While it might seem new and intimidating, machine learning in business is already bringing massive benefits to companies and consumers alike.

From increasingly effective product suggestions to accurate journey time predictions and advanced customer analytics, machine learning is an incredibly powerful tool which lets you analyze every important aspect of your business without wasting human hours on the task.

But what exactly is machine learning, and how do you go from knowing that to actually using it?

“Instead of using labels to teach an AI what each object it’s looking at is, this DeepMind project teaches itself because it learns to recognise images and sounds by matching them up with what it can see and hear.

This method of learning is almost exactly like how humans think and learn to understand the world around them.” – Vaughn Highfield, How Google DeepMind is learning like a child: DeepMind uses videos to teach itself about the world

In this article we will cover:

• What is machine learning?
• Benefits of machine learning in business
• Applications of machine learning in business
• Different types of machine learning in business
• Real-world examples of machine learning in business

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Where did The E Myth Summary come from? Michael E. Gerber is the answer.

And when Michael E. Gerber gives you advice for starting a business you listen to it.

With a career spanning over 40 years and working with hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide, Gerber’s expertise is invaluable to anyone looking to start their own venture. Lucky for us, he’s written several books on the topic, the most famous of which I’ll be summarizing in this post.

This E Myth summary will take the core business tips from Gerber’s work and condense them into a single post. It’s all of the value, proven with examples from companies like Facebook and Zenefits, and it doesn’t need you to spend 40 years to learn it.

In particular, I’ll be covering:

• Balancing your business personalities
• Creating a business, not a job
• Working on your business, not in it
• Why your business needs systems
• The idea of your business being your product
• Motivating employees with the idea behind their work
• Make topics human to make them interesting

Let’s get started.

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“Don’t micromanage!” you may have heard. But what if your team’s errors destroy the business!?

It’s hard watching someone make mistakes, especially if you already know how to avoid them.

Staying silent while they slip up (or even do things in ways you would not) is harder.

That doesn’t mean you have an excuse to micromanage them.

Micromanagement is the ultimate controlling management style. It’s demoralizing and counter-intuitive, as the desire for control to make sure everything goes to plan only creates more problems in the long term.

That’s why in this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at the following:

• What is micromanagement?
• The pros and cons of micromanagement
• How to spot a micromanager
• How to offset micromanagement with OKRs
• Using process management to remove the need for micromanagement

Let’s get started.
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Ecommerce is a massive sector, with a projected value of $4.5 trillion by 2021. However, without the proper ecommerce processes in place, it’s more than easy to fail before you even get close to selling your first product.

And have you ever heard:

“That’s fantastic! Have you thought about selling those?”

We’ve all had a moment of inspiration for our own online store. Whether (like me) you took up a new hobby (crochet) and showed your project to a family member (my gran) or you stumbled across a cheap source for a certain product, the lure of online sales is difficult to ignore.

“… data from Statista anticipates a 246.15% increase in worldwide ecommerce sales, from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $4.5 trillion in 2021. That’s a nearly threefold lift in online revenue.” – Aaron Orendorff, Global Ecommerce: Statistics and International Growth Trends

That’s why we here at Process Street have put together this ecommerce processes pack. These templates will provide you with detailed instructions on how to do everything from setting up an online store to listing products, designing a logo, and promoting your content.

Better yet, every last process is completely free!

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s start selling!

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Now we come to the heart of our consultant’s guide to Process Street – how to document client processes and deliver them as efficiently as possible.

This is your bread-and-butter in any BPM software, and by weighing up the pros and cons of the various ways you can manage business processes, you’ll be able to see what best fits your company and customers.

I’ll be detailing the method, advantages, and disadvantages of:

• Documenting client processes in your own Process Street organization before handing them off
• Setting up a new organization in the app to later hand off the whole thing
• Accessing and working inside a client’s existing Process Street organization

I’ll also be covering the various options for actually documenting client processes (such as using new or premade templates), collaborating with clients to get the best results possible, how to hand off business processes, and when to set up integrations with other apps.

