Business Tech Tools

Good grief! I would have never thought about insuring a website. It is a crazy world when someone can sue over falling through a skylight while trying to break in a building and win! Or when someone is injured on a kitchen knife lying on the counter while climbing through the kitchen window to rob the home, and win the lawsuit. I guess it makes sense to insure yourself against the litigation happy public. Thanks for the advice!

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Hi Matt, thanks for the post and taking the time to talk with us this week. If folks are interested they can also get the most up to date info on app protocols on our community site, www.breakingpointlabs.com.

Thanks,
Kyle Flaherty
BreakingPoint Systems ...

A company would certainly be married to Sharepoint if they were to develop any .NET business intelligence Dashboards or integrate their workflow into Sharepoint. Microsoft has not developed any standards based workflow or portlet tools. Other vendors rely on JSR 168 portlets, which means that a portlet could be taken from one server to another. Sharepoint doesn't do that. Surprise! Microsoft doesn't play well with others. Also, I have run into huge problems growning Sharepoint installations. Sure, a single server or a server farm that is all built under the same tree works well, but try to take two separate Sharepoint installations and bring them together under a single management instance. You end up with duplicate and orphaned objects which can't be managed.

Sure, Sharepoint does some things very well. It is a fine document management system. Add Groove folder synchronization and it's a very good solution for document management. Powerpoint libraries are a great feature. All of that is great. I won't deny that. But try to do something a little out of the ordinary, like build a workflow, and now you have a solution that is Sharepoint specific and you are locked in if you want to maintain your investment. Being locked in to a knowledge management product sounds like bad news. The example of a network operating system isn't really applicable here. I'm talking about functionality that is added by coding for a system. So in that respect - yes there are hundreds if not thousands of companies married to technologies. How many companies are still running mainframes because they won't scrap the code they wrote 30 years ago?

Mike, I've enjoyed this discussion. I wish more readers were as engaging as you. Thank you for your comments.

And I also agree with you that many companies will probably never go paperless. But there are more and more that are trying and hopefully they can lead by example.

I am really surprised by your comments about how you would consult a client away from a "complete solution" like a SharePoint solution or something similar. In addition, I am surprised to see you would think that a company would be married to SharePoint and Microsoft if implemented.

Just because Microsoft has actually made a useful tool such as sharepoint that improves business performance, doesn't mean that it is "from the dark side" and thus "evil". Yes, my company is a proud Microsoft Partner, but that doesn't mean that we always recommend a Microsoft solution to a client. Also, I must say that we are not a consulting firm that works on SharePoint installations - so I am not looking for a consulting engagement by posting about the tool.

In regards to the free version of SharePoint not having all of the tools that the SharePoint Portal Version would have, is true. However, for a small business, the free version is more than adequate for them to start with, and as they grown as a business to in turn grow into the full version. I complete disagree with the lack of ease to use. The product uses a very simple web-based gui interface that even a beginner can figure out quickly.

I do find concern with your comment of becoming "married" because they chose to implement the product. Let me ask you a simple question, when does any company truly "marry" a software vendor? Look at the history of software - in the begining there was a big push to deploy thin clients, as well as in the 80's networks were not run by the big bad Microsoft. They were run by products from Novell, email communications was Groupware, Lotus Notes, etc. Over the years, I have seen top 50 law firms move from Hummingbird to I-manage to Worlddox and back to Hummingbird - as an FYI - both all three are very high end document management system typicaly found in the legal markets. These conversions & licensing can run into high 5 and 6 digits. Look at the migration away from Novell to Microsoft Server, or from Lotus to Exchange over the years. So, I don't see where any company is tied to one product.

Although, I do agree that companies do need to look towards moving away from paper towards a total electronic system. I don't believe we will see a true paperless system in the next 10 years, but I do believe that we are a business community are becoming more "Green" ...

I've had great success with using a web-hoste CRM application from HostedDatabase.com to help run our sales department. It is great because we can access all our contact info from the road. Plus, the price is right when you consider there is no software to install on our compan servers.

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Hi Mike,
You make a good point - if everything were electronic to begin with it would be a lot more efficient as a whole process. I'm not a big fan of Sharepoint, especially the free functionality which I think falls short (and I think it falls short purposely to force businesses to buy the full version). It's tough to manage and it is proprietary. I wouldn't put any of my corporate info in a proprietary solution. Once a company puts all of their documents and knowledge into Sharepoint, how could they ever leave Microsoft? They may not want to leave Microsoft anyway.

You point still stands though. It is much better to start electronic and stay electronic than to get paper and scan it in again. I may not like Sharepoint, but it would be a step forward from a paper based process.

Hi Denise,
I do everything I can to push my own business and others towards going paperless. I don't think we can blame the baby boomers - I know plenty of baby boomers who scan everything in and store it on a hard drive rather than storing paper (my father used to do business almost entirely on paper and now it is almost entirely electronic and he's a baby boomer). I think that maybe it is our society. How many times has someone said, "This is important. Print it out and save it." This is probably a little like digital photos - 15 years ago I printed them all out and now I never print them out. I hate to admit it, but these things take time.

I think that the technology is definitely there for us to go paperless but the business processes haven't kept up with the tech in this case. Many times I put a digital signature on a contract and email to a client, and then they answer and ask me to print it out, sign it and fax it back because those are their business requirements. What we really need is an overall understanding by everyone that paper is wasteful.

To be more realistic though, it isn't that we're saving the planet. Few businesses will act on that. More businesses will act on we are saving you money. Even if you don't care about the planet, you should care about the cost of paper, toner, printer servicing, file cabinets, the rent you're paying on the extra space you need to store the file cabinets, and even the recurring expense of archiving offsite. Compared to those expenses, hard drive space is very cheap. I think that once that argument becomes common place we'll rapidly advance on the paperless office.

