Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts

Friday, September 24, 2010

Fuggedaboudit! The Dilemma of Online Storage


I read about an interesting study in the early part of the decade on cab drivers in London, UK. As a result of having to mentally map and navigate an entire city, these drivers had, over time, developed an enlarged hippocampus (the area of the brain associated with memory and learning). Essentially, without getting into medical mumbo-jumbo, these men and women, while on the job, had their brains rewired and as such developed a sort of super memory. Lucky them.

For the rest of us ordinary Joes and Janes - we have a hectic life that contributes to what I like to refer to as the scourge of the small business person - absent-mindedness.

As a small business owner you are your business - you are sales & marketing, accounting, administrator, and CEO. Your primary objective is to grow the business, meaning you're on call 24-7. What complicates the matter is the "mobility factor" - your "office" could be at home, in the car, at a client site, or at some other location in your city or state. So now you have to lug around your laptop, business phone and maybe personal phone (if that's the case, you should really check out my1voice) and you have to ensure you have your briefcase, PDA, and the list goes on and on.

How do you remember everything or ensure you have everything nearby when there's just so much to remember all the time? You can create a checklist for every time you go out the door, but that would be cumbersome and time consuming, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, money is not the most precious of resources, time is (I just saw the most recent trailer for Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, where the great character, Gordon Gekko, reiterates my point).

Physical paperwork adds to this dilemma, so much so that it has spawned an entire industry for online storage targeted at small business. Other companies wrap these services in fancy names like Content Management System and sell them to big business for a lot of money.

Faxing is no different because whether you look at it from a mobility perspective (the machine doesn't go anywhere) or from a physical documents perspective (a fax machine prints everything), you quickly realize, "Houston, we have a problem."

There are many free value-added features that are part and parcel of the MyFax service. Two that might help alleviate some of the pressures of remembering to bring everything, everywhere are the ability to store commonly faxed documents inside MyFaxCentral as well as one year of unlimited inbound and outbound fax storage. Available in the Send and Receive preferences section of MyFaxCentral, each permits you to leave all the fax paperwork behind like contracts, schematic designs and other important fax documents that are an essential part of the supplier-customer dynamic. Each gives you access to your important faxes from anywhere in the world you have access to an Internet connection and a web browser.

Feel free to check them out! We know that removing fax documents from your list of things to remember will definitely alleviate the pressure of doing business on the road.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Need to Run Your Small Business? There's An App For That!

I love my iPhone. There's no two ways about it. The marketing professional in me loves how it totally changed the mobile phone game, and the branding and marketing behind it - right from its amazing and flawless design down to the packaging. The early adopter in me loves having the best piece of technology out there (I already have the iPhone 4 while many of my friends are still waiting for theirs), and the ability to stream things like World Cup matches directly on my phone, while at the beach. The business person in me loves what the iPhone and its apps marketplace represent - a remarkably simple but powerful piece of technology that can help you run your business from the palm of your hands, from any corner of the world. But why is that important?

Well, one common thread across our many customers, who are spread across many industries including real estate, construction, and health care, is the "mobility factor." Whether a small start-up or a large enterprise, mobility can now make or break your business. It's no wonder then, why close to three quarters of US workers can now be classified as mobile.

Developments that have certainly aided and abetted this trend include not only the iPhone, but other smart phones and the availability of Software-as-a-Service (i.e. software applications you can access over the web). Starting with the BlackBerry and the idea of "email everywhere" and evolving to the everything-under-one-roof iPhone and Android smart phones (with their respective marketplaces), and continuing with the availability of 3G/4G Internet and cheap data plans, small business owners using SaaS in conjunction with their iPhone can now run an entire office out of their car, at a client meeting, or at half-time during their son or daughter's sports game. This means they are connected to their customers , employees, suppliers and partners 24/7 - anytime, anywhere.


Where Does Fax Fit In?
So where does fax fit in? Well, fax is still an important business communications tool and a staple for many industries in the context of the prospect-customer-supplier dynamic. So it's no surprise that our very large and mobile customer base requested and now has available to them the MyFax app for the iPhone. Available in the Apple App Store - for FREE - this app means MyFax customers can now add even more convenience to their iPhone business experience.

So bear with me for a moment, as I've been waiting a long time to say this: Need an important fax but you're 1,000 miles from your office? ...There's an App for that!!

Read more about the MyFax App for the iPhone here.

So what role does your smart phone play in your business strategy? Have your say in the comments...