Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center Have you ever had a project "go sideways" on you? When it happens to you, it feels like you are treading water. You're working hard, but going nowhere. After building a beautiful coordinated project plan in Microsoft Project or Microsoft Excel, your dates start slipping. You can see that too much time is being wasted on unnecessary communications, but how do you take back control? Typically, the problem isn't in the upfront planning, it's in the ongoing communication and collaboration. Follow these three steps to ensure all team members are on the same page, making progress to your mutual goal. 1. Create a collaboration site. Endless hours are wasted and bandwidth consumed from circulating documents via email. The larger the project, the worse this problem becomes. Because the document isn't centrally stored, multiple versions are created, and that's where questions and confusion pop-up. "Is this the latest version? Has John reviewed this? ...

PDF is a file format that allows text (including fonts) and images to be embedded into a non-editable document. This file format is great for documents that you do not want changed or that you want to make sure anyone can open. There are multiple ways that you can convert your non-PDF documents (such as Word files and Excel spreadsheets) into PDFs. Using Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 If you have Microsoft Office 2010, you can easily save documents as PDFs in Word, Excel, and other programs by going to File > Save As > Adobe PDF. (In Office 2007, you an also look for the Acrobat tab on the ribbon and click Create PDF.) Simply save the PDF with the name and location you want it to have and the PDF will generate. Using CutePDF CutePDF is one of many free programs that allow you to convert documents by "printing" them. You can download CutePDF online at http://www.cutepdf.com. Install the program that you downloaded. Now, when you go to print a document, in the list of printers you can print to, you’ll ...

used with permission from IBM ForwardView For years, midsize companies have protected themselves against downtime and data loss caused by disasters such as hurricanes and fires. But in today's intelligent and interconnected world, where information is one of the most valuable assets a business can have, many midsize companies are not doing enough to protect themselves from the full range of risk. Despite reminders from experts that most businesses at some time will experience an event that results in serious data loss, significant numbers of midsize companies' IT managers acknowledge that they do not have an adequate backup strategy for their critical data. Why is this? To a large extent the answer lies in the economic climate. Over the last few years, companies accepted greater levels of risk to reduce expenses. But as the economy picks up, companies are focusing on initiatives for growth. Meanwhile, data protection and business continuity remain on the back burner. Growth, of course, is good for busines ...

used with permission from IBM ForwardView As the economy rebounds, many companies are faced with pressure to capture new opportunities quickly, while simultaneously managing an increasingly mobile workforce and continually controlling costs. It's these forces that are driving interest and investment in unified communications. With communications systems that work together, midsize companies can listen and respond to their customers, partners and employees more effectively. And they can do so with greater speed and accuracy. That's important today, when near ubiquitous access to applications, information and resources is changing the way people shop, work and live. It's important, too, because access is raising expectations of the services people receive, placing greater pressures on companies to deliver optimum performance. Integrated, interconnected enterprises keep pace with change A recent IBM study, "Inside the Midmarket: A 2011 Perspective," found that unified communications and mobility are among t ...

If you're a business owner, you need to know how to protect your business.  Try as we might, there's often no way to skirt disaster — whether it's national, personal or weather induced. But there are strategies to cope with it as best we can, no matter if its source is a burst river levee, a thoughtlessly discarded match, or the deranged actions of others. Knowing what to do in the event of a disaster is crucial for anyone, of course, but particularly for a small-business owner, whose livelihood may depend on a small storefront or home basement office.  Start with some strategies.

If you're like most small to midsize businesses today, you can recall a time when you had to rummage through thousands of files -- just to get your hands on the one you needed. And if you're a company in the highly regulated accounting, finance or healthcare world, you may encounter this frustrating scenario almost every day. Worse yet, the amount of data produced and retained by companies continues to soar -- with no real end in sight. So how can your company become more effective at organizing and locating important documents and files -- while reducing the headaches and risk associated with lost documents? One great place to start is with an automated document management solution -- a solution that dramatically increases accessibility, security and cost savings.

Many of us have heard the fable about the blind men and the elephant. When the men were asked to describe what an elephant looked like the descriptions ranged from a snake to a tree to a fan depending on whether the blind man had touched the trunk, the leg or the ear. What does an ancient fable like this have to do with technology? It's the same problem we have when we try to explain to you how useful a tool Microsoft SharePoint can be to your business. SharePoint is so flexible and has so many uses; we often have trouble describing it in a way you can get the whole picture.

A copier may seem like old school paper-based technology, but there is a lot more to it, and the way your office uses it could cause a serious security leak in the future. According to a report from CBS News, many office copiers...

Through December 31, 2009, you can take advantage of a unique financing offer, a zero-down, 0% interest equipment lease for 30 months. Help your qualified business acquire the hardware you require with the flexibility you need to get it done now...

In the modern world of the quickly evolving internet, web applications are quickly becoming the standard for customer software. Users of the past purchased expensive licenses for difficult to update software that ran on limited platforms. Keeping pace with this rapid change in software technology, AgentWise Transaction Management Software...