Give Your Business a Data-Protection Reboot

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2010/02/give_your_busin.html

Gerhard Eschelbeck
Business Week
February 18, 2010

A good article in Business Week about the need for IT security for small businesses.  In our experience, many small businesses started out with in-office servers that they built themselves and manage with the help of a local desktop support tech.  We developed our cloud-based solutions specifically for these small businesses, so they can take advantage of Enterprise-class security and availability, without the hassle and worry of handling security on their own, all at affordable rates.

DENVER, CO (MARCH 5, 2010) – Insight is proud to announce the official launch of its Referral Partner and Affiliate Marketing Programs, in support of the talented professionals who contribute to Insight’s success. Recognizing the value of referrals from trusted advisors to the small business community, Insight developed these programs to solidify its relationships with key partners and provide a framework that allows for the development of strategic marketing opportunities.

Insight’s Referral Partner program provides a structured, long-term revenue-sharing relationship for companies and individuals who assist their clients and colleagues by referring them to Insight’s full suite of solutions. Revenue sharing provides the opportunity for referral partners to benefit directly from their strong business relationships, while encouraging continued involvement of Insight’s partners and clients. “Our strategic partners refer Insight to their colleagues because they recognize the strength of our services and the added value that we provide to small businesses,” said Ron Olsen, President of Insight. “The Referral Partner Program is our way of sharing our good fortune with those who help us grow,” continued Olsen.

Understanding that certain strategic partners can benefit from integrated sales and marketing relationships, Insight developed the Affiliate Marketing Program to provide support for co-branded marketing opportunities to the small business community. “Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for resources needed by small businesses and start-up companies. By expanding Insight’s relationships with other quality service providers and creating complete operational packages for small businesses, Insight provides increased value to our clients and partners,” noted Olsen.

With strong interest in the Referral Partner and Affiliate Marketing Programs from existing clients and colleagues, these initiatives are off to a promising start in 2010. By enlisting the support of their business partners, Insight continues to expand into the small business market by providing low-cost, high-impact finance and technology services to emerging businesses.

About Insight Professional Services, LLC

Founded in April 2009, Insight Professional Services provides small business owners and consultants with a full suite of professional services and technology tools to streamline their back office operations, allowing owners to focus more time on generating revenues and growing their businesses. With more than 50 years of professional experience helping businesses increase their effectiveness and reduce their overall costs, the Insight team assembled a robust set of virtual solutions for managing the financial and technical operations of their clients. By combining the best solutions available from proven leaders in the small business space, with a powerful and reliable IT infrastructure in a state-of-the-art data center and time-tested operational practices, Insight provides an affordable offering unmatched in the marketplace. Insight is privately owned and operated. For more information, visit http://www.InsightProfessionalServices.com.

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Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2010/02/25/making-referrals-as-a-job-creation-engine/

John Jantsch
Duct Tape Marketing
February 25, 2010

Our friends as at Duct Tape Marketing are issuing a challenge to see if we can log 1,000 referrals to small businesses the week of March 8th. Great timing for the challenge, as Insight is just releasing the details of its Referral Partner Program and invites all of its Facebook fans to check it out and get signed up. We want to share our financial success with the people that help to get us there!

Small Business Gets Tech Savvy: Nearly 30% plan to implement SaaS solutions in 2010

Todd Thibodeaux
IndustryWeek
February 12, 2010

The Help Is Free, and It’s a Click Away

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/business/smallbusiness/09toolkit.html?_r=2&ref=smallbusiness

Paul B. Brown
New York Times
December 9, 2009

A great article full of valuable links to additional resources. I’ve often said that the problem isn’t that there’s no information available out there, it is simply that there is too much information to be able to accurately and quickly track it all down. This article summarizes a lot of valuable resources to help narrow down your search.

And always, if you simply need some help or don’t want to have to do this all yourself, just give us a call and Insight be happy to help.

A handful of years ago, I went to work for a long-time friend of mine and as we were hashing out the details such as pay, vacation and working situations, he said to me, “This will be new for me, as I am not normally friends with the people that work for me.”  And as our working relationship developed, I made sure that whenever possible we kept the office environment “professional,” even as we enjoyed vacations and spending time together outside the office.

What was odd for me was that I couldn’t think of a time, then or now, when I worked anywhere that I wasn’t friends with my co-workers or the people working directly for me.  And not surprisingly, a recent article/survey points to this as a factor in workplace stress:  http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=309307271&topic=Main

As the article points out, having friends or friendly relationships with the people around you in the office gives you the ability to bounce ideas off of each other in a non-threatening environment and to feel connected to others when things are at their most challenging. I would add to this that I believe that these friendships also enable co-workers to be more candid about their true opinions on work topics, as you can take the “personal attack” potential out of the equation and provide a more fertile ground for true collaboration.

