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I like talking to real people on the phone when I need technical help. TrackVia doesn't offer me a menu of topics so I can search for a solution from a programmed script. Instead, the company uses a real help desk with live assistants that actually answer the phone. This is a definite plus for the small-business owner without an IT staff or even a worker in a larger company whose corporate help desk is always busy...

Nobel Prize winner Al Gore would be the right guy if you needed someone to sell ideas to the Senate, could build his own staff of technology advisors, and if the primary focus was alternative energy. In the debates, Obama did indicate alternative energy was the leading proble...

The business case for Speech to Text is self-explanatory. With it, users do not have to listen to several minutes worth of messages to jot down phone numbers. "The time savings can really add up," Hardy said, adding that Avaya is rolling out the application internally to its North American sales staff...

In support of its strategic actions, the Best-in-Class (67 percent) are more likely than Industry Average (65 percent) and Laggards (48 percent) to have formal processes and policies in place for getting leads to the sales team. Driving traffic to a Web site through a properly designed one that has the right keywords and site structure or through effective bid management to get the right paid placement is only part of the marketing process. Revenue conversion of leads cannot occur if the sales staff doesn't know how to get prospect information and what prospect information they can get. The Best-in-Class are 40 percent more likely than Laggards to make sure that their sales force has the resources it needs to get the job done.

Numerous tune-up solutions I've used -- both boxed and online services-- often fell short of actually fixing problems to such a degree that my computers couldrun like new again. Don't get me wrong. Remote tune-up services andtechnicians-in-a-box software can be very helpful in maintainingcomputers for users and small businesses with no IT staff. The alternative is spendinghours every few weeks manually running stand-alone programs to cleanthe registry, unclutter the hard drive, and pick the nits out ofobsolete computer settings. Doing this on an office full of computers would constitute a full-time job...

Michael Greenberger, a former staff member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, describes a credit swap as follows: "A credit default swap is a contract between two people, one of whom is giving insurance to the other that he will be paid in the event that a financial institution, or a financial instrument, fails. It is an insurance contract, but they've been very careful not to call it that because if it were insurance, it would be regulated. So they use a magic substitute word called a 'swap,' which by virtue of federal law is deregulated."

Don't have one phone line for all your business communications. Nothing says "too small" like a phone number that returns a busy signal, or a phone that rings and rings until the caller finally gives up. In today's business world, when someone actually places a call (instead of sending an e-mail) they expect it to be answered. Or, at the very least, routed to an auto-attendant or voice mailbox. While a standard public branch exchange (PBX) phone system might be too costly to install and require too much specialized knowledge to maintain, virtual PBX services can provide the same professional "face" without the equipment investment or the maintenance. These services automatically route calls to extensions you set up, and provide voice mail services so callers can leave a message. Callers will never get a busy signal or be stuck in a ringing loop, giving them the confidence that you have the staff to service their business...

Find the Right Personnel for the Job. There's a new way of doing things, and it means finding the right people to plug into the job. You need to find agents who are comfortable with the online medium for conducting a conversation. They should also be used to managing multiple online interactions at once. Who's already on staff that will hit the ground running? Focus on your phone agents, rather than existing e-mail agents. E-mail agents are used to an asynchronous, non-real-time interaction that gives them time to craft considered replies with the goal of resolving the inquiry in one response. Phone agents are comfortable with the give and take of conversation and free-form exchange that chat engenders. They'll likely be quicker on the up-and-up -- and that means a better, more informative conversation for your clientele.

To this end, MDS Medical Software focuses on training not simply doctors, but any other staff members that will have to use the electronic system "When we train an office to use an EMR, we don't train a doctor as the one who does it," Richardson told TechNewsWorld. "You've got...

"For most SMBs, there is an unfamiliarity with outsourcing that dictates that when they make technology buying decisions, the first thing they are going to think about is buying hardware and software, and then trying to integrate those through internal resources and staff, as opposed to turning to an outsourcer to help," said Robert Brown, a research director at Gartner. ...

Communicate your commitment to your entire staff. Keep harping on it until you see progress....

When voters are unable to get the information they need online, they will often call their local precincts, said Caudell-Feagan -- but they rarely get much love. "Government agencies tend to devote their resources to running the precincts and so on. They don't have staffing to handle the call volume that comes in, which can be quite expensive." Such calls can cost from US$10 to $100 to answer...

According to the September report, these organizations are twice as likely to have the ability to filter network traffic that is being monitored as compared to all others, which allows these organizations to improve usability of performance data by enabling IT staff to sort through thousands of data points collected and find information needed for preventing and resolving performance issues in a timely manner.

Few small and even mid-sized businesses have the dedicated IT staff and expertise needed to configure complicated and out-of-band approaches like 802.1x network configurations and properly troubleshoot network problems when they arise. Also, the IT staff in these businesses t...

Primavera staff will join the newly created business unit, led by Primavera's CEO Joel Koppelman as senior vice president and general manager. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be complete by the second half of this year. Until the deal closes, the two companies will continue to operate separately.

While Moskovitz's departure is drawing rumors of turmoil and changed culture within Facebook, it's important to remember that staffing changes are part of the startup world -- and most conclusions about any deeper implications are, at this point, little more than speculation "...

The U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversightreport is referenced as "Questions regarding technical flaws, poor government oversight and potential contractor mismanagement on the National Counterterrorism Center's RAILHEAD information technology program." ...

As subprime mortgage lenders struggled with their financial positions internally, many cut back on program and product management staff who were responsible for making sure their electronic initiates stayed in touch with customer needs and requests. The result: Entirely new Web sites rolled out with no prior testing by customers and no launch process, even internally...

"On the surface, 24,600 jobs seems like a big number, but when you look at HP's 320,000 global employees, it's about 7.5 percent," Shaw Wu, an equity analyst with American Technology Research, told the E-Commerce Times. "EDS was seen as a poorly run company that was way overstaffed by Wall Street. [The job cuts] arguably could be a lot worse, given the impression of how EDS was doing before this deal."

Aiming to optimize systems performance, adaptability and business continuity while minimizing IT staff and energy resource demands, the three-tiered HP AI in a Box lineup relies on HP Proliant BL260c dual processor servers running Windows Server 2008, HP StorageWorks All-in-One SB600c Storage Blade, HP Insight Control environment management, automation, power and cooling technology, virtualization and security all packaged together in a BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure.