BlueTie Blog

Small Businesses Get More Using Hosted Technology

Smartbiz recently posted on a study titled The Small Business Transition to Hosted Technology: Cost vs. Benefits. The posts summary: "The bottom line is that SMBs get more bang for their buck—a lot more—when they have someone else run their IT infrastructure." The full 13 page study summary is available for download. Here is an excerpt from the release covering the study:

"The survey consisted of more than 325 SMB senior executives, half with companies that outsource all or part of their IT infrastructure, and half managing IT internally. The vast majority of respondents – more than 97 percent – worked in companies with fewer than 100 employees.

Key findings from the report include the following:

1. The majority of SMBs that outsource (54 percent) spend less than 5 percent of annual revenues on maintaining and upgrading IT infrastructure, while 64 percent of non-hosting companies spend more than 10 percent of revenues on IT
2. Companies that outsource (68 percent) are much more aggressive about using IT assets to engage in e-commerce than companies that manage technology infrastructures internally (29 percent)
3. By more than 85 percent, outsourcers report that their IT organizations play an important role in remaining competitive in their respective industries than those that do not outsource.
4. Outsourcers suffer fewer security incidents and technical failures than their non-hosting counterparts, and they are better positioned to avoid or mitigate downtime risks."

If you're a BlueTie user then you're probably already seeing the benefits of outsourcing IT infrastructure. If you aren't yet a BlueTie customer and are considering SaaS for Email and Calendaring, or any of your IT services, then this article may provide the impetus you need to make the transition or provide valuable information in presenting an effective business case.

What Small Businesses Want From Email

Today's small and medium sized business are looking for a high quality, full-featured email suite that meets the needs of their growing business without having to spend a lot of money. How do we know? We asked them.

The combination of cost and feature set is a critical balance for growing companies. They want to "...decrease costs without sacrificing functionality." And they need an "...inexpensive way to get all the functionality that larger businesses rely on for email and collaboration...". They need a way for their staff to work more efficiently together to service a growing base of customers and transactions. They need tools that let them service more customers without hiring more staff.

So as businesses grow, the ability for staff to coordinate work becomes more important. Many "...have grown as a company  and realize [they] need advanced email and collaboration tools." Increased coordination/collaboration can allow for specialization, each person is a specialist at specific functions and thus information can be passed from person to person for action efficiently, or it can be used to 'load balance' the workload by letting multiple people perform the same tasks and thus share the workload. Businesses are looking for email with integrated and shared, calendars, tasks, files and contacts.

This might all seem obvious to some but for many business owners answering the question of how to increase productivity can be complex. And if you're running a very small business, hard to recognize. Communications and coordination amongst staff is just one area of opportunity to do so and may not be so obvious depending on the type of business.

We also heard consistently that a professional appearance is also important to a growing business. Just because it's a small business doesn't mean they want their email screaming it when communicating via email with distributors, vendors or customers. This is why every small business needs an email service that provides domain support. An email service that lets them send and receive email from their own web domain. The number of small business that are still using 'free-mail' consumer email accounts without their own companies domain is still very large. If you own a small business, you can have your own email address domain even if you don't have an extensive web site.  Additionally, if you have your own web site, you can point your email to any good email provider, with the collaboration tools you need to increase productivity,  you don't have to use the email tools provided by your web host - which likely are not specifically designed for businesses.

What do you think small businesses need from their email service? If you're not already using BlueTie what are you using and how's it working for you? If you are already using BlueTie how are you using it to improve productivity at your business?

Best B2B Transaction Web Site

Last week we won the ad:tech award for Best Business to Business Transaction Web Site for our Featuretisements. If you haven't seen what the Featuretisements are all about you can read about them here and check out a demo of the Travel Featuretisement here.

As you know from our prior posts travel and business search (in partnership with Business.com) are available with BlueTie now. We're working on additional features that will be available in late May.

We believe Featuretisements to be the newest and best way to monetize web-based software and we're exicted that others believe it too.

