79 Ways for your Small Business to Save Money

I just read a great article on InsideCRM called 78 Ways for your Small Business to Save Money in this Economy. It’s filled with great advice and is even broken down into categories like Technology, Office Items and Office Space, Advertising, Travel, etc. I highly recommend you check it out.

I was surprised that an Internet fax service like MyFax did not make the list. It’s inexpensive and it doesn’t tie up any phone lines since you send and receive faxes through your Internet connection. It also helps you save energy, paper, and toner since all documents are electronic.

Fax machines are huge energy wasters, in fact the The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have named the fax machine as the biggest energy hog in the office.

Here’s a few other numbers you might find interesting if you are looking for ways to save money. Over five years, a standard fax machine in the $150 range will cost you about $5,400 if you add in the cost of toner, paper, and a 2nd phone line. (And this doesn’t cover your long distance charges or any maintenance if it breaks down).

MyFax on the other hand is $10 a month with no long distance charges and free 24/7 support and you can cancel at any time. Even if you’re like me and not great at math, you can still see that is a considerable savings.

Faxing as a punchline

I was watching a movie on TV the other day, and saw something I thought was pretty amusing. Although it was a recent movie, it was set in the 1980s, which is important to the story. At one point, the main character told his companion he needed to get some important information to a person who was far away. His companion said something to the effect of, “Here, we’ll go into my office. We have this new machine up there that lets you send an entire page over the phone lines. And it only takes 17 minutes per page.”

I have to admit I laughed – just like I did when Drew Barrymore’s boyfriend brought over this amazing new music-playing device called a CD player in The Wedding Singer. It doesn’t take long these days for one era’s hot new technology to become the next era’s punchline.

It’s hard to imagine a world when 17 minutes per page was considered a marvel, but that’s the way it was not so long ago. Of course today it takes longer to a prepare a fax than to send one thanks to advances such as MyFax. With just a few clicks of a mouse you can select your recipient(s), add your attachments, and even choose the style of cover page. Then all you have to do is write the note and hit send.

Probably the biggest difference from the sender’s perspective is you don’t have to stand by a machine somewhere while the fax goes through to make sure it’s successful. MyFax sends you a confirmation e-mail that shows either that it was delivered or that it failed – and why.

One other nice thing about an all-electronic sending method (versus the mechanical task of pages feeding one-by-one into a machine) is you never have to worry that the rollers are going to grab two or three pages at once. That used to happen a lot with lengthy documents (like contracts) being sent over fax machines. In those cases, the person on the other end would be missing pages, requiring a re-send either of those pages or the whole thing. Which at 17 minutes a page isn’t much fun. Today, your whole document arrives intact, where it can be reviewed on-screen – no paper required.

I wish I could remember the name of the movie, but I can’t. If I see it again, though, I’ll update the post. Or, if you happen to know what I’m talking about, let me know! In the meantime, be glad you don’t have to spend 17 minutes per page just to send or receive a fax. Isn’t technology marvelous?

Customer Service: A department or a way of life?

As I was making my way around the world of small business blogs, I saw a post on Small Biz Survival that caught my eye. In it, the writer describes how a trainer was working with a trainee at a big box office supply store, ostensibly teaching him how to handle his customer-facing job at that retailer. The trouble is, the trainer completely ignored the customer in order to go into the finer points of how to offer tech services. In other words, rather than taking the opportunity to teach the trainee how “our customers are our most important asset” the trainer instead chose to focus on some arcane computer procedure.

It’s really kind of a funny perspective. The reason it caught my eye, of course, is how much effort we at Protus put in to our customer service. It’s one of the things that draws the highest praise from customers who have to use it. Often, they seem shocked that it’s so attentive and their issues are resolved so quickly. I guess in the technology space in particular the expectation is getting into a Battle Royale, followed by the opportunity to meet three or four new people over the phone before anything is resolved.

In my daily life, I’m amazed how many companies simply don’t get it. They will list a “customer service” number, but when you call it you find it leads to a phone tree that seems to have been designed by the same people who create those Sudoku puzzles. When you finally do make your way through the maze, you’re met by someone reading a script, who is more clueless about the product or service you’re calling about than you are. It’s only after getting belligerent and practically squeezing your phone to dust that they finally get you to someone who can help. It’s almost like running a gambit – you have to earn the right to speak with someone who actually knows what’s going on by first making your way through an army of minions.

