As a savvy professional, you will need both a relevant skill set and quality tools to progress in your career. These tools can help you organize your time and business so that you can step up your game and stand out in the marketplace. Top companies put the customer first and think outside the box and will expect the same of their employees, so utilizing every resource you can will help you shine in your workplace, and here are a few to consider.

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Use OKRs to meet company goals.

Identifying clear objectives and key results that help with developing coherent team dynamics and project workflow is a good first step. Objectives need to be decisive and key results need to be quantitative so that company goals can add measurable value to your company. Good OKRs can help keep all of your team members involved and on track, too. This can be difficult to plan out, but keep in mind Doerr’s goal formula, “I will (Objective) as measured by (this set of Key Results),“ and you will have a reasonable baseline to work off of.

Well formed and aligned OKRs help you visualize and organize your projects and team members. While each objective should have several measurable key results, having too many OKRs can result in a breakdown of communication between team members. Neither the objectives nor the key results should be used as checklists, but rather as methodologies that add value to your company and projects. Keeping to simple and results driven OKRs is a powerful means of supporting you and your business. What’s more, by using professional OKR resources you can streamline the process and have more time to move your business forward.

Make use of data management solutions.

Innovative designs and solutions require a company to have a sufficient and comprehensive grasp of their data. A good search engine based on the elastic search engine service to assist with your company’s analytics will greatly increase your productivity if properly used. Using the elastic stack with simple intuitive queries can make visualizing your data much easier. Elasticsearch uses JSON documents with keys and values that allow the engine to carry out searches quickly. Moreover, with the practical use of an elastic search engine that incorporates the kibana data visualization dashboard you can remain informed on relevant statistics, analyze your company’s metrics, and come up with creative solutions for your business. In an ever changing market it is important to have the ability to see and analyze your company’s figures so you can keep up.

Always maintain professional attire.

No matter where your career takes you, a professional appearance and demeanor will serve you well. You need to convey that you are taking the opinions of the people you provide services to seriously, and oftentimes even if the quality of two similar services are the same people will tend to prefer the one that has better presentation. This also extends to how you convey your services. For example, clean and well-organized tax return folders will certainly leave a better impression on an accountant’s clientele than messy and disorganized ones. Once your company gets big enough, you should also see if investing in customer service makes sense for your company goals, since new customers are hard enough to acquire. Regular customers might feel ignored if they aren’t treated well after a company grows. Even as you utilize OKRs and Elasticsearch to advance your company strategy, don’t forget your commitment to your existing clientele.

No matter what career you intend to pursue, there are a few common threads that will help you out when it comes to business management. The main information you need to keep track of beyond the knowledge specific to the industry in which you operate are the numbers that affect your bottom line and how to utilize best practices and data analysis to meet your business goals, k=no matter what ambitious goals you’ve set as your company objectives.