Technology Solutions, LLC offers services in the following NAICS codes:

• 541512 – Computer System Design Services
• 541511 – Custom Computer Programming Services
• 541430 – Graphic Design Services
• 518210 – Web Hosting
• 519130 – Portals, Web Search
• 541611 – Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services

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It should be noted that the main target audience for QR Code marketing are those people who use smartphones with a camera feature. So QR Codes, while an innovative addition to your marketing tools, should not be your sole means to advertise.

Increase Your Audience By Keeping It Big & Simple

Smartphones vary in quality and functionality; some have better camera capabilities than others, varying focal lengths, etc.. So, the size and complexity of the QR Code can limit its ability to be read on older, less capable technology.

A QR Code can contain numeric, alphanumeric or binary information types with the following limits:

• Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
• Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
• Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes

The more information that is stored in the code, the more complex its design and the harder for lower-quality smartphones to translate.

It’s a game of percentages really. As you make the dimensions of the code smaller or increase the amount of information stored in the code, you also make smaller the audience capable of conveniently scanning and reading the code.

In general, QR Codes should be no smaller than 1 inch square.

What To Market With QR Codes

As previously mentioned, QR Codes can contain 3 information types: numeric, alphanumeric or binary. What information you choose to promote is really up to you.

Maybe you want people to call your business. In that case you can provide your telephone number for convenience.

Or maybe you’d rather communicate via text message.

Perhaps you have a specific product or company information that you want to promote.

Or, maybe you just want to provide a quick and easy way for people to visit your website.

Where To Place QR Code?

As with any marketing tool, the best place for it is one that attracts the most attention!

Be creative! Make the code as a sticker, business card, yard sign, keychain or you can even make a T-shirt with a huge QR code on it! Just experiment and have fun!

QR Code designs themselves are interesting and the technology is still a fresh concept to most people. Chances are your codes will garner the desired attention and curiosity to lead people to scan them… marketing done!

For use on a website, the most prominent place for a code is the header, upper sidebar or top left of the main content area. They can also be made visible printed pages to later provide readers with a redirect back to your site.

It’s All About Convenience

In this fast-paced world, saving a couple minutes here or even a few seconds there is greatly appreciated.

Even if you are not doing some serious e-commerce business, you can use QR code to advertise your company. The key is convenience, which is also the core of QR Code marketing. As previously mentioned, first and foremost, you need to place the QR code in a prominent location, so everyone can scan it instantly.

Imagine you are browsing the Internet on your desktop and you stumble on a website that you’d like to reference in a meeting, but you are late (and your long-term memory isn’t all that great). Then you see a QR code in the main sidebar. You quickly scan it, instantly transfer the site information to mobile and off you go.

Another example is using QR Codes on print-friendly pages. When a page is printed, the QR code can be included so that wherever the prints go a simple scan will lead directly back to your website.

One caveat to remember: what’s convenient for some may not be convenient for all. To maximize your audience, make sure the information contained in a QR Code (especially if it is important) is accessible for those who don’t understand the technology or have the technology at their disposal.

Happy coding!

The simple question to cloud security is: Do you want to be a fish in a pond or an ocean?  Here are the explanations for each-

Ponds rarely get fished

• As a small target, you are relatively insignificant and pose a high effort to reward ratio.
• The downside is that you have limited access to enterprise level security systems/controls.

Oceans provide greater protection

• Being part of a larger environment, you have greater resources available than in a smaller environment (enterprise level security).  Additionally, you can enjoy the benefits of being part of a larger food chain (your predators have predators).
• The downside is you retain some accountability of your data (either via compliance requirements or to your customers) and lose most control over the environment its stored in.

Our philosophy at Technology Solutions is that each client is unique (based on variables such as organization goals, market location, staff/resources, current business operations model, etc).  As a result of this, what is the best approach for one may not necessarily be the best for another.  We consider our ability to help determine the best path a keystone to our service delivery- for more information on how we can help you, please contact us.

In this fashion, we are the same as many of our customers.  We are too small to afford customized or enterprise solutions for our needs and too big to have a canned solution meet all our needs.  In our experience, most small to mid-size businesses exist in this gap.   As a result, they either pay more for a solution than is reasonable for the organization size, or adjust business processes to fit inside the box of capabilities provided by a CotS (Commercial, off the Shelf) solution.  

As a company providing process improvment and technology solutions, we fundamentally disagree with both options.  Since we can’t complain without offering a solution, we have developed an approach to helping organizations meet their needs at an appropriate cost.  We do this by getting to and executing step 4 in the following high level overview of our Assessment/Analysis service offering:

1. Define the current environment/system - including process mapping, existing resources, and culture.
2. Measure the pain – the total cost of the current process (the sum of hard costs, lost opportunity, process errors, and non-value add activities). 
3. Design a future state – what the business process or function will be (not at a technical level, but operationally).
4. Architect the technical solution to achieve the future state – make the business process/function drive the technical solution.

This sounds and feels complicated and expensive, and it has the potential to be both if not executed well.  To execute well, there are a few criteria:

1. Experience- This is a practice that requires repetition and a history of successful engagements.
2. Neutrality- This process works best when you don’t have a stake in the current process and are not affected by internal politics (or as little of both as practical). 
3. Knowledge- You have to think outside the box of the current environment and existing process.  Incremental changes to a process only produce incremental improvements.
4. Practicality- Understand and work towards a practical solution, using a sensible amount of effort.  Too much time or cost put into a process can negate potential benefits. 

When you keep the above in mind, it is easy to scale a process assessment/technical solution up or down to meet the cost/effort constraints of any project. 

The end result?  You get a solution that is neither too big, small, or expensive.   As always, feel free to contact us for more information/questions.

“In the absence of process, people will argue personality” (I can’t find the person to credit this quote to – sorry!)

I like this quote because it helps define the reason people with aggressive or assertive personalities have a tendency to drive projects/meetings that don’t have a defined structure and controls in place.  I find more often than not that office politics is used as the excuse that these people impact projects to such a high degree.

Usually what I find is that it isn’t office politics but a lack of processes or controls to properly manage projects and project personnel.  In addition to this, there is generally a macro manager/executive providing exceptions to whatever processes and controls may be in place.

I’m always amazed when a system requires a completion notifier after a known value length.

Now, the phone system may be old and require a completion notifier, but I see this in software development on a regular basis.

Simple things like moving to the next box when filling out a form or the extremely annoying “are you sure you’re sure” dialogue boxes.

The approach I’ve taken for this is adding a section to a Software Requirements Specification document detailing the expected behavior for the UI of a system. By defining upfront the expectations of the application interface and interaction with a user (as painless as possible), developers have a (limited) creative license to apply practical flow and common sense to application development.