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Posts from the ‘Enterprise Applications’ Category

Feb 10

Al Lyons 3
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The Importance of Effective Employee Training in Enterprise Systems

Employees are considered good by managers when they are comfortable enough with a business process to develop a “System”. This system is a way of doing things, a way of handling common business situations in an efficient way. Employees get very attached to their way of doing things, and when technologies change, they invariably come up with resistance to that change.

This resistance to change is often misunderstood. Suddenly managers and employees are pitted against each other over this sudden and  unexpected resistance by good employees. But what is at the root  of the resistance? The resistance is actually caused by employee’s worry about the health of the business and the business price. These good employees are resisting what they see as a threat to the organization: a threat to getting the job done well.

Because this resistance can now be seen in an entirely new light, as a positive emotion about protecting the business and its’ processes, there clearly needs to be a better way to handle this particular resistance than with anger.

Experts in change management and software implementation always say, “welcome the resistance”. This seems to be counterintuitive, until you listen to their reasoning and use  for  the resistance. The resistors need to be converted and have their energies put into the new technology project in a process of gaining consensus. This consensus among employees is actually the biggest part of training. If you have ever tried to train employees in a technology that they dislike, you will be met with resistance and claims that the technology is too difficult. If this is the case during training, then more consensus building is needed before training. Once the consensus among employees in general is positive toward a technology and a procedure, the training will take place by itself almost as if by magic.

Staff have a long way to go with technology when implementing a new enterprise system, but it is important to keep that staff happy. The main reason for this is that your implementation staff is your front-line army for turning  technology resisters into technology champions.

This staff will have to face your staff when they feel that they are not only losing beloved procedures, but that they are also losing power. The loss of power for employees with an enterprise system is the farthest thing from the truth: a new enterprise system used by all will give them complete transparency, control, and access to the data they need when they need it.  They will be able to churn out reports faster than ever  before, and be able to take advantage of the collaborative efforts of others, who are all using the same system. For some of the oldest employees, it is useful to bring up the times when people used to do all of their computing on a mainframe. That was a form of team computing, and this new enterprise computing is simply team computing without the removal of the individual.

Planning and executing a major enterprise technology initiative is difficult in any organization. Before you get started, be sure to call the professionals at the Web and I to talk about your needs on an informal basis at 646-853-0573.

Nov 25

Business Contact Manager or Solutions
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Project Management for Information Technology Projects

People may wonder what it takes to run a project which has well-defined goals, accountability, transparency, and good management. These features are neither a matter of luck nor of management style rather of understanding and adhering to a set of academically proven best practices known collectively as project management. New initiatives as well as the management of organizational change can be run using the principles of project management. Information technology adds new levels of best practices related to compliance advice, documentation, software testing, quality assessment/quality improvement plans, technical and functional specifications, and more.

There are a great number of skills to be learned and master, from scheduling to anticipating the needs of different events and making sure that they are met as well as the art of managing change within an organization.

Project management as a discipline recognizes seven distinct phases of a project. Each phase has its’ unique goals and requirements.

  • Project strategy and business case.
  • Preparation.
  • Design.
  • Development and testing.
  • Training and change management.
  • Support and benefits realization.
  • Project close.

Project Management

Project strategy and business case.

It is up to every organization and each stakeholder in a project to help think through the project strategy and business case and to thereby define the reason that the project is taking place, some rational and achievable goals, a risk analysis, and any other method specific to the industry of the organization to analyze performance. A methodology for the project should be defined at this time. Often when preparing a prospectus for a client, an information technology or other consultant might spend a lot of unpaid time putting together these parts of the project in question. This phase often ends up including the signing of any initial contracts and retainers, NDA agreements, and other formalities needed for project initiation. After the terms and methodology and the goals are well-defined and understood, it is time to prepare for project initiation.

Preparation.

  • Work Breakdown
    • Project personnel needs must be defined by goals and resources. The budgets for personnel and materiel are part of those resources.
  • Project Milestones Defined
    • These expected events are agreed upon by key stakeholders as to being hallmark events in the proposed project as it runs its’ course successfully.
  • Personnel
    • Personnel needs defined earlier during the work breakdown are then identified and named during this sub-phase. Employment search criteria and budgets for personnel are agreed upon.
  • Produce Project Initiation Document and Kickoff
    • The project initiation document defines the goals, the budgets, the resources, and the general timeline. Key stakeholders and key personnel are involved in a project kickoff event. During this event, project leadership should take the time to share project initiation documents and explain the project timeline and goals.
  • Selection of third-party contractors or other staff.
    • Existing staff and other contractors need to be hired and named after being chosen according to the standards defined for the project.
  • Secure Key Resources
    • Funding for budgets, personnel hours for internal staff, rooms, and equipment all are resources which have to be secured before the project can take place.

