My product selection for the month of December 2022 is the #1 job management software JobNimbus. I will have my own review posted soon but till then here are what users have been saying about JobNimbus...

JobNimbus was built for contractors just like you to take your business to the next level by easily organizing, tracking, and automating your work using the most-trusted contractor software.

•  All in One - Take care of every aspect of your business, from estimating to scheduling and billing, in ONE place.

• Boards - Never lose track of a job again. Gain visibility into your business with a virtual whiteboard.

• Automations - Stop spending all your time on mundane tasks. Let the software automatically take care of things like sending updates and emails.

• Mobile App - Keep your business in your pocket. Access the information you need, no matter where you are, and keep everyone in sync. 

Watch a short demo of JobNimbus!

So who uses job management software? Generally, the primary users and industries fall into one of these categories:


Any business that works from job to job or on multiple jobs at once can benefit from putting a job management cycle in place.


Examples of such businesses include:

• IT services
• Creative agencies
• Design agencies
• Accounting and bookkeeping firms
• Consultants
• Engineering firms
• Construction services

What is affecting businesses today?


I know we talk about this a lot. The right software is the wonder software that will = project success. Well, that’s not really the case. It’s more about how you manage the project, having the right project manager and team for the project and using your PM software tool wisely.
It’s never been a bigger question mark than it has been the past couple of years with the pandemic, uncertainty and many workers being sent home, driven home, or just safely choosing to stay home for fear of endangering themselves and their families by wandering around the non-vaccinated or careless individuals trying to keep their own families safe at the same time.


This can be true in every industry and genre. All were affected – all still are affected. Whether you are in tech or whether you are a builder in construction, tough choices had to be made or are still being made. However, one constant that still remains… choosing the right software will help you to better connect with your team, stay on top of the key tasks for the project and – at the end of the day – end up with a happy and reference-able client. A client that recommends you and comes back for more.


Has our work changed?


It depends on the industry. Tech – not really although our locations have changed. Where to work? Do you still want to work? Many are retiring and figuring out income along the way. Many are freelancing it. Many are just plain changing jobs as they fear their own current organization Is not honoring their wishes or may be in danger of shuttering their doors.


For builders it may be quite different. Yes, the workforce may have changed. Finding the right workers may be a bit harder. But they are still there. Managing the job really hasn’t changed. Materials are more expensive, but they are still critical materials for the job. Supply chains have broken down or supplies have simply not been available so project delays are likely and happen frequently. But the tasks are basically the same and the software demands for managing the project have not really changed. Yes, It’s a strange world we live in right now, and it may not be changing anytime soon. This may be the new normal for a long time.


The software that puts it all together


No matter what industry you are managing projects in, the software can make the difference. The right software or combination of software manages your team, your financials, your collaboration, produces status reports and manages all tasks. If you can find one software that will do it all without really any quality sacrifice, then that would be the best way to go. If you are in the tech industry you want something that …. By contrast, If you are in the contractor industry you probably need software that is a software a little more specific to contractor needs. Such software may be designed to help contractors be more organized, profitable, efficient, and professional.


As you can see, this process isn’t what you’d call a piece of cake, and trying to manage all of this with Excel spreadsheets, sticky notes, and white boards can only get you so far these days. You need to stay competitive; you need to be ready for anything. You need to have a solution that will work as fast as you need. You need a service that will help you communicate better and send information to the office in a snap.


What’s best for your clients?


So what do your clients need? They need you on the job, of course. They need you to have the right software to track tasks, resources, progress, change orders and status reporting. When we are focusing on contractor software, the focus is going to usually involve these key elements:

• Interfacing with the customer
• Scheduling someone to get the quote/estimate
• Interface with customer again to close the sale and schedule work
• Creating and sending a materials order
• Creating and sending a work order
• Assigning the job and associated tasks
• Following the process to make sure everything gets done and on time
• Invoicing the customer for work completed
• Collecting on the estimate
• Administrative follow up with the customer
• Reporting and auditing on the job done to assure completeness and examine what you could do better

Summary / call for input


Work has changed. Work locations have changed. Undoubtedly this economy has separated the wheat from the shaft and the good ones remain, some fresh ones with the right priorities have joined, and some of the dead weight has left the building. The same even holds true for the vendors offering the software that will be used on the contract to manage the engagement and the team. It’s definitely a different world. But the end result is still the same. At the end of the day is the customer satisfied? The right company, the right software, the right workers and the right work ethic is still needed.