Where it gets tricky is when you are friends with those that report directly to you, and you are responsible for making sure that their job performance is excellent and that you are displaying impartiality when it comes time to providing employee reviews and determining promotion opportunities.

One of my partners, Ash, once told a mutual friend and co-worker of ours who had recently joined the company, “Ron is a great guy and a great friend.  But just know that business is business, and if you screw up, he will call you out on it and you shouldn’t count on your friendship to save you. But, he’ll probably buy you a beer when it is all over.”  A very accurate assessment. Much like I want to see those around me thrive and succeed, and will go out of my way to help make that happen, I also expect that those around me will want to see me succeed and do everything that they can to make me successful. If you have these symbiotic relationships, built on mutual respect and friendship, then you are bound to be more successful than trying to go at it alone.

In the end, I try to surround myself with people that have a similar work ethic and a similar desire to succeed professionally in both my personal and professional lives, so it stands to reason that overlap will exist and I welcome it.

You’re Bleeding Money

http://www.womenentrepreneur.com/2010/01/youre-bleeding-money.html

Sherre DeMao
Women Entrepreneur
January 27, 2010

DeMao addresses the use of your time as a business owner in this very insightful article.  Her first point about spending your time doing non-revenue generating activities is precisely why we started Insight - it is not just about what something costs you, it is about the opportunity cost of not spending your valuable time generating new business.  Accounting, payroll, technology, administration – this back office b.s. is just the type of thing you should let others do so you can focus on running your business.

Additional points made by DeMao involve using your time outside of the office wisely. Whether it’s industry associations or charitable groups, identify a limited number of strategic groups and become involved with them.  How can you invest your time in eight different groups effectively, while still running your business and still actively developing new business?  The answer is that you can’t.

I’m not normally one to rant about things, particularly in a public forum, but I think that these people have been wearing me down and caught me on a day when I was just too frustrated to put up with more. Who are these people, the subject of my tirade? They are the team at Salesforce.com. Many of you know Salesforce – they make an on-line CRM (client relationship management) tool that helps companies aggregate all of their contacts, leads, potential clients and clients into a single sharable database. The technology is great and they have done wonders for making it easier and easier to follow-up with people and keep prospects and suspects moving through your process. But sometimes the ease at which you can automate these contacts can lead to the exact opposite reaction, as so perfectly demonstrated by Salesforce.com’s use of their own tools and processes.

I evaluated their solutions in September and I should have known what I was in for then.  A free 30 day trial – just sign up and start using it. If you like it, then sign up on a contract, if not, no problem. Day one of the trial: call and email from my friendly sales representative. Day three: tricks and tips for how to get the most out of Salesforce. Day five: phone call, “Can we get you signed up for an online Webinar on how to use the system better?” Day ten: phone call, “So how is it going?” And so it went. The system worked well, so I bit the bullet and signed up. Minimum contract is just 12 months. Little did I know that that was simply to ensure that they had enough time to beat you into submitting to calls, seminars, sales pitches on all of the other ways that Salesforce can be your new best friend.

Today was my breaking point. I’m running a business here. I have been nice…then less nice, when I’ve received continued sales calls and emails from these people. “No thanks, I’m just interested in the one license for just the one feature.”  And, “As I’ve said before, I’m not interested in anything more from you guys. Please stop calling me.”   So today, a nice note from Kristen M. from Salesforce, letting me know that she is working with my sales rep, Nicholas F., (which is surprising because that is the one person that I have never heard of, nor from) and she wanted to have an exploratory conversation with me. Now, Kristen has emailed me before and I was very direct about my use of the product at that time. We exchanged several emails about this, which by the nature of this product that they also use internally, have to be attached to my file. My first response today was direct and short, “Thanks for the email, but I don’t think that I am interested at this time.”

Unfortunately for her, she emailed me back to let me know that she appreciates my candor, but that she has been speaking to other people at Insight Professional Services that have indicated their desire to implement more of the features of Salesforce. She wants to learn more about our focus as a corporation so that she can share how their services can bring the most out of our business. blah blah blah…

My next response (and more wasted time) inquired as to whom she is talking to in my company, since no one has heard of her, and explained that we are a small but growing company but that we don’t need any of their products. Further, I let her know that the constant bombardment of sales calls and email campaigns is a huge detriment to a relationship with Salesforce and to please put our company onto their “Do Not Contact” list, pronto. As of the writing of this post, I have not heard a response. I was tempted to cc: Jim Steele, President Worldwide Sales and Chief Customer Officer, but De Ann thought that might be a bit much. It’s probably part of their internal sales requirements, anyway.

