Competition!
Over the past two weeks, I had the privilege to represent ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey at both the ASCII Boston event and Computer Troubleshooters/Geeks On Call conference in Cleveland. During a break at one of these events, I sat and spoke with another company that offers similar services as ExchangeDefender—a competitor, if you wish to label them as so. I say this because I do not view any company that offers similar products as competitors. However during the conversation, the representative from the other company asked me a question—but prefaced it by saying, “You don’t have to reveal this, but…” I laughed at the premise. “Why would you think I wouldn’t answer that question,” I asked. The representative didn’t disappointment with his answer, “Because we are competitors.” Again, I smiled and asked, “Do you believe we are competitors because we offer the same services—because we sell similar products?
You see we view competition as those that offer similar services and products as we do. And by definition, that would be accurate. But, for competition to exist there must be at least three parties involved: Two similar companies and the consumer. For the most part, the companies are transparent—meaning each knows what the other offers and at what pricing model they offer their products and services. The client is the unknown factor. Which leads me to the end of my conversation with my new friend, I closed by stating, “Sure, we can compete on pricing, offerings, service, support, etc., but in the end, it can come down to customers not liking the way someone handled a support ticket or not liking someone in your sales department, or even something as simple as your logo is ugly. Your competitor is not my company; it is the very people we are both trying to solicit business from. All things being equal (and for this argument, they are), we both provide hosting and email hygiene solutions—at roughly for the same price. That is not competition. The struggle is not between our two companies to win that client. The battle is between the client’s emotions and us.”
It is about making the consumer “feel” a certain way about your company, your product and services. The lesson here is to stop concentrating on your so-called competition. It is a waste of time and resources trying to battle tit for tat. Instead, concentrate on your partners and making their experience with your company familiar—and in a positive way. Instead of practicing the ABC acronym of “Always Be Closing,” maybe you should change that to, “Always Be Caring.” Taking care of your client database means taking care of your clients. This sounds elementary, I know; but when is the last time you called your clients to check on them? Not to sell them. Not to respond to an issue they are experiencing. But just to pick up the phone or stop by their place of business to check on them unsolicited?
In closing, recognize that your true competitors are your own clients. Spend as much time and resources on them and less on the rival companies. In the end, you will keep their business and not give them a reason to have you compete for their business.
Michael D. Alligood
Partner Sales & Support, ExchangeDefender & Shockey Monkey
michael@ownwebnow.com
(877) 546-0316 x707
ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive v2.0 is LIVE!!!
Last week we completed the ExchangeDefender Compliance Archive migration process, which took roughly a week to finish. This process moved all the existing Compliance Archive data into a new infrastructure, without interruption to the existing Compliance Archive service. Since then we are 100% on the new system and all new archived mail is being fed directly into this new infrastructure.
With this new design comes vast improvements, otherwise what’s the point?
· The first enhancement you will notice is the overall design interface you are presented with upon visiting. https://compliancearchive.exchangedefender.com
Next upon login into the system you will notice a completely new interface, however still retaining a similar look and feel.
· We’ve implemented paging, which will allow you to see exactly how many messages are in your compliance account. You then can easily navigate through the pages with (first, next, previous, last) navigation controls.
· Search has been redefined into an easier to use interface. You select the filter (with the drop-down next to the magnifying glass) and type your search, followed by pressing enter. By default [entire message] will be selected.
· Instead of having to use f5 to manually refresh the page. You now have a refresh button, which will provide an instance refresh of the data that is currently selected.
· Under the [More] option, you have the ability to (print, open in new window, and download the selected message).
· The side and bottom panel are easily resized to fit your custom viewing needs.
Hank Newman
VP, Development
hank@ownwebnow.com
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