E-Newsletter March 2007

It is hard to believe that another month has flown by!

This month has been an extremely exciting and busy one at itSynergy. We are adding new customers at a record pace, and have some type of major project scheduled nearly every weekend for the next couple of months. Our growth is continuing in earnest, and we are very excited to be beating our goals in that area. Along those lines, we just announced an opening for a new position - "User Support Specialist". You can read more at http://www.itsynergy.com/user_support.shtml. If you know of anyone that has a GREAT phone personality, loves to work with and help people, and has some technical knowledge, send them our way!

On a separate note, did you see that Microsoft is getting into the phone system business for small businesses? Check out http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint for details. I'm excited to see how we can integrate this into our business, and even begin offering it as an option to customers in the future.

Finally, I gave a speech this month on Key Performance Indicators, and using them in your business. While I'm sure you have defined the KPIs for your business, and are measuring them regularly, what you may find interesting about my presentation is HOW we look at some of our own KPIs internally. Specifically, we are doing some pretty neat things with pulling data out of databases (think your accounting system) and displaying it in graphical format right on our internal intranet site. I've included an article on starting a company Intranet below, and I think many of our customers could benefit not only from having a 'starter' intranet site, but also from really flexing the muscles of the tools you already have to improve your bottom line.

Have a great month!

By Jeff Wuorio
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center at http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness.

Many small-business owners get it when it comes to the influence and reach of the Internet. But what they may not fully appreciate is how that medium can be used exclusively within their own business.

Planning and programming an intranet - an internal Web site restricted to those within your company - can prove a boon to communication, project management and a host of other responsibilities. But using it effectively means more than building it, plugging it in, and letting it rock.

With software such as Windows SharePoint Services, a private Web site could also easily be converted into an "extranet," which is a restricted site that serves an internal audience but also allows in selected outside partners and others. Extranets are particularly useful when outside vendors are key members of project teams.

Here are eight dos and don'ts for launching an intranet (or extranet).

1. First, determine your employees' wants (and needs).
2. Assign an administrator to manage the internal site.
3. For users' sake, keep your starter site simple.
4. Make it as secure as possible.
5. Keep things safe on the inside as well.
6. Aggressively test your system.
7. Make it easy to update.
8. Watch your (programming) language.

Notes from the Network Engineering Department:

Note to readers: As our network engineers work with all of you across our entire customer base, they observe trends and issues that many people have in common, or that many customers will find helpful to know about. This section is designed to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.

Last month, we promised a discussion of the two theories for managing growing storage requirements. A large percentage of our customers struggle with storage requirements, and many have faced a situation where they are running out of storage space on their server

When faced with this scenario, there are really two options for moving forward:

1. Clean up the data that is out there, and remove unneeded, duplicate, or old data.
2. Purchase additional hard drive space.

Most small businesses are keenly focused on cash flow, and so the initial reaction is to use option 1. We ALL are storing data on our servers that we really don't need any more - quite possibly a significant percentage of our total data is information that we don't need or want any more. As a result, the natural reaction is "I'll just clean things up and we'll be fine". What many people don't think about in this scenario, however, is the value of their time.

Hard drive storage has come WAY down in price over the last several years, to the point that with most technologies, you can now estimate the cost of storage at roughly $1 per GB. So for example, you can probably find a 120GB hard drive for around $120. When you look at the problem from that viewpoint, it can really change what makes the most sense to solve the data crunch. Even if you only ask your employees to spend an hour each on cleaning up their data, it is likely the salary cost for that time will easily leap into the thousands of dollars. When you compare that to the few hundred dollars you'll need to just add more space, option 2 suddenly starts looking much better.

At the end of the day, it is true that storing data we don't need any more is inefficient and costly. It is important to view the issue from a purely business standpoint, however, even if it is psychologically difficult to accept. The vast majority of the time, the best business decision is to just purchase more space, and be more careful with what you store moving forward.

Next month, we'll talk about the options that are available to you once you've come to the realization that the financially smart decision is to purchase additional storage space.

March 2007
In this issue....

 □  Welcome
 □  Launch a Company Intranet
 □  Time to change your OS
 □  System Engineering Corner
 □  Office - Excel Features

So That's How!
Great Excel Features

• Learn five great Microsoft® Excel® features that will help you to work faster and easier.
  
  
  
  
  After completing this course you will be able to:
  
  ◘ Freeze the upper and left panes to keep column or row titles in view while you scroll through data.
  
  ◘ Compare two workbooks at the same time by using the new Compare Side by Side feature in Microsoft Office Excel 2003.
  
  ◘ Add up numbers just by selecting them.
  
  ◘ Use the fill handle instead of typing to complete the repetitive series of numbers, dates, or text.
  
  ◘ Make formatting changes automatically when values are at a certain point by using conditional formatting.
  
  
  SEE DEMO!

How To: Determine if it's the right time to change your OS

• How To: Determine if it's the right time to change your OS
  
  
  
  
  After much hype, Microsoft's newest operating system release in almost five years, Vista, became available to business users in November 2006. Vista has flashy features and updated capabilities that can only run on hardware that has enough power and memory to support them, however for that reason, there are a whole new set of system requirements for this new OS that are more demanding than previous Windows operating systems such as XP and 2000. Before you upgrade, consider the following:
  
  
  Read more

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Fax: 602.297.8703

Email: info@itsynergy.com
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