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👻 s Among Us (How to Prevent Payroll Fraud)

CMMA Blog

Payroll fraud is incredibly common. White collar crimes can be slippery because they aren’t always as obvious as someone swiping a stack of bills from the cash register. Some perpetrators likely don’t even think of themselves as thieves. They’re just “redirecting” funds they feel should be theirs anyway, “manipulating their payroll records ” to show they had extra vacation time, or clocking in when they’re not actually on duty . Those last two, by the way, were done by police officers and a firefighter, respectively.

What is Payroll Fraud? What Are The Stakes?

Payroll fraud is a misappropriation of funds that can happen a variety of ways. It could happen in the form of paying “ghost” employees or vendors. Such entities look legitimate but exist solely as a front. They may be workers who’ve quit, been fired, or died but are still receiving paychecks. They could be vendors that seemingly provide a service, but are in fact, nonexistent.

Another form of payroll fraud is when a worker clocks in when they’re not working or has someone clock in for them when they’re running late. Any form of falsifying hours falls under the umbrella of payroll fraud. Businesses lose billions in reported cases and small businesses are especially vulnerable. The duration of the schemes varies, but some businesses only find out after a worker has been fleecing it for years.

Resources to Prevent And Detect Payroll Fraud

Depending on a company’s setup, payroll fraud can sometimes be remarkably easy to pull off. Businesses with small payroll departments are most vulnerable, but it happens at the big companies and even feel-good nonprofits , too.

As usual, the best approach is prevention. Preventive measures discourage a would-be fraudster from trying something unsavory in the first place. They also make it easier for companies to catch perpetrators early on. Any resources a company puts toward preventative measures pales in comparison to the potential cost of lax procedures.

  1. Hire with discretion. Use the Social Security Administration website,  E-verify  or the IRS website  to confirm candidates’ identities. Continue the process by conducting a background check before hiring anyone as well as at regular intervals even after they’re on the team. Institute a process and apply the same level of scrutiny to every employee at every level.
  2. Separate duties. This applies especially to smaller businesses where one person fills multiple roles. If the same person makes entries, writes checks, and audits the books, they have too much power and can cause problems. Separating duties when possible and having a system of checks and balances (pun intended) in place goes a long way toward preventing fraudulent behaviors.
  3. Conduct audits. Both internal and external audits can identify fraudulent activities and each has benefits. When used in conjunction, these efforts can pay off big time by preventing issues or detecting them early. Quarterly reviews are a healthy standard practice for companies of all sizes.

Something Doesn’t Seem Right. Now what?

So let’s say you’ve taken preventive measures to minimize risks and something still doesn’t add up. If you see any red flags, it’s time to dig.

  1. Watch for ghosts, unusual behavior, and anything out of the ordinary. Twitter made headlines in 2022 attempting to identify if there were ghost employees sucking up payroll. This article identifies other red flags to watch out for. Hint: an employee who never takes a day off may not be as dedicated as you think.
  2. Provide an outlet for other employees to report suspicions. Company leaders can’t have their eyes on everything and it’s often the ones in the trenches that will be first to identify when something is amiss. Organizations with hotlines receive more tips to potential fraud than those without.
  3. Follow the 💰. Corruption always leaves a trail. If more than one employee uses the same bank account, unknown vendors are receiving checks, and unusual expenses are popping up, it’s worth looking into. If something seems like it could be amiss, investigate. If you have the resources to conduct a thorough internal investigation, that’s a good place to start. If not, hire someone to do it for you. And do it quietly so you don’t tip off the fraudster(s) before you have all the information you need.

Can Businesses Conduct Payroll Fraud?

We’ve talked about the workers, but companies can be guilty of a different kind of payroll fraud as well. Businesses that misclassify employees as independent contractors to avoid paying payroll tax and other costs associated with employees are also guilty of payroll fraud. It’s not the focus of this post, but we cover worker classification in depth. Contact us for a free risk assessment if you think your worker classification practices could use a second look.

Bottom Line

Now is a great time to identify vulnerabilities, and determine a course of action. Most payroll fraud, while incredibly frustrating and costly, is highly preventable. If you’d rather offload some of your payroll completely, call 303-526-4900 or email us. We minimize the time, effort, and risk associated with worker classification, payroll, and more.

The post 👻 s Among Us (How to Prevent Payroll Fraud) appeared first on PayReel .

