Border States Sales

Archive for the ‘The Business Connection’ Category

In order to keep up with your customers’ demands you need a real-time 360 degree view of your business. Your systems need to operate 24 hours a day and your stock levels must be up to date at all times.

When your company is small and based in a single location, things are simple. But they may start to get complicated when you expand or start to outsource into other territories, either at home or abroad. For example, if you’re a retail business with multiple shops around the country, as well as a national distribution hub and a factory located abroad, then ideally you want everyone in the business to send you data in real-time. This way you can know at any time how many coats have sold in your Newcastle shop and how much stock remains at the distribution point.

You want every part of your business to be connected. This way a sales till in your shop in Newcastle can both ring up sales and keep track of how much money has been taken. It can also connect to the internet and access your company website, as well as interrogate the distribution hub to see if there’s any stock left or to put in an order if more stock is needed. You also want it to be easy for the shop assistant on the till to be able to contact anyone in the organisation, no matter where they are, in order to get an idea of stock levels in different shops or to find information about forthcoming products.

Without fast connectivity, you have to disconnect each part of the business from the headquarters and collect data on a daily or weekly basis. But this means accounts are always a few days or a week out of synch, so nobody can say with any certainty whether or not an item is in stock. Such businesses are also unable to respond effectively to changes in the market both locally and nationally.

Seeking connectivity solutions via broadband

Some companies look to the internet and broadband for a solution, but here there are also drawbacks, namely a lack of security. Unfortunately, the internet is an inherently insecure network. For example, whenever you send an email, that email is split into small bits by the sender and then bounces from server to server until it’s reassembled at its destination. At any point along that route it’s possible for someone to intercept those deconstructed bits. And if you’re streaming video or audio the data can get out of sequence, as different parts of the file are sent over different paths and may not be received in the order in which they were sent. Broadband connections, while fast enough for consumer needs, are less likely to be adequate for medium to large business use. When you share one broadband line between multiple users in, say, a branch office and you need to send, upload and download large files you start to hit problems. Most available broadband connections are asynchronous, meaning they download at one rate and upload at another. Therefore, an 8Mbps connection will allow you to download a file at 8Mbps, but only upload at around 512k to 1Mbps. Speed is also dependent on your distance from the exchange and the number of other people sharing your connection.

Wide Area Network Options

The simplest solution to the problem is to create a set of dedicated connections between your sites. With these, the upload speed is as fast as the download speed, and it has pre-agreed levels of service, which are set via a service level agreement (SLA). Also, the line is used by your business and no one else, so the download speed will not reduce at peak times when the business next-door starts to send large CAD/CAM files.

Leased lines are one of the simplest connections, offering connectivity up to 155Mb, but there are other options that offer faster performance, often at a lower price. For example, if your offices are dispersed across a business park, a town, a city or a region, Ethernet Extensions are one way to link your people. Ethernet Extensions offer unlimited usage through a dedicated, fixed-price digital transmission channel. This secure, fibre-based service offers dedicated connections at Ethernet speeds of 10, 100, 1000 Mb and up to 10Gb. You can have point-to-point connections or point to multipoint, as well as supporting business critical applications and high speed file transfer to improve efficiency. All this between locations up to 25km apart allowing you to exchange large amounts of data effectively and efficiently.

In cases where your offices are spread across the country, National Ethernet may be a good solution. National Ethernet offers unlimited usage across the UK at speeds of 2Mb right up to 1Gb across our national network. If bandwidth upgrades are needed, they can typically be done remotely without the need for a site visit. Whether you need multiple circuits or a single connection, the service can be tailored to you. Annual charges are fixed regardless of usage or distance.

As the number of your sites increases, it becomes more complicated to rely on individual connections between them. In these cases, a virtual private network is often a good alternative, allowing you to share resources efficiently rather than on a site-by-site basis. An IPVPN is a cost effective, secure, flexible, scalable and fully managed service. IPVPN provides the security of a VPN with superior performance for business-critical applications, plus the cost benefits of converging voice, data and video traffic on the same network. The service is managed for you, including the set up and ongoing management of routers and IP routing. If you want to control your own routing hardware Ethernet VPNs can be a great solution, allowing you connect sites nationally, at speeds of 1MB to 1GB through our Next Generation Network.

Combining a Next Generation Network with VoIP

Because you have a connection that’s both fast and secure, you can start to use the connection to perform other tasks, such as video conferencing, or using the connection for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems.

