GOOD BUSINESS COMMUNICATION IN BUSINESS?

Communication is said to be an art and especially so, if it were Business Communication as this is pivotal for any enterprise to function as well as flourish. Here are a few ready pointers this to happen easily, effectively as well as empathetically:

• ANY business communication, be it oral, written, or a mailer should be logically structured which means that it needs to possess a good opening, a logical content that supports the opening and a proper as well as an apt conclusion- one that summarizes the entire written as well as the spoken topic presented. It has also to be reckoned with that the language spoken has to be lucid and the jargon needs to be easily comprehended and appreciated by the audience of all genres and they get to fathom what is expected of them and they participate thoroughly and comprehensively and get to understand the jist of the entire presentation delivered or written.

• Communication especially Business communication needs to be simple, precise and concise as if it is not articulated properly and if there is an ambiguous usage of words then, it dents the whole meaning and purpose of communication as well as communicating. Choice of words would have to be such that they overcome the cultural barriers and topographies and do not slander the sentiments and the sensibilities of the audience on the whole.

• Business communications should be comprehensive, influencing, persuasive, cogent as well as cohesive. One that follows a set pattern and is sequential apart from being one that is simplistic and easily appreciated.

• One other aspect of Business Communications is that the language adopted be polite, courteous, empathetic apart from being succinct, so as not to offend the sentiments of either their staff as well as their clients.

• It also needs to be remembered that the body language during presentations needs to be positive and approachable. Simple etiquette like maintaining the eye contact during the entire presentation, smiling genuinely and warmly and maintaining a general atmosphere of bonhomie and camaraderie would go great lengths in spreading a positive cheer around.

• Any Business Communication would be negated IF the feedback given would be left unsaid as well as unspoken. For feedback is the ONLY yardstick that would assure the presenter whether the message had reached the audience as it was meant to be intended to reach.

• The usage of more of “You’s” as well as “Why’s” during presentations more than the “I’s”, makes the audience understand that they have been given more value and importance and would also help in facilitating them in participating better during future presentations apart from being more involved.

• One of the most important components of Business Communications is listening. Some of them have this as an intrinsic and innate trait and some others adapt and acquire it over a period of time. Whichever way we look at it, this is again another art that we are either born with or, could cultivate over a period of time. Feedback and Listening go on most occasions hand on glove. The more patient the listening, the more positive that we would accept the feedback as ‘Listening’ jumbled would give us the other simple word ‘silent’. And the more silent we are, the better the listeners that we would be and the more positively we would accept and appreciate the feedback. It goes without saying that, a good speaker would always be a good listener and vice versa.

• The other important factor to be remembered is that we should divest ourselves from being biased, prejudiced and parochial while placing our facts as any biased or partial statement would cloud the entire facts and the receiver could get mired in confusion and the powers-that-be might end up taking a wrong action if the facts are or do not seem complete and comprehensive.

IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS:

Communication forms the crux of any business functions as well as functionalities. All areas be they Marketing, Human Resource, Business Development, Sales need very good as well as glib talkers who possess the gift of the gab to convince and communicate with the customers as well as the clients and acquire the business for their respective organizations. When the Managers fail to communicate with their employees, then it results in a great deal of miscommunication apart from there being serious lacunae in their staff’s understanding and performance leading to under performance or worse no performance by the employees.

Ineffective or retarded communications would lead to the employees becoming isolated from the Management and this then paving the way for conflict and crisis. As the Managers would find it increasingly difficult to communicate with their ideas, circumstances as well as demands cogently as well as cohesively, it would become increasingly irksome as well as difficult for the employees to continue or perform better at their jobs.

A FEW POINTERS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AT WORKPLACE:

• BETTER PERFORMANCE BY THE TEAM:
If the leader is able to perform better and is both cogent as well as cohesive in his communication, then the team would be able to analyze as well as assess what is expected of them to do and how best to reach there more faster and with a little more clarity of thought and action.

• INCREASES THE PERFORMANCE LEVELS
Effective communications augment the process of better performance levels, enhancing client as well as customer loyalty thereby increasing the revenues as well as the client support and base for the organization. This clarity of communication between the different levels of hierarchies fosters the attainment of the short term as well as the vision, mission as well as the goals of the organization.

• Communication style as well as the channels has to be both positive, effective apart from being encouraging.
The channels of communications or the hierarchies of communications have to be straight, circumspect as well as transparent so that the immediate hierarchy to resolve the outstanding issues and turn the problems to solutions.