Worse are the live ones – the service providers who ignore your questions, or the people in stores who are more interested in folding the sweaters than helping you find what you want. It’s like they view you, the customer, as an inconvenience instead of the reason they have a job.

That’s just not right. “Customer service” has to be more than a department or a marketing slogan. It has to be an approach to doing business. I’m proud to work for a company that still understands that, and borders on being obsessed with making sure customers are happy. Too bad that way of thinking seems to have gone out of style.

Have a cusotmer support story, good or bad? I'd love to hear it!

Improve your Home Office Week

Well, well, allow me to be the first to wish a Happy Improve Your Home Office Week to you and yours.

Seriously, who even knew there was such a thing, much less that it’s happening September 7-13? I didn’t until someone I know told me about it. But it makes sense, all you have to do is look at the entries we had at the beginning of the year in our Messy Office Contest and you can see there are a lot of home offices that could use some improvement at least once a year. Of course, some would take a bulldozer but don’t get me started.

Beyond just the general clean-up and learning to put things away, there are all kinds of things you can do to improve a home office. Here’s my top 5:

1. Obviously number 1 is signing up for MyFax and my1voice. Both of these services can really help small business owners work more efficiently and present a professional appearance to customers, partners and suppliers.



2. Update your home wireless access (or get wireless access if you don’t have itJ). A ton of improvements have occurred since you bought that 802.11 b wireless router at Radio Shack so it’s time to let it go and get faster download speeds over a longer distance. While you’re at it, look in to upgrading your PC/laptop, monitor, or business applications.



3. Join the organizer mania! Everyone is doing it! Organizers can actually give you places for your stuff, so you can find it when you need it (instead of a week later after you’ve bought another one). My top recommendation is the charging station. It lets you store and charge all your little portable electronic devices (mobile phone, iPod, PDA, camera, etc.) in one handy unit. Sure beats having all those bulky charging block under the desk and all those cord snaking around your work area.



4. Replace your old desk chair. If you’re like me you probably lugged your current chair home from a garage sale and fixed it with duct tape. But you really can’t underestimate the value of a comfy work chair.



5. Give your office space a facelift. Even if it doesn’t “need” it, a fresh coat of paint can be a real pick-me-up in your work environment. Don’t just settle for beige either. Us traditional office types have to settle for beige but you don’t. Pick a color that inspires you and revel in your non-corporate freedom.

So there you have it. I’d love to turn this in to a top 10 list so let me know what you’re planning or what you’ve all ready done to improve your home office?

New Features for MyFax and my1voice

In case you haven’t heard, we’ve just implemented some great new enhancements to both MyFax and my1voice, and the best part is you don’t have to buy, or sign up for anything in order to take advantage of them. As with all MyFax and my1voice enhancements, they’re free and already available to you as part of your service (of course there is a charge to purchase additional phone numbers).

For my1voice there are three big changes I think are really going to add an incredible amount of value to your service:

The first is Internet Fax Reception. Now faxes can be sent to your my1voice number! my1voice will recognize a fax call and will save the fax to your my1voiceCentral Inbox. From there you can read it, forward it, even save it to your hard drive. A great bonus to this is you will never again pick up the phone expecting to hear a human and instead be deafened with that horrible fax machine sound!

The second is what we call Web Calls. Basically, you can place a "Call Me" link on your website or in emails. Visitors to your site, or readers of your email can click this link, enter their phone number in the pop up box and my1voice will connect the caller to you at the number or extension you choose. One benefit with this is you can mask your number so callers aren’t aware of the number they’re calling, this is good because if you change your phone number or add new numbers, your callers are not affected. Callers will always be able to get a hold of you with no thinking required! This is also another great way to make sure your customers or even potential customers can reach you from yet another medium. Imagine what this can do for your business.

Finally, the third addition to my1voice is Multiple Number Support. Not only does this allow you to have both a toll free and a local number, but you can also use this enhancement to have numbers that dial directly to your auto-attendant, or extensions, queue, or mailbox.

