Jobs in the technology sector are among the best-paying, and therefore help to raise the economy generally. There is also a multiplier effect, as each single technology-sector job creates more than four jobs in the broader community. Creating the jobs and the work force to fill them, then, has become an important focus of economic development from the local to the statewide … [More]
Ken McMahon, CenturyLink
Arizona’s strength in technology is broad. Leading and emerging companies in a wide range of technology sectors have operations in our metropolitan centers and are helping Arizona claim a reputation as a second-to-none business destination. Arizona has a wealth of assets that we can leverage to build an ever-stronger and more diversified economy. Our enterprising and active … [More]
Finance: Employee Wellness Benefit
Financial wellness is increasingly a concern of employers for their employees. “There’s almost universal awareness now that financial problems affect business,” says Mike Sullivan, director of education with Take Charge America, explaining that people do not attend to business as well as they would if they didn’t have financial problems on their mind. “So businesses need to … [More]
Customer Loyalty: Gauge It as a Growth Predictor
Sure, your company has satisfied customers. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in business (at least not for long). But here’s a question few companies ask: How loyal are they? Will they recommend your products and services to others? Will they stick with you through thick and thin? Or will they run at the first sign of a price increase or some other change that rubs them the wrong … [More]
Experts Have the Answers
What is the difference between experts who have built a platform and brand around their expertise and experts who are great at their work but haven’t figured out how to launch that one big idea or build a truly successful platform? Conversations I have every day with authors about brand strategy around their books and conversations I engaged in earlier this year at one of this … [More]
Intellectual Property Is Not Created Equal
Business owners tend to underestimate their intellectual property (IP), says Lee Fraley, a partner in the Phoenix office of law firm Snell & Wilmer who specializes in IP and works with many emerging businesses in acquisitions and related transactions. “They tend to think IP only includes patents, but it’s much more than that — it’s almost anything that gives a company a … [More]
Make Room for Millennials
It might seem an odd fit: a nonprofit aligning itself with 20- to 32-year-olds who, at first blush, appear to have little in common with such institutions. But successful nonprofits believe such a pairing is simply good strategy, especially considering that half the U.S. work force by 2020 will consist of this young demographic known as millennials. They are 80 million in … [More]
Blue Sky Pest Control: Building Strength from Small Decisions
The creepy-crawlies of the Arizona desert are no match for Curtis Whalen and Nathan Woolf, owners of Blue Sky Pest Control. The Phoenix-based company has experienced aggressive growth since opening its first office in the Phoenix metropolitan area in 2003, and now has more than 65 employees and a second location in Gilbert. This growth advanced even during the economic … [More]
Secure Against Internal as well as External Breaches
Diligence against cyber security breaches is as much an issue of internal processes as external threats. In fact, the breach Home Depot so publicly suffered last year was enabled through a pfishing scheme whereby hackers first gained access to a third-party vendor that had access privileges with Home Depot. In the recent survey “Privilege Gone Wild 2” by global cyber … [More]
Securing Mobile Financial Access
Working with financial institutions to provide risk management solutions against the constant evolution of threats, Early Warning is building an ecosystem that will continue to match up with the threat over time. With no direct link itself to the end user, Early Warning’s strategy is collaboration among companies with their own expertise and a consortium model in sharing data … [More]
Communication Control
Consumers “have little control over their messages thanks to autocorrecting tools and the lack of ability to easily fix errors leading to miscommunication,” says Kevin Wooten, reTXT Labs co-founder and CEO. His Tempe-based company’s recently launched app (patent pending) puts users in control of their text conversations by enabling them to edit previously sent messages and to … [More]
IT Staff in Demand
The unemployment rate in Phoenix for IT professionals is half the general unemployment rate. That shortage of talent makes for a very competitive market, and therefore, observes Allan Dunn, managing director of the Phoenix office of IT staffing agency MDI Group, “Businesses must be willing to pay above the median rate based on a skill set.” There is non-salary compensation … [More]
Crowdfunding Answers Medical Need
Hospitals and nonprofits have begun expanding their fundraising efforts beyond the traditional reliance on a board of directors out to the wider reach of the Internet. But medical crowdfunding is taking another direction as well. “There is a major growing trend of people using the Internet to raise money for medical events,” says Frutkin Law Firm founder Jonathan Frutkin, a … [More]
3-D Print for Medical Use
3-D printing is making a big impact in medical applications. Not that the technology is new — W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc., among others, has been using 3-D printing for decades. It was used to make models and prototypes, says Eric Miller, principal and co-owner of Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies, which provides 3-D printers and 3-D printing services and is … [More]
More Doctor Time
Medical Scribes The push for healthcare providers to adopt electronic health records (EHRs) has fostered the growth of medical scribes as a supporting profession to relieve doctors of the time-consuming task of entering the comprehensive medical documentation EHRs require. Essentially handling data management tasks, a medical scribe charts the doctor’s patient encounters … [More]
High-Performance Building Is New Home for Manufacturer
At 163,420 square feet, CornellCookson’s new facility in Goodyear does more than just double the space the company has been operating out of in Phoenix for 25 years. Among its advantages, it streamlines the work flow for the company’s manufacture of custom closure solutions — such as the rolling doors and grilles used at stadiums, hospitals and other secure facilities — and … [More]
The Wrike Place
Project management has a new friend. The Wrike app is an all-encompassing way to organize in one spot everything needed to complete a project. Break large goals into manageable pieces, attach files and set due dates. Easily track overall progress and individual contribution. Wrike lets users communicate with teammates to share tasks — even with people outside the company. … [More]
Work simply. Work securely.
From LogMeIn, Inc., the new Cubby allows individuals, teams and entire workplaces to easily and securely work together, anywhere. Files are stored in the cloud for anywhere access, shared with others publicly or privately, or even directly synced between devices without using the cloud. And to keep company data secure, Cubby helps IT easily manage users, policies and devices … [More]
