So, What's Your Plan?

Which plan is that? The one for how all your IT applications work together to help your business succeed. The plan that goes right along with your business plan as one of the important living documents that you read and update every year. The one that details what your business needs to accomplish your mission, whether it's building hotels or building brands through innovative marketing programs. That plan that identifies what IT resources you have, what they do, and how you know they are effective, current, and secure.

If you're mumbling something like, "I know, I'm going to do that one of these days, but I've been busy, and you know how it is." Yes, we do know. After the first rush of getting a business launched, you focus on making it grow. As you need new IT solutions, you buy the software that seems best for the particular task. Only later do you find out that there is no way to export data from one system to another. You upgrade the operating system and then learn that some of your important applications won't run anymore. It happens all the time, and small businesses pay the price in slowed growth and unnecessary cost.

Last week we talked about how small businesses can learn from how large corporations handle their systems. You don't have to have millions of clients and billions of dollars to get the best combination of IT resources; all you need is some solid planning before you start spending. That's what large organizations do; they invest in planning before they spend the first dollar.

A solid IT plan starts with defining all your needs and then identifying the best solutions to meet them. It includes planning for hardware, operating system, and software version upgrades including system security. An important part of planning that is sometimes overlooked is setting the policies that define how the system will be used, and when components will or will not be replaced.

Take for example if you have 10 staff and 5 PCs. Your plan should include a statement regarding how the internet will be controlled, and a policy preventing employees from downloading too much of the wrong thing. Not only could you have a security risk with all those downloads, but you might be blowing your budget on broadband costs, running up $1,000's of unnecessary cost. One method is to remove control of firewall software from the end user and buy a robust router. This centralises control and lets you manage the network. Or consider this: The average total cost of ownership for a PC out of warranty and more than 3 years old is around $600 per year, and even more with lesser known brands. But a new PC with a 3-year warranty is around $1,100. Do the math and you'll find a saving of more than 33% over a 3-year period. It pays to turnover your network hardware when the warranties run out.

Your plan documents all of this so you have a blueprint for growth, doesn't it?. Yes, you can probably do this yourself - if you have the expertise to compare the technical options and understand the complexities of putting together software from different vendors to create the unique package that will serve you best. Or, you can do what larger companies have learned is the easier and more cost-effective way; choose an experienced professional IT implementer to guide you through the maze of possibilities.

So, what's your plan?

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

Is Your Marketing Message Getting Through?

You know what it's like…you open your email in the morning and see dozens of unread emails, maybe more. Now put yourself in your client's place. After dealing with the urgent emails, which messages do you think will be opened and read?

The answer is, the emails that deliver a valuable message, in an easy-to-read and pleasing form, are the ones that will be read and remembered. The challenge for you as a business owner is making sure your message is one of them. Not only do you need a message that works, you need an email marketing system that creates professional-looking emails, helps you manage contact email lists, and measure results. Above all, you want confidence that your messages will be delivered, and you want to be able to collect information from your market.

Sound like a full time job? It can be, but there's another option for the small business owner. Let someone else do it! Instead of spending hours and dollars trying to do it yourself, consider one of the companies that is set up specifically to handle email marketing. Companies like Constant Contact and Vertical Response can help you manage this important part of your marketing program.

The advantage to your business is two-fold. First, these email marketing companies have systems that let you run campaigns, include surveys, and stay in touch with clients and prospects alike. Whether you send a regular newsletter or need a special promotion, they are pros at marketing and might even have some new ideas you can use. Second, and just as important, the time and money you save can be spent where they will do the most good in building your bottom line.

Email marketing is here to stay. If you're going to reach out to your market, doesn't it make sense to get the most for your investment?

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

The Handheld Revolution

There you are in a hotel two or three time zones from home, feet up and cool beverage in hand. You've finished your meetings for the day and now it's time to open the laptop, check on email, review your next presentation, and get ready for tomorrow. Except the hotel's Internet connection is down so your laptop isn't talking to anyone, at least for the time being. Not a problem. You have your hand-held, perhaps a BlackBerry or maybe a Treo, and you're still in business.

Mobile computing has improved exponentially in the last few years to the point that, today, you can make phone calls, receive and send emails and instant messages, take pictures, update your calendar, browse the Internet, download and review documents, and play music, all from that one small device. There are models that have WiFi capability, 3G technology, and video recording ability. With some, you can even figure out where you are with GPS capabilities.

With older handheld devices, when you were away from home base and your PDA's synching cradle, you had to depend on email or a phone call to let you know about a schedule change. No more. The newer handhelds have push technology that doesn't wait for you to ask "What's new?" Changes to your calendar, tasks, and email in Outlook take only seconds to automatically synch to your BlackBerry, Windows Mobile or mobile phone calendar.