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“Without IT process management, there is no way to assure [cost-effective IT services]” – Casper van der Kolk

Whether you’ve been in the IT business for years or are just starting to make your mark, there’s no question that managing your processes is vital.

With processes, you can you do more with your current resources by standardizing and optimizing your work. And, when your team knows exactly what to do for each recurring task, they can greatly improve their productivity and motivation.

However, the benefits don’t just stop at a happier and more efficient team.

Integrating these recurring workflows into your IT management resource basket can reduce incident response times, increase customer satisfaction, ensure security compliance, manage department stock and – perhaps best of all – enforce consistency, to give you peace of mind that everything is running as expected.

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Ah, the days before I started using project management software.

I don’t miss them.

70+ hour weeks of pure stress and disorganized skitting from task to task, unable to focus on the things that mattered when they needed to get done. It was a lesson hard-learned but one of the most valuable I’ve ever had the misfortune of going through.

So I’ll save you the trouble and show you the best free options on offer.

You don’t need a massive budget or a lot of experience to get the most out of these apps – hence why they’re the best free project management software. Most have paid plans but all are functional with the free version and all will help you and your team organize your projects and get things done on time and to a high standard.

I’ll be covering:

1. Process Street
2. Agantty
3. Airtable
4. Asana
5. Avaza
6. Backlog
7. Bitrix24
8. FreedCamp
9. HiTask
10. KanbanFlow
11. MeisterTask
12. Paymo
13. Pivotal Tracker
14. Podio
15. TeamGantt
16. Toggl
17. Teamwork Projects
18. Todoist
19. Trello
20. Wrike
21. Zenkit

Enough talk – let’s get stuck in.
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A value statement isn’t some kind of jargon speak for “what we think matters”. It’s a statement of what your company is, what it stands for, and what everyone can expect from it.

It’s the “soul” of your team.

“Culture is living values.

Values are written words, and your culture is how you actually live [them].” – Jeff Lawson, Articulating Company Values & Living Them Authentically: Jeff Lawson

Whether you need to unite your team around a core set of ideals, show potential recruits what to expect and how to act or resonate with your core audience, these values are an essential part of any coherent company. Without defining them everyone will be working on their own assumptions.

So, how do you create a value statement that’s effective, concise, direct and, most importantly, accurately reflects your company?

To answer that, let’s dive straight in.

What would happen if you were hit by a bus while walking to work?

Well, other than the morbidly obvious, and the time and money spent hiring and onboarding their replacement…

This is the line of thinking behind the infamous “bus factor” – the minimum number of people who, if out of action, would cause your operations to collapse.

“46% of UK businesses would be forced to cease trading immediately if a key person died or was unable to continue working through illness or injury” – Online Money Advisor, Key Man Insurance: A Definitive Guide to Key Person Insurance

It might not be ideal, but it’s a harsh reality that every team has to face; whether temporarily or permanently, your colleagues aren’t always able to make it into work.

We, here at Process Street, have had more than our share of project delays (and even failures) due to a low bus factor, which is why this post has been written. Today, you’ll learn how to identify risky projects by using the bus factor, and how to mitigate those issues as quickly (and cheaply) as possible.

We’ll be covering:

• What is the bus factor?
• How to calculate the bus factor
• Bus factor elements
• How to increase your bus factor
• The limits of boosting bus factor

Let’s get started.
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Bidding for jobs can be cutthroat.

Not only do you have to create an accurate estimate of how much everything will cost, but you have to do so as quickly as possible to have the best chance of securing the customer.

You don’t want to waste time filling out forms when you could be working, but any mistakes can severely damage your chances of getting the sale (if the estimate is too high) or even ruin your reputation (if the estimate is too low).

That’s why we here at Process Street have created and gathered these 14 free estimate templates.

Instead of having to create your own job estimate form, all you have to do is look through the templates below and see which one you like best. All serve the purpose of giving your clients a professional job estimate document, but allowing you to just fill in basic details instead of creating each document from the ground up.

Just head for one of the following sections and make your pick:

• General free estimate templates
• Microsoft Word job estimate templates
• Microsoft Excel estimate templates
• PDF estimate templates