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At Riverbank we like to be "vendor-neutral" - unbiased in real English - so our Business Development Manager, Chris Jones, happily took his iPhone along on a two-day BlackBerry training course this week. Bad idea.

He has returned a changed man. He is convinced that BlackBerry is the way forward for any serious business. He can tell you why the compression of the BlackBerry e-mail transmissions means lower costs, particularly when roaming. He can tell you how BlackBerry is the most efficient device, delivering more for less power to give you longer battery life.

If you let him, Chris will also explain why the Saudi government is threatening to ban BlackBerry. Unlike other manufacturers, BlackBerry encrypts all its e-mail traffic, making it hard for hackers (or governments) to intercept your e-mail.

Web conferencing is set to become a mainstream business tool, and soon. There are a lot of pressures driving us towards it:
• rising fuel costs
• volcanic ash reducing the opportunity and desire to travel (“will I get back?”)
• climate change pressures encouraging us to reduce travel • economic pressures to keep costs down
• the feeling that whatever changes the new government makes will not be good news

These pressures mean that change could come much faster than we anticipate. If you want to be in a position of leadership with your customers you need to be able to offer them virtual meetings over the web. The technology is all there, but there is a bewildering array of options and prices.

You can start simply and cheaply. All you need is a computer connected to the Internet, a headset and optionally a webcam. You can of course spend as much as you like, and £20,000 would buy you a very nice video conferencing suite.

Riverbank clients are starting to be upgraded to the faster broadband service, ADSL2+. What it means is the prospect of a faster Internet connection at no extra cost.

Whether you will actually see a benefit depends on a number of factors including the distance from your office to the telephone exchange and the hardware in your office. All Riverbank-supplied hardware is ADSL2+ compatible.  

The upgrade should involve no more than a disconnection of 20 minutes. We are advising each client of the date of this upgrade. But be aware that with any change there is a risk of disruption, so if the date assigned to you for upgrade is a particularly crucial day it might be safest to ask for a different date. 

Many businesses are seriously under-powered when it comes to home broadband. Our experience in the small business market is that many firms expect their staff to work from home and just assume that any cheap broadband connection is fine. Staff then have a poor experience working remotely on their office network and everyone is unhappy.

What these businesses forget is that working from home often means that a lot of data is going upstream from home to office. Staff are quite naturally expected to be productive. So the information they produce has to go from home to the office network  - when a user saves a document for example. 

This is the reverse of the way that ADSL broadband was designed, which was on the basis of much more information coming downstream from web sites (like a video) than going back upstream (like "next page please"). With ADSL it doesn't matter how fast the promised and much-hyped downstream  performance is; almost every ADSL connection has a very dreary upload speed. Because of this it's vital to squeeze every bit of performance you can from your home ADSL line.

To get that performance you need high quality broadband. Cheap broadband means crowded broadband which means poor performance. You are in the queue with all your neighbours and every school student chatting to their friends online. The result for someone working from home is that they wait for an age while their computer tries to save a document. It is not a good use of expensive employee time.

Thirty two Riverbank clients use inexpensive software called Exclaimer to make sure they add an e-mail disclaimer to every e-mail and ensure they comply with the requirements of the Companies Act. They also have the opportunity to add a marketing message to every outbound e-mail.

If your company uses Exclaimer you need to be sure that you are taking advantage of this ability to promote your business. It could be anything from “Winner of the south-east technology award 2010” to “Find out about our new product launch at www.etc”.

If your company uses Exchange as its central e-mail database and you don’t have Exclaimer you should get it. You should get it because you need to know that your company is legal and you should get it because you need to take every opportunity you can to go for growth.

It’s the BlackBerry software that makes the BlackBerry such a delight to use. It’s just easy to get the job done. If you use a BlackBerry here are some little features that make it even nicer to use.

• Upper case? Hold down the key and it automatically switches to upper case.
• Full stop. Press the space bar twice.
• Typing a URL into the browser? Use the space bar for the dots.
• Typing an e-mail address? Use the space bar for the @ sign and for the dots.
• When browsing through your e-mail press B for bottom and T for top.
• Don’t forget that you have copy and paste available to move text. Highlight the text (Shift and roll across the text) and press the menu button. It automatically selects ‘Copy’ for you.
• Rearrange the screen icons so the ones you use most frequently are on the top row. Press the menu button and select move. Just move the icon and press the roller button to drop it.
• To switch between ring and vibrate press Q.
• Use the speed-dial option to get single-key calling. In the list of recent calls highlight the person you want. Press the menu button and select Add Speed Dial. You can also do this from the contacts list – open the contact and highlight the phone number. Then press the menu button.

Have you got any favourite BlackBerry tips? If so, share them through the Riverbank newsletter. Full credit given!

One lesson from the recent snow was the importance of being able to work away from the office. A really useful tool for working anywhere is a mobile data link - a small USB device that connects your laptop to the Internet via the mobile network.

The Riverbank partner for mobile communications is O2. They are running a January incentive of 3 months' free subscription for voice calls if you change to O2 for your mobile voice and data communications. If you would like more information please contact Chris Jones at Riverbank, chris@riverbank.co.uk (01844 278036).

 

E-mail keeps piling into your business, and your e-mail database keeps on growing. There is a hidden cost to this, which only reveals itself when the database hits its limit or your disk is full. At that point you wish you had been managing your e-mail all along. You realise that even a large server system needs management, and that as new data comes into your organisation so old data must move out of it. E-mail archiving is the solution.

 

 

I recently overheard someone lamenting the demands of e-mail, that people now expected an immediate reply. A few years ago, they said, a reply next day was what was expected. We have become a "now, now, now" society.

One reason for this feeling is that e-mail can now follow you around on your mobile phone, whether it's a BlackBerry, an iPhone or a Windows phone. That leads to another strongly expressed view from some people that they don't want to be hounded by their e-mail - "it's bad enough in the office" is their view.

In the recent PC Pro Awards 2009 Riverbank partner Zen Internet was named as the best Internet Service Provider. This is the sixth year running that Zen has won this award.

Andrew Saunders, Zen Internet’s Head of Product Management and Marketing, said: ‘This award acknowledges the value Zen’s services provide to our customers, through our unique combination of reliable products, one month contracts, no Fair Use Policy or traffic shaping – all supported by exceptional customer service’.

In September Zen received the highest score in a survey by PC Advisor, with 93% for reliability, 95.8% for ‘would recommend’ and 94.5% for overall satisfaction.