In a case of the rich getting richer, and by that, we mean, filthy rich, Facebook announced it made $1.6 billion in the first half of 2011 — about double what it made in 2010′s first six months. This means world’s No. 1 social-networking site garnered about $500 million in net income, putting it on track to make $1 billion in net come for 2011. READ MORE
To help us all prognosticate where things may go for Apple from here, Wired took a look at what happened at three other iconic tech giants when their founders moved on and left new leadership in charge. READ MORE
Former Microsoft executive Steven VanRoekel will become the next chief information officer for the federal government, the White House announced today. READ MORE
Despite growing a back-room start-up into a billion-dollar software giant, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is still the socially awkward and publicity-shy man he’s always been. In a rare move, Gates granted an exclusive one-on-one interview with The Daily Mail, revealing secrets and details about his enigmatic personal life to promote the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, an organization co-founded by Gates in 2000, which kicks off a “pledging conference” in London to raise money for vaccinating children in the world’s poorest countries. READ MORE
Now that the summer is upon us there are so great social media events I wanted to mention. There are few things more valuable than attending a great conference. I have made such incredible contacts by attending conferences and have learned so much. If you really want to know about what is going on in social media, I highly recommend you start attending as many of these events as you can. Here are three of my favorites: READ MORE
You’ve heard the expression, “the customer is king.” In today’s economy, the customer is key to your future success. The right customer relationship management (CRM) strategies can give you insights that lead to increased revenue, improved earnings and solid competitive advantage. Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Whether happy or unhappy, your customers are a vital, often underutilized source of business intelligence. Companies that take the time to understand their customers are better able to anticipate and respond to their needs. They also gain a distinct advantage over their competitors. At this stage of the recession, many companies have lost sight of the competition, focusing instead on cutting costs and improving efficiencies. And they have succeeded; in fact, today’s companies are leaner and meaner than ever before. But now is the time to look outward – focusing on better CRM to grow top line revenues, improve earnings, and take market share away from the competition. Know your customers and reap rewards The key is capturing the right information about your customers. With effective CRM processes and technology, you can build a single “book of truth” about each customer. It’s a data warehouse that chronicles each customer’s history, including the products they typically buy, how often they buy, as well as their individual preferences and any problems they have had in the past. CRM delivers instant, company-wide access to valuable customer profiles and gives you the insight you need to turn this data into actionable information. With a detailed customer history, you can easily segment customers, identifying which are your best customers and why. Is it their margins? Or is it their consistency of buying particular products and services? Linking your data warehouse or business intelligence system to your CRM process and technology can help you answer questions like these and gain an enriched insight that allows you to know how and when to focus on particular customers. Profitable communication Consider, for example, a customer who prefers doing business with your company over the Internet. If you don’t know that information, you may unnecessarily redouble your sales efforts by having a direct sales person call on that client. Had you known the customer’s preference, you could have eliminated the effort and cost of a direct sale and freed up your direct sales force to focus on generating new clients. CRM is a great way to streamline and optimize your sales force. The information you gather in various systems can show you where to focus your efforts, directing your sales force to certain sets of clients. When implemented properly your CRM system will enable you to be more successful in attracting new customers, responding to new leads and closing deals more quickly. By improving your responsiveness to customers you also build loyalty and decrease customer “churn.” At the same time, you can identify the best ways to cross-sell and up sell to each customer, either through direct sales, telemarketing, Web marketing, or other sales or marketing activities. If your goal is to better enable your website for e-business activity, CRM is the ideal approach. It establishes a single point of contact with your company and enables you to capture vital customer information and put it into various applications. The result is a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate with and learn from your customers. Creating your system Practicing CRM does require discipline in the form of a more efficient and integrated internal business system. When it comes to developing a CRM system, it is important to remember that this is an “outside-in” approach that focuses on customer input. The most critical component is spending time with customers, learning what they find most valuable about doing business with you. By doing that, you are essentially identifying your main competitive advantages. From there you can design your processes and the supporting systems that will capitalize on that competitive advantage. As with most IT initiatives, there is a wide variety of CRM hardware and software available from major vendors like SAP and Oracle. When choosing your CRM system, be sure to couple it with business intelligence capabilities that allow you to capture data in a variety of areas and organize it into a single book of truth about that customer. As you put that information into your CRM software in the right fields and capture all the types of transactions you do with clients, you now become very effective in the way to interact with them. Keep in mind that CRM can only work to your advantage if you view as more than just a tool for getting more from your customers. It helps you do more for your customers. When you become more responsive to customers and understand the way they want to do business with you, you give your organization a head start over the competition and prepare for the impending recovery. Mike Gorsage is a Partner and Leader of the Business Operations and Technology Practice for Tatum LLC. Tatum is the nation’s largest executive services firm, providing financial and technology leadership nationwide.
