Let's talk business

Office managers are the real VIPs

Some interesting research by Staples in the US confirms what many of us already knew - that in small businesses many office managers are very important people indeed. Far from being simply responsible for stationery and clerical work, many play a decisive role in areas such as human resources and information technology.

Office managers are definitely important in choosing small business software for collaboration and email, such as OfficeTalk and WorkgroupShare. They can also be some of the biggest beneficiaries as they are relieved of the burden of managing team diaries and multiple contact lists.

via Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends.

Technorati tags: small business, SME, SMB, office manager, Staples, IT, information technology, collaboration, diaries, calendars, email, contacts

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

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

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

Did you know: creating a content filter to block attachments

You can use WorkgroupMail to create a content filter to block certain types of attachment, or alternatively to allow certain types of attachment. For example this is how you block video file attachments:

1. In WorkgroupMail open Administrator and double click on Content Filtering.
2. Click on add to create a new rule.
3. Tick the boxes for 'Check incoming messages' and 'Check outgoing messages'. Click next.
4. Tick the box for 'Message contains specific types of attachments.
5. In the description box click on 'specific types' and then enter the attachments extensions one at a time, clicking 'Add' for each one. You can see a full list of video file extensions here but these are but the ones we are blocking are .avi, .mov and .mpg. Click OK. Click next.
6. Tick the box for 'Quarantine message'. Click next.
7. Give the rule a name and ensure that the 'Enabled' box is ticked.

It's as simple as that.

Technorati : Microsoft Exchange, WorkgroupMail, content filter, e-mail, email, email server, messaging

Email tax: "it's a ******* stupid idea"

IT Sneak reports on a rather refreshing response when it called a 'leading global telco' to find out its stance on the EU's investigation into taxing emails and text messages.

"We tend not to comment on legislation when it is at the proposal stage," said the corporate mouthpiece. "Because what will happen is that the EU will spend two years looking at it and then come to the same conclusion as everyone else: that it's a f***ing stupid idea."

Hey, if they'd asked us we'd have given them the same response. It's much the same as what our PR man Stuart said yesterday in his blog post about the same subject - except he was politer!

Technorati : EU, Europe, IT Sneak, IT Week, Messaging, e-mail, email

EU lawmakers consider taxing email and SMS messages

Reuters reports that European Union lawmakers are investigating a proposed tax on emails and mobile phone text messages as a way to fund the 25-member bloc in the future.

A European Parliament working group is reviewing the idea, tabled by Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French MEP and member of the centre-right European People's Party, the assembly's largest group.

Personally I doubt the idea will get very far. MEPs I know tell me that such working groups discuss lots of ideas that are then rejected in favour of more practical and beneficial proposals. In fact these discussions are the source of many of the straight banana' type Euro-scare stories that appear in popular British newspapers.

Technorati : EU, Europe, e-mail, email, messaging

Email is dead, long live email

David Tebbutt has an interesting column in Information World Review in which he predicts the growth of new collaboration technologies such as blogs, wikis and RSS doesn't spell the end of email as many predict. But rather it will lead to the rebirth of email as a person-to-person communication tool - "exactly what it was invented for" says David.

Technorati : collaboration, email