Let's talk business

Urgent need to amend your email signatures

On January 1 the new UK Companies Regulations came into force. The regulations apply to all UK limited companies and limited partnerships with websites and that use e-mail to communicate with customers.

The regulations mean that every UK company now has to list its company registration number, VAT number, place of registration and registered office address in legible characters on its website. The regulation even says that this information must also appear in e-mails and online order forms.

This has always been a requirement on business letterheads but has now been extended to cover websites, electronic order forms and electronic documents including email. Some of this was already implied in the 2002 E-commerce Regulations Act, but this new legislation clarifies it.

Directors of companies that fail to comply face a fine.

You can read the full details of the regulation here (warning - written in legal jargon).

The regulation is as a result of a European law, the First Company Law Amendment Directive, which had to be implemented by the end of 2006. This probably means that companies in all other EU member countries have to do the same thing, although sometimes countries miss the deadlines for implementing EU law.

Later we'll post some quick updates about how to ensure your email signatures are compliant if you are using WorkgroupMail, OfficeTalk or MailDisclaimer.

 

Technorati tags: small business, SME, SMB, OMB, email

20 tips to survive the workplace

Guy Browning provides 20 tips to surviving life in the workplace including biodegradable email.

Disclaimer: follow his advice at your own peril

 

Technorati tags: email, workplace, The Guardian, work, office

Work.com for small business owners

Work.com is a new Web 2.0 site designed to help more than 25 million US small business owners run their businesses. The launch press release says:

"Work.com features unique "How-to-Guides" for more than 1,000 business topics, ranging from start-up basics to advanced management techniques. The Guides are written by business experts who can now share their expertise with others through a new form of "Expert Generated Content" (EGC). Work.com is being launched by Business.com, the leading business search engine and directory."

I'm delighted to add that the Softalk Let's talk business blog is featured as one of the Best Blogs and Forums (well actually the only one at the moment) on the messaging how to guide.

 

Technorati tags: small business, work.com, business.com, web 2.0, messaging, management

Third of large firms admit their email systems are 'complete chaos'

More than a third of large British companies admit their email management systems are in "complete chaos". A similar number of firms either have no policy or do not know what their policy is on archiving. Similarly, a third do not have plans or procedures for dealing with compliance issues and the need to keep historical records.

Shockingly just 27% archived emails outside of Outlook and 16% don't care about the environment and archive email by printing paper copies!

Two thirds (70%) of organisations admit that content created by employees who have left is not archived appropriately. This is something that we've made really easy in OfficeTalk. Just go into Supervisor mode to users and right click on the user you want to archive. All of their interactions with contacts will still be easily available in searches or in history tabs.

The survey of large companies was carried out by enterprise content management association AIIM.

I suspect a survey of small and medium size businesses and organisations would reveal figures that are even worse. Not only is it essential that you archive your email but you also need to back it up.

Dylan Ambrust, editor of PCW, says that 40% of small to medium size businesses don't back up their data at all. But that's not the alarming figure. The one that you need to take notice of that 60% of businesses that lose data close down within six months and 72% that suffer major data loss cease to exist two years after the event.

If you use WorkgroupMail you should ensure that you've enabled email archiving and you are also taking backups of your data.

tags: email, SME, SMB, small+business

Self-help from an ex-Dragon

Let me stress that this is a personal view (so I don't know if Simon and Stuart at Softalk will agree with me) but my least favourite Dragon's Den star was always Rachel Elnaugh, the founder and former chief executive of Red Letter Days.

It's not that Red Letter Days went bust. That's not actually a bad thing and in the UK there is far too much stigma attached to it compared to the US where it is almost a badge of honour to have failed and picked yourself up to try again.

My problem with Rachel was always that her questions to the entrepreneurs were all a bit - well daft. She appeared to operate on how she felt rather than the facts. My favourite was Doug Richards who gives an impression of someone who knows what they are doing. I used to like Simon Woodroffe as well as he appeared to combine fact and feeling.

That's a long way of explaining why I found this story of Rachel Elnaugh's latest venture to be amusing. I can't imagine anyone less likely to motivate or inspire me.

Quality, quality, quality

The Sunday Times in the UK has been running 'How to win at business', a series of articles by serial entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne, one of the star's of BBC Dragon's Den. This week Duncan is talking about successful marketing. His best piece of advice comes right at the very end when he says "the best form of marketing... is the product itself... It's not about 'cheaper, cheaper, cheaper' but 'quality, quality, quality'."

tags: business, marketing, bbc, dragons+den

IT Week podcast on employee email monitoring

This week's IT Week podcast (June 7) features advice from James Murray on employee email monitoring. Don't know what he says as I haven't had chance to listen yet but have popped it on my MP3 to listen to later.

Technorati : IT Week, e-mail, email, podcast

Don't take risks with your World Cup emails

Today we've joined in the World Cup fever to issue a warning about the risk to small and medium size businesses if employees circulate video clips of their favourite World Cup moments. Yes it's a shameless bit of self-promotion (although not as tacky as some companies are being!) but has a serious point.

As our warning says top corporate lawyers Baker & McKenzie are already preempting any potential copyright violations by sending warning letters to websites like Boing Boing. And just in case you think your emails will be safe and won't come to wider attention just read this news story about what happened when one of Baker & Mckenzie's own lawyers sent a saucy email.

We've used Del.icio.us to bookmark and share some useful, relevant and helpful web sites related to this topic. You can see our links here or why not subscribe to the RSS feed so you'll know when we update the list.

Of course from our self-promotion point of view the most important link is to WorkgroupMail, our email server for small and medium size businesses which is what enables you to set up filters and block those pesky attachments that might get you into trouble.

This post shows how easy it is to use WorkgroupMail to filter video file attachments.

Technorati : SMB, SME, Softalk, WorkgroupMail, e-mail, email, email filters, email server, small business

Computer viruses 'could kill 70% of SMEs/SMBs'

Seven out of 10 SMEs risk going out of business because they are ill-equipped for IT security threats, the National Computing Centre (NCC) said yesterday. The NCC said that small and medium size businesses were particularly prone to losing their business because many believed they did not face the same risks as larger companies. Given that 15,000 computer viruses were discovered in 2005 this is obviously a mistake.

Source: Times Online Enterprise email bulletin - unfortunately it doesn't appear to be replicated on the web site or available as an RSS web feed. But you can subscribe for free at Times Online.

More than 1 in 10 small business leaders buy IT on 'gut feeling'

Cisco has just published some interesting research (PDF news release) into the IT buying habits of small businesses in the UK. The two biggest complaints were:

• 42% feel 'left in the lurch' after purchasing technology, due to insufficient post-sales support or training
• 41% said that they disliked having enterprise scale technology imposed on them, as opposed to products tailored to their size

The most popular way of conducting research was using magazines and journals (57%). Other popular ways include seeking advice from peers in other companies and external business consultants (both 38%). Surprisingly 13% make their decisions based on 'gut feeling', this was most common amongst smaller companies and start-ups (averaging five staff) where 21% selected IT by using 'gut feeling'.

Despite the difficulties experienced in selecting technology it does prove to be worth it for most businesses. The two main benefits are improved customer service (77%) and  improved productivity (76%).

It's worth noting that the research was amongst businesses employing between 10-250 employees. The research also showed that most businesses couldn't justify employing an IT/network manager until they reached about 75 employees. That means that IT management in small businesses is usually left to the business owner (17%), managing director (15%) or finance department (12%).