When it comes to business-related technology, there’s no bigger news than a major software release. Witness the splashy celebration marking the consumer launch of Microsoft Windows Vista, the company’s first new operating system in five years, along with the popular Microsoft Office 2007 suite of business applications, in January 2007. Among other launch events, 16 aerial acrobats formed a “human billboard” displaying the Windows logo on a building high above Manhattan, Bill Gates made a rare guest appearance on a comedy show, and retailers across the United States stayed open overnight for shoppers wanting to be the first to obtain the new versions. But while Microsoft and analysts have projected millions of sales for Vista alone this year, shoppers didn’t flood the stores that night — and, as of this writing, haven’t done so since. For some, it’s a simply a matter of caution: They’re waiting out the flurry of patches for problems that inevitably come to light shortly after any new software release. For others, it’s a textbook example of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” principle: They feel that Vista’s predecessor, Windows XP, is working just fine right now, thank you very much, and they see no reason for immediate change. Even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged at the launch that many customers won’t upgrade to Vista until they need new computers, which will come equipped with the new software. It’s not that the new operating system doesn’t offer some attractive improvements. Among them: a more secure version of the Internet Explorer browser that helps prevent “phishing” attacks, the new Windows Defender anti-spyware tool and integrated searching capability. On the down side, Vista — which comes in five versions, ranging from “Home Basic” to “Ultimate” — is a disk hog, requiring at least 15 gigabytes of free hard-drive space. In addition, the new system may be incompatible with some existing third-party software applications. Ultimately, businesses and individual users must both weigh a whole host of such factors in deciding when to take the Vista plunge (as well as when to upgrade to Office 2007, with its new interface and many revamped tools and capabilities as well). That high-profile dilemma turns the spotlight on a bigger question: How do you know, in any case, when it’s time to switch software? Following are several considerations to help you decide whether and when to undertake any upgrade: Does the proposed upgrade offer genuine improvement? For instance, will it help make your business more efficient, more productive, and more secure? Will it enable new types of innovation or collaboration? Will it give you a competitive advantage? Does it offer features that you actually want? If so, are those features easy to learn and use? Or will you be paying for additional capabilities that you’ll probably never need — or at least won’t need for awhile? Does the upgraded product have a track record? New releases often come with bugs and security holes; manufacturers then follow up quickly with patches and “service packs.” If you’re not in a rush, consider waiting a few months for the dust to settle and then investing in an updated version that addresses those post-launch problems. Is right now the best time to upgrade? If you’ve got an important project in progress or a big deadline looming, you may want to wind up that effort before doing a software shuffle that could delay your progress. Do you have the necessary expertise for implementation?Can your own IT staff handle the job? Or do you need to hire a consultant or contractor? The latter choice adds significant expense — but avoiding installation-related disruptions and down time may be well worth the investment. Will the new software play well with what you’ve got now? Will it communicate and work with your existing programs? Will you be able to access all your current and past data? If not, you may need to consider upgrading other applications as well — which is, of course, another expense. Do you need new hardware to support the new software? Even if your existing computers will run the upgraded program, it may be more cost-effective in the long run to upgrade everything at once. For instance, if you’re planning to license Vista for your current computers, but you also expect to replace those machines in the next year or so, it might make more sense to invest now in new PCs that will come with Vista already installed. Is training necessary? You may need to train both your IT personnel and your users on how to use the new software — and both efforts add costs. Do you need to upgrade everybody at the same time? Running a pilot project for one group of users may let you pinpoint and resolve small-scale implementation problems before they become big ones. Rolling an upgrade out in phases can help minimize disruption. If you don’t upgrade, will your old software still be supported? Most manufacturers provide technical support for only the current and, in some cases, the most recent previous version. For instance, Microsoft discontinued technical support — including security updates — for Windows 98 in July 2006. The single overarching piece of advice for considering any upgrade: Do your homework. That will go a long way toward deciding whether, what and when to make the change. For more information: Microsoft Windows Vista requirements Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Office 2007 Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has called for an end to passwords for years, pinpointing them as the weak link in the network security chain. But alternative identity technologies such as biometric scanners, which use retinal and other body functions to find distinctions, and smart cards with encoded passwords are still too expensive for most businesses to deploy. So, the majority of businesses are stuck with the lowly password, with its tendency to get lost and stolen. Some crackers — rogue programmers who swipe passwords off private networks — have designed software enabling them to bombard machines with 10 million word variations per second in an attempt to breach security. Here are a few tips for keeping them out: Choose a password that takes full advantage of your keyboard. The more characters a password has, the harder it will