Cinco de Mayo Promotion!!!
In honor of Cinco de Mayo, for the entire month of May (May 1st – May 31st) we will be running a double promotion that revolves around introducing that we are now going to be offering Exchange 2013 Mailboxes! The pricing for Exchange 2013 will be normally set at $11.99/mailbox, however, the promotion for May will run at $9.99/mailbox!
We want your feedback!
If you provide a testimony, feedback, quote, success story, etc., we will give you 5 Exchange 2013 Mailboxes for $5.00/mailbox!!! This is a great deal and you don’t want to miss it! To take advantage of this great promotion all you need to do is go to our Promotions page and fill out the form at the bottom of the page with your testimony! After I have reviewed the information that you submit I will then send you the coupon code for the promotion to use when signing up your 5 accounts!
Please keep in mind that this double promotion will only be valid during the month on May. Therefore, all accounts need to be signed up before May 31st.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
The Pareto Principle
On Tuesday of this week, we successfully held on our first XD LiveOnline! Workshop!
I would like to again thank those that were in attendance and hope that you received something useful that you can start implementing in your business right away. It was my job to educate attendees on what I felt were solid ingredients to grow their businesses. Those topics included processes, workflows, productive habits and the Pareto Principle. While each topic of equally important in the success of your business, it is the latter topic that garnered speculation and something I want to discuss today.
When I teach the Pareto Principle to other folks, I see the same astonished reaction on their faces as I had when I first heard of the principle. The principle is so simple, yet so accurate, that it somehow feels like a trick. The principle, or rule, is simple: 80% of the results/effects come from 20% of the efforts/causes. Apply this to rule to your revenue report listed by customers, and you will find that 20% of your clientele accounts for 80% of your revenue. So, for an example, let’s put some real numbers into this principle. Let’s say that you had a client database of 100 businesses that you have serviced last year. Furthermore, let’s say that your records indicate your revenue was $100,000 in the same year. According to the Pareto Principle, 20 of those clients account for $80,000 revenue. The other 80 customers that you probably spent the same amount of time and resource (if not more) only account for $20,000. Now, my question to you is: Do you see a problem or an opportunity? If you business-minded, you will see both.
The problem you should see is that you are wasting time and resources on 80 businesses for less money. The opportunity here is that you don’t have to! This is where you make your own choices as a business owner. I can’t tell you to drop those 80 businesses and concentrate on the top 20% for additional revenue, client retention, etc. And I also can’t tell you to look for additional businesses that match the mindset of those top 20 customers and have them compete for your time, resources, and services. I can’t tell you how to run your business. I am not a shareholder or your wife. I can tell you that this math is too simple and accurate to ignore.
Give the principle a chance to work in your business and let me know how it goes. You can reach me anytime via email at Michael@ownwebnow.com. I am very interested to learn how you put the Pareto Principle to work in your business and the results that followed.
Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707
Compliance Archiving v2.0
We have some exciting news about the upcoming release of ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive v2.0!
Over this past month, we have purchased additional hardware and have been migrating existing accounts onto this new infrastructure. With the new infrastructure in place, it will allow us to perform faster searches and build reports on top of the information retained within ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive. Rest assured, due to the dynamic nature of our product we have been able to do this almost seamlessly and without disrupting service to any customers.
Compliance Archive was originally released almost 3 years ago and due to growth and time, we felt it was time to improve this product. While we have implemented an improved back-end system that will improve performance, we’ve also made several enhancements to the front end as well.
Enhancements
· Improved searching capabilities.
· Paging has been implemented. (No more 10 minute load times to view your mailbox.)
· Improved GUI, (cross browser support).
Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com
Helping Customers Go Green
Many offices across the nation are putting in a concerted effort to make their offices more efficient or “green” if you will. This movement is lowering overall office maintenance costs, lowering utility bills, lowering office supply costs, and providing more revenue to the bottom line. IT companies that want to help their customers adopt an efficiency policy, should first adopt some simple practices in their office and provide a value added, example based guide of common practices or implemented improvements.
A number of simple and effective practices are:
Lights – Lights can have a huge impact on energy used and utility costs. Place stickers by all light switches to “turn off” when not in use. Make a policy that lights in common areas such as bathrooms, break rooms, and conference rooms, are always “off” unless being used. Make sure all lights are off before leaving the building at night to maximize energy efficiency.
Recycling – Recycling can be an easy way to make a difference. Add recycling bins in common areas to encourage employee participation, this minimal change can boost morale and make a noticeable difference to your green office.
Computers – Computers are a silent drain on energy, whether it is a CPU, laptop, or monitor, all add up to costly energy usage when on. It is often common practice for users to leave their computers powered on when leaving for the day. Implement a policy that all computers and monitors be powered down prior to leaving for the day. Make a visual check prior to leaving the office and place a note on the desk of any users that have left their machine on. “It is not a good idea to manually shut a computer off if left on, as the user may have been working on something that may be lost if shut down.”
