Tag Archives: Federal Express Corporation

About 617 days ago Apps | Blogging and Social Media | Business Software | E-Commerce | Gaming | Green Initiatives | Hardware | Innovation | Internet and Online Business | Location-based services | Managing Technology | Online Marketing | PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks | Smartphones and PDAs | Tablets and eReaders | Telecom and Wireless | Tools on Managing Technology | Uncategorized | Web Analytics

TechCrunch’s Disrupt Battlefield: Local Networks

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From Monday to Wednesday in San Francisco, TechCrunch’s latest Disrupt Start-up Battlefield competition is showcasing entrepreneurs from 30 start-ups, all vying for a $50,000 prize by making six-minute-long pitches to a rotating panel of venture capitalists, tech influencers, angel investors and Silicon Valley players. Tuesday featured three more sessions of Start-up Battlefield, titled Customer-Friendly Enterprise, Local Networks and Increasing Understanding; here are the start-ups presented in session five: Local Networks. READ MORE »

About 692 days ago E-Commerce | Internet and Online Business

SocialVest Pairs With Major Brands

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People are going to buy things. Many of the same people want to give to charities. Why not tie the two activities together? That’s the idea on which SocialVest, a website that launched in February of last year, is working. The site pairs with major companies like Sunglass Hut and FedEx, said Adam Ross, SocialVest’s founder. Individuals register their credit cards with SocialVest, and when they make a purchase with any of the associated companies and retailers, a small percentage of the money spent is directed to their SocialVest account. From there, users can direct the money to any of the 1.5 million charities SocialVest supports. READ MORE »

About 1299 days ago Computer Security

Tech Talk: Publisher Puts Kibosh on Spam

Hay House, a book publisher based in Carlsbad, Calif., was founded 24 years ago and has grown to become one of the largest self-help publishers in the world with 125 employees in the U.S. and locations in four different continents. The publishing house relies on e-mail for internal communication and for communicating with writers, often sending manuscripts back and forth. But employees were being deluged with spam – the company receives up to 10,000 spam messages per day – until information technology director Mike Fishell and his staff installed an e-mail security appliance. Elizabeth Wasserman: What are the plusses and minuses of using e-mail in your business? Mike Fishell: It’s much faster for moving information around. Whether it’s information for a book, fact-checking, public relations, or passing on quotes to be inserted into our books, we rely on our e-mail. We also have offices located in time zones that don’t match up. We have offices in the U.K., Australia, South Africa, and India, in addition to the U.S. So if it’s noon in London and someone e-mails us with something that has to be addressed that day, we can get back to them before they go home that night. We also may receive manuscripts via e-mail from our authors. Instead of sending a manuscript via FedEx, they can e-mail it to us directly. Wasserman: What are the security risks to a business posed by relying on e-mail? Do you get a lot of spam? Fishell: We get in the neighborhood of 10,000 spam messages a day. Wasserman: What did you do about that? Fishell: We were using software-based spam solutions in the past, but the spam problem was growing faster than our application could deal with it. I looked at appliances and Axway’s Mailgate was the first one I brought in-house for a trial. It worked so well that we couldn’t even think of taking it out of production. The trial unit we were sent was kept in production for three years. Wasserman: What does it do? How does it help you? Fishell: It helps us with spam by using a context-based algorithm. Some of our books may deal with health and we may have the word Viagra show up in a book, maybe with someone giving medical advice related to it. It’s not in the context of someone trying to sell it, because that wouldn’t be delivered to the mailbox. Our users receive an e-mail every day at 5 p.m. showing everything that was quarantined by the filter. They have an option to release it to themselves or ignore it. Wasserman: What have the results been? Fishell: On the inbound side, the time savings is money savings. I do a report once a year for the directors explaining the cost savings associated with it. I have calculated out in the thousands and thousands of dollars in terms of man hours for our people not having to delete spam. The cost savings worked out to about $54,000 a year in terms of man-hours we would have spent deleting spam. There are a lot of these e-mails being sent around maybe directing people to a website and it’s not enough of an e-mail to be caught as spam or a virus. But it directs them to a website that may have malicious intentions. We’re able to plug keywords into our filter and have it blocked in a matter of minutes instead of waiting for the virus companies to have something out there to block one. I don’t have to worry about anyone clicking on the link. It also allows me to set policies to prevent certain types of sensitive data from being e-mailed outside the office accidentally. Not only viruses, but personal information or confidential information, certain contracts we don’t want leaving the building, or proprietary material we don’t want leaving the building. In terms of time management, it’s nice having something in the business that doesn’t require babysitting. I take a look at the reports once a day. If I skip looking at the reports once a day, I’m not worried. The box gets restarted once or twice a year.  That and software updates a couple times a year and you can pretty much set it and forget it.

About 1452 days ago E-Commerce

Tech Talk: Florist Switches Payment Platform

KaBloom is a Massachusetts-based online florist in business since 1998 that has a patented technique for shipping fresh-cut flowers in water overnight. The company found that sales increased dramatically after switching to a new online payment platform that allowed the firm to better communicate with customers and allowed customers to more easily process payments, CEO David Hartstein tells IncTechnology.com. Elizabeth Wasserman: You have a patented system for sending fresh flowers in water to customers over night. How did that impact your technology decisions? David Hartstein: We’ve been in business since 1998 and our business has gone through different cycles. Today we have over 30 stores but our business model right now is focused on mainly selling online at KaBloom.com. The majority of our stores are in Massachusetts. We also have stores in Chicago and Florida. But we deliver nationally. Fresh cut flowers that are delivered over night are usually delivered by FedEx without water. When you go through the rigorous distribution and logistics within FedEx, you can not pack flowers in water. Think about taking a bottle of water and putting stems inside. If this ends up on its side or upside down, the water will be all over the place. We have a patented technique where we are the only one in the world that can ship fresh flowers in water via FedEx. Our flowers can be in any position, upside down and sideways, and no water will spill. When we started offering this to customers, we needed a new platform, a new way to communicate with our customer and tell them about what we do, what we have, and why we are different. Wasserman: What did you decide to do? Hartstein: We decided to implement a new payment platform called whizPay mainly because it provides reliability and ease of use. It provides a very easy customer checkout process. The back office that we have with it has very rich functions. It assists us with product description, with the content, with our stores and our stores managing platforms. Each store has the ability to manage their orders. It’s a central platform that they can access from different locations. They get a notification when an order comes in for them. They have the ability to log in to the main platform, communicate with the customer, change the order, change the address. Without having to have an administrator do it for them. Wasserman: At the same time, does it protect your data? Hartstein: It’s all secure. There is information that can only be managed by the administration and not by each store.  They can not delete a customer’s information. There are other benefits, too. For example, say we have a store in Virginia. That store knows their customer base and knows what the customer likes. They have the ability to display the designs that their customer likes so that when the customer orders a certain design, the system knows to go to that store to deliver that product. We have the ability to say that product X can only be delivered from Y location. Wasserman: What it easy to implement? Hartstein: It was easy — as far as anything in technology is easy. We launched Sept. 1, 2008 and we never had to during that process shut our site down and bring other alternatives online. There are always hiccups but we’ve never had issues. Wasserman: What results have you seen? Hartstein: Since February of this year, we have seen an increase of about 50 percent in orders through the new platform. That is quite astonishing in this market. There are two reasons for this. First, we have a product we sell that no one else sells and that is that we are the only one can deliver flowers in water from coast to coast over night. Second, our management function within our platform allows us to communicate with our customers in a much easier way.

