Choosing a Business Mobile Phone

 

Choosing a Business Mobile Phone

When choosing a mobile phone for personal use, the buyer is usually looking for the latest style, the hottest color and all the little extra features that a phone can offer them. When choosing a phone for business, however, it is best to choose a phone that suits the needs of the business, not one with a lot of extra gadgets that you will probably never even use.

When choosing a business phone, the main features that you may want to look for

include:

1.              Large screen

2.              Easy to use interface

3.              Email capability – preferably via Blackberry Mobile email

4.              Calendar capability

5.              Camera if you are in a business that needs a camera phone

Obviously these are features that you would not be looking for on a standard phone for personal use but you just never know when any or all of these features may come in handy for your business. There are several other things to keep in mind when looking for the perfect business mobile phone for you.

A company that you may want to look into for help in finding the perfect business mobile for you is Telaustralia. They carry phones from top manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and 02 mobile phone hand sets. Also you can choose to get a phone for free with a 24 month plan or contact them to purchase one of their phones or handsets outright.

Nokia is the traditional market leader for Mobile Phone handset sales, but over the past 2 years has faced much stiffer competition from the likes of Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung who’s mobile phone handsets are gaining popularity. For typical Business use, longevity and reliability we still recommend Nokia Mobile Phone handsets followed by Sony Ericsson.

If you want your Business Mobile Phone handset to be a useful Business tool and not a play thing full of gadgets you wont use, heres a few tips that may be useful in selecting your next phone.

Consumers usually select a mobile phone based personal preference with brand, size, colour, flip phone or not etc. For a Business user however, selecting the right Business Mobile Phone handset to do the job should always be a matter of substance over style.

As we have number portability in Australia you are no longer locked into one network or provider for your Business mobile Phones. With telaustralia you can bring your Business Mobile phone with you or we can provide a handset as part of your deal and have access to the Telstra Mobile Phone Network or the Optus Mobile Phone Network.

Some of the features you need for your Business mobile Phone are -

Do you need a flip phone or block style?

  Usually this is just personal choice but in some cases there are functional issues that dictate. eg. are you in an environment where there is a lot of dust? A flip Phone or clam shell style may be more suitable as it closes after use and this may reduce  (but not altogether eliminate) the amount of dust that gets into the key pad and screen. Are you likely to drop or have impact on the mobile phone? If so a rubberized tradesman type of mobile phone may be more suitable.

http://www.telaustralia.com.au/all-products.html

Battery Life

 Long battery life is essential for your business mobile phone, especially when traveling or on the road a lot. There is nothing worse than running out of charge at an inappropriate  time – usually in the middle of an important call.. Look for mobile phones that use a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery rather than a nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) one. Li-ion batteries weigh less and provide 10 to 20 percent better performance than their NiMH counterparts. You’ll want a mobile phone with a rated talk time of at least 3.5 hours, preferably closer to 5 hours. If your mobile comes with a desktop charger, shell out for the travel charger since it’s significantly smaller and easier to pack for business trips.

 Travel

If your travels take you overseas, you’ll want a tri-band GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) Mobile Phone, which operates on networks (GSM 900/1800/1900) in Europe, Asia and the US.

Features

You’ll also want a handset that features a hefty address book — at least 300 names with support for multiple entries per contact. Some Mobile Phones allow you to include information such as email, Web and street addresses with your contacts. You can enter all that information one key at a time, or you can get a Mobile Phone with the ability to synchronize with Microsoft’s Outlook on your PC. Nokia PC Suite allows you to load address book and other software on to your lap top and back up as required and import other information such as calendars, pictures & songs to your phone.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth equipped Mobile Phones are a must these days. If your PC or handheld doesn’t feature integrated Bluetooth support, you can purchase an adapter to add this functionality. Then you can browse the Internet using your Mobile Phone as a wireless modem. You can also use Bluetooth to synchronize phone numbers and addresses between your Mobile Phone and other devices.

 Another advantage with Bluetooth is that many cars now come equipped with Bluetooth hands free so there no need to get handsfree kits wired up in your vehicle. If you vehicle isnÕt already equipped with Bluetooth, portable and rechargeable handsfree kits such as Blue Ants Supertooth 2 are available and very low cost. These usually clip to your sun visor and are portable from car to car.

 Internet

 Even better, skip your notebook altogether. Fast Internet access is rapidly becoming a common feature in mobile phones. Most GSM Mobile Phones support GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks, which offer always-on Internet content and data services, enabling access to Web browsing, email and multimedia content at around 56Kbps. 3g Data is carried at speeds of up to 3.6Mbps with planned speeds in Australia of over 40Mbps using HSDPA. Many mobile phone manufacturers including Nokia & Sony Ericsson are now taking advantage of the RIM BlackBerry Licencing and including Blackberry Mobile email on their mobile phones.