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Getting the Most Out of Interactive Video for E-Commerce

CMMA Blog

Forget “try before you buy.” Today’s consumers are all about watching before they buy. Research from Brightcove shows that 85% of consumers worldwide use video content in some way to inform their online shopping decisions.
The next generation of e-commerce video marketing is here now, too: interactive video . More than eight in 10 shoppers who spend the most money online agree that interactive videos with features such as click-to-purchase links are helpful as they shop online.
The challenge for brands looking to seize this opportunity is that most video platforms don’t offer interactivity directly in the platform. However, Brightcove is one of the few online video platforms (OVPs) that offers interactivity out of the box (OOTB). For a feature designed to improve the customer experience, the benefits of in-platform interactivity are undeniable.
Benefits of OOTB Interactivity
There is, of course, one key benefit to using third-party interactivity: It’s platform agnostic. Most vendors work with a variety of OVPs. While switching video platforms might seem like a hassle, the many benefits of OOTB interactivity (like Brightcove) make it worthwhile.

Seamless integration. Features are designed to work with the rest of the software, reducing the amount of time and effort required to get the system up and running.
Consistent user experience. There is a consistent user experience for interactive elements, reducing confusion and improving customer engagement.
Lower costs. Unlike third-party features that require additional licenses for fees, the cost is included in the software subscription, making the rates more transparent and cost-effective.
Greater security. There are more robust security features in place to protect systems and data. You can take advantage of them without having to implement additional security measures for third-party integrated features.
Easier maintenance. Interactive features are maintained and updated by the OVP, reducing the burden on you to maintain and update it. Plus, feature enhancements aren’t time-consuming or costly for you—they come with the package.

Interactive Video Features
While OOTB interactivity is still uncommon among OVPs, several features have become standard across interactivity offerings. Overlays, quizzes, chapters, polls, external links, and in-video branching are available on most solutions, including Brightcove.
However, Brightcove has the widest interactivity feature set, including several advanced features that many other platforms do not. The standard features are a step in the right direction, but the following advanced features further interactivity’s goal of making video behave more like the web.

Sentiment. A high-performing product video clearly demonstrates interest. But without knowing the customer sentiment, you won’t know if that interest is related to purchases or returns. Embedding a video with sentiment options like thumbs up/thumbs down, star ratings, or emoticons can help you discern the difference.
Video-to-video branching. If streaming services have taught us anything, it’s that consumers like the video experience. With video-to-video branching, online shoppers never have to leave. Instead of returning to a menu, they can continue browsing similar or related products from the comfort of your video player.
Time triggers. One of the most important rules of interactive video is giving the viewer time to react. Opportunities for feedback or browsing different product videos can quickly become opportunities for frustration if the video continues before the viewer can take action. Time triggers allow you to pause the video at certain points, or skip to another part of the video if no action is taken.
Personalization. If your website offers a store login, you can further refine your customers’ viewing experience based on the first-party data they submitted. Like the restaurant server who remembers your name and order, your video player could do the same.
Chat. In stores, getting your questions about a product answered is easy—just ask someone. Overlaying third-party messaging programs onto your video provides a similar, digital experience. Why lose an immediate sale when you answer questions in real time?
Custom content. Embedding custom forms means that RSVPing to a launch party doesn’t have to wait for a follow-up email. Whether you use Google Forms, Mailchimp, Typeform, Calendly, or Eventbrite, feel free to collect form data without asking your customers to click off the video.