Design.

The project design sometimes is completed from the beginning, which is actually not appropriate for anything but the most groundbreaking projects. Most projects have a project type and an identifiable set of best practices which define the design of the type of project in question. During this phase of the project it is very important to take all of the previously created documentation into account while preparing a master project plan. The milestones you have created earlier will be further defined with deliverables along the way between milestones which ultimately roll-up into goals. Different aspects of the project may run concurrently and require multiple Gantt charts to coordinate scheduling. Every deliverable, every task, has a timeline and responsible staff. The project manager will track these events in a pre-defined sequence and will report on project risks and progress with the progress reports designed during this phase. A business process analysis and business process re-engineering analysis will be run. In a good plan, the original business process most likely looks quite scrambled when presented visually, showing many cases of duplicated efforts and unnecessary loops. The result looks like boxes connected with spaghetti. A good information technology project results in a re-engineered business process that when presented as a diagram has removed the duplications of effort and made the approval and processing parts much less convoluted. The business is all working with the same fresh set of data, and there is organizational transparency in the final result.

Development and testing.

During this phase, the solution is developed and tested. The method for this is determined by the best practices of the industry of the organization in question. In the field of information technology, software is unit tested, then data is extracted, transformed, and loaded into the new solution. Functional testing of the existing data and of procedures to add new data and report on that data are then designed and executed. Finally, user acceptance testing is conducted with key stakeholders to make sure that the solution meets needs and expectations. Functional personnel are also developing the methods that the solution will use to execute the needs of the business processes, and these methods are refined as a result of a proper functional testing process. The best testing involves looking for the zero error, learning each possible error and obtaining a solution before the final solution is even seen by the end users.

Training and business readiness (Change management).

With a new system, there is a great deal of excitement from some staff, resistance from others, but there is very little indifference. Everyone has an opinion on the feasibility of using the new solution, and it is important to take special advantage of the resistance. The resistance, while often containing the vestiges of recalcitrant bureaucracy, often has staff that is concerned with important parts of the business process which might have been overlooked. These points of resistance should be tracked during user acceptance testing, and important changes that are identified can be made and discussed with the staff who raised the issues. This helps to gain support for the project by taking people’s objections seriously while also improving the quality of the project by taking into account all available information. Other recalcitrant resistance can be overcome through standard morale boosting efforts combined with strict policy enforcement for use of the new solution. A cut-off date should be made for the old solution so that two sets of data are not created. Training of staff during user acceptance testing may or may not have to be accompanied by classroom or lecture setting, depending on the amount of change from existing procedures.

Support and benefits realization.

During this phase, the project is wrapping up, final changes are made as well as maintenance plans to ensure that the new solution stays healthy and usable. Ongoing tasks are tracked and budgets and methods are agreed upon. Great post-implementation support is what sets great information technology professionals and firms apart from the rest. There will always be new issues, and support should be unobtrusive but immediately available at any time. The attitude for proper support must be maintained so that no implemented project is truly closed, all support needs get the greatest consideration.

Project close

When all parts of the project have been completed, all personnel trained, maintenance and service plans agreed to, the project wrap-up may begin. A post-implementation review of the project should summarize the success of the project. Plans should be made to reassign existing personnel back to their old stations or on to new ones with the new business process as needed.

The Processes

Throughout the above phases the following processes are always running to support the project. It is important that control of these processes are assigned to specific team members for each project phase.

  • Phase management.
  • Planning.
  • Control.
  • Team management.
  • Communication.
  • Procurement.
  • Integration.

Here are more details concerning the processes.

Phase Management

Deliverables and sign-of methods having been previously defined, phase management involves following the project plan to ensure that tasks add up to deliverables and milestones, and that each sub phase and phase are signed-off on by key stakeholders. The person responsible for the phase management is known as the project manager, and a successful project manager will be able to manage teams and expectations of all parties so that cooperation is engendered, supporting the success of the project.