About 1603 days ago Computer Security

Time to Take a Look at Digital Signatures?

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Aurora Lifetools helps disabled people win Social Security claims. The firm typically works with clients whose claims have been turned down as too small by law firms that traditionally handle such matters, although Aurora is not a law firm, and its professionals who represent claimants are not attorneys. Since the sums involved aren’t huge, Aurora’s success depends on its ability to represent large numbers of claimants. Electronic signatures are a huge help to that effort, according to Drew Hyde, senior partner. “About 12,000 people apply for Social Security Disability every day — that tells you how big the market is,” he says. The company’s staff of nine, using electronic signatures combined with customer relationship management and database technology can enroll about 200 cases a day in Aurora’s system, he adds. “Without electronic signatures, those same nine people could pull in about 35 cases a day — maybe.” And, even if the company had a staff of thousands, some clients would be impossible to help without digital signatures, he says. “In the old days, we couldn’t take on anyone with less than a week to go before a filing deadline,” he says. It would simply take too long to get the papers certifying Aurora as the client’s representative signed and in place in time to submit a claim or appeal. Today, Aurora can complete the process of interviewing and signing up a new client by phone and Internet in about 12 minutes, Hyde says. “Now, someone can call us at 3 p.m., and we can submit the claim at 3:45 and protect that client’s rights.” The time is right to move to digital signatures In 2000, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act decreed that a properly obtained electronic signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten one. Since then, adoption of electronic signatures has been slow, except in certain industries, such as financial services. But acceptance of digital signatures has been building to a critical mass in the last year or two, perhaps in part because the general public has grown comfortable with the basic concept of a legally binding Internet transaction, such as filing an online tax return or clicking “Buy It Now” on eBay. At the same time, evolving technology has made digitally signing easier, according to Jason Lemkin, CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, an electronic signature service. “It wouldn’t have been practical in 2000, because you needed today’s browsers and Ajax [asynchronous Java Script and XML] to make the experience as easy and elegant as it is today,” he says. At the same time, as business in general becomes more Web-oriented, using paper contracts seems less and less logical. “When everyone’s using Salesforce.com and LinkedIn, it doesn’t make sense to have to use FedEx or a fax machine in order to close a deal,” he says. Avoiding revenue loss But there’s another reason to consider electronic signatures today — one Lemkin says has created an upsurge in EchoSign’s business in the past few months. “The most important thing in today’s economy is revenue assurance,” he says. Electronic signatures help by allowing companies to close a legally binding deal in minutes, while a customer is still on the phone. “When you have customers who want to buy, you don’t want to make them dig up a fax machine or go out to the mailbox — because they might not do it,” he says. Revenue assurance is the biggest benefit of using digital signatures for Hcareers, a job board for the hospitality industry. “With many of our one-time transactions, we would simply work by e-mail confirmation,” notes Jim Finn, vice president of sales. That made life easy from a logistical point of view, but customers occasionally reneged on their deals. “We had a certain percentage of write-offs,” Finn says. “It wasn’t a large percentage, but we weren’t really happy with any.” Today, Hcareers customers must digitally sign using Agreement Express, showing their consent to the site’s terms and conditions, which include a commitment to pay for services used. The result: “We’ve had 80 percent fewer clients being sent to collections in the six months after implementing digital signatures,” Finn says. Working with digital signatures comes with other advantages as well, he says. “It’s far more efficient than a fax machine, and better for the environment. My contracts are all in cyberspace, so I can print them if I need to — and I don’t have two file cabinets standing outside my office.” In fact, he says, “From an efficiency standpoint, electronic signatures are the only way to go about securing contracts.”

