Daily Biz Solutions

Mobile database applications are an effective way to streamline business processes and ensure that end users always have access to the critical corporate information they need to do their jobs. Although large enterprises tend to be the ones that invest most heavily in mobility, smaller businesses can also benefit from mobilizing their data.

“Mobile” is Not the Same as “Online”

Some people equate “mobile” to “online”, but they’re not the same thing. Online applications require a consistent and dependable network connection to an external server. Browser-based applications are the classic examples of online applications.

A truly mobile application, however, is an application that continues to work even when network connectivity is lost, unlike an online application. Being “disconnected” from the network does not stop the application dead in its tracks. This is an important feature for many users. Many mobile workers move in and out of network coverage on a regular basis while doing their jobs but need information to be “always available”. Online solutions don’t work well for these kinds of workers.

Local Data = Speed and Convenience

Mobile applications work best when they include some kind of local data store. By keeping important data local to the device, the user is insulated from network connectivity problems. Data operations are faster (no network lag) and can occur at any time. This results in a much better and less frustrating experience for the user.

Of course, using a local data store makes the design and implementation of the mobile application more complex. Even if the application works standalone, without the network, eventually some kind of data exchange must occur between the local data store and one or more external servers. Depending on the design of the application, keeping track of changes and dealing with potential conflicts can be quite challenging to manage. Mobile database applications often take longer and more skill to develop than their online-only equivalents because of this.

Saving on Network Costs

Besides offering a better user experience, mobile database applications can also yield significant savings in network costs. Data costs on mobile networks can be surprisingly high when using online applications, especially browser-based applications. The continuous back-and-forth between the device and the servers hosting the application racks up network charges quite quickly. A well-designed mobile application, on the other hand, requires only minimal use of the network by exchanging changes to data instead of entire data sets.

While the upfront costs of developing mobile database applications are typically higher than online applications, the savings on network costs can be quite substantial and make these applications must more cost-effective than their online equivalents. It’s certainly something to consider the next time you develop or purchase a mobile application.

Whether you are a buying for a large multi location business or setting up your own home office, there is an amazing variety of office products you will need to buy on a regular basis. There are probably many office supplies superstores at retail parks in and around your area, most probably huge, hot and expensive. Have you ever considered buying your necessities online? Internet shopping for your business needs is quick, easy, and generally cheaper. Your possible needs are myriad: paper (probably in different colours), notepads, post-it notes, pencils, pens, rulers, staplers (be sure you get the right size staples to accompany them), paper clips, and tape. The list could go on forever.

It is almost impossible to list all the items you will need, as well as the many burdensome trips to the store that all this office equipment will require. You could strain your back as well as your budget. You may find after all this drudgery that you have forgotten some of the office supplies that you may unexpectedly need, like rubber bands, clipboards, or ink cartridges for your printer. It is easy to forget even some of the basics, unless you have a perfectly planned shopping list.

How can you avoid the inconvenience that an office supply superstore can lead you to? If you do your office supplies shopping online, you can save time, effort and probably money. Most internet stores have a site that contains a vast range of office supplies products, as well as a way to contact the supplier should you have any questions or require assistance. The better websites are user-friendly, allowing you to browse through all the products with powerful yet simple search tools before you buy. Another really handy reason to shop online is that you can shop 24 hours a day, seven days a week, rain or shine.

Online shopping also has a number of environmental benefits over purchasing from office supplies superstores. An online retailer can service the entire country though one centralised distribution facility. Compare this to the hundreds of superstores around the UK each generating large amounts of carbon through heating and lighting requirements and it’s easy to see how online shopping can be more eco friendly.

Perhaps the largest advantage to buying office supplies through the internet are the low prices you are likely to find. Online stores do not need a location with a customer-friendly atmosphere, or large and expensive display areas. Large savings are also made on staff costs as the amount of employees needed to run a successful online store can be a fraction of those needed to manage large retail stores. These savings can then be passed onto you, the valued customer.

Delivery is made by courier and in most instances is next day removing the need for you not lug the packages back to the office. All in all, shopping for the needs of your business, whether small or large, is more convenient, time saving, environmentally friendly and cost efficient when you purchase online.

