Let's talk business

Small businesses get four times as much spam as large companies

Small Business Pipeline reports that small businesses receive almost 50 spam emails per day per user, which is four times the amount  received by employees of large organizations who receive about 12 per day. The amount of spam received by small businesses has increased from 36 in 2004.

One reason for the problem is that many small businesses don't have the appropriate security barriers in place. Employers who fail to protect employees from offensive spam are potentially opening themselves up to damages claims from staff.

That's why Softalk has built-in spam filtering as a standard feature of WorkgroupMail (and therefore of Softalk Collaboration Suite and the soon to be released OfficeTalk 4.5, which both include WorkgroupMail). In addition you can add an additional level of protection by subscribing to SpamCleanser which automatically detects 95% of spam.

US small businesses optimistic about 2006

Management Issues reports that US small businesses are kind of optimistic about their prospects in 2006 in that they expect to hire more workers and pay them more money.

More than two thirds - 68 per cent - expect to grow faster than they did in 2005.

Small businesses need to think about how they integrate new workers into the team. Big businesses have formal induction processes and expensive team building programmes to help them create productive teams. Small businesses often don't have the time or resources to create fancy handbooks but that doesn't mean they don't need to do some of the same things.

Collaboration software such as Softalk Collaboration Suite, OfficeTalk or Softalk Organizer is only part of the jigsaw of getting your team to work better together.

You don't need to spend a fortune on expensive team-building programmes. How about volunteering to do some useful in your local community? Get the team out of the office to help decorate a community room for older people. Or help some youngsters to clean-up the local park and maybe paint the railings.

Volunteering is great for helping your team bond and what better way than helping people in need? You get a kick out of it and so do the people you're helping. It doesn't need to cost a fortune and you could consider spending the money that normally goes on corporate holiday gifts and cards.

If you don't know how go about it then try contacting an organisation such as Business in the Community (UK) or United Way (USA).

Softalk Collaboration Suite now available

Hi, I'm Wayne Jones and I'm Softalk's global sales manager. Just wanted to let you know that our new Softalk Collaboration Suite is now available. It brings together three of our products to provide a complete messaging and collaboration solution for small and medium size businesses. It's been designed and built specifically for that market and isn't simply a restricted version of an enterprise system. Most businesses should be able to get the system up and running in less than hour, and if you do have difficulty then simply email our tech support department. They are friendly and eager to help, no really they are!

You can read the full launch news release  or why not just download it and try the 30 day free trial for yourself. Oh, and don't forget to let us know what you think by emailing feedback@softalkltd.com . I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Eighty working days lost to inefficient office practices

I'm currently drafting a series of news releases to announce the launch of Softalk Collaboration Suite. As part of my background research I came across this interesting news release from BACS Payment Schemes Limited, the organization that handles automated payments and related services for the UK banks.

It reveals that British employees are losing up to 80 working days every year as a result of inefficient office practices. Predictably the number one time wasting culprit is technology which can waste up to 48 minutes a day. However, the most interesting figure for me was the 34 minutes a day wasted in dealing with colleagues. Much of this is doing simple things such as trying to set up an internal meeting which without a product such as WorkgroupShare (part of Softalk Collaboration Suite) or OfficeTalk requires a lengthy game of email or telephone tag.