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Cost Effective Tools for Business

maureen — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:30:26 +0000

These days we are working smarter and cheaper. We are looking for tools that do what we need inexpensively. In past blogs I mentioned free business tools, primarily software. You can’t get everything for free, but what you need doesn’t have to break the bank either.

Social Media

Nothing beats having your customers excited to sign up to take advantage of your expertise. Join social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn (okay, I’m starting with free tools) and share away. Offer your knowledge, your area of expertise. If you own a garage, give tips on seasonal car maintenance. If you own a salon, give your list of drugstore beauty finds worth trying. A realtor could share some free or low-cost ways to improving a home to make it ready for sale. By providing something others need, you can gain a large following, which will lead to sales. I take the idea that this is “free” back. Social media is not completely free; your time is money and you need to invest time to make this work.

Having trouble keeping up? Try a Social CRM (Contact Relationship Manager). There are several available but one that has been gaining in popularity is Sproutsocial. Sproutsocial is a tool that can manage your social media efforts such as scheduling messages to be sent, scanning social media sites for relevant information regarding your business and, perhaps, gathering analytics on your social media efforts.

Hardware

If you are a small business, investing in an all-in-one printer can be extremely cost effective. A good all-in-one printer could cost up to $500. If you do a lot of printing, you may choose to lease a commercial multi-functional printer that offers free maintenance and a per page cost. To ensure you are getting the most for your money, calculate the per page cost based on how many pages the printer ink will print.

Want more? Check out these links:

PC Magazine article on all-in-one printers

Cnet article on all-in-one printers

How to calculate cost per page

Author: Lisa Ryan
lryan@microknowledge.com

Remember, if you are a MicroKnowledge customer and have a software question to ask, feel free to contact us at any time by using our Support link at the top of the site. Your question might be featured in our next blog entry!

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Course Survey Winner

maureen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:33:25 +0000

Thank you to all our clients and friends who participated in our course survey; we had a great response. Congratulations to Susan D’Entremont from Capital District Library Counsel who was the winner of the iPod Touch. Susan was joined by Jean Sheviak the Executive Director of CDLC.

Author: Kathleen Pingelski
kpingelski@microknowledge.com

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Edit Attachments in Outlook 2010

maureen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:56:37 +0000

It’s happened to everyone. You get an email, it has an attachment, and you notice something you want to change – it could be a typo, addition or some sort of note. But can you edit the attachment right in your email?

Yes, you can! But, there’s one tricky action to take before you start making those edits. Here’s the step-by-step in Outlook 2010:

Open your email with an attachment in a separate window.
Edit your email by going to Actions > Edit Message on the Message tab.

Open the attachment and click Enable Editing from the yellow bar at the top.
Edit, Save, and Close the attachment.
When closing the email you should get this message. Click Yes.

Now you’re all set. A bit of warning though – your IT professionals might not like the idea of primarily saving attachments on your email server. They do take up a lot of space, so choose wisely!

Author: Ryan Donelan
rdonelan@microknowledge.com

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Using Technology Instead of Paper

maureen — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:33:48 +0000

Businesses have been on the paperless trend for years, investing in scanners and document storage space. You see the call to “Go Green” on billboards and even in our daily emails. What about you? Are you going paperless? There are quite a few options to help you get away from paper.

Ironically, email is often a primary source for using paper. You might print out email so you’ll have the content with you when traveling. Let’s face it, not only is this a paper burden, you may have misplaced a few emails here or there. There is a simple solution: access your email through a web browser. Then there is no need to print the email and you can refer to it as often as you need.

What if you just need information? Perhaps what you need is just a few notes from a document on your computer and possibly some other locations. If so, Microsoft One Note is the tool for you. Takes notes, copy files, draw work flow from a variety of tools and locations (such as your PC or iPad), and have them available in one spot via a web browser.

Read a lot of books? Try the Kindle or Nook. You’ll have access to a large number of books without the weight and the cost (you can “borrow” books just as you can from a library).

Certainly technology today has made going paperless much simpler for individuals. If you haven’t made a transition, try one of the options above to start. Good luck on your paperless quest!