Servers – Servers utilize an immense amount of power and energy, cooling costs, battery backup, and peripherals add to the inefficiency. Remove and consolidate any servers into virtual servers on a single machine if possible. Research available cloud solutions that may help eliminate internal servers and devices as well, to maximize your green efforts. Cloud solutions can help to effectively minimize your energy usage.
There are many more ways to make your office more efficient. By taking a few simple steps you can save money, add bottom line revenue, and add to your company culture. Once you have implemented a plan for your office, write up a short guide and provide it to your customers as a value add. A small effort can make a huge difference for you and your customers.
Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com
Don’t Miss the first XD LiveOnline! Workshop
Time is running out…get registered for our very first XD LiveOnline! Workshop!!!
The XD LiveOnline! Workshop is a 4-part Business Training Workshop Series that will be held quarterly. Each workshop will build off of each other and is designed to provide you with detailed and useful business and technology training to better run your business!
The best part about this first installment of the XD LiveOnline! Workshop Series is that it is completely FREE! We want to give everyone a little taste of what these workshops will be like. We do however, want your feedback at the conclusion on the workshop so that we can continue to make it better and more beneficial for you and your employees.
The event will consist of 4core training area about 30 minutes each followed by a specific Q&A session after each training topic. Then you will have a short break. The last segment of the workshop will be a ‘How-To’ and application session to give “marching orders” on how you can use the information you learn in your business immediately! Also, after the close of the workshop you will be given a quiz to report the attention from attendees, collateral, additional resources, transcripts, PowerPoint’s of the topics that are presented, promotions, etc.
The XD LiveOnline! Workshop is being held TOMORROW, April 23rd @ 1pm-5pm EST immediately following our “ExchangeDefender Best of the Best” webinar. If you have not yet registered, REGISTER NOW!
Let me know if you have any questions!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
Tips & Tricks
Quite frequently, I receive emails or phone calls from our clients that have suggestions for our products and services. The majority of the time, the requested feature is already in place, but the partner didn’t know it was even available. To that extent, I am going to start a category of this blog called Tips and Tricks.
A feature request I heard this morning dealt with the Service Manager in the Own Web Now support portal (https://support.ownwebnow.com). A partner, who has quite a bit of hosted mailboxes, wanted a way to group the mailboxes by domain. He stated that browsing through the many address listed to make a change to one account was daunting. He allowed me to perform a join.me session so I could be clear as to what he was referring to. I patiently listened and watched as he scrolled thru all his hosted Exchange mailboxes to demonstrate his frustration over the issue. He then said, “So you can see now, that grouping the mailboxes by their domains would be such an easier process. Is this something you guys could develop—the grouping of mailboxes by domain?”
“Absolutely,” I responded, knowing the solution already existed. “Would you mind if I fixed that for you right now? I just give me access to this join.me session?”
A little taken aback about the immediate fix, he gave me permission of his mouse and I proceeded to:
*Click on the My Profile tab inside your Support Portal;
*Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and locate the Service Manager section;
*Click the down-down menu and choose:
*Group accounts by domain – to group all your hosted mailboxes by domain; or
*Show all accounts on one page – to show all your hosted mailboxes on one page.
*Click the Update button.
Depending on the option you chose to display, the next time you access your Service Manager to view your Hosted Exchange (or Essentials) mailboxes, that chose will reflect your new view. Needless to say, the partner was thoroughly impressed with this tip! “You guys should document this stuff! This is great!” Wish granted—again.
Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707
Reporting, Reporting, Reporting!
Check out what Shockey Monkey is up to when it comes to Reporting…
Over the years reporting has always been a highly requested feature inside of Shockey Monkey. The biggest issue that we have faced with reporting has been trying to please everyone. While one user may absolutely love everything about the pre-defined reports, other users consider them useless. Well we believe that we have come up with a solution to fix that issue. Dynamic Reporting – we let you pick the information that is critical to you and your company, and then generate a report based on top of that template. Unfortunately, this feature is not quite ready yet, we are hoping to have it live in a few weeks.
However, let’s go over the basics of how this works.
1. You pick a type, (Ticket, Contact, Company, etc.)
2. Based on that choice optional fields will populate under [Report Filter].
3. Create the report.
4. Run the report.
5. Some reports will take a long time to generate, based on the type and filters.
6. View the generated report after is has finished, (instantly).
We also understand that this Dynamic Engine will not be able to produce every single (detailed) report that may exceed outside of the scope of dynamic generation. So we will also have (revamped) pre-defined reports, that may be executed on the fly.
Employee – Billable Ticket Summary is the first report that we’ve added to the system and is CURRENTLY AVAILABLE. This report generates an overview of your Employees billable time inside and across all tickets within the provided date range. You can see from the screenshot below how this looks, across several employees.
Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com
Are Your Customer QBR’s Happening?