Guest posts welcome - all you can post for one month. Do-follow links and 1 image ok. 99% of all topics/themes approved - anything interesting and relevant will be considered. Advertise your business - that's ok! Guaranteed promotion of your content to 3 million+ potential readers. Contact me or email me and let's get your content published and noticed!

Cybercriminals are changing how they target financial institutions this holiday season: some 80% of them are going after vulnerable customers rather than the institutions themselves.


A new report from Akamai also found a massive 257% increase in the number of web applications and API attacks against the financial services sector in the past year.


Other important findings include:

• Customer account takeover attempts represent more than 40% of attack types, with another 40% focusing on website scraping used to create more convincing phishing scams.
• Within a 24-hour span, exploitation of newly discovered zero-day vulnerabilities against financial services reaches multiple thousands of attacks per hour and peaks quickly — affording little time to patch and react.
• Phishing campaigns against financial services customers are introducing techniques that bypass two-factor authentication solutions and increase risk for everyday customers.

Steve Winterfeld, advisory CISO at Akamai, said the shift to attacking APIs means that security teams must focus on testing and close monitoring, adding that in some cases that may require new capabilities or skill sets.


“During high traffic times often driven by holidays we will see increases in attacks trying to hide in the increased volume, Winterfeld said. “The insights on customer-focused attacks also provides companies with critical information on where they need to reevaluate how they are categorizing attacks and tracking fraud trends. Fraud prevention is moving into cybersecurity where it can be prevented at the edge."


Teresa Walsh, global head of intelligence for the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center added that the data in Akamai’s report underscores the harsh realities security professionals in the financial services industry face every day.


“With next-generation technology amplifying attack volume and sophistication for financial services organizations, sharing threat intelligence and security best practices is especially critical to protecting the sector and its customers,” Walsh said.


Scott Gerlach, co-founder and chief security officer at StackHawk, said threat actors will go after anything that can gain them assets, such as money, information, or fame — subsequently, banking customers and their personal assets fall under that category. Gerlach said many organizations are still taking API security into consideration too late after the API has been shipped to production or they are using legacy security tooling that isn't built to test APIs thoroughly.


“Both methods leave vulnerabilities undiscovered and create gaps in protection— and that's exactly what threat actors are looking for,” said Gerlach. “Organizations have to scale API security practices along with the increase in API usage. That means security and engineering teams partnering early in the software development lifecycle to understand what APIs are being developed, what data they handle, and how to best test the APIs for potential security issues early and often.”


David Maynor, senior director of threat intelligence at Cybrary, said Akamai’s findings align with what he has seen in the wild. Maynor said the surge in attacks shows that the threat actors targeting FinServ know the huge windfall they will have if they are successful.
​

“This also says to me personally that the attackers have selected their victims and are trying to find tools and attacks to penetrate the victim,” Maynor said. “This targeting pattern is rare and the reverse of what’s generally observed: lazy attackers using a tool or exploit they have to compromise victims opportunistically.”

Three Types of Problematic Consulting ClientsIf you’re an independent client and you’re looking to add one or more clients to your project list or you’re looking for that next big gig, then you may not be thinking clearly and looking for the warning signs. But often they are there…flashing loud right in front of us…if we learn what they are and learn from our own mistakes that we have a tendency to walk right in to. Yes, we may need the work…we may be desperate for the revenue. But avoiding certain problematic clients by learning how to quickly identify them can save us frustration, anxiety, stress, and possibly even save us from a failed consulting engagement.


We must be watching out for ourselves and determining if this is a client that we want to work for. We have to look and listen for certain cues to help us sort that out and make wise decisions for our consulting practice.


Through my experience, there are three types of potential clients that I generally like to try to avoid – if I can identify them before diving in head first into a new engagement. Let’s examine each…


Can you give me a better rate?


