From www.ebusinessstrategies.com.au
eStrategy - position your business to take advantage of emerging trends
Strategy, in simple terms, is a process to position your business to take advantage of future opportunities. In all businesses large and small, managers make strategic decisions on a day-to-day basis that cover all aspects of their business to ensure that the business can thrive and grow as operating circumstances change. Some strategic matters like finance, marketing, human resources and equipment have a long history and there are many years of business experience to support and back up business managers. Our consultants explain the Internet, its implications for your business and help formulate eStrategy to ensure that your business is not disadvantaged and does not lose its competitive edge.
eDevelopment – custom software to meet your real business needs
Software that meets your business needs is a critical component of your IT system. Sometimes, it is more efficient to create software from scratch as it exactly meets your requirements. Often however, someone else has already created software that can be configured to also exactly meet your requirements at a fraction of the cost. The development team can assist you with business analysis to identify the business rules that your software will follow, and using experienced developers build software to do precisely the job you require. The team also has expertise in identifying existing products including very common applications like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SQL and Microsoft Word or less well-known products like Star Office or MySQL, and can often modify and configure the existing software to meet your needs.
eMaintenance – keep your computer systems and staff working happily
Computer systems need maintenance. Just as you have your car serviced to ensure efficiency and reliability, you should have your computer systems serviced for the same reasons. Without maintenance, computer systems will slowly grind to a halt causing data loss and downtime. The maintenance team, which works either on an hourly rate on demand or under a maintenance agreement will service and maintain your computer systems to ensure they are always operating efficiently. Routine tasks include checking backups, ensuring anti-virus and e-mail checking software is working and up-to-date, installing service patches and updates as they are released by vendors, updating drivers for peripherals such as modems and printers and checking hard drives and other hardware to ensure that there are no early indications of failure. The maintenance team also provides a telephone helpdesk facility with remote access support. Remote access allows the team to see your computer screen and even take control to solve a problem without the need to be on-site. This saves both time and travel expenses.
eVOIP – telephone systems over the internet
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an effective way to reduce the cost of telephone calls by converting the calls to an Internet signal and transmitting them via the Internet to the called number. Untimed VoIP calls to capital cities in Australia start at about $0.09 to $0.15 per call. This can create dramatic savings in your phone bill. The technology is now reliable enough and mature enough to be in common use in most businesses and we can assist with installations as simple as a single handset through to 50 extensions using our Asterisk PABX solution and a variety of third-party VoIP service providers. The Asterisk PABX is a software PABX that runs on its own Linux computer and provides all of the features of a major commercial-grade PABX, including call queues, ring groups, digital receptionist, call recording, and all the other features that you might expect. Asterisk PABX is a very cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes and particularly seats businesses with less than 10 handsets. It can also be configured to use existing "real" telephone lines.
eCommerce – simple, easy-to-use on-line stores
The idea of an online store which is open 24 hours a day and doesn't require any sales staff has to be appealing to every retailer. In the mid-1990s, running an online store was an expensive exercise, often costing tens of thousands of dollars. In the last 10 years, the cost of an online store has been steadily fallen and is now hundreds of dollars rather than thousands of dollars. Furthermore, once set up, these stores are easy to maintain and operate. With proper management and strategy, any issues you may have with trading online can be safely managed and even a micro business can have an effective 24-hour online store selling its products and services without any sales staff, all day, every day.
eMarketing – make your marketing spend work for you online
"Build it, and they will come" seemed to be the catch cry of the Internet age prior to the dot com crash of 2000. If you have a web site, you already know the absolute truth, they only come if they know where it is and if they are motivated to find it. Marketing is a critical part of any Internet solution. A web site without users is of no use to you at all. It doesn't matter how amazing the creative content or how spectacular the graphics are, if no one sees your web site, it will serve no purpose. Our eMarketing team members are experts in Internet marketing and can advise, create, commission and implement an eMarketing plan to ensure that your web site meets your expectations. Their expertise in search engine optimisation and online paid advertising will ensure that your website is easy to find and that visitors to your web site come there with an expectation of buying goods and services from you. The team has expertise in service marketing for industries like government, legal and real estate, and in retail outlets selling all sorts of products. As much as anything, a consultation with our team will ensure that you at least understand how the marketing works and what has to be done to improve the market visibility of your products and services. Once you understand, you are then in a much better position to make a decision about how to better market your web presence or to engage consultants to do it for you. You can check out the effectiveness of out eMarketing team very simply. Go to www.google.com.au and search for our principal, "Wayne Bucklar" (with or without the inverted commas) and you should see many pages relating to Wayne Bucklar with his primary commercial page www.wayne.bucklar.net at the top of the list.
ePortal - use modular web site design to create an effective commercial-grade website at surprisingly little cost. Basic sites are less than $10 per month and allow you to edit and create your web pages with no additional software. Editing is as simple and point and click. Additional modules can be purchased to upgrade your portal to a full ecommerce store, blog site or discussion forum. All the power of the biggest and best web sites in the world in a simple and easy-to-edit package for a tiny cost.