Virtual Nirvana

Do Virtual Business Right!

2020-01-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

Doing some or all of your business virtually is becoming the norm for many companies. People routinely work from their homes, hotels, cars and public WiFi hotspots.

Keeping business organized in a virtual world takes planning, good tools and training. The following are five tips for managing your virtual workforce:

Trust - It's the key to any relationship, but it's particularly important when managing employees you don't see daily. Don't assume your staff is taking a day at the beach if they don't answer the phone or don't instantly reply to an e-mail.

Communication - One of the most common complaints of virtual employees is a lack of interaction with the boss or their team. Take time to connect with virtual staff members and let them know their virtual work is just as important as the work going on in the office.

Make the Best Use of Technology - Working virtually means more than just utilizing your laptop. The use of a Team Intranets or a Virtual PBX will help you stay in touch and on task. Using web cams and video conferencing software helps provide important non-verbal feedback and connect with each other.

Hire Independents - While it's important to support your employees with regular contact, it's also important to hire staff who are self-motivated. "Your best virtual worker is an Eagle Scout!" "Once you give them a task, they know what to do. You want people who will act as their own internal manager so you don't have to. You can't be the cop if you're not there."

Don't Get Marooned On A PIM Island

2007-05-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

It's great that Comcast and other broadband VSPs(c) (Virtual Service Providers) are starting to offer customers access to rich, web-based information management applications for email, calendars, voicemail, etc. Having access to this type of personal information management (PIM) console, via the web is helpful.

Beware getting marooned on a PIM island though! The VSPs want you to be their customer for life, regardless of potential rate hikes. They know the best way to do this is to make you loyal (locked in) to the services they offer.

Make sure that any web-based PIM you embrace has the ability to easily import and export or synchronize your contact, email, task, calendar and other PIM data. Keeping a current backup copy of this data in Outlook or a PDA is always a good idea.

Small businesses will want to take a look at products like TeamPro. Having access to true work group collaboration features like shared calendaring, scheduling and tasks as well as shared secure virtual file folders can provide a huge productivity boost for any company with multiple offices and staff on the go.

It's Past Time For A Unified Anti-SPAM System

2007-05-03T17:47:00.000-07:00

We've been advocating aggressive, unified, anti-SPAM measures for years. With more business moving to the Internet and people increasingly dependent on the Internet for everything from banking and investing, to scheduling their personal training classes, it's time email providers started cooperating to make the Internet safer for all of us!

David Berlind's idea, to have email providers like AOL, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo and even private label mail vendors like ourselves collaborate is dead-on! Enabling email systems to provide "signalling back and forth between e-mail clients and servers as to who end-users consider to be spammers and who they consider to be safe-senders," would make it considerably more difficult for spammers to slip through the "net." (pun intended!)

Another tool that ISPs and email providers should employ, is verified enrollment and credentialing. Email users would be required to provide proof of identity to receive a "verified" account. Getting a "certified + verified" account would provide the user with a private security Certificate that could be used to digitally sign and encrypt email, files, etc.

Implemented with ubiquitous email client/server support, this three layer approach for verifying the true source of email would not only allow for more precise filtering, it would strengthen the market for true "opt-in" email and RSS advertising, creating additional sources of net revenue and jobs.