BlueTie Launches a New Way to Book Travel

Today we, in partnership with Orbitz, launched it's new travel planning feature. With it, you can do flight searches and overlay flights right on top of your personal calendar. You can see if a flight will get you there in time for a meeting or see if there is a sufficient gap for you to leave the meeting and get to the airport before a flight. No more tabbing between your email and the Orbitz site to figure out what flight times will work, it can all be done on one screen in BlueTie. And the ability to just type it in, "Flights from ROC to SFO" for example, is just plain cool.

Another great thing about the travel planning is the way you can sort the hotel results. All the hotels come back in a list, one per line. You can double click on any hotel to get the details; photos, does it have a gym, pool, etc. But what I love about the one per line listing is how easily I can sort and compare prices and stars now. There just isn't a faster or easier way to compare these items that I have seen anywhere else.

There is, of course, an official press release, but if you really want to see how cool it is, just go view the demo via travel.bluetie.com.

Let us know what you think of the new travel planning feature.

Work Anywhere

It's that time of year when all the bloggers post their prediction lists on everything from global warming to the latest tech gadget. We think this is going to be the year of Work Anywhere, a trend that gets predicted every year but has not turned into something that affects small businesses as a whole. Until now.

To have a Work Anywhere business you need to be providing some kind of expert services rather than physical services. If you sell things you can also have a Work Anywhere biz. So why do we think this business model will hit its stride in '07?

Here's a few reasons:

• Bandwidth, wi-fi and EVDO. Its getting harder and harder to be somewhere where you can't connect and connect fast. This is critical to the Work Anywhere model.
• SaaS. Software as a Service is what BlueTie does- we provide you with a communication, collaboration and organization suite you can access anywhere from any computer. In the past year I've logged into my BlueTie account in an Internet cafe in Paris, a hotel room in NYC, in a conference in SF, at my friend's camp in the Adirondacks...and, regardless of where I log in or what machine I'm using, there's all my stuff: email, calendar, people, files. I don't need to be in my office or my home office at all. And I can see my co-workers presence online, IM (with BlueTie Pro), email, etc. I might as well be across the hall.
• A big change in understanding how to motivate people. Best Buy's corporate offices now run on a radical new model: no set hours, no schedules, no required attendance. You have your work goals, your deadlines and your resources; you do the work any way that works for you. Productivity is up 30%. This was not a great leap of faith for their upper management. It started as a grassroots effort. Small workgroups heard about the model and surreptitiously started adopting it. By the time execs realized what was going on, the proponents had data and it was impossible to ignore.
• Timeshifting and placeshifting. This is an extension of the previous bullet. If you're a knowledge worker and you have the resources you need, why should you be constrained to work within a nine to five system that evolved from the need to take advantage of daylight? We've got lightbulbs!

Years ago there was a big buzz about 'virtual businesses'. The problem was that the tools to make these businesses work were in their infancy. Now with ubiquitous access, online resources and mobile communication you can run a business from anywhere, on your own terms.

Liberation 2007: Work Anywhere!

The Small Business Computing 2007 Excellence in Technology Awards: We'd appreciate your vote!

Are you a happy BlueTie business user? We hope so because we know we offer the best collaboration solution on the market for small and mid-sized businesses. The most storage space, best anti-spam, widest feature set and it's a crazy good deal- after all who can beat Free with no ads? Not to mention that BlueTie Pro is a great product at $4.99 per user per month.

So, enough pitching. The voting for the Small Business Computing's 2007 Excellence in Technology Awards is open to business owners like you and we'd appreciate your support. You can vote here (you'll find BlueTie listed under Collaboration). It's easy, requires no personal info and only takes a minute.

Voting is open until January 7, 2007, so vote early and vote often (;-)...and a big thanks in advance!

Your New Business: Start-up Basics, Part One

A lot of BlueTie Free companies are start-ups. That's not surprising given that setting up email, contacts and files are all important 'day one' activities for a new business. Here's a start-up checklist to help you get your business up and running ASAP:

