Just to make your reading more interesting and my brain not so full of clever tricks and details I think I will share what I have learnt so far in 2010. I have to say for a person with no IT training I am getting the hang of this quite well. But thank you all the great software developers too!
So big wonderful gadgets I am making use of with my business, pretty much all free too! Let me know if you have found any great ones too! Love the Net.
My biggest vote currently goes for number 1…Dropbox… wow. For us at work we are in four different locations often working on same projects. This is small business in the country folks. So we needed a solution where we could see each others spreadsheets, quotes etc and also put our logos and resources for all staff to access. Welcome Dropbox. This is cloud based I have read (not quite 100% sure what this means but think essentially you don’t have the server or computer in front of you or back at the office rather all your information is stored in ‘the clouds’)
Hey this has not failed us and has saved us huge amounts of time with staff communication. It is my number 1 free web product of the moment! Try it www.dropbox.com
Number 2 is my iphone! I did hesitate at first and I tried the blackberry but now I have the iphone I won’t ever change. If you don’t have it, get it. Very essential business tool our sales team (yes we have expanded and now have employed two salespeople) have iphones. They can flick to product images and show them very quickly to clients, and yep there is a plug in or app (I think that is the appropriate word) for the dropbox on the iphone! Brilliant!
Number 3.. wordpress. I am discovering everytime I get on this website new things to try and do with my blog. I am finding that I can create the blog more to my personality and if I stuffed it I can fix it myself. Goodbye expensive IT software developer costs as I do my own dirty work.
Number 4.. wix.com. Now I have to say before you get hooked into this make sure that the kids are all busy, you have a few hours to spare uninterupted because this is fun. Wix lets you create your own website for free and offers lots of really neat accessories (I am guessing there is a proper geek term for this but this ones mine!).. you can put in notepads, and images, change templates to suit. Honestly in 2 hours I created a little bit of wix which is linked to our website but have a quick look now http://www.wix.com/logosRus/Complete-Uniforms
finally up to number 5 and i am going to say WRIKE.. hmm new software we are using, is cloud based and seems quite sensible and easy to use, we are using it for job tracking and project management. So many people are a part of completing our uniform designs and printing, cutting, sewing, despatch, payments and promotions that we need a strong and easily accessible template to use for task assignment, task updates and task completion notes! Yay www.wrike.com give it a good look!