Experienced consultants warn you to be wary of clients who are overly creative with payment methods, in particular clients who tempt you into working for royalties on the software you develop for them instead of offering cash for your development work. Never fall for the statement, “The market is huge for a system like this – you’ll be able to make a fortune when this thing is done!” All that client wants is free software development and a share of your future profits for ‘making you rich.’


Watch out for clients who express surprise – or even irritation – when you charge for things like hour-long support calls or site visits to explain things that have already been documented (and similar legitimate billable actions). If you’ve made it clear up front that these are things the client should expect to pay for, then the client should be willing to pay up. The client who is constantly trying to get free work from you is not a client you want to deal with. You can sometimes identify these clients in the sales process when they repeatedly try to get you to do significant amounts of work for free, or if they show irritation when told that you charge for all but the first meeting with a client.


Have it done yesterday


Next, be concerned with the client who is incredibly rushed and demanding before anything even really gets started. This type of client may even want you to get started immediately without a signed contract, spec, or any ‘trivial’ paperwork relating to the engagement that might keep him from meeting his deadline. Be afraid…be very afraid.


When you encounter a ‘drop everything and do my work’ type of client, you know right away that you’re dealing with a selfish, demanding and likely very disorganized client who can’t manage their way out of a paper bag. Worse, this client will likely also turn out to be a rate chiseler who will express shock when presented with your bill. NEVER ever proceed without the engagement properly documented – no matter how rushed the client says it is. You’re going to get stiffed more times than not from this type of client. Run away fast.


The big ego


Finally, by very wary of the client who raises a red flag is the ‘ego hog.’ This type of client tries to turn every situation into one with a winner and a loser. The tip-off that you’ve encountered this type of client may come during contract negotiations when the client shows inflexibility about modifying even the smallest of terms he’s suggesting. He may become insulting and possibly even aggressive. Or he may attack your qualifications and abilities in a personal way. This should represent a huge flashing red light to you and tell you to “run, don’t walk” from this situation. Do you really want the work that badly that you’ll deal with this type of behavior on a potentially long-term basis? I don’t think so.


In this same vein of client is the know-it-all who responds to your initial attempts at solving his problem by shooting them down trying to blow you away with techie snippets he’s obviously picked up from the internet. This is the type of client who is likely to try to get a detailed proposal out of you only to turn it down and take that information somewhere else and try to get it down cheaper – with your ideas.


Summary


These are just three of many possible scenarios or variations of problem clients we can and probably will run across during our consulting careers. What clients have presented you with problems? What flashing red lights have you learned to identify meeting with potential clients for the first time or when you’re just starting consulting engagements? How have you responded?

Your advertising has worked and you’ve made contact with a potential client who has a need and thinks they might want your consulting services. That’s the easy part. Now you’re ready to sit down with the potential client and get details on what it is they think they need. The easy assumption is that the client always knows what they need – but in reality they rarely have a good handle on their entire need. They usually know a symptom or a portion of the need…but what we as consultants need to uncover is the real need or the full need or the root cause of the issue.


Here is a discussion of five key questions that I have found need to be addressed at the beginning of any potential consulting engagement in order to kick everything off on the right foot and to know that this is something that I really want to take on….


Do you have a budget in place?


It’s important to ask this question early. I’ve wasted too much time in the past with potential clients who’ve asked me in to discuss taking on projects for them only to find out that there is no budget in place for this effort yet. I’ve met as many as three times with one of these types only to end up with nothing to show for it.


So, I’ve changed my process. This is the first question I ask of all prospective clients, even if we really have no idea what it’s going to cost at this point. The client must have some idea of what budget they have available for it – even if that means we tailor what I can do for them based on monetary limitations. At least I know they’re coming into the discussions with some money approved. It’s not necessary to know how much they can spend. But it is necessary to know that they can spend something.


Is there a deadline?


If there have been some corporate promises made, then you need to know about them. I once led an effort to create an interactive website for a pharmacy. What they didn’t tell me at the beginning – and what I failed to ask – was “is there a drop-dead date on this activity?” There was, and it was as unmovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. To top it off, they forgot to tell me that the drug database they were using was from a third-party who had originally hoped to create the interactive site. Needless to say, that database vendor was less than excited about cooperating with me and the team I had assembled for the effort. It took my best negotiating skills to get them to cooperate. Thankfully, the project was completed successfully and on time, and the website was used by this huge Fortune 500 company for the next 10 years to service their employees. But this incident taught me a valuable lesson and I’m more careful in several of the questions I ask – including the specific timeframe needs of the client.


