The PC World Canada email newsletter just alerted me to their Partner Resource Centre, which is featuring How new technology can help your Small Business’ bottom line(PDF). The article discusses some of the challenges small businesses are faced with when trying to measure the ROI on technology investments and shares the following tips:
1. Study headcount and work processes for different jobs and assess their related costs.
2. Examine overall workflow, paying special attention to any ad hoc or manual processes that could be helped through automation.
3. Analyze the cost of maintaining an older technology, then factor in the savings you may realize through reduced maintenance or service costs.
4. Check out remote monitoring and other outsourcing services and compare that to managing your own systems in-house.
5. Identify the quickest areas of return (e.g. integrating POS data with accounting systems can reduce input requirements and administrative headcount).
Specifically, the article recommends small businesses invest in technology that will allow them to automate routine processes, create real-time business reports and connect business information and staff. For more details, head over to the Partner Resource Centre.
This morning’s Network World Daily News pointed to a news item “Back up e-mail, judge tells White House” outlining that “The White House must preserve e-mail and maintain copies of millions of backup e-mail messages that were allegedly deleted improperly from servers, according to a temporary restraining order issued Monday by a U.S. judge.” Directives such as this certainly validate the business case for email archiving solutions like those offered by companies like Exclaimer, an inmedia client. Businesses of all sizes can learn from this situation and deploy solutions in advance of the onset of external pressures. Transparency in government and public companies is increasingly in demand; compliance and accountability issues within both private and public organizations will continue to be powerful market drivers for these sorts of solutions.
BarCampOttawa4 is scheduled for Saturday, November 17. The event will be held at BitHeads, 1309 Carling Ave, from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM. Francis and I will be hosting the “Where does the blogosphere fit in a PR strategy?” session. You can join us in the Room 2 (Social Media Stream) from 3:30 -4:15 PM.
A few weeks ago, my colleague Linda wrote a blog entry about how difficult it is for her to imagine what pre-Internet public relations would have been like. After going through the exercise of building an international media list for the launch of the Touch Bionics i-LIMB Hand, I can’t imagine how such a list could have been compiled in any reasonable period of time without the help of Google and the ability to access online content from print and broadcast media outlets. Notice, I don’t mention any branded media contact database as my savior. That’s because we don’t rely on them.
I’m willing to bet that more than a few PR firms, or at least their newly hired interns, would think we’re crazy for not using one of the available media databases to grab all seemingly relevant contacts, export email address and blast out news releases.
John German, one of the first patients to receive the revolutionary new prosthetic hand, the i-LIMB, that inmedia helped launch in July has posted an endearing video to YouTube detailing the amazing array of uses to which he puts his bionic hand on an everyday basis. He gets a bit carried away, taking a Lee Majors-like leap over a running car, but the biggest impression I was left with was just how easily John has integrated the arm into his life.