 If you spend most of your time away from the office meeting with clients, you may want to consider a smart phone, which combines mobile phone and handheld functions in one unit. These phones are larger and much more expensive than standard handsets, often costing as much AU,200, but they eliminate the need for two separate devices.

http://www.telaustralia.com.au/mobile/mobile

 

How Bespoke software can improve your business

Today Computers are an indispensable business tool without which many business simply could not operate. Not only can these machines save you time and money some of their tasks would simply be impractical for your workforce to perform, but are you really getting the most from your machines?

 

Within your business you probably have many computers all using off the shelf software, which for many tasks they are perfectly suited for, but when it comes to the software you use to operate your organization the packaged software often comes up short.

This isn’t the fault of the developers of the software, they are simply creating a solution which is useful to the vast majority of their customers, but at some point pre-built software operates in such a different way to your business that it becomes an obstacle to overcome.

 

Consider the software you use for your business. You probably have an accounts package, stock control software and electronic point of sale software – none of which communicate with one another and depend on your staff to key in data from one system to another. Each of these systems in their own right are excellent solutions and serve you well but the man hours needed and the inevitable degree of human error is bothersome and costly. This is where bespoke software can help.

 

A bespoke application is written to your specification and can be built to operate exactly as you wish your business to operate. For example: A bespoke EPOS system could automatically update your Stock Control and Accounts software immediately after a transaction is completed, eliminating the need for your staff to update the two systems by hand. A fully bespoke solution could combine all three of these systems into one and automate most of your back office operations.

 

It is also incredibly difficult to have off the shelf software modified as you need when your business grows or changes in the way it operates. A bespoke application however can be modified and improved upon whenever you need.

 

Lets take another example:

Gary runs a small chain of Sandwich Bars and currently uses off the shelf software for his accounts, stock control and EPOS. There is a significant overhead of administrating his business as data must be collected from each of his stores manually and then hand typed into each of the software applications. As Gary is on a tight budget a complete bespoke solution is beyond his reach.

 

He selects a local development team and they recommend that a custom EPOS system is built which will update both his existing accounts and stock control systems automatically over the internet. Not only will the system save him having to collect data from each store by hand but man hours saved typing this data into each of the applications he needs to run his business.

 

Later Gary decides he is going to improve the way his business works and decides that he wants the customers themselves to build their own Sandwich in store.

His developers could recommend that the EPOS system is extended to allow customers to select the components of a Sandwich and build their own from touch screen terminals while in the store. The details of the customized Sandwich would then be sent to the appropriate screens for staff to prepare the Sandwich. The new extension could also collect payment from the customer once they have completed their order.

 

After the development Gary not only finds that he has saved money on the administration of his organization but has gained a competitive edge. With customers creating orders themselves via the touch screens and many paying at the terminal his staff are free to serve more customers and can prepare meals faster.

Additionally a new opportunity becomes possible. With the computers themselves collecting orders and payment in store only a small amount of work is needed to enable customers to place orders over the internet – opening the door to a potentially new untapped source of customers.

USPS Software and What Your Business Needs to Know About It,

What you need to know about USPS Software.

There was a time when mail was sorted manually and the pigeon was the courier. Now it sounds like a part of a fairy tale. Nowadays advancement in technology has brought about a sea change in the entire system. The USPS is an acronym for United States Postal Service.

USPS is a government owned agency situated in the United States and is responsible for delivery of mail. USPS is one of the oldest government organizations in the USA and holds a kind of monopoly on many aspects of delivering mail. Through the USPS, citizens can send mail and parcels to almost any part of the world at reasonable prices.

The Intelligent Mail Barcode, popularly known as IMB is a new system introduced by USPS. It is a next generation of barcode technology that can be used for sorting and tracking letters and flats. It combines the capabilities of the Planet Code barcode and the POSTNET barcode into one unique form of barcode.

Many software companies design USPS software or USPS shipping software. They create and provide software solutions for direct mail, marketing, document design and data quality. Let us discuss some of its products they offer.

MaxPresort is one of the most comprehensive and powerful product for United States Postal Service bulk mailings. It is ideally suited for business which have direct marketing campaigns, or else who serve others who mail. This software helps in taking advantage of the huge postage discounts that are offered by the USPS. They can presort mail of different types like letters, NFMs, flats and parcels. This sorting is done in USPS classes -Periodicals, First-Class Mail, Package Services and Standard Mail. Apart from presorting mail, the software also has an optimization routine so that you can further maximize your discounts.

MaxPresort also supports the Intelligent Mail Barcodes. It can be used with the Basic as well as the Full Service Options and includes Intelligent Mail Container Label and the Intelligent Mail Tray Label.

Another product is the IMB Manager. This technology allows users to create an Intelligent Mail barcode for files that are generated by any type of presort or Mail.dat product. It also allows users to manage their exclusive Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers either within a single Mailer ID or else across multiple mails for the same Mailer ID. This is how it works. First, it creates all three kinds of Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers. Then it creates a database which can track the 45-day expiration dates for these Serial Numbers. The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

MaxOG is another product that uses functionality from MaxPrint, a great document creation and printing software. It can produce a wide array of documents and labels with the help of pictures, text, ovals, tables, boxes, lines and fill patterns in various font, color or orientation. By using MaxOG you will be able to create letters as well as name-and-address labels using Intelligent Mail Tray, Intelligent Mail barcodes, Container Labels and also Inkjet files.