Want to learn more? Here are a few additional links to get you thinking about being green:

Great Debate: Reflections on a paperless society

Boogie Board Tablet

iPad

iCloud

Author: Lisa Ryan
lryan@microknowledge.com

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Business Contact Manager

maureen — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:13:25 +0000

Outlook is a popular program for email, calendaring and scheduling and is often used as a primitive contact management tool. If you currently use outlook and need more features relating to contact management, then try Microsoft’s Business Contact Manager. The Business Contact Manager can be downloaded if you own Office 2010 Professional Plus.

The Business Contact Manager can store and share contact information, manage sales leads and track opportunities and sales. The 2010 version offers a customizable dashboard to quickly display business metrics. It works well with Outlook and does not rely on the Microsoft Exchange server to share information. It is a good starting point for contact management.

If you are interested in using the Business Contact Manager, give us a call. MicroKnowledge can offer you a session customized on the features you need.

Author: Lisa Ryan
lryan@microknowledge.com

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Find and Replace Zen

maureen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:40:27 +0000

There’s got to be a better way… We’ve all uttered these words before. In my case, it’s when I have to repeat the same action over and over to make something look right. Here’s another tool in your belt to help you retain your sanity.

Imagine you’ve just pasted a list of items into Word and this is what you got:

Did it paste the way you wanted? Probably not. In this case I wanted a list where each keyword is on its own line. Before you start pressing Backspace and Enter 20+ times, consider using Find and Replace:

Press Ctrl+H to bring up the Replace window
Type a comma and space next to Find what
Type a ^p (which is a paragraph mark) next to Replace with
Click Replace All

Now my list looks like this. Perfect!

If you actually wanted to remove the line breaks, you can instead replace the paragraph marks with nothing (leave the replace field blank). Now Replace acts like a mass-delete.

Author: Ryan Donelan
rdonelan@microknowledge.com

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MicroKnowledge Celebrates 25 Years

maureen — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:50:54 +0000

On November 15th we celebrated 25 years in business. We had a great gathering of friends, family, clients and community members. As we reflect on the holidays, we are grateful for all of the support and continued success you have given to us. Thank you and we look forward to our future and servicing our communities and beyond!

Author: Maureen Fodera
mfodera@microknowledge.com

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Free Web-based Tools

maureen — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:42:50 +0000

As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, MicroKnowledge has been exploring quite a few free web-based tools. Last November, we launched a new website and blog. Both are powered by WordPress, a free blog and publishing tool. WordPress is written by volunteers and has enough add-ins to enhance your website with a variety of functionality.

In addition to WordPress, other tools such as Drupal and Joomla are available to you. All three tools are free, open source and completely customizable. Sound complicated? Not really. Each tool offers a large number of pre-defined templates. Add your content and you could have an incredible site with very little to no programming necessary.

If you are considering using WordPress or Drupal in your business, MicroKnowledge offers classes for both. Hope to see you!

Send me your favorite free business tools and I’ll post them in a later blog.

Author: Lisa Ryan
lryan@microknowledge.com

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Writing Custom Error Messages in Excel

maureen — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:01:47 +0000

Want to encourage better data entry in your Excel form? (And maybe have a little fun?) You can write customized error messages that appear if someone enters invalid data in a cell. To set it up, click on the cell you want to watch, go to Data > Data Validation and choose what to allow someone to type in the cell.

For a quick example, you can choose to allow a whole number between 1 and 5. Next click the Error Alert tab and type in a message to display if someone doesn’t follow the rule. Click OK and test it out.

Did you type a 6? I knew it!

Author: Ryan Donelan
rdonelan@microknowledge.com

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MicroKnowledge Recognized for Celebrating 25 Years in Business

maureen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:02:25 +0000

MicroKnowledge celebrates 25 years in business. We are thrilled to still be offering great service and we are looking forward to our continued commitment and success to our clients and community.

Take a look at this great piece in Spotlight Newspapers acknowledging our years of service and the dedication to our community.

MicroKnowledge Featured in Spotlight

Author: Maureen Fodera
mfodera@microknowledge.com

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