HEROware: Trade Shows - are they worth it?

Hey All - this is Lynn Shourds, President & CTO of HEROware. We recently attended the SMB Nation Fall Conference in Las Vegas. This was the 5th show we attended this year and looking back, it's time to talk about the ROI of doing these types of shows.

We all know that trade shows can be expensive, and according to a really terrific ROI report from American Image, those fees include "...show fees, airfare in many cases, hotel stays, meals and wages, not to mention the actual display."

However, trade shows are successful in many ways; namely 3: PR, Branding, and Sales. Of these three, sales always gets the most attention. But don't be fooled, the PR and Branding associated with trade shows pays massive dividends down the road. Sure, they're not as flashy and in-your-face as sales are, but no company can thrive and survive without them.



Candy Adams - "Booth Mom"

 American Image talks about ROO (Return on Objectives) and ROR (Return on Relationships) as being strong factors in measuring the success of a trade show. “A lot of events that we do these days have to do with ongoing relationships with people and upselling,” says Candy Adams, known as the Booth Mom. “Too many people are using a shotgun approach, saying it’s a numbers game. Numbers are nice, but give me a focused group of people — this is where the rubber meets the road, is these relationships, this ROR.” It may seem difficult to measure these types of variables, but it can, and should, be done.

So how were the shows for us? Well, sales were increased, and nicely I might add. But for me, the Branding associated with trade shows is King. The chance for thousands of resellers and end-users to see our brand, and get to know who we are and what we do is where I measure our greatest success. I'm a huge fan of ROR. The culture of our company is key to how we do business and how we treat our customers and partners. This culture is very entrepreneurial and overflowing with customer service and caring about every reseller, customer and technology partner.

So I would say YES...trade shows are worth it. Factor in your leads with your relationship building and throw on top some branding success and you've got a the equivalent of a triple-scoop ice cream sundae with extra fudge and whipped cream. I don't know about you, but that's really good for me!

Thanks for listening,

Lynn
>check out what we do at http://www.heroware.com/

HEROware: Best Practices for Disaster Recovery

Hi All - this is Lynn Shourds, President & CTO of HEROware. Today I'm going to talk off the top of my head about best practices for Disaster Recovery (DR).

DR is a term which is often confused with other pieces of the Business Continuity (BC) model. Let's first examine that model: BC requires local high availability (HA), off-site disaster recovery, and long-term archiving for mass data retention and compliance. The confusion usually starts here. As you can read, DR is one component of the BC model.

So let's suffice to say that your business has some sort of local HA. That HA is where 90% or so of outages happen. Local outages, if not prepared for, can costs company's thousands of dollars. Thanks to North American Systems International, who has provided an easy way to calculate the cost of downtime, using the following equation to calculate the average labor cost of an outage:

LABOR COST = P x E x R x H

Where:

P = number of people affected

E = average percentage they are affected

R = average employee cost per hour

H = number of hours of outage

As companies depend more and more on computer applications for day-to-day business operations, the cost of downtime has increased. The simplest way to calculate potential revenue losses during an outage is with the equation:

LOST REVENUE = (GR x TH) x I x H

Where:

GR = gross yearly revenue

TH = total yearly business hours

I = percentage impact

H = number of hours of outage

Service costs are rarely zero.

So now you can see, I've talked about BC and that is not DR. DR, as nicely described by a Wikipedia entry as, "...the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster".  

I like the part about "human-induced disaster." I bet many of you didn't know that a common threat to many companies are its employees. Accidental misuse of technology by systems administrators cost companies hours of downtime. Additionally, the oh-so-loved disgruntled employee can take a company down in minutes. It is these disasters, along with fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, snow storms, and Godzilla that prove the need for Disaster Recovery.

Well then, you say, how is it one properly prepares for these disasters? It's not that hard. You need to at least get your data off-site so you don't lose important company and customer information should you encounter one of the above disasters. Cloud storage and server recovery options are now available to aid you in your DR plans. If you want your company to survive a full company disaster, then it is imperative that you get your act together.

Business owners have spent countless hours and money building a company, hiring employees, and keeping the economy going.  Why risk all that hard work and sweat by not following some very basic Business Continuity tenets? Work on your DR plans now...you'll thank me later.

Thanks for listening,

Lynn
>check out how we can help your DR and BC plans at www.heroware.com

HEROware: email continuity

Hey All - this is Lynn Shourds, President & CTO of HEROware. More and more companies rely heavily on their email systems for communication internally and externally. Email has become the top of the priority list in terms of tier-ing out a company's most critical applications.


Companies have now integrated accounting, manufacturing, and business to business operations into their email systems, especially when it comes to Microsoft Exchange Server. Because of this, the dependency on email has become the life-blood of many companies throughout horizontal markets worldwide. According to ITSecurity.com, "...emails are not just for idle chatting, but can also be used to make legally binding contracts, major financial decisions, and conduct professional meetings."

So how should email be protected? There are three sides to this question. One, requires that you have a backup of your email so you can recover email from accidental deletion, modifications, or viruses. Two, demands that there be some form of continuity so your company can recover quickly and easily from an email server outage. And three, there should be long-term archiving of email for compliance reasons. These archives should be available for long-term recovery of individual emails, or whole email boxes, or entire email databases. Additionally, these types of archives should have the capability to configure legal holds in case of a law suit or other legal action.

Email is nice to have. When email goes down, everyone knows...especially the Executive Team. So do yourself a favor, make sure you're protected both from email issues and for job security!

Thanks for listening,

Lynn
>check out how HEROware protects your email in all 3 ways by clicking here.