20% Time Project Week #5

This past week I finally finished the general procedures for Bulldog Manufacturing, and we officially have a procedures binder. This is both an accomplishment and a reason to improve because this was a big project to get done but it was also my goal for week 2 that took me approximately 2 months longer to finish than I had planned. The main challenges for this goal was being distracted by other projects that were more urgent, constantly changing the way things are done, and having to talk extensively with every department to make sure the procedures were accurate. My next goal is to create a presentation that effectively conveys everything I've worked on the past 5 months.

20% Time Project: Week #4

A ton has happened with my 20% Time Project since my last post. Bulldog Manufacturing has been featured on Channel 2 news, we presented our update to the Board of Education, celebrated 2 birthdays, received our official shirts, finished the template for the Profit and Loss Sheet and more recently we were interviewed by WBEN and attended Christmas at the Park. Despite all of this success, I have personally have had a few other challenges along the way. We have recently started having each of the departments come up with a weekly goal to help people stay focused and motivated, but this week only the manufacturing department was able to make a goal. However, we can change this by working on making constructive and reachable goals during our company meeting next week. Also, the revisions on the website have been going slower than what was planned. Mostly I am waiting for the catalog to be finished so I can put it on the Products and Services page, but I could also be working on all of the images on the website and extra pages such as News and Industry Partners. My goals for the coming weeks is to finish the website, get a full detailed Profit and Loss report for all of our projects, and complete any needed Sales Tax forms by the end of the week. I also want to focus on taking more pictures/ documentation of all of the events we go to in the future. For now I have included some pictures of us at Christmas at the Park!

eCommerce Article #6

https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/ecommerce/how-to-make-a-global-black-friday-happen/

My article this week was, "How to Make a Global Black Friday Happen" by Amandine Soares. Currently, only 1% of companies in the U.S. sell products online internationally. Soares explains how businesses can use the holiday season, partnerships, and company location to boost their sales and start selling on the global market. I found the authors perspective of Black Friday and advice to be very interesting and informative.

20% Time Project: Week #3

The past 2 weeks in Bulldog Manufacturing I have been trying to look at the bigger picture of the company and focus on what other departments and myself need to be accomplishing. I started doing this by giving most of my previous work with depositing payments and filing to the Business Administrator. Then I made a new section of the white board that has all of the departments weekly goals on it, with this weeks being making a catalog for sales and finishing the athletic awards for the design apartment. My biggest challenge while doing this has been communicating with everyone to make sure it's all getting done, but everyone has been very focused and on top of things. Next week I have to make a presentation for the Board of Education on a update of Bulldog Manufacturing and make sure the website gets finished. 

eCommerce Article #5

https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-design-logo

My article this week was "How to Design a Memorable Logo in 7 Steps (We Make One From Scratch)" by Evan Ferguson. In the article Ferguson goes into extreme detail on how to make a logo, with numerous useful visuals and examples as he makes his own logo for a company called "Lawn Pure". I found this super interesting because we are talking about logos in class and many of the things Ferguson went over we're very similar to what we learned, he just went more in depth about it. He discussed how certain font types and colors make people feel, tips for deciding if you should hire a designer, and how to get good feedback on your logo. 

20% Time Project: Week #2

This week my goal for the 20% Time Project was to finish the general procedures list for Bulldog Manufacturing. To do this I had to talk with all of the departments to get a detailed list of how they do things. While working on these procedures, I realized that they are going to be constantly changing as we improve how we do things and new changes come up. For example, the day after I finished the final lists of all of the processes that need to be in the procedures, including how and when each person uses QuickBooks, we had to switch to using the online version of QuickBooks which looks very different from the desktop version, and therefore is used differently which needs to be updated in the procedures. Overall, I have an informal list of all of the procedures in our company OneNote, now I need to work on writing them all formally to be put in a packet.

eCommerce Article #4

https://www.shopify.ca/blog/bfcm-checklist

My article this week was "The 27-Point Checklist to Prepare Your Store for Black Friday Cyber Monday." by Corey Ferreira. As the title suggests, this article is about all of the things businesses should do to prepare for the extra sales and stress of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Reading this was super interesting because I never thought about all of the extra work stores have to put into advertising to make sure they get the max amount of sales and returning customers. 

20% Time Project: Week #1

For my 20% Project, I am working on my business skills at Bulldog Manufacturing. My goal for this past week was to implement better organization throughout the company to help us stay on top of projects. We did this mainly by setting up Monday.com, a website that uses multiple boards to help organize projects. Everyone in the company updates projects on various boards based on what they finished that day, which lets everyone else see what they need to work on and prioritize tasks. Although the sales team still needs to finish updating all of the projects, I think Monday so far has been a success and has already start helping other team members communicate on projects.

eCommerce Article #3

https://www.shopify.ca/blog/instagram-marketing

This week the article I read was "Instagram Marketing 101: Using Hashtags, Stories, and More to Grow Your Business" by Ana Gotter. This article discusses the best ways to market companies on Instagram, mainly using hashtags and stories. I found this super interesting because I see products advertised on Instagram all the time and it's cool to see how you can increase your sales and get more followers by grouping hashtags in certain ways and including story highlights. The article also includes several statistics that show how important it is to pay attention to how you market things on Instagram. This includes 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram and 65% of top performing Instagram posts clearly feature products.

eCommerce Article #2

3https://ecommercetrainingacademy.com/best-project-management-software-for-ecommerce-digital-marketing-teams/

The article I read this week was, "The Best Project Management Software for eCommerce Digital Marketing Teams" by Alaa Hassan. The article discusses the importance of having organized and efficient project management in a business, and how to find a software that works for you. I thought this was super interesting because I've recently been working on finding a good way to manage projects in a team for a class. Although I didn't use the software Hassan recommended, Basecamp, I found his tips helped me look at the bigger picture and narrow down what I needed.

eCommerce Article #1

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/334976

The article I read was "Online Grocery Recommendations Are Lacking. 3 Young Entrepreneurs Have Created an AI-Powered Solution." I thought this article was interesting because I've heard of online grocery shopping before but I knew nothing about it. This article discusses the overall business of online grocery shopping and the growing problem of irrelevant recommendations for people orders, which is an important tool for online retailers. A solution to this problem was created by 3 men who founded an AI-platform called Halla. These men used an algorithm to recognize over 350,000 recipes and 100 million grocery transactions to give accurate recommendations on online food orders, and they are now partnering with several large grocers. Overall, I thought this article was extremely interesting and informative.