All in one network appliances, sold by Microsoft (Small Business Server), Network Integration Technologies (Nitx - now owned by IBM), Novel (Novel Small Business Suite) and other vendors are not new. However, CRN writes that your local solution provider might be re-introducing them to you.
Instead of having servers and appliances (hosted or other wise) for email, web site, file server, network security management and other uses, having one appliance to centrally manage and provide critical network functions is an option. Of course one down side is that if the box fails, everything goes down.
The advantage of having one box is simplicity of management and lower cost of ownership. You also save space and reduce energy consumption.
Network appliances might not be for every business, but at least if your computer consultant recommends one to you - you know what he's talking about.
You can see a video of Allworx's CEO. Allworx is one of the companies reviewed by CRN. In this interview the focus is on their telephone products, but it's an interesting video, nevertheless.
Enabling sales online is easy. Very easy. You can use PayPal or any one of hundreds of ecommerce solutions from Yahoo, Amazon.com, eBay or your web host. These solutions are relatively easy (did I say this three times?) to implement and if you can't do it yourself you can hire someone to put an ecommerce solution together for you. Of course depending on the size of your inventory, traffic expected, features needed and other variables - your budget will vary.
The hard part of selling online, however, is not JUST selling the product but boosting sales, getting customers to come back and buy again. Remember, if customers don't find what they want on your web site, the product they want is only a click away.
In an awesome online presentation, Jason Billingsley, VP of innovation, at ecommerce software maker Elastic Pathgives 9 ecommerce innovations.
The 9 innovations are
Video
Customer Service
Real World guided selling
Multi-store retailing
User inter-face design
Navigation
Merchandising
Social Shopping
Loyalty
I've sat through dozens and dozens of presentations (probably lots more) and many of them are traditional boring, bullet point presentations. There's more to a presentation than just typing text into Power Point (or some other presentation package) and reading from the slide deck.
The design firm that helped create Al Gore's famous "An Inconvenient Truth" slide show shared a few do's and don't's to make a great presentation with InternetNews.com
And passion can be a key to any presentation. "You need to be comfortable on stage, passionate and vulnerable," said Duarte.
Michael Moon, Duarte's creative director of content, said a great presentation is all about telling a great story. "Clients get nervous when we say 'tell a story' because they think we're talking about fiction, but story-telling dates back to the early cave paintings."
Getting started in online advertising can be a bit intimidating for a small business owner - there is just so much information out there and so many choices, it's easy to get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. However, starting small and taking your time can still have a big payoff.
When lifelong peanut farmer Danielle Baker of Baker's Peanuts decided to expand the business five years ago, she was faced with a whole new market segment to reach. Her family-run operation grew from strictly wholesale to include consumer sales of peanut goodies and gift baskets. Baker initially began advertising through offline channels including print ads in magazines and newspapers, radio ads and exhibiting at food shows. Although they had good results through these avenues, it took a significant budget and time to see the sales roll in.
Earlier this week I downloaded a regular supply of Microsoft updates for Windows XP. As has been the usual case, the updates were downloaded automatically via Microsoft's automatic update utility. I've been using this utility for years with no problem, but recently, every now and then programs simply, just don't work.
My suspicion is that some of the most recent Windows updates have caused programs to stop working. This last set of updates caused a few of the support tools of my Lenovo notebook to stop working, for example. This was merely a hassle, as I don't use the tools, but I don't like anything on my computer to not work.
What's the solution? I'm not sure if there is an easy solution. Very large companies take the time to first test updates and ensure they work on their computers. This process could take several hours to properly test. You don't have the time for that and probably don't have extra computers just waiting to be tested.
Another solution is to sign up with a managed service provider such as CMIT Solutions, Green House IT, Direct Pointe or one of dozens of other national, regional or local managed service providers. These providers will first test the Microsoft update to ensure it's "good". Keep in mind, however, that you might have a particular application that won't work with the update. The only real way to know this is to try it out.
In the end, I resolved my problems by a) downloading service patch 3 of Windows XP and reinstalling the Lenovo applications that weren't working. It was a royal pain, but it worked.
Time spent on client work is directly tied to revenue for service based professionals. If you don't have a reliable, easy to use tool for tracking project time of employees, contractors, and yourself that ties into billing and collections, you're making life so much harder than it needs to be. (Still using Excel? This article is for you!)
There are quite a few solutions, both hosted and offline, that are suitable for the small professional service firm including Quickbooks by Intuit, Freshbooks and Timeslips from Sage Software. Sage recently announced the release of the newest version of Timeslips, touting enhancements that give greater reporting and customization capabilities.
