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Category: ROI

Open Office – the Alternative for Microsoft Office!

Written by Jess
Tuesday, 01 May 2012 23:23
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Suffering a bit of sticker shock at the cost of Microsoft Office?  No worries.  There’s a fully functional, all the bells and whistles alternative out there that you probably don’t know about.

It’s called Open Office. And it is FREE.

It has word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, graphics, database etc. etc. and it’s been around for two decades.  It’s completely modern and, yes, it is free!  And it’s the one thing I can think of that defies the old adage that nothing in life is free.

Sound too good to be true?  It’s not.  The only reason you haven’t heard of it is that it doesn’t have a massive marketing and advertising campaign behind it like Microsoft Office does.  It’s used by many companies, many of our own government agencies, and about a bazillion companies abroad.  They get their money from advertising and sponsors.

You can get it at http://www.openoffice.org/ .

Did I mention it’s free?

Happy computing!

 

What is the right printer for my business?

Written by Jess
Thursday, 19 April 2012 21:54
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Isn’t it cool how you can buy a printer for less than $100? Pretty amazing.  Also pretty amazing is how much money you’ll spend in the next year or two not only replacing ink cartridges but also frustration and lost time keeping it running or printing cleanly.  Don’t waste your time.

It’s a better decision for a business to purchase a solid business grade printer for the majority of printing needs.  After all, your business generates how much revenue per hour?  What will you lose if your printer is down or you’re having to fix it?

Rule of thumb: If you print most of your docs black and white, get a laserjet.  Yes you will spend at least $500 up front but it’ll pay for itself quickly in keeping your business running and less dollars spent replacing ink cartridges or toner.

Even color lasers are becoming more affordable.  Still we’d recommend spending at least $850-1000 for a decent model.

Of course you’ll find less expensive options out there but everything the same, you get what you pay for.

Good luck and happy computing!

 

IT ‘On the Cheap’

Written by Jess
Tuesday, 28 February 2012 17:45
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Many business owners view computers and internet and technicians as a cost – sitting only on one side of the balance sheet.

However, this perspective is costing those owners far more than they’re saving by doing things “on the cheap”.

Consider that anything that interrupts revenue stream has a very serious effect on profitability. And that creates a lot of anxiety for a business owner, something we’d all like to avoid.

Consider the case of a Veterinary Clinic in Minneapolis. Each day the owner would walk in and be faced with another bombardment of his staff saying the system is down, I can’t print invoices, we had to hand-write bills for services.

Besides the unprofessional appearance they displayed to clients, employees were annoyed and angry, time was lost having to double-entry paper and digital. Whole lots of frustration, energy taken away from the most important factor: revenue stream. It was a mess.

CW came in, assessed their entire workflow and technology status. We implemented our field-tested best practices and 8 months later, we’ve only received a couple calls from them and those were so minor it was like a picnic.

Needless to say, the Doctor is a very happy camper and working at peak efficiency.

Moral of the story: If you stop to do the analysis, technology costs are dwarfed by lost revenue every time. Make the investment. There’s a high cost to doing things “on the cheap”.