Sometimes what you need is a quick look at a document or spreadsheet. No problem now for the newer handhelds. With small screen readers much better than they used to be, you can receive Acrobat, Excel and Word documents on your phone and read them easily. This capability becomes even more powerful coupled with the latest version of MOSS (Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server) intranet software. Now, handheld users can see mobile versions of their KPI data, those all-important measures of performance.

Imagine you are at a client's office an hour away from your office. How much would it be worth to know that the prospect you've been trying to get in to see for months can see you today if you can be there in two hours? That's when you can quickly see the value of making a full-featured handheld part of your every day business outfit.

With these new mobile computing options there is no longer any question about whether we can be connected anytime, anywhere . Should we always be connected? Ah, that is a topic for another day.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

Use the Other CRM to Create Future Success

What is the single biggest cost for most businesses? Correct – people. Salaries, taxes, and benefits are a major expense, so managing the hiring and retention of good employees is critical to an organisation's success. In the information age, when knowledge has become the product of value, managing your company's talent resources is as critical as managing cash flow or making investment decisions.

The other CRM – Candidate Relationship Management – is an outgrowth of traditional Human Resource (HR) activities. In the past HR departments have concentrated on making policy, hiring and troubleshooting staffing issues, and managing the risks of being an employer. That's no longer enough. The best managed organisations are reaching out ahead of need to create a system that identifies candidates and builds an optimal workforce for the business. And it's working. Companies that invest in talent management are showing higher performance than their competitors, because it is the people who are the creators of value.

CRM systems are designed to help improve recruiting, development, and retention of employees who have the skills and aptitudes to meet a company's needs, both now and in the future. If your company always seems to be scrambling to find good people to hire, consider adding a CRM system to help expand the pool of qualified, pre-screened candidates before you need them.

There's a good article that includes techniques for building your talent management process here: http://tinyurl.com/2kl72n. CRM tools don't have to be elaborate and expensive to be effective, and there are options for small firms with salaried as well as hourly employees. The key is not size or complexity, but how well you are able to build a knowledge base of good candidates. If you have employees, you owe it to your organization to build a business-enhancing CRM system.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

Why Won't My Listing Show Up on the Google?

That's the question many businesses ask. You spend money to design a great, effective website, and you sprinkle the content with what you think are sure-fire keywords. You know enough about search engines to realise that they "look" for not only keywords but also frequent updates to content and activity when calculating your search engine ranking. Each of the major engines – Google, Yahoo, Ask, and others – has a closely guarded system for ranking web sites.

So you have a great site. You want to see your listing there on the search results page. You start trying your keywords in a search and scan down the page of results – your listing isn't there! You go to the next page, then the next…and somewhere down the line you finally find your company.

If you have a product or service that is not unique in the world, this has probably happened to you. Try searching on "computer repair" – in Google I got 17,200,000 possible results! Narrow it a bit more to "computer repair service" and now we have 2,200,000 results. Try again with "computer repair service Sydney" and it's down to 166,000. But that's still a massive number, and if you're not on the first couple of pages of results, chances are people won't scroll long enough to find you.

Why do some companies always seem to be at or near the top of the list? The answer is simple: They pay to be there. That's right, you can buy your way to the top of the page. Look again at your search results, and notice that the very first few results have a slightly different background colour and, in small print, "sponsored results."

But unlike traditional advertising, where you put an ad in a magazine and hope your potential customer sees it, advertising on search result pages is very much targeted. All of the search engines have such programs; you choose your engine and then plan your advertising campaign around it. Google's AdWords is one that has been around for several years and has features that not only help you get business but also help you tweak your ads for best effect.

Here's how it works. You create an ad that Google displays above or beside regular search results, based on the keywords you choose to be associated with. For instance, if you have that computer repair service, you might want your ad to appear when people search for "PC repair" or "computer parts" or even "memory chips."

What's different from traditional advertising is that you don't pay Google to run your ad. You pay them when someone actually clicks on your link, at so much per click. How much? That's also up to you. You "bid" on keywords. If you bid more than other people then your ad will appear nearer the top. In addition to your bid, Google considers how effective your ad is, based on how many people click through, when choosing how high on the list to display your ad.

The major advantage of using AdWords is that, if someone uses your keywords in a Google search, you know they are looking for what you are advertising. You've hit your target. Google also has great tools that help you refine your ads to be better targeted. Using their reporting capabilities, you can even tell you which buttons are being clicked.

AdWords can be a cost-effective part of you marketing. To get started, visit our web site and let us help you.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

What's All the Fuss over VoIP?

Sometimes that thing that sounds too good to be true turns out to really be true. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has turned into one of those techno-promises that has proven its potential, especially as a cost saver for business.

The concept is simple – plug your phone into the Internet, and talk to the world as if it were all next door. And the reality is almost as easy: VoIP service converts your voice to a digital signal, and that can be sent over the Internet. On the other end, it comes out as your voice in a signal that the receiver can process – cell phone, wired phone, whatever. VoIP does require a broadband (high-speed Internet) connection for your computer, but these days you need that just to conduct business effectively anyway.