Interactive Video Playback
The most advanced interactive features are worthless if your customers can’t play or properly view the video. Thankfully, interactive video has come a long way; most platforms offer web playback on all the major browsers as well as mobile web playback.
Especially with almost half (42%) of e-commerce now happening on mobile , it’s critical to ensure the video experience is seamless on every user’s device. Unlike some interactive solutions that only offer lightboxes, Brightcove provides inline experiences. While lightboxes are notoriously unresponsive on mobile devices, inline provides a much more user-friendly experience.
Most platforms also allow interactive playback in standard landscape orientation, and some, including Brightcove, allow portrait.
Interactive Video Analytics
Interactive video not only provides a better video experience for online shoppers, it gives marketers more granular behavioral data about their customers. Most solutions offer this through platform analytics, CSV export, API access, and the ability to integrate with Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
The metrics offered will vary, but you can expect most platforms to include metrics related to activity stream, aggregate performance, conversion, and overlay clicks. However, few offer stop watching/exit metrics like Brightcove. Similar to a video’s engagement rate, these metrics are key to knowing how your audience is responding to your interactive elements.
For example, just as too many interactive elements can be distracting, so can the wrong element at the wrong time. Stop watching metrics can help you test and isolate the optimum time in a video to place a Buy Now button or a related product link.
Thanks to native MAP integrations, Brightcove also offers user-level reporting like click-through rate, navigation rate, and response rate. If this sounds like an absurd amount of data, it is. This is actually one of the biggest issues with interactivity providers: great data but poor insights.
Marketers don’t just need more data; they need the tools to quickly interpret and act upon it. This is why Brightcove also offers Audience Insights, the leading customer data platform (CDP) specifically designed for video. With proprietary metrics as well as fully aggregated user-level data, Brightcove offers more actionable interactive video insights than any other platform on the market.
How to Compete with Interactive Video in E-Commerce
E-commerce brands know that video can make or break a product purchase. But with so much video content, it’s hard to stand out. And even when you do, it’s often hard to figure out why. It’s not enough knowing that a video was viewed or a call-to-action was clicked. Brands must focus on why a viewer took the next step or dropped off.
While other platforms can produce engaging, interactive videos, most aren’t innovative enough to meet the data-driven demands of e-commerce strategies. Brightcove Interactivity offers everything enterprises need to compete in today’s highly personalized, audience-centric market.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Your Secret Weapon For Eliminating Red Tape For Hiring (a Quiz)

CMMA Blog

For companies that hire a lot of freelancers, an Employer of Record (EOR) can be a lifesaver—or at least save some headaches if not literal lives. A partner for handling hiring temporary workers can be a key to avoiding fines and court dates by keeping businesses out of trouble. An employer of record is defined as “a company or organization that is legally responsible for paying employees, including dealing with employee taxes, benefits, insurance, etc.”

As such, an EOR deals with the administrative problems and mountains of paperwork that come with hiring, paying, and insuring workers. Outsourcing parts of business that require extremely-specialized skills and those that deal with risk and compliance can be a very wise business move. These issues have very high stakes and a partner is required when devoting the time and resources toward doing the job right simply isn’t feasible. Keeping your workforce happy and paid on time/with accuracy is also crucial to maintaining a happy workforce. In addition, the laws are always changing and audits, fines, and penalties follow when airtight systems and processes are not in place. An EOR keeps everything running as it should and serves as the employer. As such, it takes on many of the related responsibilities and liabilities while employees work for another company.

Would an EOR Benefit Your Business?

  1. Does hiring new workers slow you down when you’re trying to accomplish a goal or staff an event?
  2. Do you have a lot of freelance hiring needs on tight deadlines?
  3. Does freelance payroll management cause your team headaches?
  4. Would maintaining current headcount when engaging freelancers save you trouble?
  5. Do you have compliance concerns?
  6. Does your staff need refreshers on workers’ comp and necessary insurance for contractors every time you hire freelancers?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you might consider whether an EOR would help you. In addition to easing the above concerns, an EOR turns a mountain of hiring paperwork into a molehill and handles certificates of insurance, I-9s, and E-verify forms. They also terminate employees when necessary, administer benefits, and conduct background checks and drug screenings.

Bottom Line

Not every company needs an EOR, but for those who do, it’s a game changer. We find clients benefit greatly from partnering with an EOR when they need help onboarding or don’t have the capacity to handle hiring-related HR issues. Since PayReel specializes in these services, we have systems in place to make everything as efficient and smooth as possible. Sometimes, having an EOR in position can be the difference between staffing and finishing projects on time and tanking a project before it really even gets off the ground. If you think you might benefit, reach out to PayReel  and we’ll talk through solutions for your unique situation.

The post Your Secret Weapon For Eliminating Red Tape For Hiring (a Quiz) appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Making QoE Actionable for Video Streaming