About 1725 days ago Tools on Managing Technology

No Fly Zone: Virtual Meetings

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Poor Karen Pierce Gonzalez. Not long ago, an out-of-state client of her California public relations firm needed her at a face-to-face meeting but had cut its travel budget. To save money, the client booked her on a weekend flight with multiple stopovers from an airport that wasn’t even close to her home. “I was exhausted from sitting in horrible airport chairs during the stopovers, plus the meeting was scheduled for late Saturday night and Sunday morning,” her usual time off work, Gonzalez recalls. “I don’t see how they could have gotten their money’s worth from me.” If only Gonzalez’ client had considered a videoconference, she could have participated from the comfort of her own desk during regular office hours and the client could have saved itself the hassle and expense. With air travel and gas prices still sky high, more small and mid-sized businesses are using videoconferencing and online meetings in place of in-person visits. In fact, 42 percent of 610 business travelers and corporate travel managers responding to a June poll by Business Traveler Magazine said they were exploring alternatives to business trips, including video- or Web conferences. Technology finally lives up to promise When videoconference systems debuted in the early 1990s they promised to revolutionize how companies conducted business. Things didn’t exactly work out that way. Hardware in those early systems was glitchy and transmissions traveling over too-slow computer networks resulted in choppy pictures that lagged behind audio feeds. Thanks to high-quality graphics, high-speed Internet connections, webcams and voice over IP, videoconference systems, and Web-based online meeting services are miles ahead of where they used to be. Add to that companies looking to cut travel budgets — and lower their carbon footprint — and you have the perfect combination of factors pushing online meetings into widespread use. “Videoconferencing is a whole different experience today than it was a few years ago, and it’s more affordable, which is driving it down” to smaller companies, says Brett Shockley, CEO at Spanlink Communications, a Minneapolis communications reseller that markets videoconferencing and other communications networks to small and mid-sized businesses. While some high-end videoconferencing systems run well into six figures, services exist for just about any budget. At the lowest end are services such as DimDim, a free, open-source, Web-based online meeting tool that lets up to 20 people share PowerPoint presentations, files and video without having to download software onto their desktop. Meatier versions of DimDim’s software cost $99 a year for online meetings of up to 100 people and $1,999 a year for up to 1,000 people. Even mid-sized companies are remodeling conference rooms to include expensive telepresence systems featuring wrap-around-style screens and HD-quality video from companies such Cisco and HP to avoid flying salespeople and managers to face-to-face meetings, says Spanlink’s Shockley. Spanlink uses telepresence rooms for its own business, to hold meetings with far-flung employees and make presentations to new customers. “I fly two or three days a week but I can’t be on the East Coast, West Coast, Florida and Canada in the same week,” Shockley says. Using videoconferencing “I can leverage my time and be closer to the customer.” Not to mention cutting his travel costs. Road warriors and companies that don’t want to take on the burden of buying videoconferencing equipment themselves can rent videoconferencing rooms by the hour at FedEx Office, formerly known as FedEx Kinko’s. The shipping and business services company has videoconferencing systems in 122 locations around the country, starting at $225 an hour. Meanwhile, Gonzalez, the California public relations agency owner, is hoping her customers start using videoconferencing soon. “While it isn’t warm and fuzzy, it still serves a great purpose,” she says. SIDEBAR: Videoconference and Online Meeting Vendors Here are some additional videoconference and online meeting services suited to small businesses: Adobe Connect Pro — The Meetings module included in this recently upgraded Web conference and e-learning lets a user customize the look of their online meeting space, among other features. Connect Pro also has modules for presentations, training and events. GoToMeeting.com — Citrix’s videoconference service for small businesses was recently upgraded to include free VoIP and audio conferencing for PCs and Macs. IBM Lotus — The venerable communications and productivity program includes features people can use to simultaneously send instant messages, share documents and launch Web confernces. Microsoft Live Meeting — The Microsoft service lets people schedule, start or join audio or video online meetings from Outlook. WebEx — Cisco purchased this online meeting pioneer in May 2007 and six months later introduced a version of the service for sole proprietors called MeetMeNow that’s $49 a month and includes personal video conferencing and Web meetings that can be launched from Microsoft Office programs.

About 1725 days ago Mobility Tips and Tricks

No Fly Zone: Virtual Meetings

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Poor Karen Pierce Gonzalez. Not long ago, an out-of-state client of her California public relations firm needed her at a face-to-face meeting but had cut its travel budget. To save money, the client booked her on a weekend flight with multiple stopovers from an airport that wasn’t even close to her home. “I was exhausted from sitting in horrible airport chairs during the stopovers, plus the meeting was scheduled for late Saturday night and Sunday morning,” her usual time off work, Gonzalez recalls. “I don’t see how they could have gotten their money’s worth from me.” If only Gonzalez’ client had considered a videoconference, she could have participated from the comfort of her own desk during regular office hours and the client could have saved itself the hassle and expense. With air travel and gas prices still sky high, more small and mid-sized businesses are using videoconferencing and online meetings in place of in-person visits. In fact, 42 percent of 610 business travelers and corporate travel managers responding to a June poll by Business Traveler Magazine said they were exploring alternatives to business trips, including video- or Web conferences. Technology finally lives up to promise When videoconference systems debuted in the early 1990s they promised to revolutionize how companies conducted business. Things didn’t exactly work out that way. Hardware in those early systems was glitchy and transmissions traveling over too-slow computer networks resulted in choppy pictures that lagged behind audio feeds. Thanks to high-quality graphics, high-speed Internet connections, webcams and voice over IP, videoconference systems, and Web-based online meeting services are miles ahead of where they used to be. Add to that companies looking to cut travel budgets — and lower their carbon footprint — and you have the perfect combination of factors pushing online meetings into widespread use. “Videoconferencing is a whole different experience today than it was a few years ago, and it’s more affordable, which is driving it down” to smaller companies, says Brett Shockley, CEO at Spanlink Communications, a Minneapolis communications reseller that markets videoconferencing and other communications networks to small and mid-sized businesses. While some high-end videoconferencing systems run well into six figures, services exist for just about any budget. At the lowest end are services such as DimDim, a free, open-source, Web-based online meeting tool that lets up to 20 people share PowerPoint presentations, files and video without having to download software onto their desktop. Meatier versions of DimDim’s software cost $99 a year for online meetings of up to 100 people and $1,999 a year for up to 1,000 people. Even mid-sized companies are remodeling conference rooms to include expensive telepresence systems featuring wrap-around-style screens and HD-quality video from companies such Cisco and HP to avoid flying salespeople and managers to face-to-face meetings, says Spanlink’s Shockley. Spanlink uses telepresence rooms for its own business, to hold meetings with far-flung employees and make presentations to new customers. “I fly two or three days a week but I can’t be on the East Coast, West Coast, Florida and Canada in the same week,” Shockley says. Using videoconferencing “I can leverage my time and be closer to the customer.” Not to mention cutting his travel costs. Road warriors and companies that don’t want to take on the burden of buying videoconferencing equipment themselves can rent videoconferencing rooms by the hour at FedEx Office, formerly known as FedEx Kinko’s. The shipping and business services company has videoconferencing systems in 122 locations around the country, starting at $225 an hour. Meanwhile, Gonzalez, the California public relations agency owner, is hoping her customers start using videoconferencing soon. “While it isn’t warm and fuzzy, it still serves a great purpose,” she says. SIDEBAR: Videoconference and Online Meeting Vendors Here are some additional videoconference and online meeting services suited to small businesses: Adobe Connect Pro — The Meetings module included in this recently upgraded Web conference and e-learning lets a user customize the look of their online meeting space, among other features. Connect Pro also has modules for presentations, training and events. GoToMeeting.com — Citrix’s videoconference service for small businesses was recently upgraded to include free VoIP and audio conferencing for PCs and Macs. IBM Lotus — The venerable communications and productivity program includes features people can use to simultaneously send instant messages, share documents and launch Web confernces. Microsoft Live Meeting — The Microsoft service lets people schedule, start or join audio or video online meetings from Outlook. WebEx — Cisco purchased this online meeting pioneer in May 2007 and six months later introduced a version of the service for sole proprietors called MeetMeNow that’s $49 a month and includes personal video conferencing and Web meetings that can be launched from Microsoft Office programs.