Since the service starts with your computer, your desktop computer can actually make calls directly from your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Now, while you talk to a customer you can also be reviewing their information on your computer, entering orders, checking schedules, or even writing a confirmation of your phone conversation. Sure, you could do that before, but what was that phone call costing you?

As simple as the VoIP concept is, the main attraction has always been the potential cost savings. Installing a traditional wired phone system for your office with multiple stations could be an enormous investment. But a VoIP PBX system with up to 16 extensions costs under $2,000. And if that got your attention, how about calling from Sydney to Perth for just 10c? Period. Now your mobile phone can become an extension of your PBX, and a call to a mobile can cost only 20c/minute, regardless of the carrier.

During the early days of VoIP there were stories of dropped calls, just as there were with the early cell phones. But the technology has advanced rapidly, and these days VoIP is highly reliable. You do need to understand how the system works and what services are available, because there will be differences from your old style wired phone system. But that brings us to another advantage of a computer-based VoIP phone system - one service provider can install and support everything for you. That provider will be able to advise you about the best service choice for your business.

So give VoIP a look and a listen. With the cost savings and increased efficiency, I think you will soon be saying, “Now we’re talking!”

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

Wouldn't it be nice to know you know what you know?

If your head is spinning from that title, here's another way of saying the same thing. Your business has accumulated a vast amount of data that can be of value to you now and as your business grows. But if all that data is not in a form that you can easily retrieve and analyse, it is of little use. You may actually be sitting on a treasure trove of information that could improve your customer service and your profit, but how to get hold of the treasure?

Knowledge Management can bring order to this chaos and help you find the nuggets buried in your data stores. Many small businesses simply do not realise that they have been building an unstructured collection of valuable data. Applying knowledge management tools can organize and mine this storehouse, and also make it possible for the information to be shared across the organization.

Too often, customer billing information is in one file, purchasing history is in another and client contact information in another. Project information including the skills needed, who worked on what, how long they took, and how much it cost compared to the revenue, all that is somewhere else. Imagine how valuable it would be to look down into your data stores and discover connections and relationships you might not have noticed before. What could that mean to building and enhancing customer relationships? To your company's strategic planning? What might you change if you discovered patterns of buying that you had not seen before?

In many ways, knowledge management is a living thing. As humans, we are constantly renewing ourselves. We recognise changing conditions, draw on our memories of what has served us well in the past to deal with change, visualise alternative outcomes, and make decisions about how we will proceed. We carry our database on our shoulders and make connections and see relationships that change continually as we gather new data from our experiences. That's very much like what a knowledge management system can do for a business.

In today's increasingly high-speed, competitive environment, businesses cannot afford to waste resources or miss opportunities. I've found that a frequent benefit of knowledge management is an increase in internal collaboration and sharing of best practices. As a company, you already know more than you think you know. And now you know that knowing is not enough; you have to be able to share knowledge and eliminate duplication.

Know what I mean?

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.

Cradle Your Customers in a COTS Solution

When customers call for help or information, does your system make them feel like welcome guests or annoying pests? From the first contact, whether by web or voice, the systems you have in place should be helping you capture and keep clients.

Of course you and your staff are courteous. But if you don't know that the same customer called a week ago, and what the call was about, a cheerful voice and frequent apologies will not erase the fact that you didn't care enough to make a note. Is a client celebrating a business anniversary? A greeting card takes seconds to send and can pay dividends for years to come.

Ah, but how to capture all that important information, and be able to find it in seconds? That's where your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system pays for itself over and over. And, you don't have to spend a fortune either.

CRM has been around for years and many very effective software packages have been brought to the market. But just as "one-size-fits-all" never does, so a straight off-the-shelf package is not going to suit everyone. Full custom development is a huge investment, but there is a middle ground.

COTS can be your answer: Customised off-the-shelf brings the best of both worlds to your business with a system that will collect, store, report, and help you analyze the details of your customer relationships that matter to you. You will have the features needed to manage your business your way, and still have the benefits of off-the-shelf economy.

Starting with the base of a fully functional application, the integrator will tweak the system to meet your specific requirements. Snap-shot views help you see what's in your pipeline of sales, reports help you understand how well your sales staff are doing, and client records help you collect and organise information on every contact your customers have with the company. Score card reporting allows you to visit or call customers with full confidence and preparation.

Knowledge is power, and the data collected by a well-designed and implemented customised off-the-shelf CRM system can put that power in your hands. The payoff will be a more efficient process and happier, more loyal customers.

At Chill we take the heat out of IT. No matter what pressure you are under, we will always keep our heads and make sure you get back up and running as soon as possible. So don't sweat - Chill IT. Click here for more information on our consulting services.