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Daniel Benoni

Pro Bono Standards & Valuation - Pro Bono 101 - Resources - Lead Pro Bono - Taproot Fou... - 0 views

  • Pro Bono Standards & Valuation In partnership with the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), Taproot Foundation has developed standards for pro bono service to professionalize the field and ensure the consistent quality of services delivered to recipient organizations
  • Examples of Pro Bono Service HR team audits the HR systems of a nonprofit Finance team develops managerial accounting systems for a nonprofit Property development team helps a nonprofit secure and design office space Creative team develops a nonprofit's annual report Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a professional tax accountant provides tax consulting to needy individuals in the community
  • Examples of Other Skills-Based Service (Not Pro Bono) Executive serves on a nonprofit board and gives informal advice Manager coaches high school student on a business plan competition An accountant independently provides free tax services to an individual in the community who can't afford tax advice Engineer designs a technology curriculum for an after school program Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a software designer sets up staff computers (setting up computers is not within the core description of a software designer's professional expertise)
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  • Current Dollar Fair Market Valuation Pro bono work should be valued at Fair Market Value (FMV) and recorded as non-cash giving in CECP Survey Question 9.  FMV is the hourly or project cost that a paying client would incur for the same service. Companies are encouraged to use the three scenarios below to assist in determining the FMV of services rendered.  The dollar values in the scenarios below are based upon current U.S. salary data adjusted to account for geographic differences and typical fee-discounting practices.  CECP is currently unable to provide dollar-value assistance for non-U.S. pro bono service. Paid-release-time service that does not meet the pro bono criteria should be recorded at a dollar value that is appropriate to the skills involved in CECP Survey Question 22 (do not include pro bono hours in Question 22, as that would be double counting hours recorded in Question 9). When in doubt, the current Independent Sector rate is appropriate.
  • For companies with minimal pro bono tracking capabilities In the absence of employee skill area data and internal billing rates, CECP recommends using an estimate of $120 per hour for pro bono service projects. This is based on a rounded average billing rate for mid-level employees across disciplines, highlighted below. For companies with moderate pro bono tracking capabilities Companies that track the seniority level or skills deployed in pro bono projects should use the following chart to value pro bono hours if internal rates are not available.
  • For companies with robust pro bono tracking capabilities Companies should use their best internal billing information to determine the FMV of services rendered. These valuations should be adjusted to reflect billing differences by: geography, seniority level, rate discounting, employee skill area, etc. To do this, companies must track project metrics that affect billing rates so that an accurate, defensible valuation for pro bono contributions can be recorded. CECP strongly encourages companies to track pro bono to this level of specificity whenever possible.
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    GREAT INFORMATION. To read! - Use cases leads - "What to track in pro-bono" - References, etc. 
Daniel Benoni

Financial Modeling Tips and Techniques for Technology, Software, and Internet Startups - 0 views

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    Nail the financials better!
Rachel Chaikof

Corporate Sustainability Driven by the Bottom Line - Forbes - 0 views

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    This article talks about how companies don't have tools to track their sustainability efforts, most notably these sections: Sustainability reporting is growing, but the tools are still developing. About one in four survey respondents use packaged software to track sustainability efforts, but most still use spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls. But the effectiveness of such efforts may be limited by internal systems that don't allow companies to effectively measure, track, and optimize their sustainability impacts or to understand and manage the risks of insufficient action.
Aude-Olivia Dufour

Pricing - Signup for your free trial of Zendesk - Help Desk Software - 0 views

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    interesting for customer service
Daniel Benoni

Companies Adopt Gaming Techniques to Motivate Employees - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • Striving to make everyday business tasks more engaging, a growing number of firms, including International Business Machines Corp. and consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., are incorporating elements of videogames into the workplace. They're deploying reward and competitive tactics commonly found in the gaming world to make tasks such as management training, data entry and brainstorming seem less like work. Employees receive points or badges for completing jobs or meeting time limits for assignments, for example. Companies also may use leaderboards, which let players view one another's scores, to encourage friendly competition and motivate performance, experts say. This "gamification" of the workplace, or "enterprise gamification" in tech-industry parlance, is a fast-growing business. Companies have used digital games for a number of years to help market products to consumers and build brand loyalty. What's emerging is using games to motivate their own employees.
  • Tech-industry research firm Gartner estimates that by 2014, some 70% of large companies will use the techniques for at least one business process. Market researcher M2 Research estimates revenue from gamification software, consulting and marketing will reach $938 million by 2014 from less than $100 million this year.
  • SAP even turned its gamification efforts into a game, holding a series of "Gamification Cups" to generate ideas for turning various business processes into games.
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  • 400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.
  • found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less
  • Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.
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    Gamification Article
Daniel Benoni

The Struggle in Finding An Addressable Problem - Lean Startups - blog - kyle ... - 0 views

  • focusing on a market before an actual product idea
  • By starting with a market and focusing on data/interviews to find an addressable problem, rather than building software from day one, we encountered problems I would never have predicted
  • spent our time talking to as many parents/teacher/psychiatrists that would give us their time
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  • The more we narrowed our focus the less motivated we became.  We went from looking at a massive addressable market to a subset of people and a minimal product offering.
  • Focusing, as difficult as it was, was necessary given the reality that we were two
  • Write everything down.
  • best ways to drastically narrow your scope, it’s easy to list four or five options but having to pick just one and describe it fully really focuses things.
  • Pitching everyday
  • it helps you to iterate much faster.
  • People tend to love your idea when it’s vague, as they develop their own picture of what it will really be.  -- What we found to really work well was building a baseline pitch deck and iterating on it every day based on what we had learned.
  • Take all the “ands” out. 
  • We help parents to fix the problems in their child's daily routine and to encourage them to try new things
  • We help parents to fix the one or two main problems in their child's daily routine. 
  • It’s tough to not start writing code after your first positive interview.
  • Not because we found the best problem/solution mix, but rather because we found one solution that we can quickly test and on which we can iterate.
Aude-Olivia Dufour

Wild Apricot Blog : 100 More Online Tools for Non-Profits - Part 1 - 1 views

  • Fundraising Software, Online Payments, Donor Management In addition to 4aGoodCause, ActiveGiving, Antharia|onDeposit, DonateNow, Donor Perfect, Donor Tools, eTapestry, GiftTool Solutions, Orange Leap, and Sage Fundraising 50, which we listed previously, you might take a look at these options:
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    tools that can be interesting for us too!
Daniel Benoni

Build, market, measure in parallel - LaunchBit - 0 views

  • First-time web entrepreneurs often tell me "Oh we're moving really quickly...we're launching in just 6 months."
  •  The trouble is that product traction isn't just about getting a product out the door.
  • Your biggest competitor isn't any company or individual.  It's time -- the duration you have before you run out of money, morale, and the enthusiasm your significant other/family has for your endeavors.
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  • The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.
  • So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.
  • So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.
  • Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.
  • Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.
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