HP, for example, said that it saved $10 million in call center costs by infusing social listening into customer service. Procter & Gamble reported that nearly half of its innovation is coming from outside the company through forms of social engagement, like its InnoCentive initiative. IBM is infusing ongoing real-time social intelligence across the organization for myriad use cases. This is about business redesign.

It’s interesting to see the case for social media in your business from a social media pro talking to other social media pros. Your thoughts?

And… if this interests you, please join us at “Streamline Your Business!”, our Facebook page where we discuss new and easy ways to get more out of your workplace technology.

With MaxMobile, you can log your smart phone into your office phone system and — voila! — it becomes your extension! It doesn’t access your desktop phone… it literally becomes your extension. Do practically everything you can do from your desktop on your smart phone, plus take advantage of your smart phone’s features. See all your call logs. All your voicemail. Transfer calls. Conference calls. Dial extensions. And… you never again have to give out your cell phone number.

It’s really quite remarkable. It’s like having your desktop phone, in your pocket, anywhere in the world. It’s incredibly useful, especially if you’re forced to be away from the office unexpectedly, or almost any time if you’re in sales. Here’s a great example.

Call us at 703.212.7100 if you want more information.

• This review offers a great way to think about the iPad: Can you use it to give your company — or yourself — a competitive advantage?

From InformationWeek.com:  Apple iPad delivers basic office tools

• This review looks at iPad in a way that’s perhaps not quite as useful as they could have. They’re looking at all the current shortcomings — which seem to be correctible in an iteration or two — and not looking at the big picture, the way CIO.com does.
• However… the comments section below the review offer the positives and negatives in a very balanced way.

From The Times of London/TimesOnline.com:  iPad: The Times review

• “It is hard to overstate how much fun the new iPad is. As a piece of computing consumer genius, it is difficult to think of another device in recent history that comes close and I am including the iPhone in that.”
• Also,  this article has a pretty good and balanced video that’s well worth the 3.5 minutes it takes to watch it.

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Here’s a link to some of the iPad apps that people will be talking about when the iPad is available on April 3 or thereabouts. Also, look at the “Sneak Peak” slideshow for the “Key Capabilites” slideshow.

• (EDITED ON APRIL 6, 2010 TO ADD: More iPad reviews here.)

But would you be better off with a Kindle? Amazon’s e-reader is lighter, less expensive, and has a more book titles to choose from.

Here are some of Kindle’s benefits:

1. Lightweight: only 10.2 ounces
2. Add books in as little as a minute
3. No monthly wireless bills: When you need to download something, Amazon pays for the 3G or EDGE/GPRS connections.
   • Of course, it’s not meant to be a full-service internet device — for instance you can email to your Kindle, but not from it. That is…
4. Email your documents to Kindle: Read and review documents at your leisure
5. Huge storage: It can hold 1,500 or more books
6. Automatic backup of your library: Amazon keeps your titles backed up, so you can delete a book now and retrieve it later
7. Easy on the eyes: Kindle readers report that unlike regular computer screens, the Kindle doesn’t wear down and tire out your eyes.
   • What’s more, the no-glare screen makes it easy to read in the sunlight
8. Basic web browser: Kindle includes a browser that’s best suited for simple, text-oriented web pages
9. Read-to-Me: Kindle will “read to you” with its text-to-speech feature
10. Audio books: Amazon has 50,000 audio book titles you can upload from your PC to the Kindle

See Amazon’s promotional video here.

See cnet’s user reviews of Kindle here.

* * *

Finally: Are these e-readers going to be a serious business tool?

You bet they will. Imagine going on a quick business trip, and having reams of paper — entire books or technical documents — in your 10-ounce Kindle, or 24-ounce iPad, rather than your briefcase or suitcase. Imagine not having to lug your laptop everywhere. Imagine having the Internet in your hands in an easy-to digest format, anytime, anywhere.

The real question is, how will you plan to use the e-reader of your choice to give yourself a productivity and business advantage?

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That’s the question posed in the opening frame of the video below. The obvious answer: Of course not. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re fully aware it’s a major force in society in general, and a powerful new force in the business world.  This video has some of the details (though we don’t have attribution to most of the assertions).