be to crack. A good tip is to pick a favorite lyric or phrase and seed it with symbols, numbers, deliberate misspellings and upper and lower case letters. For example, I*m2$Exy4MyPnts or 19Go%Boi1ers96. Here’s how it works: If you only use lower-case letters of the English alphabet, each character in your password will have only 26 possible values. Using uppercase and lowercase letters will give each character 52 different values. Add numbers (0-9) and you’ll have 62 possible values; add symbols and you’ll have a total of 92 unique possible values. Pick a password that is at least eight characters long. A two-character password offers just 8464 unique combinations. Using three characters increases the number to 778,688 possibilities; four characters affords 71,639,296 possibilities. Obviously, longer passwords are harder to crack than shorter ones. Don’t be obvious. Pick something that’s easy for you to remember but difficult for others to guess. Avoid using personal information such as the name of a child, pet or spouse, your birthday, wedding date or phone number. These choices would top the list of any potential cracker attempting to access your system. Change your password frequently. The longer you have a password, the better the chances that someone will figure it out. A good rule of thumb: the more valuable the material you are protecting with a password, the more frequently you should change it. Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts. If your e-mail, network logon, Amazon, bank and day trading accounts are all linked to the same password, you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Save your most complex passwords for your most sensitive accounts. Never give your password to anyone. Be especially wary of seemingly legitimate e-mails asking you to click on a link and renew your account and password information. This is known as “phishing,” a common form of identity theft. Thieves set up websites that look identical to Paypal or Amazon, for example, and when visitors log on, they steal their account information and passwords for personal use or to sell to third parties. Never write your password down. If you write your password on a piece of paper or even in a file stored on your hard drive, a determined thief can find it. It’s easier to request a new password than to recover from identity theft. If you’re unsure about the inviolability of the password you’ve chosen, there are several Internet sites that allow visitors to test drive a password before putting it to use. SecurityStats.com is one. Microsoft Password Checker offers another.
If your laptop and your cell phone mated, the offspring might look something like the Nokia 9300. This Symbian OS-based handset is the third in Nokia’s suitably dubbed “Communicator” series, designed for mobile executives on the go. It’s a phone, computer, and high-speed Internet device all rolled into one. But calling the Nokia 9300 a “smartphone” is like saying Bill Gates has a few shekels in his bank account. Here’s why the Nokia 9300 — which sells for $299.99 on a two-year contract with Cingular Wireless — may be right for you and your growing business. Push e-mail Unlike most handsets that log on to the Internet to “pull” e-mails down to the handset, the 9300 offers three ways to have your important messages “pushed” to the device as they arrive in your inbox: BlackBerry Connect: The Communicator is one of the first handsets in North America to launch with this program that lets corporate customers choose to either use the BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Connect to access ISP e-mail accounts through the BlackBerry Internet Service. Cingular’s Xpress Mail: This program is based on the SEVEN e-mail platform, which is compatible with a variety of corporate e-mail applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell Group Wise, IMAP4 and POP3, as well as global directories and personal calendars. Intellisync Wireless E-mail: This e-mail service “pushes” e-mails, meeting requests, calendar updates, among other information, to a variety of mobile devices. It supports a variety of platforms, including Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Symbian, IMAP clients and other platforms. With push e-mail, you won’t miss a beat, as you can read and respond to incoming messages without fear of missing an urgent request. Multi-tasking and Office features Taller but trimmer than the Palm Treo series, this 5.9-ounce handset (measuring 132mm x 51mm x 21mm) opens up along its spine to access a QWERTY thumb keyboard and widescreen LCD (65,536 colors) that’s perfect for creating or editing documents, presentations, or spreadsheets. It also includes full synchronization support with Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes via the optional Nokia PC suite software. Calendar, contacts, and tasks can also be easily synched with a desktop or laptop PC. Run into a client at the airport but forgot his name? No worries – excuse yourself for a moment to “take a call” and browse your contacts list to find his thumbnail photo attached to his name. If you need to chat while tweaking your sales report, the 9300 includes integrated Bluetooth and speakerphone support, which means you can do both at the same time. In fact, the handset automatically switches to speakerphone when it’s flipped open to the keyboard (this can be changed in the Options menu). You can even use the 9300 to host conference calls for up to six participants, and take notes during the chat. Bluetooth also allows for wireless printing of documents and photos to a nearby and compatible printer. Oh, and the fun With support for high-speed EDGE service, the Nokia 9300 is also a fast Web-surfing tool and can handle downloads, including large e-mail attachments. Text-messages (SMS), multimedia messages (MMS), and pull e-mail compliments its host of push e-mail services and support. When not in an EDGE coverage area, the 9300 is a tri-band GSM phone that works in a host of countries. The handset also plays MP3s, AACs, and RealAudio. For video, it supports RealVideo, MPEG4 compression, and H.263 formats. If the 80MB of internal storage isn’t enough, a MultiMedia Card (MMC) can expand the memory. With this lineup of features, it’s almost hard to imagine why anyone ever lugged around a laptop.
