MASC on Monday said a file containing names and contact information of an unspecified number of AgriInsurance clients was “attached in error” to an email sent last Tuesday to 134 Manitoba producers.

“The information that was sent did not include clients’ social insurance numbers or financial information,” MASC said in its notice.

Producers affected by the breach can expect to be contacted directly by MASC, the agency said, but any farmers with further questions may also contact MASC via email.

MASC said it has put “additional process controls” in place and reported the privacy breach to Manitoba’s provincial ombudsman. It also said it “will conduct a review of its processes and procedures to minimize the risk of an incident of this nature occurring again.”

Affected farmers have the right to file a privacy complaint with the ombudsman’s office as per the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, MASC added. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Email is the big concern. Although it’s been more than two decades since email was widely adopted, it’s still king when it comes to business communications, especially when it’s used for avoiding phone tag or for making a record of a conversation.

Yet, despite email’s longevity, many of us could still benefit from brushing up on our email skills. So I turned to Heather Wright, instructor at the Ontario Business College. Wright has written “A Quick Guide to Better Email” and has tips on using email effectively and efficiently.

Wright gets down to business immediately. A good email starts even before your fingers touch the keyboard, she says. Think about what you want to say beforehand, and make sure you get to the point early. Be concise.

For simplicity, break your message down into its component parts and number them to make sure you’re organized.

Similarly, if you are responding to an email, make sure you are answering every question posed in the original message. This reduces delays and it reduces frustration.

If your response is short, send it in the email’s subject line so the recipient doesn’t have to open the message. Follow with “EOM” for “End of Message” so the recipient knows that is all there is to the reply. “Will attend meeting EOM,” for example.

Think before you hit “reply all.” Does everyone need to see your response? “If not, don’t do it,” says Wright. This helps to avoid clogging up everyone’s inboxes, a serious problem these days.

When sending group emails, put the recipient addresses in the BCC line. This maintains the privacy of the recipients and prevents spammers from harvesting their email addresses.

With the prevalence of social media and texting, it can be tempting to relax your use of capitals, punctuation and grammar in email, says Wright. But the standard hasn’t slipped when it comes to business correspondence, she says. You want to look professional and send a clear message. This requires appropriate grammar as well as writing in complete sentences. Otherwise you run the risk of wasting both the reader’s and your own time.

If grammar isn’t your strong suit, Wright suggests signing up for a free grammar app like Grammarly that finds the errors in your email.

And unless you know the person you are sending the email to you should avoid using tech talk and emojis, warns Wright. The meaning of an emoji isn’t always clear and may actually cause unintentional offense.

The same goes for sarcasm and humour, which can be lost without the tone of voice or body language of in-person interactions, continues Wright. This is especially important if there are cultural differences between sender and recipient, she says. “Saying LOL doesn’t make it better.”

Always proof your email before you hit send, adds Wright. If you have the time, leave the email in the draft folder for an hour then read it again before sending.

Phone etiquette

Sometimes it’s better to pick up the phone and call a person rather than send an email, text or other written message. Unfortunately, with the prevalence of texting and instant messaging, phone etiquette has become a bit of a lost art.

Wright also wrote a guide to telephone skills as part of her Better Business Communications series. Here are her phone etiquette tips:

• Answer the phone as if the person on the other end is interviewing you for a job. Don’t say “Yo” or “Hey” or “Sup.”
• Don’t answer the phone if there is loud music or if there are distracting noises. Find a quieter location and then call the person back as soon as you can.
• When you are calling someone, practice the message you want to leave in case the call goes to voicemail. Have a script prepared. Introduce yourself. Explain why you are calling. Then say your name again and leave your phone number. And say it slowly.
• Don’t talk on the phone while typing on your computer or scrolling through social media. The caller can hear the distraction in your voice. You don’t want the embarrassment of asking them to repeat something because you weren’t listening.
• Smile. The person can hear it.

Email security

Unfortunately, as email has become more prevalent, bad actors are increasingly using it to send spam or malicious threats.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security offers several tips for spotting suspicious emails:

• If you don’t recognize the sender, treat it with caution.
• Look for misspelled words in the body of the email. This is a trick that fraudsters use to bypass spam filters.
• Look for unusual phrasing in a message, which may suggest that the author is not legitimate.
• Always be suspicious of emails that contain offers that sound too good to be true, that ask you to click on a link in a message, or that request personal information.
• If a suspicious email appears to be from a recognized organization or client, contact the legitimate client or organization through another means of communication (e.g. the phone) and ask if they sent such an email.
• Do not write the spammer for any reason, even if it is to complain. Doing so will only confirm that your email address is valid and will actually result in more spam.
• Delete spam if you are certain it is not legitimate.
• Before sending emails or attachments that contain sensitive information, always ask yourself: “Could the unauthorized disclosure of this information cause serious harm to me or my business?” If the answer is “Yes,” then use another more secure method.