About 1969 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Tech to Track Workers: Pros and Cons

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Golden Valley, Minn.-based Wessin Transport Inc. not only tracks packages, it tracks its truckers. And business is booming. “We do so to measure route efficiency,” explains Alan Schostag, director of information systems for the 100-plus employee company, which handles some regional shipping for companies like Amway Corp. and Avon Products Inc. Using a GPS-enabled cell phone carried by each driver, the company and its clients can track drivers and their cargo in real time. If it routinely takes drivers too long to make certain runs, the company can make changes. And their clients can chart their progress, too. Wessin uses a solution offered by AirClic, a Newtown, Pa.-based provider of mobility solutions. AirClic offers a hosted solution that allows companies to track assets and employees using barcode, radio frequency identification (RFID) or global positioning system (GPS) capabilities, and the ability to transmit data in real-time to the organization or their clients, wherever they are. “It’s an A-1, fantastic product,” says Schostag. “There were no problems rolling it out, and it’s cheaper than using PDAs” because it can be linked to cell phones, he notes. And other companies are following suit. AirClic’s sales are brisk, tapping into a growing interest in harnessing GPS and related technologies. Fifty-eight percent of the 1,140 IT professionals surveyed in Sept. 2006 by San Mateo, Calif.-based Ventana Research said that GPS-related technologies had “a very important role” in the future of their business. Not just for FedEx anymore AirClic’s MP solution is unique, says AirClic CEO Tim Bradley, because it allows even the smallest company to use it at a cost of $1-$2/day per user. ‘We think it’s a unique product,” he says, because it integrates so many technologies and puts them right in the client’s hand. Small and mid-sized businesses “that don’t have the luxury of IT support struggle to know what’s happening in the field with sales, support, or contractors,” he explains.  “You don’t have to be FedEx anymore to have access to this kind of network,” he says. In addition to its use by shipping companies, AirClic is finding a market for its solution among companies needing to track custodial employees at theme parks, those tracking health care personnel, or firms needing to capture time data for payroll purposes. Privacy might be a concern But how might employees feel about being tracked in this fashion? In union shops, it is of some concern. “The Teamsters Union is making sure that protective language is included in any contracts that we negotiate. Our members must be protected from the misuse of information gathered from a technology like GPS in disciplinary actions,” notes Teamsters spokeswoman Leigh Strope. The 1.4-million member union represents many transportation employees. But in general, experts note that the U.S. courts generally side with employers when it comes to personal privacy in the workplace. “Companies can already install software that tracks what you look at on the Internet during the day and who you email,” notes Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, a website and magazine that covers the RFID industry. “If someone is required to clean a bathroom, what difference does it make if the inspection is done manually or electronically?” Wessin’s Schostag says that the introduction of GPS technology some time ago created “rumblings” in the industry, but that they have not met with any opposition among their workers. Wessin’s employees are not union members. AirClic’s Bradley says the best way to address the privacy issue is to “be proactive.” “Working directly with the unions” and explaining the technology to workers gets the best results, he says. Roberti adds that, with any technology, employers need to be just. “If you use the technology in an invasive way, you will have unhappy employees and many will leave.”