For entrepreneurs starting a company by the bootstraps, it may be tempting to minimize expenditures by utilizing a pirated copy of Microsoft Office or other popular programs. Pirates save thousands on licensing fees, avoid hassles like shipping and credit terms, and can produce enough copies of virtual tools on-demand to keep entire states, let alone small companies, running smoothly for decades. In truth, a whopping 35 percent of all software installed on PCs worldwide last year was illegitimate, according to a study conducted by the Framingham, Mass. research firm IDC for the Business Software Alliance (BSA), a trade group in Washington, D.C. The unauthorized distribution and use of copyrighted computer programs accounts for more than $34 billion in global losses annually, the report says. And while you shouldn’t be shooting colleagues sly glances over the boardroom table – America has the lowest piracy rate at 21 percent after all – there’s a valuable lesson to be learned here. Piracy, like any crime, just doesn’t pay. “Businesses face serious risks because of software piracy,” explains BSA spokesman Diane Smiroldo. “Apart from associated penalties, there’s the improper maintenance of accuracy and security, not to mention ethical problems, to consider. In the end, dealing with these issues will cost you more than purchasing the fully licensed software in the first place.” Here’s the problem with using pirated software in your business: It’s Illegal Guilty parties may be subject to civil litigation, arrest and/or criminal prosecution, with penalties ranging from fines as much as $250,000 to prison sentences of up to five years’ length. Under the law, companies can be held liable for employees’ actions as well. If an associate is caught installing unauthorized software or downloading it off the Internet, a lawsuit can be brought against your company for copyright infringement – even if management is unaware of the offense. What’s more, at any given time, the BSA has more than 600 open investigations within the U.S. and Canada. Cautions Smiroldo: “Unless you have no current or former disgruntled employees, you’re only one phone call away from becoming the target of an investigation.” Never mind the sky-high legal costs and dips in daily productivity associated with defending against such charges – the damage associated allegations alone can cause to fledging firms’ reputations is irreparable. Copyright holders may immediately freeze unauthorized usage of their applications as well, potentially shutting down your entire operation overnight and levying statuary damages of up to $150,000 for each program copied. No Patches, Fixes or Tech Support Even those who manage to avoid fines or litigation pay in the end, says Smiroldo, who further cites the following major drawbacks to utilizing illegally-copied content. Pirated software is unauthorized; its users, unacknowledged. Over the product(s)’ lifespan, you’ll receive no ongoing bug fixes, improvements or – worse, should show-stopping problems arise – technical support. Unlike manufacturers, cracking groups – teams of bedroom coders who remove copy protection and spread software via the Internet – further make no guarantees. Programs may be functionally crippled, prone to unexpected failure or work improperly, if at all. Anti-piracy checks hidden by vigilant programmers can also randomly corrupt data, insert embarrassing remarks or secretly report proof of illicit activities to the program’s creators. Freely-issued downloadable patches, or program updates, that correct errors and add bonus options, may not install to boot. Manuals, training cards and users’ guides are generally missing from pirated programs too. Good luck learning to master that new database or accounting package without proper documentation. Legal ownership of content created using stolen software isn’t the easiest thing to argue in court either. Profits generated from the usage of pirated software are additionally subject to seizure. And clients, should they become aware of such activities, have been known to justifiably pull contracts, cut ties to and even report offending firms to appropriate authorities, e.g. the FBI. It’s Anti-Entrepreneurial If you’ve started a business, you have a product that you want people to pay for. Same with Bill Gates. Same with Steve Jobs. If you use illegal copies of their work, what’s to prevent someone from using illegal copies of yours? “You wouldn’t drive a new car off the dealer’s lot or take a computer from a retail store without paying for it, would you?” asks Smiroldo. “Software developers spend years creating programs, and a portion of every dollar spent purchasing it is reinvested into R&D so newer, more advanced applications can be produced. Piracy harms both consumers and the industry.” To put things in perspective: According to the BSA, dropping piracy rates just 10 percent by 2009 would fuel the creation of 120,000 new IT jobs and $132 billion in additional economic growth – a bounty of commercial opportunity. In short, the use of pirated software – or other products – can create all sorts of troubles any sensible entrepreneur would smartly avoid. So the next time you look at a program’s price tag and blanch, remember this: Initial costs aside, you could be saving millions in hassles – not to mention attorneys’ fees — in the long run.