Email alternatives

Email isn’t the only game in town anymore when it comes to internal communications. Developers have been busy developing new communications tools and updating older apps. Here’s a sampling of options from Angela Spisak, a Stoney Creek, Ont. virtual assistant and marketing strategist.

Spisak says virtual assistants function as an extension of your business. They can assist with a variety of jobs including building websites, checking email and responding to clients.

Many of Spisak’s clients use Slack for team communications. “You get pop-up notifications so Slack is more immediate than email,” she says. Other advantages of Slack over email include that everything is in one place, discussions are easily searched, and it offers project management tools for collaboration. “You can easily look back to see what was said and what we were going to do,” says Spisak. Unlike texting, Slack messages can easily be printed out and saved for later.

Google Docs is useful for collaborating on documents, says Spisak.

For international clients with iPhones, Spisak uses Facetime audio to connect over Wi-Fi. For clients who don’t have iPhones, she uses WhatsApp.

Spisak likes Loom for creating internal “How-to” videos.

Zoom is used by Spisak mainly for team meetings and hosting webinars. “We can have video on and see each other, or not. And I’m able to record the call for review later.”

When it comes to evaluating new technology, Spisak says it’s about finding what’s best for you and your team. She recommends going to the product websites to learn more about features and also checking user reviews. “See what others are saying about it and how they use it.”

Resources

A Quick Guide to Better Emails, Presentations, Telephone Skills, Writing & Grammar (Better Business Communications) by Heather Wright (available through Amazon).

Spisak discusses her favourite digital marketing tools on her blog ‘Powered Up Marketing.’

The post Tips for better emailing appeared first on Country Guide.

The six companies — ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Cofco and Glencore Agriculture — announced Wednesday the project will be named Covantis, and have hired former ADM executive Stefano Rettore as the project’s leader until a CEO is in place.

“Covantis offers a path to improve agricultural trade, unlocking significant value for all players across the supply chain,” Rettore said in a release. “By working collaboratively with the industry, we have an opportunity to build a more effective, more efficient digital future for global trade.”

Rettore worked in international grain trading until May this year as president of ADM’s origination business. Before joining ADM in 2017 as its chief risk officer, he was president of the international trading arm of U.S. ag co-operative CHS.

ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus — the four ‘ABCD’ companies known to dominate the world’s grain trade — first announced their partnership in October last year to develop the proposed platform.

China’s Cofco International, which has operated a Canadian grain trading office since late 2016, joined the partnership last December, followed by Glencore Agriculture — owner of Canadian grain firm Viterra — in September this year.

Project developers said they visited Brazil in October and met with various stakeholders in soybean trade and traffic bound for China from the Brazilian port of Santos, which they said will be “the first trade lane in our future platform.”

The Covantis platform isn’t expected to launch until sometime next year, organizers said. The project itself, as well as its governance and executive appointments, are subject to regulatory approvals.

The partners said last year their project’s initial focus will be to “automate grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes.”

On its new website, Covantis is billed as an evolution from paper documents to digital processes, supporting a contract’s enforceability by allowing a user to see the full history of any changes made or requested.

Covantis’ operators say their proposed system could automate an estimated 60 per cent of the tasks involved in executing a transaction, and speed up the documentation processes which are now handled on paper or via emails by seven to 10 days on average.

Today, they said, over 275 million emails are sent each year to process the estimated 11,000 bulk shipments of grains and oilseeds moved by sea.

“End-to-end visibility at all stages of vessel execution would prevent slow-downs,” Covantis’ operators said. “Every process, from loading to transit to discharge, will be trackable in real-time with Covantis.”

Furthermore, they said, the new system would cut down on the likelihood of error by automating repetitive data, allowing a user to import the correct information once, then “replicate it in a single click.”

In all, they said, the platform would help reduce re-keying of entries by 90 per cent, while boosting transaction speed by 70 per cent. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The network, operated by ag meteorology firm Weather Innovations Consulting (WIN) in partnership with Glacier Farmmedia, owners of this website, gets its data mainly from over 1,100 weather stations set up at farms, grain elevators and other locations across Western Canada.

Farmers signed up for WeatherFarm’s daily email will be able to get daily data from the station of their choice, the company said, but will also get a daily wind and precipitation forecast.

That forecast, broken into morning, afternoon, evening and overnight segments, will include wind speed and direction, cloud cover and expected precipitation levels.

The email will also include maps charting high and low temperatures across the province of the farmer’s choice, noting the province’s daily average highs and lows.

The email also connects farmers to WeatherFarm’s local hourly forecast for that day and the following day, plus a seven-day forecast.

From the email, farmers can then reach other information on the WeatherFarm site for that station, including radar, weather analysis, historical data and crop-related tools such as SPRAYcast Lite, which helps farmers find windows of time most favourable for spraying.

A new WeatherFarm app is also now available for iPhone and Android phones, providing a mobile version of the station data and other information available on the WeatherFarm website. — AGCanada.com Network

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