Planning

Planning and oversight by key stakeholders is needed at all times to ensure quality and to oversee the philosophy of the project to ensure that it maintains the goals of the project and the organization as a whole.

Control

Scope, costs, issues, risks, and benefits need to be reported on and observed continually to provide supporting information to key decision-makers so that the project is managed on an ong0ing basis.

Team Management

The team personnel needs to be managed by the same people whether employees or contractors. The management for the project generally consists of one functional manager from the organization’s staff and a technical manager from the primary information technology firm. In larger organizations, both technical and functional managers may be selected from the staff of the original organization. We have experience with all sizes of projects and are capable of managing projects based on the scale of the organization and project. This avoids using project management features that are more appropriate for larger projects but cumbersome on small projects interfere. There are different dynamics to each sized project, independent of the commonalities to all projects which originate in organizational dynamics of communications and politics.

Communication

Generally the project manager is responsible for all communication to project staff, project stakeholders, and project beneficiaries. Information will not be the same at all levels. Decision making information is important for key stakeholders and project management. Project staff need to be apprised of project changes and project initiatives and changes. Project beneficiaries, the staff who will be using the solution who are not part of the project team, need to receive encouraging progress notices along with benefits and adjustments they will have to make. Taking the uncertainty out of change is key to building consensus. Make sure that all project beneficiaries get some feeling that their issues have been heard, and that the information gained from their input has been considered in the project design as a whole.

Procurement

Procurement of equipment, staff, and supplies is an exciting but exacting part of project management. People who are good at purchasing have had a lot of experience allowing them to be seasoned veterans of the procurement process. Knowing how to select the best group of consultants to work together, not only for their skills but also avoiding potentially difficult personalities is vital. Also vital is the ability to purchase with power and skill. Purchasing is not just about getting the best bargain on the initial purchase of equipment or supplies. When choosing a supplier, it is important to make sure that there is a secure supply chain in place and that backup plans exist for all possible contingencies. With equipment purchases, the price is one concern while the other is ongoing maintenance costs and feasibility, compatibility, and disaster management and recovery plans exist.

Integration

Very often, a new technology solution has to coexist with many existing processes in the organization. For instance if financial data is handled, a specific method needs to be put into place to control where and how the data is shared with accounting. There may be data in accounting that should be shared back with the solution again. Very often interfaces can be made from one software system to another. If not, processes which are manual can be used. For the success of the project, the integration of the project phases with existing business processes needed by the organization must be integrated with all change.

Apr 15

Accounting Applications
2 Comments

Microsoft Office 365 Accounting

The Web and I, in collaboration with Microsoft, will start to produce basic accounting modules for Office 365. For small businesses already getting Office 365, their modest accounting needs may be handled far more cheaply with the accounting modules they need in-house. Most very small businesses use accountants for taxes and paper for check ledgers, so having a few modules like Billing with Orders and Invoices, Accounts Receivable Reporting, and Business Expense database designed to prepare data for the outside accountants of some small businesses.

The high security, reliability, and legal compliance for housing financial data will help keep risks down, and most small businesses employing this method will be compliant with the Sarbanes Oxley Act and other regulations on computerized accounting data in business for the first time with this product. Worrying about backups or IT staff will also be a thing of the past.

There are cloud-based accounting programs available, but the monthly costs add up. With our solution, you will buy just the modules you need at a flat rate, and there will be a modest need for training, and little need for expensive support.

We have seen some attempts at accounting systems for Office 365 already, but many of them are very complex. The SharePoint environment works better with simpler applications. You can program SharePoint as a database and application, but that is not its primary purpose, so those applications may be overreaching.

Granular security is an important feature we will offer. Every type of data will only be seen by the personnel your organization deems eligible for access. This way many employees can have access, but never access to what they don’t need and should be secure and confidential. Most accounting programs offer access to everything if you have a password, so businesses have to avoid clerical help for data entry. We will make it data entry friendly and secure, so you can safely delegate journal entries to clerical staff who will never see reports or important data summaries.

We are excited to have our first client starting by May 1, and we are already programming and testing their modules and writing the manuals and video tutorials. We will post new updates soon to keep you and all of our readers informed.

Each business has different needs, and working with us on an individual basis might be more cost-effective for your business than you think. There is no cost for an initial consultation, and we promise that even if you don’t use the Web and I, our engineers will teach you something new to help your project. Call us at 646-853-0573 today and get started now!