About 2548 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

39 Great Business Bargains

Online Payment Processing If you don’t need a full-blown e-commerce solution, PayPal lets you accept credit card payments with a PayPal shopping cart. There are no setup charges and no monthly fees, just a transaction fee of 2 to 3 percent, plus 30 cents–about what credit card merchant-account processors charge. Payroll Services Outsourcing onerous payroll tasks is easy and quite affordable. For a flat monthly fee, online services such as surepayroll.com and paycycle.com do all the calculations, pay and file federal and state taxes, and make direct deposits into your employees’ bank accounts. PayCycle costs $45 to $73 per month for a company with 25 employees, regardless of how often you run payroll (50-employee maximum); Sure Payroll charges about $87 to process the monthly payroll for 25, and can cut payroll expenses by up to 50 percent. Playing Post Office All mail is not created equal, so if you’re paying equally for all of it, you’re probably paying too much. Go to usps.com/businessmail101 for a primer on the different classes of mail and an explanation of the many discounts available for bulk and presorted mail and for things like dropping mail off at a bulk mail center or a central post office. For flat non-letter-size mail, such as catalogs, simply presorting according to Zip code can save you up to 30 percent on postage, and you can save up to 10 cents per pound by dropping it all off at a bulk mail center. And remember, never send a letter if a post card will do–post cards cost 38 percent less to send than first-class mail. Montblanc Pen: because you don’t want to sign a multi-million dollar contract with a 50-cent pen Seal the deal with a more elegant instrument. Pen maker Montblanc distributes its wares through a small network of authorized dealers, so prices are pretty standardized. A new Montblanc StarWalker Ballpoint sells for $216, including shipping, at writewithstyle.com. That’s not a bad price, but you can do better. The recent eBay price was $142, with shipping–with several more up for bidding. Color, light, and air A fresh coat of paint might be the most cost-effective investment you can make in the look and feel of your workplace. And since paint is so cheap, you can always repaint if you’re not happy. For help finding a color scheme, do what professional designers do: Check out the free color forecasting reports published by the Color Marketing Group. To make sure your new color looks right, switch out harsh white fluorescents with “warm white” ones; their fuller-spectrum light will make everything look better. Finally, improve the indoor air quality with bargain-priced planters from big-boxers such as Lowe’s and Home Depot, warehouse clubs, or Ikea. Carpeting Buy or lease modular carpet tiles, such as those made by Interface. While regular roll carpet is cheaper to buy up front, modular tiles can pay off in the long run because rather than having to buy a whole new carpet, you can just replace the worn tiles. It’s easy to take the tiles with you if you move. Plus, they look a lot cooler. Software Put off software purchases until the end of the year, when you’ll find discounts on programs that are being released in new versions. You may also see discounts at the end of a financial quarter. There’s also plenty of free software out there available for download–from e-mail (Evolution) and e-commerce (osCommerce) to Web browsers (Firefox, Opera) and accounting (GnuCash). Two of the best sources of freeware are tucows.com and CNET’s Download.com. Cheap (and Eager) Labor Entrepreneurship is hot these days, and plenty of students are eager to get experience at growing companies. The key is to offer experiences that truly can’t be had at big corporations, such as real responsibility, individual mentoring, and access to decision makers. William Wright-Swadel, director of career services at Harvard University’s School of Arts and Sciences, suggests that companies build long-term relationships with career centers at local colleges and market themselves through campus events and organizations. On MonsterTrak, the largest student job and internship site, you can target your posting to the schools you want to recruit from; the site charges $30 per posting per school, with a discount for multiple postings. Wherever your job posting appears, get it in as early as possible; students typically start thinking about summer internships at the end of the fall term. And remember: Interns are cheap, but they’re not free. Generally, if you’re paying someone, you have to pay minimum wage; for unpaid internships, certain educational criteria often must be met. Check with your state’s labor department for the regulations in your area. Free Consulting Score, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, is a nonprofit partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration that provides free online counseling on everything from accounting to workflow analysis, provided by a volunteer corps of working and retired business owners and executives. Score also offers free one-on-one and team business counseling at 389 locations around the country; find the one closest to you at score.org. Copy, Right Mid-level business copiers can cost $5,000 and up. Because of the high entry cost, and the near certainty that the “latest technology” will be outdated in a year (if not six months), leasing–which often includes an option to upgrade and can cost as little as $50 a month–is usually more attractive. When signing a lease, make sure to clarify the service and repairs included, and what the response time will be. Beware of contracts that require a minimum or maximum monthly number of copies; work out pay-as-you-go terms instead. And remember, you don’t have to buy paper and toner from your copier supplier–you can usually save money by buying these from an office-supply source. And if you don’t expect to make more than 700 copies a month, you probably don’t need a “business” copier at all–you can get by with a combination printer-copier that costs a few hundred bucks. Ink & Toner Deals abound on generic, remanufactured, and even name-brand cartridges. There are numerous online office supply and ink specialty stores–InkSell.com, 4inkjets, Databazaar.com, and InkjetSuperstore.com–that often have better prices than the superstores and printer manufacturers. For example, in a recent search on comparison site NexTag, we found an HP Laserjet 2400 cartridge for $120; the same product retails for $206 at Office Depot. If you’re willing to use refurbished cartridges, you can pay as little as $70. Meanwhile, OfficeMax recently launched a nationwide refill program for inkjet cartridges, which could translate into cost savings of up to 50 percent. Best for Blogging WordPress.org provides a free, easy-to-use tool for adding an easy-to-update blog to your company’s existing website. If you want to go cheap–and skip a formal website altogether–blogger.com (owned by Google) and wordpress.com (not wordpress.org) will host your blog for free. The only drawback: The generic domain name (blogspot.com or wordpress.com) can look unprofessional. Office Furniture Check out dealer show rooms and keep tabs on any floor models you like. Come June, when NeoCon, the huge convention of office furniture manufacturers, takes place, dealers want to get new stuff on the floor–which can translate into good deals on old merchandise. Discounts of 20 percent or more are not uncommon. For general office furniture, check the lower-cost subsidiaries of the big manufacturers, such as Steelcase’s Turnstone line. And don’t forget eBay, where bargains on durable workplace basics abound. Here are some recent examples: 34 Steelcase telemarketing cubicles: $6,700; eight Herman Miller workstations: $3,995; 12 Steelcase office desks: $1,500. Paper, envelopes, pencils, staples and the rest Rather than buying different items from different vendors, consolidate your office-supplies shopping in one place. The big office superstores all offer online order management, free delivery for orders over $50, and loyalty rewards programs. In addition, OfficeMax Commercial Solutions and Staples Business Advantage are free programs that work like managed-travel programs, helping customers track and reduce total office-supply spending through more efficient ordering and discounts for volume buying. Office Depot offers similar services through its Business Services Division. Negotiating an Iron-Clad Shipping Contract The major package delivery companies–FedEx, UPS, DHL–are all competing for the small-business market. It’s up to you to meet with their reps and determine what services you need, which company best meets those needs, and which one offers the best deal. Beware of add-on charges for things like sending packages to nonurban areas and shipping fragile items; shippers