• Any urgent problems of the company should be communicated to both the staff as well as the managers as everyone is involved in the process of decision making or giving their opinions. This process would also make the employees appreciate the simple fact that the employee’s opinions are paid heed to by the Management and that they have a say in the decision making process.

• Organizations must encourage effective communications at all times and at all levels of hierarchy. This would foster and make the employees understand as well as appreciate the need, role as well as the importance of communication especially in the business contexts.

• Any communication is a two way process. Transparency would only be made possible when employees are encouraged to ask questions as well as participate in the problem resolving the problem solving process asking questions and suggesting ideas to resolve issues.

• Effective Business Communications help companies in increasing their productivity and thereby avoiding delays and leads to successful business practices.

CONCLUSION

Life is all about communicating and communication. This could be made possible in business environments only through articulation, free speech and a hierarchy that is welcoming of accepting both ideas as well as suggestions from the employees and one that encourages a pro-active participation between both the employees as well as the Managers to facilitate a faster business growth and an ever increasing and expanding client base that would fetch the organizations both revenues as well as reputation.

Article by: Varrah E

There comes a time when you find yourself facing trouble with a given file extension after downloading a software. The file is an executable file but you are not able to do anything with it. The reason may be a malware attack that will not allow you to even get rid of it. Another trouble would be not being able to run it. In this case if only you know how to fix the issue, you will be easily able to take care of it.

Given here are some useful tips that will help you fix issues with executable files:
When you try executing a file or say run it then a dialog box will appear saying:

“Windows can’t open this file”

File: [name.exe]

This is the trouble that often shows up when your system is not able to recognize the file and prompts you to open the .exe file using another operation. This clearly indicates that the file is corrupted and you will not be able to run any programs until it is duly executed.

The most important thing is that .exe issues need to be fixed as then only you will be able to use the registry editor and other such tools that can be utilized for fixing broken extensions if you have any.

Command Prompt

The most essential and the initial step that you need to take for fixing is that of using the Command Prompt. This comes handy for fixing errors related to .exe files. It would not be able to launch it due to the error as it requires entering cmd.exe in Run. For all this your efforts would be thwarted and you will require looking for an alternate method.

This would require using the following tricks:

• Use the usual trick that requires you to simultaneously press the “Ctrl+Shift+Esc” that will help launch the Task Manager

• When you see the Task Manager appear then go to Process tab-> Show Processes if not this then you might already have admin rights, this works for Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8

• Alternatively, if you are running system on XP then you might get an Access Denied command. At this point you need to go to File-> New Task-> Run, hold down Ctrl key + clicking New Task this should reveal the Command Prompt

Using a Software

After taking the above mentioned steps if you are not able to get rid of the trouble then you can use any software like FixExec that helps in fixing your .exe file error. This program is compatible with Windows 8 as well as Windows XP. All you need to do is download, install, and run this tool and it takes care of the rest. It will not only detect the file causing trouble but also help fix it.

Things to remember

You need to remember that when you use the “Ctrl+Shift+Esc” this launches the Task Manager that comes handy for killing any rogue program. It helps in killing a program that creates troubles. You can even launch a new program using the New Task option that will help you in executing an .exe file. Remember that Task Manager is the best defense against a rogue antivirus program and it often helps in killing suspicious processes.

Article by: Polly M Quinton

Unfortunately there is no universal symptom which indicates that your IT system contains viruses or any other forms of malware.

The fact of the matter is that today’s malicious software code developers are typically extremely skilled and highly-proficient in terms of how they go about their business. In many cases if you have malicious code in your system it may be virtually undetectable other than to sophisticated security software systems and IT experts who know what they are looking for.

As a result, it would be a mistake to think that you can dispense with the costs of security simply because you have no obvious symptoms.

Even so, there may sometimes be a few indications that it might be time to start worrying and to obtain specialist IT technical support and security advice.

1. Your system is running slowly for no obvious reason. It’s important not to panic because in the majority of cases this is probably nothing to do with malicious code but it could be.

2. Your system starts to do things spontaneously. Once again, this isn’t necessarily cause to hit the panic button because many modern systems regularly ‘gooff’ and do things like automatic updates which are perfectly legitimate. Even so, messages appearing on screens for connections to the Internet that you don’t remember requesting may indicate something is amiss.

