One of the Childhaven graduates was provided for by Finley, daughter of Allyis employee Randy Dickey. Finley, age 5, organized a lemonade stand this summer with her parents’ help. “As we were making the signs and putting everything together,” her dad said, “she asked me if it was okay if she could give her lemonade stand money to the Childhaven kids who don’t have school supplies.” He explains, “Finley was born about a year after I joined Allyis, and she has always helped us shop for the kids every fall, so she’s very aware of the situation.”

As Corporate Citizenship Director at Allyis, I’ve often noticed and remarked on the generosity of our employees. I truly believe Allyis employees are some of the most generous around. And apparently, so are their children. It’s obvious that Finley’s parents are doing a stellar job of passing along their values of giving to and caring for others…and I like to think that Allyis has played some small part in that as well. 

 Allyis employee Randy Dickey’s daughter, Finley, raising money for Childhaven kindergarten graduates’ school supplies.

I was pleased to hear that for the sixth year now, we’ve been honored by our employees and recognized by Seattle Business Magazine as a best place to work in Washington State. We have been in the top five each of the six years, taking first place in our category in 2010.

We really are a group of shiny happy people! But don’t take my word for it; see what these employees recently had to say:

“Allyis has given me a great opportunity to expand my professional career while working alongside passionate, dedicated people. They are also active in the community and since volunteerism is a big part of my life, I enjoy being able to bring that into my professional life as well.”

- Jaime Weber | Project Manager/Data Analyst

“I enjoy working at Allyis as they have showed time and time again that they understand that a healthy work life is built upon a healthy home life.”

-Steven Gash | Technical Publisher

“I was an Allyis client before I was an employee, and what brought me here was how happy the Allyis employees I worked with were. Once I came on board, it was apparent right away why that is: the support from the company, the interesting work, and, most of all, the great people!”

-Susan Walter | Field Engagement Manager

“Allyis offers the great mix of challenge and reward—professionalism and expertise balanced with appreciation and personal consideration.”

-Ryan Risenmay | Content Team Lead

As I’ve said before, Allyis leadership is committed to being a great place to work and we’re grateful to our employees for participating in the survey and being willing to offer honest feedback about what we can improve. If this is what you’ve been looking for in an employer, check out our openings and join our team!

“The companies on our 100 Best Companies To Work For list have created better workplaces by addressing such issues as communications, leadership and culture,” said Leslie Helm, editor of Seattle Business. ”As the economy recovers and competition for talent intensifies, these companies will have an edge.”

“It’s a tremendous honor to receive this award once again because it’s based completely on direct employee feedback and participation. Nearly 70 percent of Allyis employees participated in the survey and we are grateful for their feedback,” said Allyis chief executive Jason Herman. “Each year we look at areas where employees indicated we can improve, and Allyis leadership actively works on and communicates those efforts and results to our staff.”

“Any team that plans to win year after year, whether it’s the Seattle Seahawks or one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, has to have a philosophy and communicate it to the members of the team,” said Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, the keynote speaker. “If people don’t know your philosophy, your vision, how are they going to know what you want them to do,” he said at the event.

A full list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For 2012 can be seen on http://seattlebusinessmag.com/article/100-best-companies-work-2012.

About Allyis

Allyis is a provider of technology, consulting, and managed services in the areas of web development, project and program management, and marketing. For more information, please visit www.allyis.com.

My technology needs had out grown my infrastructure and my ability to support what my users—okay what I—demanded. Office 365 came to the rescue. For far less than I spend on coffee each month, my household is now equipped with enterprise class email and collaboration tools.

• Family tree modeled in Managed Metadata – Done
• Appliance maintenance history calendar – Done
• Extranet site for collaborative planning of family reunion – Done
• Email and Calendar push to my Windows Phone – Done
• Integrating my TiVo via BCS – Maybe this summer

There are some things that I just can’t do with Office 365. I won’t be using PerformancePoint anytime soon to analyze the sleeping, eating and diaper patters of my new born daughter. Even though I would love to do that, Office 365 doesn’t support several Enterprise features like PerformancePoint, RecordsCenter or PowerPivot. Despite that limitation is a tremendously valuable tool. The best part is that I can access it from anywhere and I don’t have to spend Saturday nights applying the latest updates to my home server.

While my example here is likely extreme for most households, they are run-of-the-mill for many businesses.

• Company structure modeled in Managed Metadata
• Company payroll and holiday calendar
• Extranet for managing supplier relationships
• Enterprise email and calendaring using tools employees know
• Surface data out of your internal systems using BCS

It is easy to see how my domestic use of SharePoint can easily map to the management of your business. Office 365 has removed the barrier to entry for enterprise class communication tools for small to mid-sized business. You can be up and running in a very short amount of time and we would love to help you get there.

About Allyis

Allyis provides technology consulting and services that help businesses improve performance and meet their unique objectives. Whether designing and developing an employee intranet, helping you increase the reach and impact of your digital marketing campaigns, or providing the talent you need for your projects, Allyis leverages people and technology to help you achieve your unique business goals.

As an example, let’s talk about a specific scenario where SharePoint can have a major impact: contract management. The challenges of contract management for a sales-driven organization (and hence the problems SharePoint could help solve) include the following:

• Contracts usually need to be approved by at least one person, and there needs to be an easily referenced record of approval.
• Contracts and supporting documentation need to be retained and easily discovered later for internal reference as well as for external audits.
• There is a huge cost (both in terms of expense and opportunity cost) of having your sales team spend a lot of time creating, managing, and searching for this documentation.

For all of the reasons above, email is a terrible solution to this problem. What is needed is a business process that enforces documentation standards, captures all of the key information needed to understand the contract, manages the approval workflow, and makes everything easy to find days, months, or even years later. Here are some ways that SharePoint can enable that business process:

• Documentation standards, enforced by document templates, created directly within a centralized document library
• Workflows that move decisions and information out of email, enable managers to review and approve contracts, and provide access to supporting documentation, including estimates, relevant emails, and previous contracts or change orders
• Document Libraries that include simple but robust tagging based on document type and Views that enable people to see only the documents that are relevant to them based on role, time period, customer, or a number of other factors

Our own experience with a solution like this has enabled our sales people to spend roughly 5-10% more time doing what moves the business forward, not searching for old documentation in email or saved on their hard drives. It has also enabled us to reach consistency in our contract terms, leaving us at less risk in the event of an audit. Bottom line, we are spending less time on administrative tasks, while at the same time reducing financial risk and freeing up time to focus on growing the business.

That’s what business productivity means.