A QBR or Quarterly Business Review is a scheduled quarterly meeting with your managed customers to provide an overview of their business technology health, to assess any current issues, as well as plan for any future expenditures or needs. The biggest problem for many MSP practices is that QBR’s are just not happening.
There are a number of reasons that a QBR doesn’t happen and things you can do to make sure they do:
Customer is unavailable
Try scheduling the meetings in advance, for instance at the end of the previous meeting, schedule the next one on the spot with the customer and send a meeting invite assuring it is in both calendars. Though this is not a guarantee that the meeting will occur there is higher likelihood of availability.
Customer Tunes Out
Often times when a meeting occurs it is difficult to keep the customer focused or engaged. This is generally contributed to the format of the QBR itself. Many MSP’s utilize long, data driven reports in an attempt to show value to the customer. Some MSP’s just read this information page by page to the customer, providing no interaction or interest. Though it is a good idea to have a deliverable, instead create an agenda to go over and highlight concerns, specific accomplishments, and future needs/budget.
You Don’t Have Time
This is probably the one we hear most often and usually just means you don’t want to. It is more than important to create and maintain your customer relationships and a QBR is a great way to do that. It may not be necessary to have these meetings quarterly with every customer but making sure there is a recurring meeting is necessary. Make the time!
Always Bring a Token of Gratitude
Going to a customer’s office with a small token of appreciation like donuts, coffee, smoothies, or lunch can create an event that the entire office looks forward to. This can help to build the relationship as well as assure a customer’s availability. If calling to set a meeting, mention that you would like to bring the office one of these tokens and come by for your quarterly sit down. Mentioning this can also help to gain the meeting.
It is easy for MSP’s to get comfortable once they have a contract or long term agreement. The reality is they should always be working to build the relationship, maintain the agreement, and build customer loyalty. By providing regular QBR’s all of these can be accomplished and so much more!
Frank Gurnee
VP, Channel Services, ExchangeDefender
(877) 546-0316 x4777
frank@ownwebnow.com
The Cloud is Flexible!
At ExchangeDefender, the Cloud is Flexible!
Many clients are sometimes reluctant to commit to contracts and quotas because there is uncertainty about where their business may be headed in the months and years to come. Will their business grow and need more employees and thus more licenses, or will they go through hard times and need to reduce their number of employees, thus needing fewer licenses?
An advantage to the cloud and hosting with ExchangeDefender is that we are extremely flexible with you and your clients’ needs. As your client grows, new accounts can be added, and if your accounts were to shrink, old accounts can be deleted without any hassles. This helps to minimize the risk of wasted resources on both parties and also takes away large upfront costs or charges along the way. A great benefit of working with ExchangeDefender is that we offer partners to add accounts with no minimums or quotas to fill. Also, there are no contracts to sign or hoops to jump thorough in order to get your services up and running, just a flat month-to-month service which frees up you, the partner, and also your client, the end user. Another benefit to the partner is that we offer volume discounts so that you have more leverage in working with your clients to get them the very best service at the very best price and making you the most profits!
Make Your Clients Think!
“Knowledge is in the eye of the beholder.” “Seek and you shall find!” There is so much truth in these popular quotes. People can find out a lot by actually looking for answers by asking questions. So, you need to ask the right questions!
You, the MSP, need to help your client understand the cloud and how it can benefit them. Our job at ExchangeDefender is to help you provide world-class cloud solutions to your clients. You can help your clients understand the questions that they need to ask and advise them on how to think of the cloud from a management standpoint to feature benefits, SLA’s to security, migration to deployment, etc. Take time to ask the right questions and start talking about the cloud with your clients.
As always, please let us know if there is anything that we can do to help!
Stephanie Hasenour
VP Marketing, ExchangeDefender
stephanie@ownwebnow.com
If It’s Not Written Down, It Never Happened…
Over the past week, I have been in documentation mode. Recently, we released a major update to Shockey Monkey. On top of that, over the past two weeks we have been debugging the entire platform. With all the updates and changes, it was time to revise the all the documentation associated with the entire platform. This included Help Guides, How-To documents, White Papers, etc. Not to mention, we felt it was time to reorganize all this literature. So needless to say, it has been a busy two weeks. This got me thinking about when I ran my businesses and how it was vital to document everything within them. Hopefully, you are doing the same in your business.
In Customer Service and Support, documentation couldn’t be more important. Keeping up with your clients is a vital part of letting them know that you care about their business. Detailed documentation of support issues not only helps you remember who the issue was remedied, but it will help others that work with and for you. There is no sense in trying to remember a fix or when the last time you called a client to check on them. Half the time, we leave the house every morning forgetting something at home.
There is a saying around the office: If it’s not documented, it never happened. At this point, I am not concerned with how you are documenting, so long as you are documenting. Get into the habit of writing or typing in detailed information about your support fixes or customer touches. After that, work on a way to organize those notes. There are no less than two-dozen books on the very subject of organization. However, if you are looking for a free customer service and support management platform to help you out, call me up. I know a guy!
Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707