Brad - I like your idea about using a service like File123.com. Going paperless helps with cutting down costs for storage, in addition to taking a step towards environmental friendliness.

However, I am surprised that you didn't introduce small businesses towards a "SharePoint" service. Whether it is internal or external to the corporate network. Introducing SharePoint into a work environment is fairly easy, plus there are some great advantages for SharePoint - Such as:

- Advanced Security / Administrative Control - Like File/Folder security on a Windows File Server on a Windows Domain/Network - SharePoint will allow advance security to the file based on user rights. Whole workspaces can be visable for users or parts removed based on user id.
- Easy to use Collaborative Tools - Team Workspaces, coordinate calendars, announcements and alerts, etc.
- Scalability and Ease to Taylor to Needs - Customization is extremely easy with 2.0 and 3.0 of SharePoint.
- Web-based Snap Ins - The web parts that you can add to a site can be invaluable for a company.

SharePoint is not only a Document Management System - Onlne storage, but also a corporate portal that can allow so much more for small companies.

Plus if the company has a standard Windows 2003 Server - SharePoint Team services is free for the company to deploy.

Regards
Mike Holland
Managing Director

Net-Flow Solutions
www.Net-FlowSolutions.com ...

Matt -

I remember 20 (or so) years ago...showing my age now...when the techies declared we were on the verge of the paperless office. Are we almost there? Or is the Baby Boom generation keeping us stuck in the paper world?

Another choice is http://www.pdf995.com You just have to put up with advertising. Great product!

Losing my data is probably worse than losing my order.

...the company loses my business!

I completely agree, Kathleen. I think that it is appropriate to ask coworkers, managers, and customer how they prefer to be contacted. There are no set rules. It's personal preference and what you can do to work better with the person. For example, I would rather be contacted by email, but I know other people would rather be contacted by telephone.

Thanks for contributing. You make some great points and share some good advice.

People are very different in the manner in which they like to be communicated to. It is for this reason that we need to understand the preferences of the recipient of our communication. This is not as difficult as it sounds. When making an initial connection with someone, whether they are a customer, employee or manager, it is okay to ask them which is the best manner in which to contact them? They will, more often than not, tell you, and respect you for asking the question, a sign of respect for their time. If you look around your circle of friends, colleagues and customers, you can detect patterns of responsiveness and non-responsiveness. Some people may respond promptly to an email, but not a phone call. As a result, your communication method with that person may best be via email, rather than phone. Having said this, there are often also very good business reasons to make a phone call and/or document a phone conversation. For example, if a customer issue is reported and resolved on the phone, it should subsequently be documented in an email for business protection purposes. Another consideration should be the native language of the person with whom you are communicating. When dealing cross-culturally, where English is the common business language, but not the native language of the recipient, a phone conversation may not be understood as clearly as the written words in English. The key to understanding the best method of communication is to ask yourself (and/or the recipient) the following questions: 1. What is the recipients preferred manner of communication? 2. How, in the past, have I received the most timely and substantial feedback from the recipient? 3. Are there cultural and/or language issues to be considered? 4. Is this a business critical communication requiring documentation for both parties? If you quickly run through these questions when establishing communication protocols with others, you will find the best manner in which to contact, and get a response from, each one of them. It would also be great if all Contact management and CRM tools on the market would include, as standard, a ?Preferred Method of Communication? field.

I completely agree with The Penguin's comment. I am running both 64-bit Ubuntu 7.10 and Vista 64-bit. Ubuntu is more solid and faster. If none of my Windows software runs under Vista and I have to install VMware and run Windows XP Pro as a virtual machine, then I really don't have to do it on Vista when I could do it on Ubuntu. Check out Ubuntu. It's free and you can throw it on a spare machine and play around.

"At some point you may have to bite the bullet and run Vista. With SP1 about to come out, the time may be right." The time is right for Ubuntu. I am running 64 bit with all the cool desktop animations and all the software you can shake a stick at for free.

Thanks for the information. I don't have a website yet. However, I have made up my mind that I want to have one. Hence, I am doing my research and developing my plans to establish a site and get it going. As a result, I truely appreciate your information.

First of all, what "all so-called ASPs" failed? What type of solutions are you talking about? You don't offer any specific examples for anything. I could try to guess at the companies in the back of your mind by your veiled complaints. My company has been a VAR of a Web-based, ASP, SaaS solution that integrates enterprise email marketing tools with most used CRM tools for nearly 7 years. Granted, if you aren't online or don't have access, you're pretty much dead in the water. That's a given. On the other hand, our stringent policies for privacy, encryption, and protection of data far exceed Federal and any other requirements. We have never been breached. How many nightmares have you read about companies' servers being hacked or data compromised because a careless employee left a laptop in the back of a cab? All policies are clearly available...if you choose to read them. You must agree to be bound by our policies to open an account. As far as cost is concerned, owning, maintaining, servicing, hosting one's own servers and software, employing IT staff is far more costly than outsourcing this, not to mention the peace of mind that lets a small business owner sleep at night, knowing everything is secure. So, you want your data out to move elsewhere? First, there's no contract, so our customers stay with us for years because of what we deliver in technology, support, and service. But, if you want to export data for whatever reason, it's simply a matter of logging in, clicking a few buttons, and there's ALL your data to copy and paste into an Excell spreadsheet. And, it's all properly formatted because when you opened your account, we helped you set up your account and imported your data for you if you wanted. So, stop making these oblique doomsday pronouncements. If you have specific cases, then call it out. Otherwise, your article is biased and uses unnecessary scare tactics to try to make some kind of point. The only thing I can agree on is that more companies need to do far more planning.