Mar 26

Microsoft Dynamics CRM
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Getting Used to CRM in Your Office

Employees in any office, especially many senior staff who have developed business processes which they are very proud of react with fear of change when they are told that they have to start doing their work on a CRM Program. Most of these employees worry that their performance will suffer because they cannot do the work in the manner they are used to. This is a common misconception about CRM and enterprise software that makes people feel that they will lose control of the process. What employees should be told is that the way they work, their data collection needs and the forms and reports they need will become a part of the new system. One-on-one and group training will be offered, and needs of different employees can be discovered. If your company is installing a CRM system with excellent customization capabilities like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your consultant will be able to take the most important customizations requested by your employees will be easily added. Reports should resemble the original reports so that they can work with the same data. Most of the invoices, faxes, letters, memos and e-mails in any office can be categorized by business purpose and are almost identical in language and intent. One characteristic common to successful implementations of CRM is that there are as many templates as possible to handle at least 90% of your employees’ daily correspondence if you are in a service industry. Your employees already produce these documents using programs such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Publisher. Each time your employees make one of these standardized documents the way they do now, they are creating each one from scratch and spending additional time filing the information in cabinets. In a collaborative CRM environment, the entire organization shares all the necessary data for each of you customers. Because of this, most of the documents they used to make from scratch can be immediately issued at the touch of a button. This is not only an incredible time saver, allowing your customer service staff to spend more time on the phone with your customers now that they do not need to create documents repeatedly from scratch. Your staff will notice the different too. Repeated clerical work not only slows down your staff but it is also distracting and demotivating to many employees. They may not even realize it until they have had some months with the new system and find their jobs more exciting and fulfilling. Another benefit is that having your employees work in one system means that they do not need to spend time trying to get information from other employees and departments about the customer they are speaking to. Every interaction with the customer by any employee is documented: now any good customer service agent can solve any issue your customers have immediately. In an office without CRM, different employees doing different kinds of work related to the same customers, a great deal of information is repeatedly gathered by many people. In a CRM system the information is shared, so the first person to collect information saves the data for everyone to use. Others can correct mistakes or amend records due to change, but the collection of information is not duplicated. Reducing duplication of information collection has been important to sophisticated managers long before there was CRM software. It has been shown in a number of studies (citations to follow soon) that duplication of information collection not only is inefficient because work should be performed only once but also the statistical likelihood of introducing errors. During the process of collecting information by even the best staff, the statistical likelihood of data entry errors can be predicted for tasks of different complexities and amount of data entry the staff performed. Staffs that do more data entry are apparently more accurate. In addition to reading in my field that I do, I noticed an aggregation of statistics from existing studies that I looked at to make these statements came from Professor Raymond Panko of the University of Hawaii. Seeing more than one study come up with error rates that are similar for data entry related jobs and also present studies with error rates in other kinds of work helped me to appreciate that there is always some error. When you duplicate effort repeatedly, the errors that are introduced will be exponential compared to organizations with enterprise CRM systems. Another benefit is that errors in the original data in CRM systems gets corrected because everyone is repeatedly exposed to the same data and can point out errors or correct them on their own and for the benefit of all concerned.

As soon as your employees see that they can work with all of the features and functionalities they are used to and now improved by CRM. Companies that learn about the way their best employees perform business processes best when key employees all can work with an engineer to help them learn to get the most out of the software and to also create the reports and correspondence as system templates. These employees feel more confident because their needs are taken into consideration. It is at this point that, organizations adopting CRM start to enjoy the many benefits of implementation. There is less repetitive work and less repetitive requests to other employees for information. Your employees are happier because they feel empowered to work better and faster. Your managers tell you that the business can now grow without increasing staff. Executive staff are able to see and measure and report on all work being done and immediately spot issues. Customers experiencing growing respect for your company because every representative they speak to delivers a consistent message and accesses the same information. In the short-term there will be some uncertainty and resistance by your employees.

Your resisting employees are not resisting because they are bad employees in any way. Resistance is a sign of pride in workmanship. This is why a good consultant will embrace resistance. Those who resist the change tend to bring up objections that can tell your systems engineer how to make sure that these issues are all addressed either with education, a custom report or form or field, or a security consideration involving allowing different access to different data for different people. The more information your systems engineer has about your needs and the way you do business, the more he or she can tailor the software in the best way for your company.