For more concrete proof: Experien Hitwise reported recently that Facebook traffic surpassed Google traffic for the first time. See this from the San Jose Mercury News, Google and Facebook’s hometown newspaper.

So the question is: What are you doing about it to help your small or medium-size business?

Are you using social media for marketing? For customer service? For technical service? Is it working?

Whatever the answers are, we’d like to know. Feel free to post your thoughts and your experiences.

Jumping into Twitter

We invite everyone to join The Washington Network’s president, Rick Endres, on Twitter. Click here. OK, he’s just starting. But we promise he’s going to deliver cool stuff on a regular basis on business technology and productivity.

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Here at The Washington Network, Inc., we find the timing of the Line2 article pretty interesting because we’re in the process of testing AltiGen’s MaxMobile app, which sits on your smart phone and turns it into an extension of your office phone system.  With MaxMobile, you can literally take your office phone extension anywhere there’s a cell signal.

The benefits: All calls go through your office phone system. When someone calls your office phone, your iPhone rings, and as far as the caller knows, you’re answering your office phone.

What’s more, it works the same in reverse. When you call someone using MaxMobile, the called party will get your office caller ID. You never have to give out your cell phone number.

More on all this to come. In the meantime, call us at 703.212.7100 if you want to know more, or email info@WashingtonNetwork.com.

Oh, and that NY Times article can be found here.

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Here’s what you need: A can of compressed air, from any electronics store; cotton swabs; isopropyl alcohol (generally called “rubbing alcohol” and available at most drug stores); and a lint-free cloth.

Hsieh says to shut down your PC. Unplug the mouse and external drives. Gently turn the keyboard upside and give it a gentle shake to dislodge any debris that’s between the keys. Use the compressed air to blow away any other residual debris. Or, you can use a vacuum cleaner.

Next, damped a cotton swab with a drop or two of the alcohol. Don’t drench it — just make it damp — and clean around the keys. Finally, use a cloth to dry, and don’t restart the PC until everything is dry.

But Hsieh saved the best for last, and it falls into the “mother of invention” category: Post-It Notes. That’s right. When your keyboard is just too gross — filled with dust, dander, hair and who knows what — get some Post-It Notes. Use the sticky part to clean up between the keys. (It’s amazing what you learn working in a dusty, converted warehouse loft!)

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He called it: “10 Things Your Competition Is Doing To Put You Out Of Business This Year… And What You Can Do About It.”

(Want Rick to speak at your event? Click here.)

He began by talking about Alvin Toffler’s three waves (agricultural age, industrial age, information age), then added a fourth: the conceptual age. In it, businesses must develop strong differentiating concepts, take ownership of their intellectual capital, and shed other functions — or fall to a wave of cheap competition who can produce the same goods and services for less.

In Rick’s words, borrowed from Rob Slee: Control the process, don’t own it. That is, own your intellectual capital – the ideas that really make your business different and better – and hire experts to do whatever is not specific to your concept. Chances are, you already pay outside consultants or services for accounting/bookkeeping, legal work, HR, building maintenance, trucking and logistics, some of your manufacturing, web development and other things. What can you do to push the envelope even further?

For instance: Do you manage your systems IT  in-house? Should you pay full-time staff for routine computer network maintenance, when outside vendors can do it better and cheaper?

Rick’s “10 Things” included ways to jump-start productivity, protect business continuity, hire better talent, use social media, provide better customer service, reduce overhead and more.

The key point: In the conceptual age, business managers face radical and exponential change. A lot of it is driven by the best application of technology. If you don’t continually change, innovate and adapt, you risk being put out of business by companies that do.

And yet, he managed to keep his audience laughing throughout.

Maybe it was nervous laughter?

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Now, when everyone is off, maybe it doesn’t matter that your phones and computers are down. But can you afford to be down when your customers have extra free time? Can you afford to be down when your competitors aren’t?

From today's Washington Post

Power down, phone lines down, Internet down – no matter what, there are still solutions to keep you up and running. Some of them kick in automatically.

[NOTE: The Washington Network, Inc., wholeheartedly recommends telecom backup services such as our own ShadowNet™ Telecom Backup System. Read about it here. We can add it -- surprisingly affordably -- no only in the DC area, but throughout most of North America. Call (703) 212-7100 for details.]

