Your office equipment may or may not be covered under you homeowners insurance policy.  General office equipment kept in the home is usually covered up to approximately $2500.  If you have a large amount of expensive equipment kept in your home that could be deemed more business property than personal property, you could be underinsured by relying solely on your homeowners insurance. 

Homeowners insurance will also not cover production interruptions.  So, if your house is destroyed by fire, and you must take a temporary residence in which you cannot operate your home business, homeowners insurance is not going to cover your income loss.  To avoid this situation you should invest in a small business insurance package that includes business- interruption insurance. 

There is also the issue of liability.  If your home based company services customers at your home, your homeowners insurance will not cover any accidents your customers may have while being in your home.  Your homeowners insurance will also not cover product liability if your business is selling a product. If your business is not incorporated to shield your personal property from litigation, then investing in a small business policy with product liability coverage is highly recommended. 

With online faxing from GoFaxer, you’ll never have to worry about damage to fax documents or equipment.  All of your important faxes are stored in your personal email box.  Contact GoFaxer today for details.

 

With its 13.3-inch screen and weighing in at just 3¼ lbs, it is nearly as thin and light as Apple’s MacBook.  However, the ThinkPad makes fewer compromises than the Air does when it comes to features, although performance suffers slightly for certain tasks.

The standard configuration includes a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 64GB solid-state drive, integrated webcam, microphone, stereo speakers, and fingerprint reader. Our tested model also included a built-in DVD burner, 2GB of RAM, gigabit Ethernet, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. Further options are available for mobile broadband or wireless USB.

Many smaller laptops sacrifice ergonomics for portability, but not with the ThinkPad. With its full-sized keyboard and large display, it offers all the comfort of a full sized laptop.  The solid-state drive should also improve durability and protect against accidental bumps during travels. Unfortunately, it lacks a modem, FireWire port, PC/ExpressCard slot, and a memory card reader – which most laptops offer.

In addition the ThinkPad has a relatively low battery life compared to the Air, along with limited storage space.

In conclusion, if portability takes precedence over performance, then the ThinkPad or MacBook are the laptops for you.  Go with ThinkPad if you’re running Windows and the MacBook if you use the Macintosh operating system. 

Maximize the benefits of your laptop by receiving all of your faxes through email!  With GoFaxer’s email fax you can receive all of your important faxes in your personal email box.  Contact GoFaxer for more information.

At four pounds and two inches thick, Canon’s pixma iP90v is slightly lighter and more than an inch slimmer than Hewlett-Packard’s Officejet H470. This can be a considerable asset if you’re toting it around along side your laptop inside a laptop bag.  You may be toting along more than the printer if you’re planning on printing a large among of material.  The downside to this printer is the small ink cartridges.  You’ll need to take a few extra cartridges along if you plan on printing more than 100 pages or so.

The HP has larger cartridges.  If you buy the largest black cartridge available, you’ll be able to print out up to 800 pages or so.  This printer is also faster than the Canon by about a third of the speed. Not to mention that the HP’s accessories are cheaper, especially if you buy them in a bundle.  The  H470 comes with a battery, Bluetooth, and a protective sleeve for the printer for an additional $100. You’ll spend about twice that for the same accessories with the Canon.  The Canon doesn’t even include the required USB cable.

Another great on the go accessory is GoFaxer.  With GoFaxer’s online fax service, you can receive your faxes anywhere that has an internet connection.  Contact GoFaxer for more details.

Establish Customer Empathy

If your staff isn’t using your service, you can’t expect them to understand where the customer is coming from. For example, if you own a four star hotel, the cleaning staff probably cannot afford to stay there. So, allow the employees to experience the service or product you are selling. Allow the staff to stay at the hotel for free, or test try the product.

Connect Pay To Service

If you want your staff to as concerned with customer service as you are, offer an incentive. Give bonuses or raises in connection to customer satisfaction surveys, or business increases. This motivates the staff to be just as involved in your businesses success as you are.

Consider a Chief Customer Officer

Putting customers first requires collaboration in everything from marketing to operations to human resources and may require someone whose day-to-day job is to coordinate the effort.

With GoFaxer’s customer support by phone or email, you’ll never have a faxing issue go unresolved. Along with providing top notch Internet fax, you can’t beat GoFaxer’s service. Contact GoFaxer today for more information on how you can receive your faxes via the internet.

One of the main etiquette issues on the table is dress code. The Baby-boomers came up during a time when women still wore dresses to church and men wore ties to work. In today’s culture, you don’t necessarily need to wear a dress to church, nor do you have to wear a tie to work. However, Baby-boomers still feel that maintaining a somewhat formal dress code in the work place is a sign of respect. Generation Y views things a little differently. They have a problem understanding why it’s not OK to come to work in yoga pants and a hoodie when they are only going to be sitting at their desks all day. As a result, Baby-boomers view Generation Y as disrespectful, and Generation Y view Baby-boomers as illogical, which neither one is true.