For very large companies, there is a very lengthy and expensive implementation process for new enterprise software. With small businesses this can be very streamlined and much less expensive. Most of the consulting is done with all employees individually, not only through training but through careful customization so that all employees are saving time. Our advice is that implementing CRM software is like when one first learns to hit a baseball and comes to the realization that one must commit to action wholeheartedly to get the best benefits.

Mar 15

2 Comments

How Small Businesses can Benefit from Big Business Software Today

Many businesses that have adopted Microsoft Office 365 to date have been medium and large businesses, government agencies, and universities, all of whom could afford their own servers on-site but chose the new cloud model. The market segment that really could benefit most from cloud computing and Office 365 in particular are very small businesses and professional practices. Businesses with under five employees would have no way to budget an in-house implementation of the same software.

Costs and Logistics for Re-Creating Office 365 Software and Services in Your Business

In order to illustrate why very small businesses never get enterprise grade collaboration software, it helps to understand the logistics and costs for setting up your own private server services to equal what Microsoft can get you for $20 per user per month for Office 365 and $44 per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, They would need to have a minimum of four physical servers housed in their business at a cost of $25,000, and they would have to buy about $50,000 in software licenses. They would then need at least one systems engineer available full-time for around $150,000 a year including salary and fringe benefits. After that, power costs upwards of $10,000 to run the servers as well as the climate control they need. Even with expenses of $235,000 for the first year, they would have limited reliability compared to the 99.9% offered by Office 365. Licensing of Microsoft Office either individually or as an organization-wide agreement for volume software licensing with Microsoft. Either way, Office will cost around $300 per employee for each new version every three years or so. They would endure the expense of the systems engineer, but they could not equal the 24/7/365 service that Microsoft has, unless they could triple their IT budget to $450,000 per year for three shifts of eight hours. In order to have co-located servers in different regions of the World so that no regional disaster anywhere will disrupt your access to software and your data and the costs go into the millions. Even with all of that, you would not have the same level of support. With all of this complexity all recently available, the Microsoft Customer Support are key players in ensuring every problem gets solved in the best way possible. With a Microsoft Consultant, you will never be calling Microsoft but you will notice that all problems are solved promptly. Microsoft wants their distributors to succeed and they help us stick to tested methods for dealing with issues. It would be difficult with a large budget to accomplish these things, and for a very small business or professional practice, this complexity is out of the question. What this all adds up to is that if the Cloud is saving money for large organizations, the Cloud could be invaluable to very small businesses, giving them enterprise capabilities that they would otherwise never see. Most small businesses have not yet discovered this potential advantage for themselves.

Why Would a Very Small Business Consider Enterprise Software

Whenever you have an organization involving more than one person, there is automatically an information disparity unless there are ways to prevent it:

  • Shared Intranet for Documents and Information (SharePoint Server) Including Version Management and Permissions.
  • Customer Relationship Management Software with custom forms and reporting (Microsoft Dynamics CRM) to suit your business.
  • Enterprise Class E-Mail (Microsoft Exchange) with legally compliant archiving.

These high costs of all of the software, hardware, and assistance you would have to pay for to get these services for your business are nothing new to the Fortune 500 businesses reading this. Their users are used to the latest and best software from Microsoft, and they know how to take advantage of these services. If it makes financial sense for these larger businesses to adopt cloud computing, it makes even more sense for very small businesses and professional offices. Many of our clients have told us at first that they did not need enterprise software, but the reason that they said this is that they have never had the chance to experience the increased efficiency and collaboration made possible by enterprise collaboration software. Offices that we have equipped fully with both Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics CRM have gotten the full effect of the business transformation that can be achieved. The reason that large businesses insist on having collaboration software and CRM is that they need information to be available at the fingertips of those who need it without delay. Sometimes that information is company policies or finances, but the most mundane use for CRM is the most commonly reported occurrence. The first thing we hear from CRM customers is what happens every day when a customer calls and has to speak to someone other than the representative assisting them. This scenario is common to all organizations both for profit and not for profit and spans all sizes from a two-person partnership up to governments. People develop a better relationship with an organization, giving more trust and cooperation, when they can get a consistent message and level of knowledge about their circumstances from anyone assisting them at the time. It shows to the consumer, patient, client, or patron that the organization values them enough to be organized and consistent. The second thing customers notice is that all of the reports and common tasks related to leads, marketing, follow-up, invoice printing, faxing, and E-Mailing, and reports that they are used to can be added.