Some of them require just a little management. By taking advantage of these techniques you can avoid a business disaster, keep yourself and your team safe, and maybe even give yourself an advantage over your competitors.

Here are some tips we at The Washington Network emailed to our clients just before the big storm hit last week:

1. Run an additional backup of your entire data network prior to the storm
- Back up your data and your servers
- Take the backup to a safe offsite location
- A backup to an external USB drive can be restored far faster — as much as several days faster — than a remote backup

2. Back up your phone system programming and your voice mail

3. Confirm your automatic backups by performing a test restore. (A surprising number of backups fail upon restore.)

4.  Auto-attendant greetings: Update to reflect any changes in hours or availability

5. Find-me, follow me feature: Ask staff to update settings if possible

6. Personal voicemail greetings: Ask staff to update if appropriate

7. Review your telecom contingency plan
- If you run ShadowNet, or another telecom failover or backup system, review any steps you will need to take should your service be interrupted
- If you don’t have a telecom failover or backup, you may wish to call key staff, customers and partners to exchange emergency information

8. If you have alternate power sources, such as a generator, check fuel levels and perform other recommended maintenance

9. Keep bottled water and non-perishable food on hand in case anyone gets stuck in the office — working on your phone system and computer network!

10 For additional safety tips for winter storms, review this link from FEMA: http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/winter.shtm

If this list serves to remind you that you have not looked at your business continuity plan in quite a while – or if you don’t have one – call us at 703.212.7100, and request our Disaster Recovery Checklist and Disaster Recovery White Paper.

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According to Consumer Reports, #1 is hidden fees. (Of course, none of us charge hidden fees, right?) But close behind — so close that the difference is statistically insignificant — is being unable to get a live person on the phone when calling a business.

Here’s the article — you may need a Consumer Reports subscription to get in.

In a national survey of 1,125 adults, CR asked adults to rate 21 gripes on a 1 – 10 scale. The top two gripes (and several others) should concern everyone who manages a business, nonprofit or association.

Here’s The Washington Network’s position: If people can’t get a live person when they call you — shame on you!

For a big percentage of organizations, you already have the technology within your current phone system to practically eliminate the situation. Maybe you don’t know how to use it. If so, get help, before you lose another customer to your competition.

For those who have older phone systems lacking the features needed to connect callers to living, breathing staff members, double shame. Here’s why: You can upgrade to a new phone system immediately, get the technology you need to connect callers to a live person… and since you’re replacing an old, inefficient system, you’ll probably end up saving money over your old system.

Making your customers happier… and saving money at the same time. What a great argument against the inertia of failing to upgrade to a modern digital or VoIP phone system.

* * *

How to help your customer get a live person on the line

So, what are some of these great technologies that you should consider including in your telecom system?

Auto-attendant: Well, sure, almost everyone has an auto-attendant. But are the right people on your staff — including you — trained in how to optimize it to the benefit of your customers?

Presence management: Tells you whether or not someone is at their desk and able to take calls before you transfer incoming calls to them. (A lot more effective than an “in/out” whiteboard.)

Call queuing: Assigns incoming calls into departments or groups, to assure the right person can answer the phone. While in queue, the caller gets messages telling her how long until someone is available. It may give her options.

Call waiting: An alert on your phone display, working in concert with the auto-attendant, to let you know someone wants your business.

DID, Direct Inward Dialing: Do key personnel have their own phone number, so key customers don’t have to go through the main line?

One-number access (find me/follow me): Is your system set up to find you no matter where you are, by forwarding your caller to your cell phone or alternate office phone?

Remote access: For businesses with multiple locations, does your system route inbound calls to other locations that are open, when someone calls a location that is not open?

Interactive voice response: Can your auto-attendant use voice recognition to route a call quickly?

Voicemail to email: In cases when you simply can’t answer the phone, will your system email you to deliver the message no matter where you are?

* * *

Remember, these technologies are no longer exotic. They’re included in many, many reasonably priced phone systems. If your telephone system provider sold you a system but did not set you up and train you properly, you and your customers are losing out. Unnecessarily.

All the pieces may be there. But make sure you have someone to put it all together for you.

Questions? We’d be delighted to answer them. Call The Washington Network  toll-free at 877.7-ASK-TWN. Or visit www.WashingtonNetwork.com.