today have more than 100 such charges, compared with about 30 five years ago. Many of these fees are negotiable, though it helps if you have what the shippers call “good shipping characteristics”–high volume, packages that tend to fall in the same size category (say, more than 100 pounds), and lots of deliveries to urban Zip codes (which are less expensive to deliver). Smart negotiating can shave 10 to 20 percent off your shipping bill, says Mike Erickson, president and CEO of AFMS, a consulting firm that specializes in evaluating and negotiating business shipping contracts. Indeed, if you do a lot of shipping, it makes sense to hire a consultant, as shipping contracts are often difficult for laypeople to decipher. A company car–plus a tax break Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, individuals and businesses that buy or lease a new hybrid gas-electric car or truck, or an alternative-fuel or fuel-cell vehicle, are eligible for an income-tax credit of up to $3,400, depending on the fuel economy and the weight of the vehicle. (This credit is in addition to the regular depreciation or lease expense you’re allowed to deduct for any vehicle.) If you buy more than one vehicle, you get a tax credit for each. This tax credit applies to vehicles “placed in service” beginning January 1, 2006. Once a manufacturer has sold 60,000 eligible vehicles, the tax credit for its cars will be reduced, and eventually eliminated. So get on it now. When buying a printer, check out the “print yield” A cheap inkjet may be easy on the wallet today, but it’ll end up costing you more later. That’s because with printers, it’s all about consumables–paper, toner, etc. For example, with a $300 laser printer and compatible cartridge, it costs $30 to print 1,000 pages (black ink only); with an $80 inkjet printer from the same manufacturer, the same print run costs $100. After a little more than 3,000 pages, the more expensive printer has paid for itself. Check out the “print yield” specs for the toner cartridges the printer requires, and divide the price by that number–that’s your cost per page. Let that number, not the cost of the printer, guide you to the real bargains. Retail Space Mall tenants may enjoy foot traffic, but that traffic comes with a steep price tag–incidental costs can run from $18 to $55 per square foot per year. Wherever you set up shop, scrutinize your lease for so-called pass-throughs–charges on top of the basic rent for things like common-area maintenance–and make sure you’re paying a share that’s proportionate to the actual square footage you’re occupying. Another way to save: Minimize your square footage in an expensive retail area by leasing storage space in a cheaper space off the premises. Stress-Free Employees Treating your staff to monthly massages may seem like a needless indulgence, but it can save you in the long run. Research shows that employees are more productive on quantitative tasks after massages and report feeling less stress. There is also, not surprisingly, less absenteeism on days that massages are scheduled. And because office massage specialists provide education about ergonomics and repetitive-stress injuries, you may reduce the costs of such injuries. A 15-minute seated massage–about the time of a coffee break–is all it takes to realize the benefits. On-site massage rates vary by location–expect hourly rates of about $75 and up in larger cities (a massage therapist will typically fit in three 15-minute massages per hour). Go to amtamassage.org and use the locator service to find a qualified provider in your area. Corporate jet: a good option for small groups It’s a bit of a stretch to call a company jet a bargain, but look at the upside. There’s no penalty for booking last minute, so it’s attractive if you make spur-of-the-moment trips. And since jet operators charge by the hour, not per person, a private flight can be a good option for flying small groups (midsize jets can accommodate about eight). Full or fractional ownership requires laying out millions up front, but Sentient and Blue Star Jets‘ SkyCard program offer membership plans that give you planes on demand for less than the cost of fractional or outright ownership. With both companies, you make an initial deposit (minimum $100,000 for Sentient, $50,000 for Blue Star) and funds are deducted as you use flight time (hourly fees start at about $2,000). Deals on PCs Comparison shopping is a no-brainer. But with PCs, you’ll be surprised at how large the price variations are for identical products. A recent search on comparison-shopping site NexTag, for example, turned up about 20 different vendors offering new Toshiba Portege R200 laptops for prices ranging from $1,162 to $2,159. Another useful tool is NexTag’s “Price Drops” section, which tracks the market in a range of tech categories and reveals, for example, that in April, the best price for an IBM Thinkpad T43P abruptly dropped 25 percent. Travel Tips Travel is typically a company’s second or third largest controllable expense, and one way to control it is to implement a managed-travel program. Most of the online booking services have launched programs for small companies. Expedia Corporate Travel ($149 a year) and Orbitz for Business (fees vary according to use) drive down travel expenses by 10 percent or more by lowering transaction fees (an average of $5 per ticket, compared with about $30 for traditional agencies) and negotiating discounted rates with airlines, hotels, and rental car companies. Obviously, the larger the company, the larger the discount a travel service can negotiate. But in some markets, just being able to offer an airline or hotel a 10 percent incremental increase in your company’s business can be a potent bargaining tool. American Express’ small-business travel program (starts at $500 a year; $100 for small-business cardholders) offers discounts on airfares of up to 15 percent on domestic flights and 35 percent on international trips. AmEx also promises to beat any fare you find online. Website Hosting and Design Some broadband providers offer free hosting with their service. If yours doesn’t, consider one of these low-cost options, all of which include easy-to-use design and e-commerce tools and templates to get your site up and running quickly. Yahoo Hosting and domain registration: $12 per month and up E-commerce: $40 to $300 per month, depending on sales volume Homestead Hosting and domain registration: $20 to $50 per month (plus $20 setup fee) E-commerce: $7 to $60 per month Microsoft Office Live Hosting and domain registration: Basic service is free; added features cost $30 a month Web Traffic Analysis Google Analytics is a free and useful Web analytics tool–if you can get it. Right now there’s a waiting list that doesn’t seem to be budging. Fortunately, Google is far from your only affordable option. Check out ClickTracks‘ Analyzer, a basic hosted service that charges $49 per month (or buy the software for $495); Web analytics program SmarterStats 3.0, free for use on a single website (available at download.com); StatCounter, free for up to 250,000 page views; and Site Meter, which starts at $9.95 per month. Numerous free trial versions of other programs are available, too–which can at least hold you over if you decide to wait for your Google spot to open up. Industrial Space Even in the information age, manufactured goods can’t telecommute. That’s why industrial space–factories, warehouses, distribution centers–always costs more the closer it is to large population and transportation centers. Prices decline the farther out you move, but then transportation costs go up–so what appears to be a bargain often is not. The right balance is easiest to strike in less pricey “second-tier” cities such as Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville, as well as on the fringes of primary markets–places such as eastern Pennsylvania, lower New York state, and northern Los Angeles County. Aeron Chairs Go to authorized Herman Miller dealers first and think of the advertised price as a starting point. Even if you’re buying just 10 or 20 chairs, you can bargain. “Every contract is individually negotiated,” says Herman Miller spokesman Bruce Buursma. Dealers often have used chairs coming back from leases, which can cost 20 percent less than new ones. Consider lower-cost models too–Herman Miller’s basic Celle chair, for example, offers Aeron-like features for about $499, compared with $699 for a basic Aeron. If you’re not making progress with the brick-and-mortar dealers, go online. Here’s what a recent price comparison turned up (all prices include shipping): New Aeron Chair $699 at officedesigns.com, ultimatebackstore.com, sit4less.com, homeofficesolutions.com (volume pricing available) “Like New” Aeron Chair (floor models or returns) $519 at luxurychair.com, $560 at trendychair.com, $539 at sit4less.com’s clearance section Aeron