Our development method for all businesses mirrors the technologies and techniques employed by the best consultants: a gradual change in an organization by re-engineering business processes into a more collaborative, information-driven atmosphere where an organization can develop consistent practices for addressing any common event. Once the existing business process is defined after interviewing all relevant employees, a graphical flowchart is made of the existing business processes that comprise the day-to-day operation of your business including all information flowing in or out. These processes and their outputs and the philosophy of how the work is done is highly developed for each organization based on their education and their experience running the organization. We do not change the processes in any way but we add flexibility to how the data is entered. Redundant collecting of information can be eliminated. All employees are originally using desktop applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher to make all their presentations, invoices, customer communications, reports, lists, and other business records. With Dynamics CRM, the capability exists to carefully add all of these document creation needs, so that they are all reports available to the people who need them. Your employees can spend more time interacting with your customers rather than repeating redundant work. Your clients will see a more sophisticated organization with a very consistent message and their trust and reliance can increase. Once the business process is more efficient after all of this re-engineering, a new graphical flow-chart is made which always shows all of the same functions being accomplished with fewer intersecting lines. What is visually more simple is also more efficient. Management can have an immediate handle on what is going on at every level of their organization to make more important decision. Employees can get more work done because they waste less time.

Using Office  365 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM is Low Maintenance

After an implementation process that involves customizing the software for your business needs and showing your employees how to streamline the work they do using the new software and share information better than before, there is very little you will need a consultant for. The need for a computer consultant is experienced by every business, but it is not practical or cost-efficient for organizations with less than twenty employees to have their own engineer on staff. Even if one does have an engineer on-staff, the engineer that traditionally oversees the servers in a business is not specialized in helping organizations harness the computing power for business. Having consultants prepared by Microsoft means a quick and easy transition, where all of your employees’ needs for customization and education are seen to. Once your employees know how to use the software, Micosoft does the rest by making sure that you have a minimum of 99.9% uptime, a standard that has rarely ever been reached before Office 365. Times when the software does not work costs businesses money for lost business, dissatisfied customers, bored employees who cannot work and are left apologizing that, “The system is down, please try again in tomorrow”. Once all of your employees are satisfied with the results, there is no need for any consultant until you need something new, such as a new report, invoice design or E-Mail template is necessary.

What About New Software Versions

With Cloud Computing from Microsoft, your business never needs to worry about software licensing and installing new versions again. The Cloud versions of all software from Microsoft Office Desktop software available with the premium plans to Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint are always the latest version. You will never need to incur expenses for new versions again. If one wants to fully take advantage of this, an organization can get Windows Intune cloud service for endpoint protection and access to the very latest Enterprise version of Windows. Windows Enterprise has been around for several versions of Windows and offers the best configuration for the workplace, including encryption options. Windows Intune offers virus and malware protection with live monitoring. Updates to Windows can be centrally delegated by a consultant to manage a dozen computers or more in less than ten minutes a week. The software also allows more complex problems to be solved by enabling your employees to give access to their desktops to a remote technician. Services like ours at the Web and I charge by the minute, and since we perform these tasks in our own office, there is no travel involved and the costs are far less. Other consultants offer similiar flexible charging. Small businesses benefit from always having the latest software, never paying for upgrades, and reducing computer consulting fees to the bare minimum.

We Already Pay Too Much for Computing Help Now

With Windows Intune, Office 365, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your office experiences far fewer outages due to systems being down than was ever possible before. The best part is that you need less from your consultants. Your consultants will help you save by offering you only what you need. We are now have financial incentives from Microsoft to do so.

Microsoft has changed their pricing model to reward consultants for ongoing customers for Cloud Services.  Now partners not only make money from assisting you, they make the most money if they can serve you well and in the constraints of your budget so that you remain long-term customers. This results in better service and minimal service time. Windows Intune is most important in this process because it is so easy to prevent all infections and most software related crashes remotely and quickly. Paying for ten minutes of time for service without travel is so much less expensive than the four hours per week it takes to maintain 15 computers in an office on-site every week that it saves many businesses enough to pay a good portion of their Cloud Service fees. The rest is more than recouped by not paying for employees to sit idle while your systems are down or their workstations are not functioning.

