It looks like CNN is taking the lead among others when talking about using technology to improve and reinvent the way they show information. First captured my attention the Microsoft surface technology and now this:
Just a short message: Looks like there are some plans on having our SBSC meeting around the mid of November in the shape of a nice dinner. Ideas? feedback is always well received!
Exchange labs is definitively a good thing. By principle it is. We have one important implementation here in Slovenia and we are facing some issues that can affect the overall opinion about the success of the project. Exchange Labs is not so reliable. In many cases is offline, a few emails never arrive to destiny and for some reason emails are routed to the spam folders on the recipient side. My advise is: The value of Exchange Labs for your customers is huge, but the service is still not fully functional and that is something your customer should know in order to set the correct expectations.
I'm sure that we are in the middle of an important crisis that will touch most of the small business around. The fact is that we don't really know how can this affect our business. I think a few things can happen:
Expensive credits
Greater difficulty for getting new credits
Less tenders and project financing
Less attention to the small business sector
At the same time there are some good things that can happen:
The need of decreasing expenses will be stronger on the customer side
The need of increasing products visibility inexpensively will drive customers to the Web
Authorities can try to help small businesses because of their power on employing people
The role of technology is definitively to help organizations to decrease unnecessary expenses and improve their approach to the market in order to improve sales. That means that something we need to be sure on including within our plan is communication. Here some steps I'm thinking to implement in B4Contact:
Concentrate on value added that means: effectiveness, savings in comparisson with competing products, speed of implementation, affordable prices, possibilities of upgrades.
Decrease importance on value added that means: technical specifications, easy to use, savings on training (because in any case training would be a new cost), aesthetics.
In any case making a list like that in your company would not be a bad idea, it will help you on your communication strategy. I'm sure that would make the difference! History also lets us know that in moment of crisis there are always a few that really know how to get advantage and find profit. I would strongly agree on letting open doors for new opportunities that might arise, always respecting the organizational values and ethics.
A big question for me is: Is it a good moment for realizing new ideas?
I think that would be prudent to wait and see how the financial situation will influence your business area. Personally I think this crisis will have medium term consequences and that means that will be each time tougher to manage healthy cash flows; starting the crisis with a negative balance can be an advantage for the competition.
B4Contact, the company I work for, is finishing an important project that integrates the power of Windows SharePoint Services, Live ID and Exchange Labs. You can see the Web site in www.dostop.si. So, why is this so important? Well, I will start explaining what the portal does:
It enables students to send registration requests to the portal using an interesting workflow that helps site administrators to validate the information and accept or decline the request.
Once accepted the server will create the users, Live IDs, and Exchange Labs mailboxes.
Users will receive an automatic email notification with the credentials.
And other things that not relevant to this post.
All that means that the students will get free access in a fully automated process to Exchange Labs... a huge Exchange organization designed to offer Exchange email. It is free for education institutions. It is a real opportunity to offer to your local schools the free service of Exchange emails: that includes Outlook Web access, 10GB of storage per mailbox, antivirus and antispam. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook client, includes calendars and all that that makes Exchange a winner in the market.
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In any case making a list like that in your company would not be a bad idea, it will help you on your communication strategy. I'm sure that would make the difference!
B4Contact, the company I work for, is finishing an important project that integrates the power of Windows SharePoint Services, Live ID and Exchange Labs. You can see the Web site in www.dostop.si.