Look-alikes Sit4Less “E” Chair, $399 at sit4less.com Ergonomic eChair, $319 at luxurychair.com Mesh eChair, $269 at designerseating.com A serious coffeemaker–and serious coffee If you consider a super automatic espresso machine to be a super productivity booster, check out the “outlet” section of wholelattelove.com, which sells manufacturer-refurbished machines at deep discounts–a Jura-Capresso Impresa S9 (list price, $2,400) goes for $1,399, shipping included. As for beans, get the gourmet stuff from old-school coffee roaster D’Amico Foods, which ships nationwide from its store in Brooklyn–at great prices ($6 a pound for the house blend espresso). The best rate on credit cards Start by checking out what your bank offers, then do some comparison shopping. As with personal credit cards, there are numerous no-annual-fee cards out there, so avoid paying such charges unless you truly require the particular services or reward-program benefits of a certain card. At sites like CreditCardGuide.com, CreditCards.com, and MyRatePlan.com (go to the credit card section), you can compare cards and apply online. Fun and Games Nothing succeeds in conjuring that giddy dot-com mood quite like little plastic soccer players. A new Striker foosball table retails for $699. But you almost always can find better deals at online specialty stores, many of which also include free shipping–which is no small matter, since delivery of a foosball table can cost a couple hundred bucks. Here’s a sampling of some of the best deals on office amusements: Foosball Table Striker foosball table $499, shipping included, at justfoosballtables.com      Air Hockey Carrom Premium Hydralumina With Scoring, six-foot model $540, shipping included, at christophersgames.com    Ping-Pong Table Prince Competitor table tennis table $359, shipping included, at dickssportinggoods.com Pool Table Charleston eight-foot table $1,787, crating and air freight included, at pooltables-direct.com    Pinball/Arcade Simpsons game $4,800, with shipping, christophersgames.com 1979 Space Invaders cocktail table arcade game $700 (plus $350 shipping), recently listed on eBay     Turn Your Office Into an Art Gallery Why buy pricey art for your office walls when you can rent? A number of major art museums have rental programs–and many will even help you choose the best pieces for your space. The Artists Gallery at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art charges about $350 to rent a $5,000 painting for three months; a $1,000 painting rents for $170. Like most museum rental programs, SFMOMA’s program focuses on local talent and has thousands of work in all media; photography tends to be the least expensive option. Other museums with rental programs include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin. Local galleries may also rent to businesses.    The Office of Your Dreams Right now, the cheapest downtown Class A rents in major markets can be found in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle–places where $20 per square foot can land you palatial digs that would cost three times as much in New York City. Wherever you live, make sure you keep up with local business news. When companies close, downsize, or move out of town, they’re often left with time on their existing leases. “Subleasing is where a smaller business can really pick up a bargain,” says Andrew Abramson, a senior vice president with Grubb & Ellis in Washington, D.C. Abramson points out that in addition to lower rent, expensive improvements that were made by the previous tenant–such as phone systems and furniture–are often thrown into the deal as an incentive. Meantime, if you forgo a view and instead take lower-floor or obstructed-view space, you can save anywhere from 10 to 30 percent on rent. (Go to grubb-ellis.com/research to check pricing in markets throughout North America.) Location, Location, Location How much do real estate prices fluctuate nationwide? To find out, we searched for Class A office space in three major markets–Denver, Atlanta, and San Francisco. In each city, we found a plush office of about 6,000 square feet (enough for about 20 people) in a fancy, downtown building with all the amenities-health club, concierge services, covered parking, etc. The annual lease rates, of course, were all over the map. San Francisco $37 per square foot Denver $25 per square foot Atlanta $29 per square foot The Wall Street Journal A staple of office waiting rooms everywhere, the Journal does not offer corporate discounts for bulk orders to new subscribers. Check for special offers on the comparison-shopping sites as well as newspaper specialists subscription-offers.com and discountednewspapers.com. And check the paper’s website, too. At the time of writing, an offer for new subscribers made dealing directly with the publisher the cheapest option out there by far (56 weeks for $99); only one third-party distributor was able to beat the regular yearly subscription price of $215. (Note: This special offer was available online only; operators at the Journal‘s 800 number did not mention or even acknowledge this option.) The Clean-Up Crew Any cleaning service you hire should be bonded and insured–if cleaners mess up your stuff, or themselves, you don’t want to get stuck with the bill. Prices for that will be higher than for under-the-table help, but worth it. Remember, cleaning people often work when the office is empty; you need to be able to trust them. Make sure the company does background checks on workers, and check multiple references. Old-school long-distance service Negotiate directly with carriers or go through resellers, or CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers), which tend to price more aggressively and be more focused on the needs of smaller businesses than the large telecoms. There are many sites that let you solicit bids and compare rates, including PhoneSaver.com and BuyerZone. As you compare services, look for one that will bill the shortest time increments possible for long-distance–one- to six-second intervals, rather than 30-second ones. The smaller increments can translate into savings of 10 percent or so. International calling It’s not a substitute for a traditional phone system, but Skype, which lets you make calls directly from your computer, is a useful supplement if international calls are a big part of your phone bill. The quality usually can’t match a good phone connection, but the prices can’t be beat. Calls to other Skype users (through your computer) are free wherever you’re calling from, and calls to landlines and cell phones in the U.S., much of Europe, China, and Japan cost about two cents per minute. Broadband: Why You Need a Broker Unless you have a strong preference for a particular provider, you’ll generally get better rates through a broker–brokers do the comparison shopping for you, and because they buy in bulk, tend to have greater negotiating leverage. Typically, there is no charge to the consumer in working with a broker; instead, the providers pay the brokers a fee. Look for resellers that have been in business at least a few years, and make sure they show you quotes from several providers. Broadband is an extremely competitive market, so avoid getting locked into a long-term contract. Most companies require a two-year minimum commitment–don’t sign up for a longer term. You can solicit quotes from multiple vendors and resellers at comparison-shopping sites. Office Design Most professional designers charge between $75 and $200 an hour. But hiring one can actually wind up saving you money. Designers often see possibilities that you do not. A designer might suggest ways to use inexpensive materials and built-ins–using melamine boards in place of desks, for example–that can help reduce the amount of office furniture you need to buy. And when you do buy, designers get discounts of as much as 50 percent. The trick is to keep your designer on a short leash by defining the task at hand as narrowly as possible. To find a designer, go to asid.org, the website of the American Society of Interior Designers, and click on the “Find a Designer” link. Before You Buy Thanks to the Web, comparison shopping is a cinch. Sites such as Bizrate.com, PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com, and NexTag.com may turn up the deal you’re looking for on any number of items. The following sites may be helpful for specialized searches. Broadband service Broadband.com Broadbandbroker.com Buyerzone.com EverythingT1.com Business equipment leasing Buyerzone.com Commercial real estate Equityoffice.com Cushwake.com (click on “Property Listings”) Grubb-ellis.com (click on “Properties”) Computers/software Shopper-zdnet.com Shopper.cnet.com Credit cards Creditcards.com Creditcardguide.com Myrateplan.com Newspaper subscriptions Subscription-offers.com Discountednewspapers.com Phone plans and systems Phonesaver.com Buyerzone.com