There is also the issue of communication. Baby-boomers tend to want to have face-to-face meetings, while Generation Y want to know why they can’t just text you. Again, Baby-boomers misconstrue this to mean that Generation Y are disrespectful and unprofessional, and Generation Y feels as though Baby-boomers are unreasonable and inefficient.

Some ways of closing the generation gap is to implement some cross-generational training within your company. There are many firms that you can hire to do the training. There are also etiquette trainers that will come and work with groups of employees or individuals to help resolve certain office etiquette issues.

From one generation to the next, employees will have no troubles communicating with each other once your company implements Internet fax! With Internet fax you can receive all of your messages via your email. Contact GoFaxer today for more details.

Radio Frequency ID (RFID)

RFID an idea to make shopping, among other things, more efficient.  With RFID, micriscopic RFID chips are placed on merchandise. Once you have went through the store and loaded up your cart, what is supposed to happen is that you push your cart through an electronic scanner (much like a metal detector), and the technology automatically creates a total for you.  It is also supposed to instantaneously remove the items from the merchants inventory.  So far, it has not worked very smoothly, and has been expensive for the few merchants who have tried it.  This technology can be ignored until further advancement.

Open-Sourced Software

Just because this software is free doesn’t mean the set-up and everything else that goes along with it is.  Spending time to customize this software to work for you is also a huge waste of time.  Small businesses should stick to the off the shelf versions for now.

Windows XP

Unfortunately Windows XP will no longer be sold after June 30, 2008.  Because of this, we might as well start focusing on Vista. Yes, it’s slower and it doesn’t work with all devices.  But you’ll be able to see all of your invoices in 3-D! I guess that’s something, right?

One technology that cannot be ignored is online fax service.  This technology offers the convenience of receiving all of your faxes via the interned.  Only you will be able to see your personal faxes, and you’ll be able to more efficiently manage your important faxes through your email box.  Contact GoFaxer today for more information.

If you’re not a GoFaxer customer yet, please take advantage of the offer by signing up for an account here.

Anti-Virus Software

Anti-virus software is a necessity to block the virus and prevent it from infecting your computer system. Most anti-virus software not only protect you from viruses, but should also provide you protection from phishing as well.

Firewall

The job of firewalls is to ensure that only the information you authorize enters and exits your computer system. Firewalls can’t be simply installed right out of the box. For optimal security, they should be properly configured by a security expert to optimize your business security.

Back up your data

Backing up your data ensures that when the data is lost, you can recover it. Backup solutions include backing up data to an online storage service, to CD or DVD, or to some other removable media, such as another computer or hard disk.

Update your software

This a low cost way to increase your security. Your operating system and web browser are two software that should be updated on a regular basis, as the updates are available from your software vendors.

GoFaxer offers a safe and reliable way to send and receive your faxes. With internet fax only you have access to the faxes you receive, and you can manage all of your faxes with your email box. Contact GoFaxer for more information.

In reality though, they can turn out to be more of a downfall. Lets use the sales business as an example. Most talented salespeople are turned off by non-compete contracts. It puts them at a disadvantage to have to look for work in a completely different area if this job happens not to work out. Therefore, you are more than likely not going to get the top notch salespeople into your business.

There is also the issue of practicality. So you hired a top notch salesperson, and after a year of working for you they’ve decided to move on. What’s next? Are you going to follow your ex-salesperson around to ensure they are abiding by the terms of their non-compete contract? And if you do, and you find that they are in fact not abiding by their contract, do you really want to go through the hassle of taking them for court for it? In some cases even if you can provide proof that they went against the terms of your contract, courts have had a history of not honoring non-compete contracts. Some courts see them as restricting a person from their right to make a living.

Instead of a non-compete contract, many companies are turning to 300% contracts. These contracts state that if an employee decides to terminate employment with you, and a client decides they want to go with that employee, the employee is then liable for 300% annual earnings lost from losing that client. This seems to work well for employers because it is easier to calculate a figure, and courts don’t seem to have a problem honoring them. In addition, employees seem to be more accepting of them, so you can still get the top notch employees you desire!

You won’t need a non-compete contract to benefit from the terrific services of GoFaxer! Contact GoFaxer today to learn about how online faxing can benefit your business.

Before wireless internet access became available, many business people had the “luxury” of toting their laptops with them everywhere.  With today’s technology individuals are trading their hefty laptops for lightweight cell phones and other mobile devices.  Not to say that laptops are no longer needed, they’re just not necessary if all you need to do is quickly check your email. Not to mention the battery life on your cell phone is much better than the battery life on your laptop. And without all those cords you can get mobile much quicker.

Which brings me to the next benefit of wireless internet access, you can check your email anywhere!  This is extremely beneficial for those business people on the go.  If you’re not in the office much, or even more so for people who work sans office, using your cell phone to check your emails is the next best thing since sliced bread!

With GoFaxer’s online fax service you can put your wireless devices to even more use by receiving all of your faxes online! Contact GoFaxer today for more details.