Business Productivity Online Suite

Microsoft has released their Business Productivity Online Suite or BPOS. BPOS is Microsoft’s answer to Cloud Computing. You can sign up for any of the following software applications at a small monthly fee per user:

• Microsoft Exchange Online
  
• Microsoft SharePoint Online
  
• Microsoft Office Communications Online
  
• Microsoft Office Live Meeting
  
• Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering

Below is a description of each BPOS product.

Microsoft Exchange Online - based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, offers businesses e-mail, calendaring, other messaging-based capabilities, and archiving. It also enables coexistence, which means new online users can interact with users on local servers.

Microsoft SharePoint Online - based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, provides a single integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search, and manage content and workflow.

Microsoft Office Communications Online - enables people to communicate easily with their colleagues across locations and time zones via instant messaging (IM), voice, and video.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting - a hosted Web conferencing service that connects people in online meetings, training, and events through a reliable, enterprise-class hosted service.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering protects businesses’ inbound and outbound email from spam, viruses, phishing scams and e-mail policy violations.

You now have all of these products available without needing servers, software, and a technical person to configure it for you! Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

Cloud Computing

How many of you are not sure what Cloud Computing is? Basically Cloud Computing is your software applications hosted on someone else's server and you access it via the Internet. If you have an email address hosted by Google - Gmail; Microsoft - msn or hotmail; or Yahoo; you are already using Cloud Computing for your email account!

What many companies are doing today is hosting all of their applications in the Cloud. You can have a computer installed with only a web browser and access complete applications now. Some of the applications that are available include Microsoft Office Applications, CRM applications like Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics Online CRM, and several different accounting packages.

Using Cloud Computing can save money in both software licensing costs and on technical support. With the availability of applications of all types available via the Internet, you may want to start using the cloud yourself!

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

Search Engine Optimization

Do you have a website? Can your customers find you? If your customer does a search on Google do they find your website or your competitor’s website? Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of making your site standout in the thousands of thousands of websites on the Internet today. SEO includes:

• Web Page Content
  
• Keyword and Keyword Placement
  
• Keyword Research
  
• Use of Java Script
  
• Use of Dynamic vs. Static Web Pages
  
• Marketing Expertise
  
• Writing Marketing Copy
  
• Online Marketing Campaigns

The Search Engines – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Bing and the others all have constantly changing ways of ranking web pages. The ranking criteria changes and then sites will lose ranking spots without revamping their SEO strategy. Some of these strategies include having keywords in your text and in your header meta tags, but at the same time, do not repeat the same keywords too many times.

Unless you are content with your website marketing, or have been doing the SEO on your own with good results, you should contact a local firm that specializes in SEO. The difference can be like night and day in the requests or sales from your website.

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Do you need remote meetings? Do you have staff in different areas? Do you want to have demos for your customers? Well Microsoft has a competitive product to GoToMeeting and WebEx called Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2. Unlike GoToMeeting and WebEx, OCS 2007 resides on your internal network and you have full-control of what your users can do or not do with the product.

Some of the things you can allow your users to do include:
· VOIP
· Audio, Video and Web Conferencing
· Group Chat
· Instant Messaging
· Connecting with Mobile Devices

If you need these features and do not want to pay the monthly fees or want to have complete control of your conferencing duties, be sure to check out Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

Using CRM Effectively

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is being used by many companies and in many different flavors – Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, Goldmine, Siebel, and many others. But why do some companies succeed using CRM and others just complain about how hard it is to use?

To use CRM effective you should do to the following steps:

1) Make sure everyone is using CRM – there are normal everyday items you can use CRM for, there is custom workflow you can add, CRM can integrate with your email system, and you will ensure that everyone knows how to use it.
2) You set up initial training sessions for all of your staff and send some key persons to advanced training so they can be the experts for the rest of the team. You may even setup refresher courses every few months and add a few advanced features as well.
3) You setup regular meetings with your local CRM expert (most likely the person who setup the system for you) and see if there ways to use CRM that will help your business in your particular industry.

So I have some questions for you:

1) Are you using CRM now? If not, it is time to start!
2) If you are using CRM is everyone using it, if not are at least all of the sales team and executive team using it?
3) If you are using CRM, are all of your users comfortable with using both the normal features and some of the advanced features?

If you would like help with acquiring or customizing your current CRM software give us a call or send an email to info@dapco.com.

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

PowerShell 2.0

Microsoft introduced their latest version of scripting called PowerShell 2.0. This replaces PowerShell 1.0 and you actually have to uninstall the first version before installing the newer one.

Some of the updates include:

• Powershell Remoting
  
• Data Language
  
• Background Jobs
  
• 24 Additional cmdlets
  
• APIs for parsing and Hosting

To see details and download the latest version go here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=60DEAC2B-975B-41E6-9FA0-C2FD6AA6BC89&displaylang=en

Download this and Happy Scripting!

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services is included with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and is used to display data for Business Intelligence (BI) analytical purposes. Basically this is advanced reporting and graphical views above what you can normally get with tools such as Microsoft Excel or Crystal Reports.

There are different types of users for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services including:

1. Information Worker – someone who uses the tool to make decisions.
   
2. A Business Intelligence Analyst who develops the OLAP models and prototypes for viewing.
   
3. A Database Administrator who maintains server resources and assigns user access to the models and prototypes.
   
4. A Business Intelligence Architect who designs the complete solution for Business Intelligence.

BI gathers the information available in all of your data sources and combines them into models to make decisions. Some uses of BI would include seeing and predicting any of the following:

1. Inventory counts during peak and trough times of the year.
   
2. Historic and Projected Sales by Region, District, and Store.
   
3. Historic and Projected Sales by Sales Manager.
   
4. Combinations of seemingly unrelated purchases by the same customer.
   
5. Untold other trends that you could conceivable come up with.

The skill set your company would need is a database administrator, a BI (or model) analyst, and users who understand the data that they are looking at. If you are implementing a system and have the in-house expertise to create the models, set some time for your team to plan, develop, implement, and train the end-users. If you don’t have the in-house expertise, you can have your local Microsoft SQL Server vendor architect, develop, and train your users on the new modeling tools. Once the solution is in place and your users trained you can start getting timely data to let you run your business form efficiently and profitably.

Visit our site at DAPCO Software Engineering, Inc. for more information on this or other related topics.