About 2579 days ago Computer Security

Service, Not Servers

Don’t tell Joe Walker that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. The headquarters of his company, Elcometer, a manufacturer of testing equipment for paints and coatings based in Rochester Hills, Michigan, was hit by lightning three consecutive years starting in 2001. In the first two cases, the resulting electrical surges knocked out the building’s power and completely fried every electronic device–including the company’s computer servers, which stored critical information such as inventory numbers and customer contacts. Both times, business ground to a halt for 10 days as the company’s tech team scrambled to restore the systems. In August 2003, yet another fierce electrical storm roared through southeastern Michigan. Once again, Elcometer’s electricity was out for days. But this time, commerce continued without a hitch. What was different? Six months earlier, Elcometer had gotten rid of its computer servers and instead began accessing all of its sales, inventory, and accounting data online. As a result, employees were able to work from home or from terminals at a nearby Kinko’s. “It was a huge difference,” says Walker. “All I had to do was get my Internet connection back up and running to get back in business.” Walker is on the leading edge of one of today’s most important technology trends–the transformation of software from a product to a service. While computer software has been growing faster and smarter, the industry’s business model has been pretty much stuck in about 1990. Developers ship out disks and CDs encoded with their latest release or upgrade, often charging hefty licensing fees. Customers install the software on their local servers, which must be constantly maintained and upgraded to run this ever more sophisticated software–a vexing game of catch-up that usually means keeping a team of tech pros on staff. And when the server goes down so does business.  But that process is becoming as outmoded as VHS recorders. Instead, software makers are making their tools available on the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis for a monthly subscription fee. Known as on demand, or software as a service, this model has long been familiar to customers of companies such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com. But now nearly all software makers are offering on-demand versions, making it possible for businesses to abandon their servers and instead keep all of their data–from e-mail to e-commerce to human resources–on the Web. In 2005, companies spent more than $4 billion on hosted software, a number that is expected to grow to more than $10 billion a year over the next two years. While those numbers represent a small portion of the $190 billion global software market, the Yankee Group, a research firm in Boston, forecasts that more than 50 percent of the software purchased by small to midsize companies in 2008 will be from software-as-a-service providers. “This is an evolution in how companies use software, especially small and midsize companies that finally have access to applications they couldn’t afford before,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, a senior analyst with Yankee. The key benefits of working with these on-demand providers are high speed and low cost. To buy and install a traditional accounting or customer-relationship-management system often means waiting months and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. With software as a service, you can be up and running within days, or even hours, of signing a contract. Since the vendor is hosting both the application and the data, getting started can be as simple as typing in a username and password. What’s more, on-demand customers generally pay monthly subscription fees, rather than large, one-time licensing fees. A Yankee Group study found that the total cost of operating an on-demand software package is less than half that for an equivalent traditional system. In 1999, before the company experienced its first lightning strike, Elcometer used Great Plains, now owned by Microsoft, as its in-house accounting system. But with Y2K looming, Great Plains was requiring its customers to spend $1,500 for an upgrade. Elcometer also needed to upgrade its servers to handle the new software and hire an IT manager to manage it. “I was looking at spending $130,000, plus license fees,” says Walker. When he factored in the need to safeguard his company’s data from future lightning strikes–or other unexpected events–the decision became obvious. He switched to NetSuite, which charges an up-front fee of $5,000 plus $99 a month per user. “Now, we don’t have any servers, we don’t have to download the latest updates, and NetSuite fixes any bugs while I’m asleep,” Walker says. On-demand software is especially useful for companies that have computers and data spread out among multiple locations, since everyone from salespeople to CEOs can access their systems from any broadband Internet connection. Businesses that operate in different time zones or countries no longer have to worry about supporting their traveling employees around the clock. Managing an e-mail server, for example, was particularly troublesome for Fred Aryan, president of LaserShip, a delivery company in Vienna, Virginia. With 150 employees spread out among 15 locations along the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to Atlanta, keeping everyone’s computers up to date with the latest patches and spam filters was becoming a nightmare. That’s why he switched to HyperOffice, an on-demand provider of e-mail and collaboration software based in Rockville, Maryland. By adopting HyperOffice, which charges about $7 a user per month, Aryan figures he’s saving $80,000 a year between software license and hardware maintenance costs. “And that doesn’t count getting rid of all the service headaches,” he says. The downside of on demand, of course, is that your business becomes dependent on access to the Internet. Aryan says he struck a deal with HyperOffice to compensate him if his system experiences any downtime (see “What to Ask For in an On-Demand Software Contract“). Security is another concern. Keeping servers in-house may be a pain, but it also means that sensitive accounting or HR data can be locked down behind a firewall. Can the Web offer the same assurances? On-demand vendors insist it can. NetSuite and HyperOffice, for example, either maintain or partner with deluxe data centers complete with the latest in data security and backup technology. Employees can gain access only through secure logins. Elcometer’s Walker admits that he was nervous about keeping his data on the Web. But he’s thankful that the decision has saved him from worrying about the nagging problems of maintaining his hardware–not to mention the weather. Resources The consulting firm ThinkStrategies offers tips on making the switch to hosted software, as well as a list of vendors, at saas-showplace.com. The consultancy OpSource offers white papers, an ROI calculator, and other resources at opsource.net.