We had some questions for Sam Hunter from Sage Software about Timeslips and time and billing solutions in general:
How do many smaller businesses manage their time now?
Many small businesses today use a variety of methods to keep track of how they spend their time. Some use spreadsheets and categorize their time by task or client. Others keep track within Outlook, in the Journal or using Notes. There are actually a large number that still do so manually, using pen and paper. The biggest hurdle with all of these methods is tallying up the total time spent and creating an automated method of billing for the time spent on tasks.
Timeslips is a comprehensive and flexible time and billing application that is used by service-based professionals across many industries. Each new release of Timeslips is the result of feedback from our customers across various industries that bill for their services.
Mind mapping has traditionally been associated with creative types like writers and designers to brainstorm or organize research in a visual, non-linear way. There are several hosted services that let you create a mind map online and share it, including Bubbl.us, Mindomo, and Thinkature.
A new Saas version of Mindjet's MindManager mapping program, Mindjet Connect, takes the standalone mapping features and combines them with a business collaboration solution (think Google Docs, WebEx Office, Office Live). Its integration with Microsoft Project and other MS applications make it an interesting alternative for companies that already rely on MS Office. We talked with Michael Deutch of Mindjet to find out more:
Q&A with Michael Deutch, Director of Solutions Marketing, Mindjet Corporation
There are many hosted and software based project collaboration tools on the market: Microsoft SharePoint and Live Workgroup, Clarizen, CatalystWeb, HyperOffice and so many other solutions. How does one pick the right solution for their business?
There are dozens of project collaboration tools for teams to choose from and you’ve got to pick the tools that are going to work best for you. Most simply facilitate the tracking of project schedules, status and related documents. The difference with Mindjet is it raises the quality of your project collaboration throughout every step of your process by putting the concept of dynamic visual thinking and mind mapping at the center. Mindjet software enables you to visually gather, manage and share a large variety of information and resources quickly and easily -- making it an ideal tool for managing projects.
Technology is a useful tool - but sometimes it can be downright embarrassing - or shall I say - how we use it can be downright embarrassing. Remember the time when you could not get your phone off speaker phone and some was yelling at you, over the phone, on the train? Remember when an email you mean to send to Jill Johnson, really went to Will Johnson?
The Wall Street Journal writes how these kind of these can happen during virtual meetings, if we're not careful.
Only a few keystrokes separate one's private life from the virtual world. The wrong computer settings, an awkward Web-camera angle and even something as harmless as the "hold" button on the telephone can create lasting career memories. And unlike face-to-face blunders, virtual gaffes can be captured for posterity on Web sites and ridiculed by viewers time and time again.
If online marketing is confusing, you're not alone. Every time I think I'm an expert in online marketing - I always learn something new. Advertising on the radio, in print or TV is hard enough - online advertising, in some ways is just as, or even more challenging. You create your Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn profile. Now how do you market through these channels. How do you get your blog content syndicated through these online channels? What about cost per click vs search engine marketing? Should you create a widget or maybe your own social networking site using Ning or Kickapps?
I know it's a lot to learn.
Whether you're a novice or an expert attending the Online Marketing Summit could be well worth your time. There's going to be a lot of useful content from experts - you might just learn something.
Email marketing is key for promoting your business. After an effective website, an informative and well designed email newsletter is one of your most important marketing tools.
If you really want to boost your email marketing, I highly recommend the newsletter/podcast of Blue Penguin Development. It's one of those handful of newsletters that I really do read every issue of (yes, we all try to slim down that inbox with the delete key), because Michael Katz gives plain-spoken, entertaining guidance about what makes an effective newsletter - beyond the technical elements.
So, with so many choices of email marketing providers available, how do you go about choosing the best one for your company? Most of the "big" names offer the same core of basic services, differing mainly on additional features and pricing, which are easy to compare. [More on this in our guest Q&A below.] In my experience, it's the features (or lack thereof) that you won't really notice until you're getting into the nitty-gritty of creating the email that can drive you nuts. None of them are earth-shattering, but hearing a client uses one particular provider over another is enough to make me give an internal "Yes!" or "Oh, man" when I find out which one I'll have to work with.
Smallbiztechnology.com helps small-medium sized businesses strategically use technology as a tool to grow their businesses and provides news, articles, discussion boards, resources, analysis & events for the owners of small to medium sized busineses.
tags: appliances, network |
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