Jul 7

SharePoint Server 2010 on Microsoft Office 365
2 Comments

Editing Your Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Files Offline

Office 365 Enterprise includes the ability to keep local copies of all of your files on any desktop or laptop computer. This has proved significant for clients of mine who wish to take their work with them on their laptop. They wanted to be able to work on their Microsoft Office 365 files remotely without an internet connection, and then to have the files synchronize later. Multiple people in an organization can have files checked out simultaneously.  Synchronized files are not new. Windows 95 first introduced Windows Briefcase. You could use Windows Briefcase to synchronize to a network drive or to a removable device. People used them for file synchronization when they worked after hours or in travel on their business laptops, then later synchronized the Briefcase with the corporate serve. Limitations included the requirement to keep file names exactly the same. Not only could the system be used for documents such as Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, and *.pdf Acrobat files, but they could also be used to replicate Microsoft Access Databases.

Today SharePoint 2010 comes with Office 365 Enterprise and can replace your corporate network drive with sophisticated libraries and lists. Each library is like a server version of the Briefcase only with more functionality and strict security and versioning options. Just like with Windows Briefcase, SharePoint libraries can be edited offline and then synchronized later at the user’s convenience. Versioning control can be implemented optionally, allowing drafts and major and minor versions. The minor versions are draft versions. Administrators have total control over access to the documents, edit permissions, and versioning rules. These help protect the integrity of document libraries in the event of synchronization.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is a desktop application that is included with Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Version.  This is your Briefcase, and setting it up can be tricky. Use the Web and I to set up your SharePoint 2010 portal site and the Workspace desktop for your users. Microsoft Office 365 is a sophisticated application with many options and is best implemented by certified Microsoft Partners like us. Call us today at 646-853-0573.

May 13

Microsoft Office 365 from the Web and I
5 Comments

Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 has been here now since June 18, 2011. Users are finding training needs minimal as they are used to the Microsoft Office Ribbon, even when they are using sophisticated add-on applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM! Desktop and online and server services in the future will be combined, but you will need a proper consultant in order to implement and make full use of the sophisticated features while maintaining a prudent and compliant information technology policy.

Microsoft Office 365 is a full suite of business productivity servers ready to run all of the computing needs of your business regardless of size. The product handles your corporate E-Mail, document storage, project management, scheduling, video teleconferencing, audio teleconferencing, PBX, enterprise voicemail, blackberry services, and integration with Microsoft Office, the licenses of which are also included with the plans we recommend. Soon you will be able to add-on accounting and project management as well. With the Web and I we are already implementing our first integrated accounting solution for one of our clients.. You may need only some of these services, and Office 365 has a plan to suit every user. However we recommend the E3 and E1 plans because they include the latest version of Microsoft Office for your desktop. With Dynamics CRM you will have integrated customer relationship management including Sales Management, Marketing Management, Order Management, and Invoice Management.

For information about the new 2013 version of Microsoft Office 365 2013 Edition Click Here

The Servers (and Services) Available with Office 365

Exchange Server 2013

Microsoft Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online is an email, calendar and contacts solution delivered as a cloud service, hosted by Microsoft. The service is based on Microsoft Exchange server and offers 25 GB of email storage per user.  In addition, Exchange online offers users personalized calendars and contacts with sharing capability and 99.9% reliability in online secure back-up. Exchange ActiveSync provides mobile connectivity to Exchange services and mobile email applications. With added E-Fax service your users can each have their own fax number and they can even send and receive faxes from their mobile devices or laptops.

SharePoint 2013

Microsoft SharePoint Online

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a collaboration, sharing, and document editing service using internal and external sites. SharePoint is a great center for your corporate Intranet, and you can store and organize your documents, lists, and databases. Databases of increasing complexity are available with Office 365 including integration with Microsoft’s flagship accounting software, Microsoft Dynamics. One of our clients, First United Services, uses Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software to handle client communications, document storage, information collaboration, sales management, order management, invoice management and interface with their soon-to-be-implemented Microsoft Dynamics GP Server solution.

Articles Written by the Web and I about SharePoint

Microsoft Lync 2013

Microsoft Lync Online

Microsoft Lync Online provides communications features including presence information, instant messaging, PC-to-PC audio/video calling and online meetings that can include PC audio, video and web conferencing with application sharing, whiteboards, and other collaboration tools. Lync Online is accessed through the Lync client. Lync Online also supports presence information and click-to-communicate features inside Microsoft Office applications. Currently the Lync components of Office 365 exclude Lync’s Enterprise Voice feature set.
Office Professional Plus

Microsoft Office Professional Plus in Office 365 provides the same client software as the Office Professional Plus product available through Microsoft Volume Licensing.

