Volano Solutions
November 12, 2013
There is no doubt that social media has fundamentally changed the way communities interact with each other. Few would argue the profound impact, good or bad, that social has had on a global scale; be it the role of social media in Arab Spring to the countless photos of babies, cute and ugly that populate […]
October 31, 2013
Recently social media strategist Brent Robinson wrote a blog on the benefits to your brand of addressing on-line customer reviews. His blog states not surprising statistics that 84% of consumers research product on-line prior to making a purchase and 70% of consumers read on-line reviews before they buy a product as well. Clearly consumers have […]
October 14, 2013
Volano is preparing to launch a new mobile app for franchise companies in February at the International Franchise Association Convention in New Orleans. We’re busy signing up beta-testers now and are encouraged by the early success. Our mobile franchise location review app Action Card went live in beta two weeks ago and one of the things […]
September 16, 2013
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine featured a thoughtful article by Jennifer Kahn on a relatively new teaching strategy in primary education called social-emotional learning or S.E.L. S.E.L. presupposes that emotions factor into a child’s ability to learn and that educators can and should focus on instilling “deep psychological intelligence that will help children regulate their […]
September 10, 2013
We are pleased to announce that Colleen Noble a Newton, Massachusetts ex-pat joined the Volano team this week to help us keep the office in order as we continue to help our clients better manage their business processes with technology and develop new product. This is a significant and symbolic benchmark for us as we […]
September 5, 2013
Volano recently hired two software developers whom you’ll read about later this week. We are also hiring our first office admin person. The process of finding and screening good candidates has been educational and cause for some reflection. Finding people whose skills line up with the prerequisites of the job is one thing but identifying […]
August 26, 2013
“Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.” – Henry Miller Last week The Harvard Business Review’s Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic tweeted a terse treatise on the deficit […]
August 19, 2013
Networking is a key component in the world of custom software consulting. Businesses typically take months to determine whether or not they want to overhaul the systems that power their operations and workflow. Custom software ain’t cheap. Once business owners determine that the cost savings of efficient systems offset the investment, and after they’ve met […]
August 15, 2013
On Friday Volano will bid farewell to Jordan White, one of the best interns to never fetch coffee or dry-cleaning for a company. In the Spring we posted this in an effort to attract a good pool of potential interns who could do some light coding for us. Our vision was to offer a meaningful […]
August 5, 2013
Volano has had the good fortune to work with local venture capital investor, Dundee VC this year and their technology start-up incubator program Straightshot (www.straightshot.co). The relationship has been overwhelmingly positive, positioning Volano, who serves as a software mentor, in front of promising entrepreneurs and like-minded metro area businesses. Dundee VC has garnered the support […]
July 22, 2013
I recently came across an interesting piece on the Harvard Business Review that essentially deals with our own discomfort with the issue of race and how this discomfort can actually impede open and honest discourse in the workplace. If you have time, grab a friend and go through the short exercise here. I did this […]
July 17, 2013
In light of the recent Edward Snowden – NSA information tracking kerfuffle, I found Stephen Clifford and Quentin Hardy’s article in Sunday’s New York Times particularly interesting. The piece brings us up to speed on the extent to which brick and mortar retailers can now use your cell phone’s WIFI signal to track your shopping […]