Your Business and Social Media/Networking Explained

You surely have heard or read about the huge phenomena called social media or social networking that has swept the web. Maybe not, in fact people still ask me today "What exactly is Social Media?"

Simply explained, Social Media are web sites that allow people, groups, and businesses to interact and engage. Key examples are http://www.facebook.com/, http://www.twitter.com/, and http://www.linkedin.com/. With these sites you create an account, login, post information about your self, group or business, find and connect with friends and associates, as well as share information. There is obviously much more to this but these are the very basics. People are sharing all kinds of information, photos, videos and links on virtually every imaginable topic.

Many business people I know have thoroughly embraced social media and found it to be very beneficial for their business. Many more are still wondering whether it applies to their business at all.

Once the domain of the younger set with Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster the demographics of people engaged in social media is getting older and older by the day. Social Media sites Facebook and Twitter are now prevalent in many aspects of our lives.
How are businesses using Social Media today?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) For Your Business? Now?

CRM, Customer Relationship Management, software has been around for decades. I have been using it myself since 1991, could not live with out it. My wife's company has been using it since 1997, it took me a while to convince her, and she lives by her CRM too.

Yet, at Net@Work of our 1,000's of customers only 100's use a real CRM software system.  This is rapidly changing. In the last month we have started or revived over 20 new CRM projects and there are scores more in the pipeline. You may wonder why.

Business owners are rapidly recognizing what the true CRM advocates have known for a long time. A good CRM system is essential to business success. In today's business world business owners must manage, cherish and nurture their customers like never before.

The point is that every business has some kind of CRM system, you have to manage your customers some how right? It is just that the system is in peoples, heads, their Outlook, on Post-It Notes, in the accounting system, etc. etc.

Sound familiar? Want to know more about CRM?

Is There Virtue in Virtualization for Small Businesses

A technology approach called "Virtualization" has been all the rage lately. You may be wondering what it is and how virtualization may relate to your business. If you have not wondered perhaps you should because there is a lot of virtue to this technology.

In simple terms Virtualization is a technology that allows the creation of multiple virtual computers on one actual computer.

It is kind of like when your flat one level parking lot got converted to a multi-level lot. The owner of the lot and parking lot operator could store a lot more cars for a lot more dollars, yet their land cost did not go up at all.

From a small business technology standpoint, the advantages that virtualization presents are numerous, too many to list here. But let me say this. Virtualization will save you money in acquisition and maintenance, reduce space and power usage, and increase utilization.

Here is a pretty simple video that explains some of the benefits of virtualization. If you are interested in this technology a great person to talk to is Mathew Hegarty of http://netatwork.com/ at (646) 293-1752 or mhegarty@netatwork.com

Take Plastic? Then Read this about PCI Compliance

PCI (Payment Card Industry), compliance refers to efforts to adhere to a set of security standards for credit and debit card processing developed by Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) called Data Security Standard (DSS) for protecting customers credit card info.

There is a lot of buzz now because there is a deadline coming up on June 30th for the adoption of DSS 6.6 requirements. This requirement addresses threats to web applications.

While PCI compliance is not a Federal Law it is being required or about to be required by some states. Is PCI Compliance a Law? Should it be? Neverthless, Gartner analyst Avivah Litan projects that only half of level one merchants (those that have more than 6 million credit card transactions per year) will be compliant with 6.6 by June 30.

How Smart is Your Mobile Phone

Smartphones are cell phones, or moblie phones as they say in the UK, with built in functionality like e-mail, web browsing and so much more.

The first smartphone which was called Simon was built by IBM back in 1992, Nokia entered the market in 1996, but the real game changer was the iPhone by Apple released in June of 2007. It set a whole new standard that every phone manufacturer is now seeking to surpass.

Believe it or not, today these smartphones have more memory and are more powerful than the desktop computer you used just a few years ago. There are thousands and thousands of software applications that run on these phones that do practically everything. Some mobile entrepreneurs are literally running their entire business on their phones, larger firms have e-mail, calendars, sales order processing, service management and a host of other activities on their employees' smartphone resulting in a boom to productivity.

How Sassy is your "SaaS"

SaaS is the abreviation for Software as a Service and is usually pronounced as Sass.

Simply stated, SaaS works like this. You rent the software instead of buying. You run the software on the provider's server not your own. The use of the hardware is included in the monthly or annual fee. You access the software over the internet or by way of a virtual private network.


Saas has been around since the late 90's but has really just started to gain popularity over the last few years. SalesForce.com, SageCRM.com, NetSuite.com, and Google Docs are some of the more widely known SaaS applications. There are many many more.


Here is a video from InfoWorld:

Welcome To Business Technology Simply Explained

Our mission is to help you to understand and learn about new technologies that may help you to grow your business by explaining them and pointing out their practical use.

We will be posting weekly and hope you check-in often.

Thanks

Peter Conway

02.11.10