Thus you can effectively use these products for direct mail and marketing or document designing.

USPS Software, Data Quality and Why Your Business is Losing Money

The importance of keeping your mailing list names and personal data up to date and accurate can not be understated. Billions of dollars are lost every year by large and small businesses because they ship correspondence to people who have moved, send duplicate mailings, mailings to addresses that do not exists and similar mistakes. By combining data and USPS software together the benefits will be significant.

Data Quality Software is the software that can convert the existing data into an integrated format by creating new fields, merging various files, and by summarizing and filtering it. The process “Data Quality” is the reliability and effectiveness of data, particularly in a data warehouse.

Data quality is much more than just records, fields and values-it’s about establishing business. From personal decisions, customer relationship to control of inventory, operations and even regulatory compliance, quality data forms the very foundation of a successful and flourishing enterprise.

Data quality assurance (DQA) is the method employed to verify the reliability and effectiveness of a data. Maintaining data quality requires going through the data periodically and scouring it. Generally this involves updating it, standardizing it, and de-duplicating records to make a single view of the data, even if it is stored in multiple variant systems.

Since data quality is so important from a business perspective, many large companies employ a data steward to be in charge of data quality. There are many vendor applications in the market to make this job easier.

It becomes easier to match your customer’s records with the help of this software. This improves the quality of your data. Usually computers trip over or ignore if the records don’t match. For instance a computer won’t know that Mac and Mack is the same person. The system is not designed to identify the slight variations in the characters, but data quality software knows this. It uses many other parameters to check the identity of two persons/names. The software also ensures that each customer has only one profile in your computer. This can have the added advantage of properly greeting a customer online when they log in. If certain criteria match, the system can anticipate that the person or group are affiliated and properly populate data.

How significant it is to have a Data Quality Software is we can understand by the following factual example: Gartner study says that poor quality customer data costs U.S. business an estimated 1 billion dollars a year in postage, printing, and staff overhead of reading data from operational systems.

The USPS is the least expensive way to ship letters and small merchandise in general in the USA. The USPS software and Data Quality software will enhance the profitability of every business. By maintaining the cleanest data records there will be less duplicate mailings, less returned mailings, a much stronger ability to sort potential customers and track results. In the challenging time the clean interface and ease-of-use of data quality tools makes is fast and a definite for all businesses looking to maximize their marketing dollars.

How CASS Certification And Software Can Help Your Business

What Is CASS Certification And How It Helps Us

Generally speaking, CASS or Coding Accuracy Support System is a software which helps the Postal Services to measure the efficacy of the software which maintains the hygiene of addresses. All vendors and mailers who would like to be enabled to have the USPS evaluate the efficiency of their software which matches addresses, can be offered CASS Certification.

CASS software also helps promote and improve the accuracy of the mailers’ Zip+4 carrier route along with the 5-digit coding. It enables the vendors or mailers to test the capability of their address-matching software packages. After a certain modicum of compatibility is achieved, it is ready to be certified by the Postal Services.

The CASS Certification has to be certified annually with the USPS so as to be able to meet the requirements of the current CASS Certification. The results are then returned to the mailers/vendors to enable them to correct inaccuracies by providing them with useful diagnostic methods.

To go into the detailed workings of this software, one must first look at the benefits offered by the adoption of this software. The advantages of this software are many.

• CASS software corrects and standardizes addresses and also adds the missing elements like zip codes, cities and states to make the total address complete.

• A ‘delivery point validation’, which means, that the software can verify whether a given address is deliverable or not is also possible with this software.

• It can also bring the addresses which have been renamed or renumbered up-to-date by accessing the USPS ‘locatable address conversion system’. The correct address saves the Postal Services a lot of time, money and effort.

• The futility of non-deliverable mail, unsorted mail is reduced. Also, mail which can be delivered but requires that extra push to locate the exact location is also taken care of by this software.

• The debugging and cleaning of the mailing list is possible with this type of software.

• The USPS offers discounted postage tariffs to those who use the CASS software.

However, to be eligible for the discounted postage packages, the mailer’s address list has to be verified against the Postal Services USPS database. This verification is termed “CASS Certification” and it ensures that every address on the list can be delivered to. This certification requires some points to be cleared before being accredited by the CASS certificate. Some of them include getting the mailing list checked by the Mail Preparation Services, signing a declaration that each address on the mailing list has been checked by the USPS or the address has been mailed to within one calendar year. All addresses on each list are also required to be corrected.

A major point to keep in mind while wishing to have the mailing list totally updated and current, is to send a mailing First Class or Standard with the endorsement ‘address service requested’. In case of any addresses being incorrect, information will come from the Postal services.

CASS has certainly simplified the mailing process and the tedium and futility of incorrect or undeliverable addresses has been reduced to a large extent.