One of the main criticisms of VoIP is that there’s no guarantee on call quality since the system uses the internet to route calls. Calls can sometimes break off or the voice quality can be so poor as to be impossible to use. However, using VoIP over a dedicated Next Generation Network will give you a clear line, as well as connections that are always reliable. This not only saves your business money, but also should encourage your employees to communicate more often.

Lastly, because you now have a constant fast and reliable connection between all your different sites, it’s now much easier and faster for your IT department to support users, no matter where they are, and to build in additional safeguards for your business, such as disaster recovery solutions. With a WAN your IT staff can use tools like Microsoft’s built-in Remote Desktop Connection to remotely control and share a PC, so there’s no need for site visits to fix simple IT problems. Additionally, the servers on your system can continuously back up their data to secondary sites. This way if a branch office is hit by fire or flood there’s a copy of all the lost data saved and available for use straight away. You can then restart the branch anywhere from within a few hours to a few days. Solutions like High Capacity Services can often be a great way of supporting the performance and bandwidth needed when servers are mirroring data of this kind over large distances.

What is the last snapshot in the mind of the people who have at some point met with you? What do they remember most? The first impression can either open for you greater business opportunities that are bound to change your entire life, or they can be the only thing that blocks your chances of acquiring anything significant in your life.

Fashion specialists have discovered that 95% of people who are likely to pay any attention to you when they meet you especially for the first time, will only do so because of how you appear to them. People will always treat you the way you look or talk so long as they do not know you much.

Supposing you have an appointment with a businessman to strike a deal, try to look your best. Look organized, presentable, confident, well informed and financially stable. When selling your product, be careful how you relate with your customers. They do not know much about you but if you give them the best impression on the first contact, they will keep returning over and over.

Learn to prepare yourself well before you go out to make a business deal. Never forget, respect, courtesy, smartness and intelligence.

If you have a website use good color combinations that are attractive and eye catching. That first impression is crucial in determining how long a visitor will spend on your site. Also, the site should be well organized and easy to navigate through, in other words user friendly. On top of that offer your customers genuine products in order to gain their trust.

MySpace is an online community focused on helping individuals to make new friends or reconnect with old friends. With this type of goal in mind it is not surprising that the vast majority of MySpace members use the community to make connections with other members. This may include staying in touch with old friends and family members, reconnecting with lost friends, making business connections or even meeting romantic partners. This article will discuss how all of these opportunities are available on the MySpace community.

Keeping in Touch with Friends and Family

MySpace can be an excellent way for friends and family members to stay in touch. Encouraging friends and family members to join MySpace with you can help you to stay in better contact with these individuals. Communicating through MySpace is a lot of fun and gives users the ability to post pictures, audio files and video files in addition to personal information presented in a blog. Members can leave comments for each other or just stay in touch by reading each others websites and posting personal information on their own websites for others to read.

Reconnecting with Lost Friends 

Overtime we all lose contact with some of our old friends. Whether this is a trusted friend who was with you through the trying times in high school, a companion who helped you make it through college or even an acquaintance you met in passing at a bus stop MySpace can help you to reconnect to these old friends.

One passive way to reconnect with lost friends is to simply create your own MySpace website and wait for these lost friends to contact you. This may not always happen but it is possible. MySpace is an extensive community with members all around the world and it is very possible your old friend may see you on MySpace and contact you. Also, if you create a blog entry expressing an interest in reconnecting with an individual, your blog may be seen by someone who knows your lost friend and passes along the message.

Another way to find lost friends on MySpace is to use the search feature. The simplest way to search for someone is by using their full name. However, not all members post their full name. Other methods of finding an individual include entering their nickname into the search feature or entering keywords related to their favorite hobbies, books, movies or entertainers. This method may require a great deal of research and may be quite time consuming but it can help you find your lost friend if they have a website on MySpace.

Making Business Connections

MySpace can also be used to make business connections. The search feature can be used to find others who share your business interests, dreams and goals. Once you find these individuals you can engage them in conversation by sending an email or instant message or by leaving a comment on their website. These connections may lead to potential business relationships but they may also simply be networking opportunities which allow those interested in certain business aspects to converse with others who share this interest.

Meeting Romantic Partners

Finally, a large portion of those who are using MySpace are hoping to make a romantic connection. MySpace is an online community which enables users to post photos and information about themselves for other members of the community to view. This effectively makes MySpace very similar to a dating service. There is also a space for users to enter information regarding whether or not they are single or looking for a romantic interest. Those who are looking for romance can spend time searching for others who they find physically attractive, share their interests and are also seeking romantic companionship. These MySpace members can contact each other through emails, instant messages or through comments left for each other on the websites. A courting relationship online can progress to an offline relationship or can remain online depending on the wants and intentions of the partners.