Finally, our last enhancement applies to both MyFax and my1voice. It may not seem as flashy as the others but it’s a great addition to our service and really quite valuable.

We’ve simplified our password reset process, you can now reset your password online or you can choose to receive and email with a secure link. What this means is, if you do forget your password it is now a lot easier for you assign a new one with the absolute minimum of wait time.
So there you have it, our newest enhancements in a nutshell. To explore them further just login to your my1voiceCentral and/or your MyFaxCentral account. As always, our Technical Support Teams are available 24/7 x 7 to answer all of your questions, or if you have an Account Manager, give them a call for more information.
I’d love to hear what you think of our latest enhancements and as always if there is something you’ve been dying to see us add to either service, post a comment and I’ll put in a good word for you with our development team!

Handy tip: Use MyFax for emergency printing

Funny how sometimes we get so caught up in new ideas that we forget there is still a lot of value in things that have been said before. Here’s an example.

I was looking through some old materials recently and I came across a tip that we’ve sent out from time to time, (though not recently). It’s a pretty cool way to work around a situation where you need to print out a document – say you need it signed – but there’s no printer in sight (or it’s in sight but is out of toner, out of service, or just generally acting up in that way only printers can when you really need one).

If there’s a fax machine nearby, use your MyFax account to send the document to the fax machine. It will print out for you and you’ll have the hard copy you need.

That’s one of those ideas that probably makes you hit your forehead and say “duh!” because it seems so obvious. But a lot of people don’t think that way.

There are a few good uses for this little trick. One is if you’re at a customer site. You may be using their wireless Internet connection, but don’t have access to their full network resources. And getting someone to get you that access may be like asking for the keys to the company jet. But, if you can send yourself a fax to their machine, you’ll have your document in moments.

Hotels are another place it might come up, whether you’re using an Internet connection in your room or a PC down in the business center. If you have access to your documents, either on your laptop or through a VPN on their computer, you can use MyFax to send the document to the hotel’s fax machine.

Pretty cool right? You may not need much, but if you do I’m sure it will be an emergency. And of course, I’ll expect a big thank you present for letting you know!

MyFax as a wedding planning tool?

You know that bizarre thing where you don’t hear from someone in forever and then you see or hear something that makes you think of them and like an hour later your phone rings? Or, sometimes an idea you’ve never really considered crops up, and suddenly you’re seeing it all over the place. Is there a name for that? It’s along the same lines as déjà vu but different. There has to be name for that (if you know it, please let me know, this is the type of thing that will drive me crazy!)

Anyway, to get to the point, something like that has happened recently, in the last few days, we’ve seen not one but TWO mentions of using MyFax to plan weddings. One was from a wedding planner who has used it in her business, and the other from a guy (yes, that’s right a guy) who was planning his own wedding using online tools (mostly from Google), and decided to tell the world how he did it.

In all of our creative planning and brainstorming sessions, this is a use for MyFax we’ve never really thought of before, but it totally makes sense.

Planning a wedding seems to be one of the more complicated endeavors you can get yourself into. There are a million people to contact –caterers, florists, musicians, hall rental people, bridal shop people – the list is pretty much endless.

Once you’ve decided who you’re going with, most of them are going to want a signed contract. Now, if you’re planning your own wedding chances are you’re running around like a madman, and stopping by each supplier to sign a contract is the last thing you want to do. This is where MyFax comes in! With a MyFax account you can have the contract faxed to your PC or laptop, print it, sign it, scan it and send it back. It’s still a bit of work, but it’s a whole lot easier than driving all over the planet, while stressing out about getting to wherever before closing time. You could even do it at 3 in the morning during one of the pre-wedding jitters bouts of insomnia you’re probably going to have! (You knew about that right?)

If you’re a wedding planner, it makes even more sense. Assuming you’re good at what you do, you’re constantly on the move lining up multiple suppliers, making sure everything is working right, and meeting with clients. Being able to send and receive faxes from anywhere you can get an Internet connection is a huge time-saver. Being able to store them on your laptop or handheld so they’re always at your fingertips is even better.

So let the wedding bells ring. Just remember to open your MyFax account before you start the planning the walk down the aisle!