Starting as purely a creative outlet, Jennifer Sarkilahti made handcrafted jewelry. However, as she was inspired by the city's entrepreneurial spirit, she created Odette New York. Along the way, Sarkilahti's real challenge wasn’t finding a market for her jewelry, it was to stay connected to the creative process even as the business grew. Office 365 played a key role in Odette New York's needs, catering to their specific artistic needs as a business.

Staying small as a growth strategy

Sarkilahti was adamant about not getting too big, too fast. Keeping things local allowed her to stay in tune with the creative process as well as her manufacturing partners. “As a business, we value that we are able to make our product locally and take a slower, more thoughtful approach to manufacturing. Although the costs are higher to produce domestically, we can maintain a connection to the jewelry and the people that have a hand in making it throughout the entire process,” says Sarkilahti.

An intuitive software solution

Sarkilahti admits that technology doesn’t come as naturally to her as the artistic process, however, she credits Office 365 for helping her through this. With that help, she is able to focus on her creativity, Sarkilahti states, “I’ve found the Office 365 products to be intuitive and easy to learn, as well as capable of adapting to whatever our needs of the moment might be. We use Excel and Outlook to help us create an efficient workflow process within our studio and communicate with people outside our studio, including vendors, retailers and customers. And on the creative side, we use PowerPoint to create mood boards for new collections, photoshoots and look books.”

Their slower approach to growth is certainly paying off. Odette New York currently has over 70 accounts, including both domestic and international retailers, and has been featured in major publications such as Vogue and Elle. Perhaps more importantly, Sarkilahti spends her days doing what she loves most—creating beautiful, handcrafted jewelry in her stunning Brooklyn studio.

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Analytics 50: How big data innovators reap results

Five winners of the 2016 CIO.com and Drexel University Analytics 50 awards share details of their projects, lessons learned and advice.

By Thor Olavsrud as written on cio.com

Data and analytics are reshaping organizations and business processes, giving organizations the capability to interrogate internal and external data to better understand their customers and drive transformative efficiencies.

Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics clocked in at nearly $122 billion in 2015 and will grow to $187 billion in 2019, according to a five-year forecast from research firm IDC.

“Organizations able to take advantage of the new generation of business analytics solutions can leverage digital transformation to adapt to disruptive changes and create competitive differentiation in their markets,” said IDC analyst Dan Vesset in a statement issued in conjunction with the release of IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide earlier this year. “These organizations don’t just automate existing processes — they treat data as they would any valued asset by using a focused approach to extracting and developing the value of information.”

Additionally, a recent Forrester Research study, commissioned by the global data and analytics team at KPMG, found that 50 percent of businesses now use data and analytics tools to analyze their existing customers, while 48 percent use them to find new customers and 47 percent use them to develop new products and services.

The picture isn’t entirely rosy, however. That same Forrester study found that many organizations are struggling to adjust their cultures to a world in which data and analytics play a central role, and many business executives mistrust the insights generated by data and analytics.

Other organizations, however, have taken naturally to data and analytics and are using new tools to better understand customers, develop new products and optimize business processes.

To honor those organizations, CIO.com and Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business recently announced the first Analytics 50 awards. The winners represent a broad spectrum of industries, from pharmaceuticals and healthcare to sports and media.

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7 simple calendar tricks that will level-up your team’s productivity

What’s the secret to maximizing productivity and efficiency? There’s no single silver bullet, but one sure-fire way to make gains is with calendar tricks that will keep you organized and focused. From scheduling “no meeting” time blocks to integrating mobile so you never miss a meeting—the art of calendar optimization is crucial.

Here are seven simple calendar tricks you can use to bring your productivity to the next level:

1.Schedule “no meeting” time blocks—Instead of multitasking, set aside time without interruptions. “When people multitask, often they do multiple things badly,” says David Sanbonmatsu, University of Utah professor of Psychology. “A lot of times, the people who multitask the most are the worst at it…it’s individuals who lack impulse control.” (From Forbes.)

2.Set out-of-office (OOO) time—Identify blocks of time on your calendar as “unavailable,” “not working” or “OOO” if you’re not working a certain day or are traveling.

Pro hack: If you have a regular non-work appointment or commute time when you’re unavailable, schedule it as recurring OOO time. To do this in Outlook, just open the meeting you want to set as recurring and on the Meeting tab (in the Options group), click Recurrence. Select your desired frequency, set options for the frequency and click OK.