About the Author:

Carl Barton ([email protected]) is the Commercial Director at Office Allsorts Ltd, a discount online office supplies and stationery business based in the UK. Visit the website at http://www.officeallsorts.co.uk.

If you’d like to purchase Office Supplies then OfficeAllsorts.co.uk has a huge selection at great prices.

When it comes to beating spam filters, you have two choices.

The first is to avoid using these words and phrases that are most commonly found in spam emails.

According to spam experts, the 20 most commonly used words are:

1. this is not spam
2. unsubscribe
3. amazing
4. check or money order
5. email marketing
6. congratulations
7. click here
8. free (including toll-free)
9. can be removed
10. dear friend
11. guarantee
12. for only ($)
13. risk free
14. great offer
15. order now
16. increase sales
17. promise you
18. special promotion
19. winner
20. can be canceled anytime

This may seem easier said than done because some words are difficult to avoid and replaced. But if you are determined on your purpose of avoiding spam filters, you can definitely find the best solution for this. After all, all of them are just words. You can try and play with them.

The second option would be to try and cloak these words and phrases in the cleverest way you can think of. This can be done by using keyboard symbols or substituting with a symbol some letters.

The ploy is not to make them too puzzling. You would not want your readers to not understand what you are saying. For example, you can use “fr*ee” for the word “free”.

Not all spam filters are immune to this strategy and reprimand you for doing it. But you will realize that the points given to you are nothing compares to the points that you can get when you use the phrases and words themselves.

It may not be the best solution but for now, it is the best option you can use.

Another way of avoiding spam filters is to assess how your newsletter or e-zine piles up before you give them away. The only good thing about this is that you will be able to do this with no charge at all.

You can use some online programs to be able to distinguish how your e-zine will rank in Spam Assassin. All you have to do is copy the e-zine texts and paste it on the box found on their site. They will run this for you and e-mail you a copy. The process only takes minutes to give the final result.

The reports will let you know you precisely what words are costs you your points. More often than not, you should only be bothered if your score is more than 5 points. If this is the case, you have the choice of erasing or disguising those words. You still have an option.

Another way of beating spam filters is by duplicating published ezines.

Oftentimes, ezine publishers will send the same issue twice, usually one in HTML and one in plain text. After a few days, they will remind the person to go check out the issue sent to them, in case they have somehow missed it.

Ezine publishers send out duplicate in different formats because they want to beat the spam filters that might filter out one of the two copies.

For the reader and receiver, it might be annoying receiving two of the same copy. But for the marketers, they know that this strategy works. It can actually increase the total number of visitors to their websites.

If you are a newbie in the Internet marketing business, it is recommended that you use this strategy to avoid spam filters.

But before doing this email marketing strategy of duplication, take into consideration some things first.

1. Send the HTML version first. This is very important. HTML is a vital Internet language and therefore it should be your first priority.

2. Modify some of the content and try to add some extra value on the second post. This can be some new posts you want to advertise or a special offer that you have not put into the first copy.

3. Alter the time when you send the second post. If you have mailed the first one in the morning, then try to send the second one later in the day. This is because some sophisticated spam filters tighten up at different times of the day that spam loads are the greatest.

Test out some of these strategies for beating spam filters. If done properly, you will notice that it can actually bring good results to your business.

If you’ve set-up an Internet business but you’re not blogging about it, then you’re missing out on one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic to your website. However, getting a blog up and running and keeping it updated is only part of the story. One of the most successful blog strategies involves taking advantage of web 2.0 social networking sites to publicize your blog posts.

The main reason why social bookmarking sites should be a part of your daily Internet business activities is that many people use these sites as their main source of news and gossip. A popular social news site such as Digg gets a lot of traffic. Digg attracted more than 230 million visitors in 2008. People visit Digg and similar sites to find out what’s new and to share content from the web, including their own blog posts. If users like what they read, they can vote for the article, and if an article is popular enough, it will reach the top pages of Digg and be seen by millions of visitors. Other social sites use a similar voting system.

If the blog posts you submit to Digg and other social sites don’t get any votes, you’re still getting the benefit of building one-way backlinks to your blog, so it’s well worth the time in making a point to submit your blog posts to social marketing sites. Also, it’s very easy to do and quite often takes just a click of a button.