• Web Site URL. This is the website address for your new company. Choosing the right one is critical as you'll want to use it for the life of the company. In fact, you really can't settle on a name for your business without making sure you can get a related URL. You don't need a website to get a URL- you can register as many as you want and then build your website when you're ready. You will want a URL on day one because you're going to want a business-specific email address for you and your employees. BlueTie offers this (known as domain support) but you need a registered domain URL (name.com). Go for a .com address. It's still the gold standard for business because most searchers will automatically look for .com rather than .net or .us or .biz. If you can afford it, register all four for your name. You register by going to a domain registrar and doing searches for your preferred URL. Your best bet is a word combination of 8-12 letters and/or numbers. Virtually every address with less is taken. Avoid dashes and underscores. It will take a few tries. Be patient as this decision will be critical to the success of your business going forward.
• Organize Your Contacts. Your Contact list is the lifeblood of your business. Set up Groups in your Contacts for Customers, Sales, Vendors, Friends and Family, Investors, Mentors, etc. Get some names in there and keep adding as you meet new ones. You've got a business card right? (Another day one activity- of course you need your email address and website for your card, so get BlueTie set up and get that domain.) Always trade cards with new people you meet and get them entered into your Contacts and matched to the appropriate Groups. A little time spent each morning maintaining your Contacts means that you can quickly and easily communicate with everyone interested in your business with a single click.
• Do you have sales literature, contracts, forms, presentations and other docs that you may need access to wherever you are? Upload them to Files so you can access them from any location. Here's a valuable tip: When you name these files use this format: year-month-filename.type. An example is 2006-12-sellsheet.doc. If you do this you can easily sort by name and see the most recent versions of your files.

We'll be continuing this series to help your start-up get organized and to help you and your people communicate effectively. Being consistent, easy to reach and organized can make a huge difference as you embark on the often chaotic process of starting a business. Good luck!

Your John Hancock

Do you use a signature on your emails in a consistent manner? Are you taking full advantage of this opportunity from a marketing point of view?

If you're not, go to your Preferences, choose Name and Signature and set one up. A signature shouldn't be an ad; it should be a concise set of information so your customers, partners and vendors can easily respond the way they choose: your direct phone, IM, website, etc. They all should be there so the recipient doesn't have to track down your info elsewhere.

If you have a very concise marketing message, i.e. Get Your Free BlueTie Now!, you can include it (from the 'Another Shameless Plug Department'!).

I have friends who include their quote of the day, a link to a cool site, etc. Just remember, in most email clients these longer signatures end up 'below the fold', i.e. out of view in a standard email viewing pane- so they probably won't get seen. Keep it brief and the territory can be valuable.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Email Etiquette

As you're undoubtedly aware, there is an inunudation of email going on to the point where it is becoming very difficult to respond or even react to every legit mail you receive. One thing that can go a long way towards helping this situation is to follow the basic rules for business email use. This article covers those basics and more- recommended reading. If we all followed these guidelines there would be a lot less useless email and it would be a lot easier to deal with what's in your inbox everyday.

Thanks to 43 Folders for this link.

Automated Scheduling of Meetings

Imagine you're scheduling a meeting that involves a half dozen people, possibly including customers or vendors that are not using BlueTie. Without BlueTie you'd probably email a series of timeslots to your invitees and make several calls to find a mutually available time. With BlueTie this process can be streamlined to the point where it only takes a few clicks to get the same result. This is where Shared Calendars demonstrates the power of our collaboration software.
To use this feature, click your Calendar icon and click the New Event button. A window opens the New Event form. Click the Contacts icon and you'll see all your BlueTie contacts including people outside of your business. Click the names of attendees and they will appear in the attendee list. Name the event, select a time and add any necessary descriptive notes. When you click Save a few interesting things happen. BlueTie checks the calendars of co-workers and tells you if they have a conflict. If they do, you can select another time. Once you've Saved an Event, BlueTie sends a meeting notification to other BlueTie users which they can Accept or Decline. It also sends a similar notification, via email, to non-BlueTie users. They can Accept or Decline by clicking their choice in the email. You can see who has responded by double-clicking on the Event in your Calendar.
When everyone in the meeting is using BlueTie you don't have to keep trying different times until you find one when everyone is available. Simply fill out your Event form and select First Available. The system searches everyone's Calendars and brings back the next time you're all free. If that time isn't good, simply click it again and it goes on to the next timeslot available. You can continue until you find the best time.
The real value of having an integrated application like BlueTie is this kind of functionality. It can literally save hours of time monthly for people with busy schedules. Considering that you can use it for free, that's not a bad deal!