3.Connect your calendar on your mobile—It happens to everyone: You’re not on your laptop and a meeting runs late, you forget when and where your next meeting is and you end up shuffling in with a flurry of apologies five minutes after the next meeting begins. Integrate your calendar on your mobile device to stay up-to-date on all your meetings.

4.Install buffer time—Whenever possible, schedule an extra 10 minutes on either side of every meeting, so that you have enough time to clean up from the current meeting and then prepare and set up for the next meeting. This will also help you avoid the feeling of “running” from meeting to meeting.

5.Schedule breaks—When you’re completing tasks like a do-it-all, it’s easy to plow through and work till you’re fried. “Getting up for a few minutes and getting our blood flowing and some more oxygen to the brain is a necessary piece of the work day,” according to the Huffington Post’s Healthy Living team. Schedule breaks into your calendar to avoid burnout and boost creativity and let your calendar reminders hold you accountable.

6.Set check-in reminders—As major deadlines approach, schedule check-ins with reminders for benchmarks along the way. This avoids end-of-project stress and ensures you’re checking off tasks before they’ve passed. Include team members on your calendar reminders to encourage team check-ins as well.

7.Integrate business contacts—Simplify inviting business contacts by integrating your calendar with your contact list.

Pro hack: You can add a contact from an email message in Office 365. Open the message so that the person’s name is shown in one of these lines: From, To, Cc or Bcc. Right-click the appropriate name and click Add to Outlook Contacts. A new window opens, where you can fill in the details you want and then OK when done.

Use your calendar to stay on top of your day by optimizing organization and ultimately making you more productive. For more productivity tips learn how to work smarter in the cloud. To ensure you and your team are more connected get the eBook: “Collaborate, Anytime, Anywhere.“

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Customizing your schedule and staying organized in Office 365

Office 365 Planner offers people a simple and highly visual way to organize teamwork. Planner makes it easy for your team to create new plans, organize and assign tasks, share files, chat about what you’re working on, and get updates on progress. Planner can be used to manage a marketing event, brainstorm new product ideas, track a school project, prepare for a customer visit, or just organize your team more effectively.
Built for Office 365, Planner lets you attach files to tasks, work together on those files, and even have conversations around tasks without switching between apps. With Planner, all your team’s discussions and deliverables stay with the plan and don’t get locked away across disparate applications.

Teamwork organized

One of the most valuable aspects of Planner is that it helps teams organize their work visually. Each plan has its own Board, and within each Board, each work item or task is represented by a Card that can have due dates, attachments, categories and conversations associated with it. Team members receive an email notification whenever they are assigned a new Card or added to a conversation.

Every Card can have documents (or pictures) attached that automatically get rich image previews, so it is easy to understand what the Card is about at a glance. In addition, Cards can be organized on the Board into customizable columns called Buckets, which can be prioritized and tagged with colored labels.

Planner also gives you views to keep your work on track. The Hub view lets you track overall progress across all plans, while the “My tasks” view lets you filter down to see just what you need to do across every plan. In addition, the “Charts” view includes interactive charts for visualizing people’s progress against deadlines. Click a red segment on the histogram to quickly see which aspects of a plan are behind schedule and use the Board to rebalance work across the team. With Planner, everyone is always on the same page. A single glance of the Charts view is all it takes to know where things stand.

Collaborate with your team using Microsoft Planner

Beyond getting a plan in place for who's doing what when, Microsoft Planner can also help you actually do some of the things you have planned.

Co-authoring
Co-authoring with Office Online. Store Office files in OneDrive for your plan, and click the preview to get to work! Start by attaching the file to a task. Learn more.

Comments
Add comments to chat with your team. Your team can read and respond to comments in the task, in Outlook, or in the Outlook Groups app. Learn more.

Calendar
Schedule events with your plan’s calendar. Every plan also has a calendar, which is helpful for capturing events that people working on the plan should attend. Learn more.

Notebook
Capture and organize meeting notes. Meeting notes don’t need to live on paper or in random Word docs and emails. Instead, use your plan’s notebook to get organized! Learn more.

Works great with all of Office 365

As a member of the Office 365 suite, Planner is integrated with other Office 365 services, such as Office 365 Groups, so all of the conversations in Planner are available in Outlook 2016, Outlook on the Web and the Outlook Groups Mobile Apps.

Planner is also an ideal way to organize your Office files. Attach your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to a Card and start editing them right away. When a document is attached to a Card, it is stored in a SharePoint Online document library, allowing you to work on them offline.

Sign up for Office 365 and start collaborating with Planner today!

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