Another benefit from blogging regularly and submitting your posts to social networking sites is branding yourself and building your credibility. Make sure that you use keywords that people are using to search for your kind of business. Social networking will also give your blog a great boost in search engine rankings, and you may find that you can get your site into the top ten of Google for a wide range of keyword terms if you take a disciplined approach to social marketing.

Speaking of discipline, don’t take on too much when it comes to social networking. Too many people try to submit their post to every social networking site that they can find only to feel overwhelmed by the huge number of social networking sites that have sprung up in a relatively short time.

It’s much easier to choose a dozen of the best social networking sites for your business and to concentrate 90-95% of your social networking and marketing effort on making regular submissions to those sites. The other 5-10% of your allocated time can be used to post occasional submissions to other social marketing sites where you want to maintain a presence.

By utilizing a focused and disciplined approach to blogging and social networking, you’ll gain much more publicity for your blog and online business than you will if you take a scattergun approach to social marketing. Combining your blog posts with social networking is one of the top blog strategies which you can implement.

“Enough with thinking about setting up a customer service department with customer service videos. I’m going to explore other strategies. It’s just too complicated and costly. I really don’t have time to deal with this right now. What I am taking away from reading that every small business owner should have a customer service department, is that I need a way to set up an online support desk with reliable people. This will give my business credibility, reduce cost and help me retain more customers.”

Are you struggling with these thoughts day in and day out? Are you feeling the pressure from the competition? Are they taking your clients away from you simply because their customer service is more reliable and efficient than yours? Are you at your wit’s end and don’t know what to do?

Well, I was there once myself. I remember the days when hiring and training customer service reps became a full-time job. There were no customer service videos then. The irony about it is that I was doing such a fantastic job; I became a target for my competitors. You see, as soon as I hired, licensed and trained my customer representative, large vendors in my industry would offer them a couple more dollars per hour and take them away from me. They were blatant about it. I remember talking to an insider in one of those large corporations to find out why they kept stealing my reps. The answer was that because they were trained by me, it was more than enough precedence to hire them. In some instances, they did not even have to go through the normal training. In other words, I become the freebie recruiter and trainer for these competitors.

It wasn’t just larger corporations. I remember an agency we used to work together. They covered the property and casualty business and I did the employee benefits. One day they realized they were missing out on the benefits cash cow and decided to open a benefits division. What did they do next? They offer my top customer rep literally a couple dollars an hour extra, plus flexible schedule and before I could do anything she was gone.

You may be wondering why I didn’t just increase those couple of dollars or added flexible hours so that they would not take them from me. Well, I tried, it became extremely expensive. As a small business owner, the large HR cost was already crushing me. Since my entire business model was built around customer service, it was where I concentrated most of my efforts. My mission was to convert every single one of my customers into Raving Fans. As a matter of fact, when I hired a customer rep, the first thing they had to do, before starting the job, was to read the “Raving Fans” book by Ken Blanchard…no kidding! That is what customer service really means to me.

As you can imagine the revolving door and the free training for the competition was costing me an arm and a leg. I could not continue doing the same thing, something had to change. It wasn’t just the cost, but the massive number of hours I was putting into hiring, licensing and training people. I was already putting somewhere in the vicinity of 60-70 hours a week in my business, this had to stop.

It took me a little while to figure out the answer, but eventually I did. I streamlined and digitized my entire customer service department. I digitized every thing that was paper based. I implemented intranets for each product line. I created FAQs and a knowledgebase, for both customers and service reps. This is where the customer and our employees could find answers to their frequently asked questions themselves. It worked great because clients would not have to call for every question. On the other hand, employees had the answer to customer’s questions right at their fingertips. This move alone reduced our number of phone lines from 21 to 3. It also reduced our customer reps from about 23 to 5…no kidding!

Believe it or not, it really isn’t hard to set up an efficient and inexpensive customer service department, or customer service videos. You just have to put a little time understanding virtual support systems and implement them in your business. You don’t even need to know programming or any techie speak. It’s all there for the taking, and sometimes it’s even free.