3. Odd failures to log onto regular websites. Some malicious software monitors the sign on screens of some of your more frequently-accessed websites and can replicate those with a view to capturing your ID and password. So, if you find that you are logging onto websites and nothing happens other than you need to do so again, it might be a warning symptom.

4. You see messages indicating that external parties are connecting to your infrastructure and you don’t know who they are or why they are doing so.

5. You are finding it difficult to access some of your databases and files for no apparent reason. If you find that you are being asked for passwords to do so and advised to contact a third party for further information, the chances are you have a virus of some sort on your PC.

6. If you are experienced enough to look at your system’s monitoring statistics, you may see processes running that mean nothing at all to you. Hopefully all of those will be legitimate parts of your software infrastructure and you can usually check that by doing an Internet search for the process name concerned. If processes are running though that you either can’t track down on the Internet or where the Internet response is that it is a virus, you should call for help immediately.

Do remember though that many malware infections will be entirely asymptomatic.

There is absolutely no substitute for having professional software and professional help to make sure that your installation is secure.

Keep in mind also that distinctions between hackers who operate for the sheer fun of doing so and those who have direct criminal intent are largely theoretical. If you do not keep malicious software out of your organisation, wherever it originates from, then you may find your entire business is at risk.

Article by: Vikas K. Sood

Hurricane Sandy, Black Forrest fire, 6.0 earthquake hits Napa Valley – major catastrophes strike large population centers, business are damaged and even destroyed. Even after these major events, many of which make international news, numerous companies have all of their corporate data in the same building, and, in many cases, the same room.

No matter what the business goal or high level requirements, organizations must take action, intelligent action, to protect critical data. While this may seem like common sense, it’s amazing how often companies fail to perform even the most basic protection.

Nearly every business has a policy in place to cover disaster recovery, a catch all phrase to cover the need to restore data should trouble occur. In reality, disaster recovery is piece of a larger concept that includes high availability and business continuity. All of these concepts revolve around two basic ideas: recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO).

There’s a tradeoff between potential for data loss, duration to recover, and cost. Certain businesses require high availability, the idea of near zero data loss and near zero downtime. Examples include financial industries, healthcare, and most organizations that utilize transactional actions in data processing. In other words, anytime one has a need to trace an action from start to finish there needs to be a way to have near zero data loss and more times than not, no downtime.

Business continuity is a step down on both RPO and RTO from high availability. The idea here is not about instantaneous recovery, it’s about making sure the business can continue to function after catastrophe hits. VMware and similar technologies using redundant infrastructure do a great job of providing business continuity; the key, how this environment is set up and over what distance, if any at all.

Disaster recovery covers both high availability and business continuity. Disaster recovery can also simply include a copy of data that sits on tape or a storage area network. The key here, where does that data reside. Having a copy of the information in the same location as the source data won’t offer protection against nearly every major catastrophe. This “old school mindset” really only protects a business from power outage, data corruption, or system related outages. Does your business implement this simplistic disaster recovery method?

Hurricane Sandy devastated the east coast in 2013 and a number of hospitals were directly impacted. One facility, a client at the time, shut their doors after the storm due to massive damage. I recall their data center was in the basement and water rose to the 5th floor; everything in the data center was destroyed. Without offsite data storage, not only would this hospital be out of business, they would have no way to run down their accounts receivable to obtain payment for services rendered.

While working with a global storage provider that was within a couple miles of the most devastating fire in Colorado history, I found out they have zero data protection outside of their server room. If the building burned down, as did so many others during this catastrophe, this company would’ve gone out of business. Data is key, protecting it is fundamental.

The recent 6.0 earthquake in Napa Valley shows the need for not only private industry to understand and implement realistic and attainable disaster recovery, Government must do the same. When certain disasters strike they can impact our infrastructure including gas, electricity, and transportation. Computer systems run large amounts of critical systems including transportation signals, lighting, and gas and electric power to the populace. Without proper disaster recovery with the necessary RPO and RTO in place, a community can suffer major impact. Government cannot only consider physical infrastructure when preparing for disaster, they have to understand the information technology impact as well.

A major impetus in creating this article revolves around the discrepancy between what a business believes they have in place versus what truly exists. So many organizations, often up to and including board of director requirements, create extensive disaster recovery plans. Unfortunately, oftentimes significant variance exists between what the business says they want, and what’s actually in place. Third party audits are critical to help close this gap. Before that audit can occur though, leadership has to know about and acknowledge the gap. Education is key; know there’s a problem and act!