Greener Pastures

from "Microsoft Point of Sale Solutions News" email today:

...Microsoft Extends Financing Option to Small Business
At the Small Business Summit event kicked off March 14, 2006, Microsoft announced that it is enabling a greater number of small businesses to take advantage of the financing offerings available through Microsoft Financing by lowering the minimum transaction size from US$10,000 to US$3,000.

As a result of lowering the transaction limit, Microsoft is enabling qualifying customers in the United States to get 36-month loans for complete IT solutions – including hardware and services – in addition to Microsoft software.

Additionally, Microsoft is further reaching out to small businesses by making a 90-day deferred payment promotion available on all transactions US$3,000 or above — an offer that until today was available only on transactions above US$10,000. The promotion, previously slated to expire March 31, will be extended until June 30th, 2006 for all loans that are closed by that date.

Partners should visit https://www.microsoftfinancing.com for more information, including sales tools for presenting financing options to customers.

Whose got a deal on the burner?  I have 3 or 4.  I gotta get them into this.  One company already has a line of credit w/Dell, but they are not at all happy with Dell, and this may help me get them over to HP or IBM servers, plus allow them to get CRM 3.0 SBE at the same time.  The best part is that financing can include the cost of installation/consulting services. 

I'm excited by seeing this.  With this I may not get that summer vacation, this time because I won't have time :-D

Bill

How does one add, say, a logo or image to a coverpage in SBS shared Fax coverpages.  These files are .cov and I have yet to be able to figure this one out.  Word baulks at openning these .cov files, as does paint.  I have several clients who have been using the shared fax service w/in SBS be they only use the 'standard' fax cover sheets, because we can't get them any customized ones.  Any ideas let me know via comment, or via direct email.

thanks!

beyond that one failing, they are lovin' life, faxing invoices quotes and sales orders directly from their Small Business Accounting, they love it.  To some clients they e-mail the Q-O-I's.

bill

Well due to some fortutous timing, we are speaking at an event on Tuesday for eWomenNetwork and Microsoft is sending the bus!  We are stoked about this as it provides a tremendous backup resource for us!  We can showcase the technology, and the attendees can check out the stuff them selves.

Our SBA and SBS practices are coming along quite nicely.  We aree submitting a couple of them the ready-set-go Small Business stories.  That has actually been a fantastic thing for us, as we are being forced into fully recounting the good the bad and the ugly of each deployment. 

Anyway, we are looking forward to this event and giving these people some great information.  Wireless, SBS, SBA, the whole deal.  It's hard to wrap that up into 20-30 minutes but who knows!

Also want to plug the Microsoft Small Business Center, even as partners, we have found lots of great materials out here.

-bill

8:30 Local time from Dallas.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx

Perhpas Larry will see this onein person, I am not fortunate enough to attend this year due to some scheduling conflicts.

Add a reminder to your Calendar

Anyway, I have somestuff tomorrow, I but I'll be watching.  People-Ready software, that'll be the day, huh?

Have a great week!

UPDATE!

I watched it today, partly in preperation for doing some presentations later inthe week.  Great stuff.  For anyone interested in the future of technology and it's impact on business and life in general, they should invest the roughly 1 1/2 hours to watching this.

So last week after migrating a network from peer 2 peer with an outdated 'super checkbook' accounting application.  I should add that it was far from super.

I setup SBS with SBA on 4 workstations, and started showing them around their new systems.  One woman, even after I had told her not to, was going into the old accounting system to enter and print invoices.  I asked her 'what's up with that?'  So I set off to show her some of the features I had been telling her about.  Creating Sales Orders, much easier than trying to read her hand-writing' moving that to an invoice, adding FedEx charges, via ShipRush.  What's more, the production manager and the shipping person can do all this now...they don't need to bother her.  Now, she can fax directly from ANY APPLICATION thanks to integrated fax, including faxing invoices directly out of SBA.

The whole time she is taking notes and saying ooooo....aaaahhhh.  Well, I guess she did not believe me when I had told her what she would be able to do after I had the system setup, then suddenly, it clicked in her.  This is why I became an SMB consultant.  Without solicitation, she blurted out, '...this is gonna save me hours a day.  Instead of walking here and there to recieve a fax or to ship a package or to check an inventory level, it's all right there!'

Highlights of the solution (we've all seen them)

1. SBS Premium
   1. Exchange/Outlook
   2. WSS
   3. Fax
   4. SQL
2. Office SBA 2006 / SBM 2006
   1. Custom Invoice and Work Order
   2. Inventory tracking
   3. AR/AP
   4. Payroll/Timesheets
3. ShipRush for FedEx by zFirm
4. Additionally, we helped them identify process improvements and process controls throughout the operation.

Will introduce BCM, integrate Web Orders, Windows Mobile Solutions

more later from the greener pastures!

I was fortunate enough to be at last night's DFW-SBS users' group meeting hosted at Microsoft in Irving.  There was great food, thanks to Wade DeVore for that.  There was great information, primarily provided by our enabler Peter Gallager, I was particularly interested in the De-buggin' tools he showed us.  I had seen it before but completly forgot.

Another great piece was to hear Larry Lentz of Taco Talk fame.  He gave us some scoop on how those South Texas folks hanle things, very kool. Larry also brought along, or maybe she brought him, Anne Stanton, who, Like Larry is a CRM-MVP.  She gave us, in none too sharp-a-fashion, a well deserved lecture on Partnerships.  Anne, thank you!

that's all for now.

-bill