An Article Written by the Web and I about Microsoft Lync:

New Office 365

Microsoft Office 365: Under the Hood

Office Professional Plus in Office 365 has month-to-month, per-user licensing. It is an “Always On” service that has 99.98% reliability and can protect your data better and more cheaply than your staff can. Most very small businesses can afford no IT staff or servers at all. Office 365 provides server services that were once the exclusive domain of the Fortune 500 companies, who have been using enterprise class software since the turn of the millennium. If you were to purchase the servers, get a full-time IT person, and buy the licenses from Microsoft to do the same thing for a company of ten employees, you would spend $250,000 for the first year alone, and at least $75,000 each additional year. Now take that cost and compare it to the $3000 – $25,000 for the first year and $3000 – $15,000 for each additional year of service for a company of ten. For a sole proprietor like some of our customers are, you will spend between $300 – $10,000 for the first year and $300 – $1500 per year for additional years. These costs assume all of the installation, implementation, and customization costs. The lowest numbers are for the Microsoft Office 365 E3 plan alone.

Office Web Apps are browser-based versions of Microsoft Excel, Word, Access and PowerPoint that enable viewing and lightweight editing of Office documents in Web browsers while preserving the formatting of the original documents. When you have legacy computers or do not wish to tax the speed of the computer you are using, Microsoft Web apps are a great way to access your documents and databases.

For your E-Mail you will be using Web Outlook or your desktop outlook you already enjoy.  For those not familiar with Web Outlook, it is Outlook that can be accessed from any modern web browser with all of the features of Desktop outlook and connected to the same information, so you are never away from home as long as an Internet connection is available.

Enterprise users always have access to the desktop edition, but it can be handy. An example would be when you are without your computer at the client’s office. They ask for a brochure that you do not have with you but is on the corporate shared drive for your department. Your client only has Mac computers, and they do not run Office at all. How do you save the day and impress your client? You can either go on their Mac, log in to Office 365 on the Mac Safari browser, navigate to your corporate shared drive, then open the brochure and print the one you need.  For our E-Fax users, this can be even easier, they can retrieve any document in their corporate servers on their Blackberry or Windows 7 Mango phones and send it to any fax machine in the world in seconds.  Paper records in the home office can be scanned into the Multi-Function Printer and have it sent directly to Office 365 and into the hands of your employees on the road immediately.

Video teleconferencing was always a very expensive but very desirable feature for remote communication with clients as well as staff on the road or in their homes. With Office 365 each employee or client can be connected with a $20 webcam with integrated microphone. Video and audio teleconferencing is a great way to help the environment and your budget by avoiding travel and still meeting. With Office 365, multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously in multiple locations while on video teleconference.

As an added option, Blackberry services will be available, so that you can run Exchange on Blackberry for secure corporate messaging. Remote access to what you need is a big part of Office 365.

Backups are included in Office 365 for Small Businesses, and the Office 365 for Enterprises comes with ISO compliant archiving features, and both editions come with the ability for people in separate locations to simultaneously have open and work on the same document with a picture in picture video conference.  All of this securely on your bonded and trustworthy Microsoft-hosted extranet.

With the high costs of IT personnel needed to baby sit servers, as well as the down time and expensive licensing, cloud hosted server services from Microsoft make sense.  These are tools of unprecedented power, offering true ERP solutions for small businesses.

Office 365 is the successor to Office Live, which is our specialty. We are part of  an exclusive list of Office Live consultants with Microsoft Bizspark Startup grants who can start you out on Office Live today and upgrade you to Office 365 as soon as it becomes available! Take advantage of most of the features of Office 365 by calling us for Office Live now! Call 646-853-0573 and visit thewebandi.com.

For information about the new 2013 version of Microsoft Office 365 2013 Edition Click Here

New Articles Written by the Web and I about Office 365

Here are more videos about Office 365


Collaboration and Communication Available With Enterprise: Communicate and collaborate with any device and monitor your employees from anywhere in the world.


SharePoint and Office 365, and how you can collaborate as well as track employee productivity.


Lync and Communication including video teleconferencing. Work from anywhere and always contact your employees.


Enterprise Exchange Online and mobile office working. Your employees can help you from anywhere, no more excuses.

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