What is the biggest issue that brought you to this point?


There’s always one big need that the customer is aware of that has caused them to seek out your service. Beyond that there are also one or more ‘elephant in the room’ type situations that you have to dig for and find out about. You ask the right questions to find the customer-perceived problem, and then you ask more questions to see if that problem is really only a symptom of the real problem or problems that need addressed.


If you address only the customer-perceived problem and fix that, you make the project sponsor happy for the short term, but the end users will not be satisfied and it won’t take long for that to become a major issue. If you dig and find the real need, you’ll save the day, likely have a longer and more profitable consulting engagement, and a happy, referenceable customer when the project is over.


What have your end users been telling you about the situation?


The end users of either the current process that you’re going to be working on or the end users of the potential new process you’ll be implementing need to be included – probably both if they are different groups. Make sure your customer hasn’t come to you without first discussing the situation with their end users. If he hasn’t, that will become your job, but you need to know this up front because it will affect your estimate and it will affect how you address these individuals going in. With no advanced warning you may be basically ‘cold calling’ them and if a new process affects – or eliminates – their jobs, then you may have a mutiny on your hands. It’s just very helpful to know what you’re walking in to.


Have you taken the issue to your subject matter experts?


The last thing you want to happen is the perception that you are coming in and immediately stepping on toes. That can lead to push back, dead ends, and an overall major lack of cooperation. You need to make sure that this isn’t a project thought up in the head of the client sponsor with no consideration given to those ‘experts’ in the organization who may be able to either shed light on the issue or may have their own potential solution to the problem. These are the people that you’ll be working with to come up with additional requirements that weren’t derived from just seeing the end users’ perspective.


Call for responses


Let’s hear from other consultants. What’s on your list of questions for new or potential clients? What is your ‘need to know’ information that you absolutely must gather before you can even say ‘yes’ to taking on the work?

I’d like to discuss the how we determine the data requirements for our issue management and our change control needs on the projects we manage. We capture issues, but what else do we need to capture? What data is needed to fully understand the issues, track them, assign them, and ultimately resolve them? What data do we need to capture and track for change requests and change orders on the projects we manage? All of these are key questions and all highlight the fact that the data we capture is critical to the ongoing nature of the work we do and report on for these engagements. Without the right data, what are we tracking? How can we know that we’re working on the right stuff and resolving the right issues?



What issue info do we need?


What is critical to capture when we’re performing issue tracking, management and resolution? First, we need to know the normal who, what, and why information. Who is reporting, who and what is affected, what the issue is at a high level and why it has been reported…meaning basically what are the symptoms or problems that brought it to someone’s attention. We need to know if it’s a showstopper, top priority issue or if it’s a small bug that can be taken care of with the next release or the next batch of work that gets performed.


What else do we need? As we perform further analysis of the issue, we certainly need to capture additional detail – much more than the initial high-level detail we captured when the issue was first reported. We need to capture dates as well. When was it reported, when does it need to be resolved, when do we think it will be resolved…realistically. Next, we need assignment and accountability information. Who is the issue assigned to – which individual or group? And finally, we need to understand how we’re going to test this issue upon resolution to know that it’s resolved and ready for implementation. Along with that, we need to capture customer signoff and approval including dates for these.


What change request info do we need?


Does the change request info differ from the issue information we must capture, track and report on? Well, yes and no. Basically, it’s the same. However, since change requests concern work that is to be performed beyond the original scope of the project, there is definitely a financial aspect to them. Estimates may be gathered for issues – and likely they will be. But they MUST be for change requests because they’ll be affecting the bottom line on the project. The budget will change as a result of change requests and often the customer must pay additional funds so there’s documentation, accountability and customer approval of any effort and cost estimation that goes into the change request. Beyond the cost info, most other key data will remain about the same – we still need to track the who, what, why, and when. It still must be assigned, tested and implemented. That’s why issues and change requests are generally very closely related and are often tracked together and reported together on project engagements.