CMMA Blog

Earning trust is at the core of Brightcove’s efforts to grow our leadership position in the streaming technology industry. That’s why we launched QoE Analytics, a suite of features focused specifically on Quality of Experience (QoE). There’s no better way to build trust with our customers than helping them monitor our performance in the arena where it matters most: the viewing experience.
Why Monitor QoE?
Quality of Service (QoS) and QoE are often lumped together, which can seem like a lot for many media companies to take on, both in complexity and cost. However, they are fundamentally different. QoS focuses on key network performance metrics at an operations level, while QoE provides a sense of the viewing experience from a user perspective.
We believe that QoE is more meaningful and often more actionable for most media companies, given the direct correlation to user satisfaction.
What QoE Metrics Are Important?
Brightcove collects a massive amount of data on behalf of our customers. This allowed us to narrow our QoE measurements down to the ones with the most significant correlations. We then cross-checked these findings with our own research team as well as several leading media companies who have studied this carefully. Based on this, we believe the following four metrics are the most important to track over time.
1) Video start time
Video start time measures the average number of seconds elapsed between the play request and the stream start. High start times correlate with abandonment before streaming even starts and can indicate issues with the CDN, player plug-ins, and initial stream bitrate where intervention makes sense. Low video start times mean your audience is watching video quickly, which is what they expect.
2) Stall Rate
Stall rate is the average number of stalls per hour, calculated by comparing total stalls to total hours viewed in the selected time range. Unlike other rebuffering events, video stalls directly affect playback. This can manifest as single stalls of significant length or frequent stalls of varying length. Thus, a low stall rate means smoother playback and a better viewer experience.
3) Error Rate
Error rate is the percentage of all play requests with errors preventing playback (as opposed to background errors the viewer doesn’t notice). These errors typically occur before playback begins, but they can also happen during playback. Low error rates mean that customers are usually able to watch the content they select.
4) Upscaling Time
Upscaling time measures the average number of seconds per hour of viewing that is spent in an upscaled state. Upscaling occurs when a video rendition is streamed at a lower resolution than the playback device can display, often resulting in fuzziness or pixelation. This is particularly noticeable when a lower resolution stream is played on a large-screen device. Low upscaling time generally means your viewers are enjoying smooth, crisp video playback.
While upscaling time is critical in monitoring quality of experience, there are times when it may not affect the viewer. For example, upscaling often happens when high resolution content is streamed to a 4K TV but not encoded at 4K. Since most viewers won’t notice this, it’s important to dig into the data to determine the reasons behind low upscaling times.
What Dimensions Affect QoE?
QoE metrics can be affected by a number of different factors, from mobile app updates to content delivery network (CDN) changes. Breaking down those metrics by different dimensions makes it easy to compare performance and identify issues and opportunities.
Device Type
Looking at metrics by device category allows you to see device-specific issues and trends over time. The imaginary example below shows a spike in error rate for Android devices that could be correlated to a recent app update.

Stream Type
By comparing the QoE metrics of VOD against livestreams, you can isolate mode-specific issues or trends. In the fictional example below, there was a jump in upscaling around a live event that resolved quickly.

Player
Looking at QOE metrics broken out by player is a great way to isolate player-specific issues. For example, there can be significant differences in load time, depending on the plugins that load at play request. There can also be issues in specific players that result in increased error rates. Seeing these differences makes them easier to isolate and act on.
Country
For customers who operate internationally, viewing QoE metrics by country can assist in isolating regional issues. Imagine a media company adopted a new content delivery network for their Asian consumers. From the example below, it’s clear that the CDN underperformed when looking at the stall rate.

QoE Analytics in Context
To properly track trends, it’s also important to see metrics and dimensions in context with each other. For example, Brightcove’s QoE solution not only provides charts for each metric, it includes a table with all metrics for a more comprehensive view. In addition to the key metrics, it also includes view count, video resolution breakdown, rebuffering time, and average bitrate for additional context.
The table is sortable by any of the columns and responsive to dimension selection, making it easy to explore and identify outliers. In the fictional example below, the device dimension was selected.

Quality of Experience You Can Trust
On most days, Quality of Experience reporting will be a testament to the high quality video streaming that Brightcove is known for. However, issues can arise and we want to ensure that we’re helping our customers see them. This is a big step forward in our mission to be the most trusted streaming technology company in the world.

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Meet The Team: Kaitlyn Kimmel

CMMA Blog

Kaitlyn’s background handling property tax issues and motor vehicle dealers has sharpened her customer service skills. She loves being able to help people find solutions and just generally make their day better. Kaitlyn stays extremely organized so she can be at her best in her role. She lives by her calendar and planner.

Growing up, Kaitlyn’s parents owned a roller skating rink and the passion for skating has stayed with her into adulthood. She’s a serial DIYer and especially enjoys silversmithing and refinishing furniture. On the weekends, you might find Kaitlyn hanging out with her two pets or volunteering in her local animal shelters or soup kitchens.

Something else: Kaitlyn believes that good things take time, so if you drop by, you’ll likely find some of those good things fermenting on her counter in the form of kombucha or kimchi.

The post Meet The Team: Kaitlyn Kimmel appeared first on PayReel .

To view our Partner blog, click here