Branding With a Shot

Alina Wheeler’s book Designing Brand Identity is considered a bible for brand professionals. In this breezy, inspirational e-book, you’ll glean insights from two chapters of the book:

  • How brand governance has evolved.
  • Why Deloitte’s brand center is a best-in-class benchmark for brand teams.

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Sustaining Brand Beyond Day Two: A New Approach to Modern Brand Governance

In this webinar, join Kelley Grover - Senior Global Brand Manager at Deloitte - as we discuss the evolution of Deloitte's brand center, Brand Space, and introduce the “new rules” of brand governance that all brands should follow.

Three key takeaways you’ll learn:

  • How has brand governance been disrupted?
  • Why do 70% of rebrands lose momentum at or around the 18-months post-launch?
  • What are the “new rules” of brand governance that all brands should follow?

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Brand Asset Management Comparison Worksheet

Through research with brand leaders and an analysis of many brand center RFPs we've found it takes more than features and functionality to choose a solution that will help you manage your brand successfully.

Many evaluation criteria ignore important criteria that are key to ensuring that you choose not only a system, but the right partner that will help you achieve your long-term brand management objectives. Use this worksheet to inform the criteria your using and evaluate the solutions that best fit your goals.

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Brand Management Scorecard

Evaluate and prioritize which activities can be improved to best deliver against your goals.

A brand’s health starts on the inside. It combines components of governance and the evolution capabilities over time to scale brand. Seeing the landscape of brand governance from an internal perspective helps brand managers lobby for budgets, build long term plans, and address short term issues.

There is no one-size-fits-all model for brand governance. We created this updated scorecard to help brand leaders understand strengths and opportunities to benchmark their brand governance activities against best in class.

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The Great Automation 2023 State of the Law Report

As we look at today’s legal landscape, the Smokeball team is in awe of how rapidly the legal community has adopted new ways to attract and serve clients since the global pandemic began in 2020. Smokeball surveyed 200 law firms with less than 30 employees across the United States to better understand these industry shifts and emerging trends. In three short years, legal professionals have learned how to work from anywhere, provide clients with the same (or better) levels of service remotely, and run their law firms as efficient, profitable businesses.

But there is still a long road ahead to harness the true power of adopted technology. The next era will focus on streamlining: unifying systems to improve law firms’ workflows, increase profits, and better support client relationships.

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Getting Automated

Smokeball designed this guide to help you understand and overcome your automation gap so you can offload all the work you don't want to do on a cloud-based platform. We'll walk through all the tasks your firm can automate, how to implement automation and measure your success.

Automation doesn't happen overnight, but you can transform your entire practice with the right tools, strategy, and action plan. Let's get started.

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How to Buy an LMS for a Compliance-Driven Business

Are you tired of grappling with the challenges of compliance training? Look no further! An LMS will help you manage your immediate challenges when it comes to completion rates and overall compliance. With its ability to automate compliance, centralize training materials, and track progress, an LMS is the ultimate tool for talent development leaders in high-consequence industries. And with our E-book, you'll learn how to choose and use the perfect LMS for your needs.

We've done the work for you. All you have to do is download the e-book now!

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Company Travel Policy Template

Want to put together some guidelines on how business travel should be booked, approved, and expensed? We’ve got you covered with this fully-customizable travel policy template. We've done all the research and hard work for you – we talked to travel managers and finance leaders from various companies & industries to discover what essential elements should go in a robust travel policy. Here's what you’ll get:

  • A concise, simple-to-understand, and easily customizable travel policy template that you can edit in minutes.
  • Guidelines on all the essentials such as expense reporting, safety information, and flexible booking.
  • Top tips on how to make the most of your travel policy such as guidelines on approvals, improving travel policy compliance & more.

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Choosing a Grants Management Software to Support Trust-Based Philanthropy

For many grantmaking organizations, the challenges and upheavals of 2020 catalyzed a different way of funding. An industry that had been characterized by compliance obsession, complexity, and rigidity suddenly opened up to a new, values-driven philosophy. This new focus on equity, relationships, and reducing the burden on grantees ultimately leads to more time spent on the work of social change, better serving the mission of both nonprofits and their funders.

Indeed, some in the sector have been practicing and advocating for this different (and better) way for a long time. Those long-standing efforts have culminated in the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, a five-year, peer-to-peer funder initiative launched in January 2020 with the aim of addressing the inherent power imbalance between funders and grantees.

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A Guide for Grantmakers and CSR Professionals

No matter what role you play in the sphere of social impact, you want to know that the work you do is having a positive effect on the causes you care about. That’s why we created this guide—to give you the tools you need to set up your impact measurement right.

In these pages, we’ll cover the benefits of measurement as well as principles to guide you. Plus, we lay out step-by-step instructions with expert advice and resources so you can move forward with confidence. Let’s get started.

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Seven keys to ace executive presentations

As a leader, your executive presentation skills are fundamental to your success.

Whether you are presenting critical updates to the C-suite or persuading key stakeholders to sponsor a new initiative—effective executive communication can make all the difference.

In this ebook, you’ll learn the seven keys to acing executive presentations, including how to quickly frame the topic to gain the attention of senior executives.

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MYPOS CONNECT: Overview of Features

More than a decade ago we saw the potential for a POS system that was seamlessly connected to the Cloud. So we re-engineered our Client-Server POS solution using Microsoft’s .NET development platform, because of its superior ability to leverage Cloud servers without having to write an app that runs from an Internet browser. In 2009 we released our first Cloud-enabled version of MyPOS Connect, and we’ve been developing on that foundation ever since.

What makes MyPOS Connect unique is that, although your corporate database is in the Cloud, the software application resides on each workstation or device, along with a scaled-down local copy of the database. So you get a crisply responsive user experience, just like an on-premise application would give you, but you’re working with real-time data that is securely accessible from anywhere, at any time.

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Eliminating Stockouts – An Inventory Planning Primer

With the advent of online sales digging deeper into retailers’ pockets, it is more important than ever for independent retailers to eliminate lost sales that occur as a result of stockouts.

According to a study in May 2018 by retail research organization IHL Group, customers of department stores and specialty retail shops experience a stockout 1 in 4 shopping trips. They estimate that stockouts are costing North American retailers more than $47B a year in sales! And where are these sales going? To Amazon, where else? IHL states that nearly 24% of Amazon’s North American retail revenue can be attributed to consumers who first tried to buy the product at a local store but couldn’t find it on the shelves.

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2022 Legal Practice Management Software Buying Guide

It's never been a secret that law has historically been slow to evolve and adapt alongside other professions. When Smokeball released the last version of this guide, “Is Legal Practice Management Software Worth It?” we acknowledged that many firms still avoided change due to fear or stubbornness. Such firms could still maintain their status quo without the help of software.

In 2022, the question of worth no longer applies: Legal practice management software is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. The shift to remote/hybrid law offices is permanent, and attorneys must permanently shift their mindsets and processes to keep up — and keep ahead.

Smokeball understands that legal practice management software is a major investment of your firm’s money and time. Because we want to give you the most value and productivity for your investment, we updated this guide to reflect the reality of 2022. The legal landscape has shifted significantly since you started your practice. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity together.

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