So the next time you are tempted to automate the message and the timing of your sales emails, make sure that you consider that they might not be as well received as you might think. No one likes to feel like they are shoved into a database and auto-marketed to…it is a turn-off.

Let me know what you think about Salesforce… And I’ll let you know if I hear back from them!

We are pleased to announce the signing of our newest client, a Denver-based law firm. This firm recognized the cost and stress associated with running their own network infrastructure and opted for a turn-key technology solution from Insight. We developed a complete package of real-time data replication and availability in our state-of-the-art data center with Microsoft Exchange functionality and Blackberry integration, all for one low monthly cost – without the client’s need to purchase or maintain any servers or network equipment. We look forward to a long and successful partnership with our newest client. Have a safe and happy weekend!

One of the best things about having started Insight is that I’ve taken a renewed interest in, and made the time for, learning about what is happening in the world around me.  Specifically, the entrepreneurial and small business worlds.  When I was focusing my time at Progressive, it was all about the housing market, home builders and home electronics.  Now, I spend my time reading about marketing, leadership, social media and a handful of other topics and I feel like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from a long nap. There is so much going on around us, so many new and innovative concepts and ideas; I had forgotten how exciting emerging companies and technologies really can be.

But the reality is that you can’t read everything, or else all you would do is read newsletters and news websites and RSS feeds and never get any work done.  So over the last year, I’ve narrowed down my reading to a few magazines, websites and newsletters that I’ve found to be the most helpful, informative and enjoyable for me.

I will mention that in addition to signing up and receiving this information, you actually have to make time to read and digest it. I spent years getting magazines that I “should” read, which were never even looked at, and subscribed to news feeds that I never reviewed. For me, I have found that I need to set aside 2 time slots weekly where I can catch up on email newsletters and articles, some daily time to read the paper, and I read magazines and other publications as time permits on the weekends or evenings. It is simply a matter of making the time (and for traveling often enough that I can “catch up” on the plane or in the airport).

So what do I read, how do I receive it and why is it important to me?

• Denver Post (Daily): Everyone should be aware of what is happening in the world around them. I receive the paper on the Kindle, so it is manageable when I’m on the treadmill or on the road. It eliminates most of the pictures and just gives you the stories.  I focus on the news, local news and the business sections.  I skim the sports section because I’m just not that into sports.
• Denver Business Journal (Weekly):  Good focus on the business happenings in our community.  I also receive the daily journal updates for Denver and Portland.  You can sign up for free, whether or not you subscribe the business journal.
• Magazines (Monthly):  Fortune and Fast Company (Business, Tech, Entrepreneurial news and articles) and 5280 (Denver food and entertainment scene)
• Email newsletters (Daily):  In addition to the business journal newsletters noted above, I am a fan of the Smartbrief series.  Smartbriefs are a series of daily email news summaries in a wide variety of industries.  They are free and they are a great source of information.  I am currently signed up for 9 of these newsletters, focusing on everything from entrepreneurship and small business, to social media and consumer electronics.  They give a great 2 sentence summary of the highlighted articles and they have a good team of editors selecting the ones most intriguing for each category.
• Websites (Weekly):  Two in particular that I’ve found to be very worthwhile. First, Anita Campbell and her team at Small Business Trends do an amazing job of writing and aggregating pertinent content for small business owners and executives. Second, Guy Kawasaki and his team at Alltop have put together a great resource for news and information on, well, just about anything.  Pick a topic and start reading. (I should warn you that I’ve lost a couple of afternoons that way, so be careful!)
• Mobile App (Daily): One final source of technology news that I use is an application on my Blackberry that summarizes the latest articles on ZDNet. It’s easy to review headlines, read the full story and forward a link of the story directly to yourself or to anyone in your contact list.  Smooth, efficient and I am guaranteed to always have reading material with me wherever I go.

For me, it is all about the routine.  If I don’t set aside the time for it, it either doesn’t get read or I feel the need to read it the moment that it comes in, which wreaks havoc on a day’s productivity. And the one thing that I don’t have a lot of these days is time.

Which newsletters, magazines, publications or websites work best for you? Have you found success in balancing out the desire for news and information with the demands of the day?  What works best for you?