News | e-Advantage Solutions Ltd

Two months in – how is the Apprenticeship going?

I’ve now been at e-Advantage Solutions for two months, the time has gone so quick!

I think being an apprentice is very good for myself and I think Pete would agree that it’s also benefited him, I’m enjoying learning all the time and being in a working environment. Interacting with clients was new to me when I started, so even answering the telephone was a bit worrying for myself but now I’m answering the phone with the correct telephone manner and trying to help the client out. I feel Pete has helped me a lot and I’ve learnt a lot from him and is a good person to work for if ever I get stuck I can ask him and he will help me out but as I’m progressing I’m starting to ask for less help.

With the apprenticeship I’m doing an NVQ I.T. Qualification with Smart Training. I have completed my induction and have just received the units I will be doing over the next months so as well as learning on the job I’m doing extra work with the NVQ. So this is nice that I’m progressing with two subjects at once.

I feel I have learnt a lot already by using all the different services we provide. I’m really enjoying working for e-Advantage Solutions and feel I’m making progress and learning all the time. I really like that I can be doing something different at any point of the day.

I’m enjoying coming to work which I know a lot of people don’t always say, which is nice and I feel the apprenticeship is going very well.

Ross

www.music4life.org.uk

This is a screen print of the website we created for www.music4life.org.uk using WordPress. Music 4 Life had a previous site but wanted us to update it, keeping the original features but more upto date with a fresh look.

We added all their previous posts that were on the old website, highlighting the bands and videos of the bands. We also integrated their new twitter feed onto the website (which keeps people upto date on the website without even going onto twitter). We added some cool widgets that look really good, including one that shows their sponsors, and a handy link to their just giving donation site. We host this website on our servers for free as part of our desire to help the local community. Music4Life do great work raising money for the Martlets Hospice.

Implemented new backup solution for hosted websites

To ensure we offer the best level of products & services, our platform provider has invested in a new backup solution which will compliment the current daily backup solution.

The new backup software from R1Soft allows for point in time backup & restore and will be used accross all Shared Hosting / VPS & Dedicated Cluster products. With any backup solution, the backups taken can only restore your website or database back to a single point in time, midnight each day.

The new Backup solution CDP from R1Soft allows for real time roll back to any point in time of the day even down to an exact time period.

See this link for further details: http://www.r1soft.com/linux-cdp/cdp-30-enterprise-edition/features/

The new backup solution will compliment the existing daily off-site backup solution at no extra cost across all hosting platforms as standard.

e-Advantage rides to the rescue of Magnificent Ageing

Brighton based Penelope Young of Magnificent Ageing had been struggling to move her website over to using WordPress. She wanted to use WordPress to give her greater control over her own content and to be able to add exciting new content such as video blogs.

Eventually she found us through Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce’s member directory and quote “brought in the cavalry”. We’re very pleased to have been of help to Penelope and look forward to seeing her new content and book.

Lise Baekgaard smiling due to new web host

Shoreham-by-Sea based dentist and aesthetician Lise Baekgaard has selected e-Advantage Solutions to host her new website (http://lisebaekgaardsmiles.co.uk).

Lise came to e-Advantage as she was struggling to get her previous supplier to deliver her website on time. We took over delivery of the new website and also moved it over to run on the WordPress platform. Using WordPress also enables Lise to add and amend the content of her website herself from now on.

Jon Silver Photography recommends e-Advantage Solutions

Jon Silver of Jon Silver Photography gave us this great recommendation:

“Having known Peter for many years, we’re now using his VoIP Advantage service for all our telephony. It’s a great solution, reliable and full-featured and above all we feel very well looked after, not only by the excellent online control panel facility, but also by Peter himself.”

Top Qualities: Expert, Good Value, High Integrity

Cunim selects e-Advantage as web & email hosting supplier

We are pleased to announce that Paul Sansbury of consultants Cunim have selected e-Advantage Solutions for the supply and support of their domain name registration, website hosting and email services. For more information about Cunim please visit www.cunim.com.

e-Advantage hits end of year target of 100 customers

I’m pleased to say that we hit our year end target of having 100 companies as active clients of our various hosted services. Particularly excited that one of these was our first public sector contract too.

What are the advantages of hosted business software?

One of the key advantages of using a hosted software service is the power of scalability. The more clients of a hosted service there are then the better each element of service should be. For instance, if a hosted service has 1,000 clients then they should have the resources to have specialists in each area of importance, i.e. firewall & security experts; database gurus; network & connectivity divas; operating system administrators. How many small businesses can actually afford specialists in any of these areas, looking after their service all of the time? Many businesses don’t even have one IT generalist looking after them full time.

Hosted services should also be located in data centres, with better and more redundant: connectivity; physical security; power supplies; onsite engineers & hardware spares; backups; network security & firewalls; cooling; fire protection. Can you supply all of this cost-effectively in your office building?

Then there are some key advantages with the pricing methodology used by most hosted services. First, that the monthly rental model that most use means that the capital costs and fixed overheads of your IT network are converted into variable overheads, only growing directly & proportionally when you expand your business and need more staff. Of course, you can also reduce your requirements & costs if needed too. This was very handy for a number of our clients during the first months of the recent recession.

Secondly, I believe that paying for your hosted service monthly actually gets you better support. If you are not tied in to a 2 year contract, then your hosted service provider will be fighting to keep you as a client every single month. I only have anecdotal evidence of this so far, but I think it would be interesting to see some research in this area.

Generally hosted services are also faster to set up. You don’t have to worry about buying servers, installing operating systems and adding the application. Within minutes of signing up online you have a live hosted service. You can then spend the effort and resources you’ve saved on customising and configuring it to suit your business.

What other advantages have I missed?

Set up a simple resource management system within your CRM

A good CRM can be configured to be a complete resource management system for your business. What do I mean? Well, resources can include:

• People with particular skill sets, who are not ‘users’ of the CRM, and who are deployed for certain tasks, e.g. a contract job driving HGVs or fork-lift trucks or a security guard

• Trainers or Consultants contracted on temporary contracts to do particular assignments

• Electronic instruments issued as needed, to various members of staff

• Computers eg PCs, laptops, PDAs or Mobile phones issued for on-going use by members of staff

• Motor vehicles, cars or HGVs

• Conference rooms

• Presentation equipment

• Equipment that is hired in

How do we need to manage these resources? Generally if you set up your resources with shared calendars and to-do lists it can give you the following benefits:

• a resource can be booked within the shared diary system and every authorised user can see the details (also consider the benefits of extending your intranet to be an extranet so that other people can see the information.)

• assets can have formal actions set up for inspections, servicing, upgrading or whatever

• a simple availability view can be set up so that the most appropriate person can be selected for the task because personal skills details can be held in Contact Management

• actions can be set up in the Resource Management solution for every recurring event for any resource

• a block of resources eg conference rooms can be looked at in the shared calendars on a ‘planning view’ basis with full details of the bookings, all with hyperlinks and ‘hover over’

• The manager or executive responsible for the asset can have a control schedule showing all the events and activities booked

All in all, making sure your resources are used efficiently and are looked after effectively. If you’d like to find out more about how your company’s resources could be managed better with a CRM please contact us.

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