Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Expect to be challenged. If they aren’t challenging you, they won’t be doing a good job for you. Equally, you need to challenge them - their approach, opinions, results, etc. This way, you will both get the most out of the process.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
It’s always good to have terms and conditions in place at the outset, to ensure there is no confusion about who is responsible for what. A good consultant will have a standard contract as a starting point. Review this carefully and ask for any extra clauses or amendments as you deem necessary.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Don’t be afraid to ask for some free advice about your project as part of your process of choosing a consultant. A good consultant will always be willing to provide a free consultation. It will give you confidence in them and a practical idea of their skills and approach, and you should end up with some useful ideas from the unsuccessful candidates to consider as part of your project.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Break the work into chunks, if you can. That way, you can work with the consultant in stages and see the results form as you go along. This also means you’ll have chance to alter course or call a halt early on if things aren’t going well. It also makes the result more organic and less prescriptive.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Make sure that you give them enough background information about your business and the current situation so that they have something to base their work on. Ask your consultant to produce a project plan in the early stages, giving you a feel for how the work will progress. It might well need to change later but it’s still better for everyone to have a framework to work within.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Consulting work is a very personal process so choose a consultant that you can get along with. You will be able to tell very quickly if they are someone you think you will get along with and could have a productive working relationship with. Approach and experience are also important factors, so pick someone whose methods and background fit well with the work you need doing.
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
If you are hoping that the consultant will tell you what needs to be done, make sure you can trust them. Try and check them out, ask for some literature, look at their website, etc. Read the words carefully, as a lot of consulting work comes down to words and the interpretation of them. You need to be sure that their approach fits with what you are looking for.
Living With The Apple iPhone 3G
July 11th 2008 saw the much-anticipated release of Apple’s iPhone 3G, the long-anticipated successor to the original 2G version. The advantages for ‘on the move’ internet browsing were so apparent that many observers believe that it was responsible for the lower than expected sales of the 2G version on initial release. Certainly there was a degree of ‘stock dumping’ in the form of a £100 price cut by O2 in the weeks preceding the announcement of the 3G launch date. This led to the bizarre situation where it was cheaper to buy an 8Gb 2G iPhone than the equivalent iPod Touch which lacks the phone technology!
By common consent, the day of the launch was a disaster! Reminiscent of the Heathrow T5 debacle, queues formed at Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores that quickly ran out of stock yet couldn’t even register the phones that they did have. Impatient and frustrated would-be customers were given various explanations and excuses for the failures but, ultimately, the blame must lie with O2. In an attempt to avoid the ‘unlocking’ of phones from the O2 network that bedevilled the 2G version – only possible because the phone was purchased separately from the contract – the contract for the 3G version must be taken out at the time of purchase and for whatever reason, the O2 network infrastructure could not cope with the entirely foreseeable demand. That, combined with yet another ‘system failure’ that saw the loss of manually-collected customer details at the point-of-sale, merely exacerbated the frustration of customers already at breaking point.
With those problems overcome however, does the product merit the hype? Overall, I would say yes. Although some of the features don’t quite live up to expectations – that searching the phonebook sometimes seems to take an inexplicably long amount of time and the ‘swipe to scroll’ interface can lack immediacy are just two examples of areas that I would expect to see improved in a future software update – the majority of the interface and functions simply feel so ‘right’ that it is difficult not to fall in love with the device. Some of the features may seem like ‘data-feed gadgetry’ for the sake of it (I can’t see anyone to whom it really matters relying on the ‘Stock Prices’ or ‘Weather’ functionality…) but there are really useful features too, such as the GPS location facility and the high-speed internet browsing and email functions that are available whenever you have a 3G signal. This really comes into its own if you subscribe to Apple’s MobileMe service with its ability to synchronise your mail, calendars, contact details and browser bookmarks across iPhone, Mac and Windows PCs and MobileMe platforms. This shouldn’t be revolutionary but for the small business user who has not been able to justify the use of a full Microsoft Exchange installation, it is. Give yourself a week of using it and you will wonder how you survived before!
So, what are the downsides? Only one really – battery life! Industry-watchers discussing the 3G iPhone before its release identified this as a likely problem as 3G is much more power-hungry than 2G. To be fair, it’s no worse than other 3G phones with a full battery lasting a day of average usage. The catch though is what’s meant by ‘average usage’. Here the iPhone is a victim of its own success – it’s simply so usable that you just want to keep using it! The 3G, wi-fi and large, well backlit screen all have high power demands and the need to get through a working day on a single charge may, just may, mean that you will have to ration your usage. My solution though would be to invest in a second charging unit for the desk and then not worry about it.
My advice? Get one tomorrow – you won’t be disappointed!!
Tips for getting the most out of a consultant
Make the brief really clear. Think in detail about what it is you want to achieve. You might not have all the answers about how you’re going to get there but it’s important for both of you to know where you want to go.
Tips on writing effective documents
Try not to write long paragraphs as this is difficult to read. Break sections into new paragraphs if they become too long, but make sure you find the right place to do it.
Wesbite Security and ‘https’ - How Does it Work?
Anyone who has looked at the address bar in their web browser might have noticed that the majority of web pages that they visit begin with the acronym ‘http’. A few might even know that it stands for ‘hypertext transfer protocol’ – the protocol (or ‘language’) of the World-Wide Web. Sometimes though, they might notice that a web page begins with ‘https’ and if they are particularly observant, that such pages are accompanied by the image of a closed padlock – usually somewhere in the status bar. That gives us a clue as to what is going on: the ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’.
So why might we want a ‘secure’ protocol? The most common place that we will find ourselves on a secure page is where the information being displayed or entered is sensitive and must be protected from a ‘man in the middle’ attack where the data could be intercepted between the server and the browser. The obvious example of this is a page where credit card or bank details are being entered. Obviously, with the rapid growth of e-commerce, these types of web pages are proliferating.
For the more technical amongst you, the data on a secure page is transmitted through ‘SSL’ – a ‘secure socket layer’ and uses a different port – normally 443 instead of 80. In order for this to work, an SSL certificate registered to the website owner must be installed by the web server. To go even more technical for a moment, SSL uses one of the most secure cryptographic mechanisms currently available using two keys – one public and one private – that is theoretically unbreakable within a reasonable amount of time. If this sounds like double-dutch to you then don’t worry – you don’t need to understand how it works in order to use it. What you do need to know is that you can trust it and the only habit you need to adopt is to check that if you are entering sensitive data the address of the web page begins with ‘https’ and, probably, that there is a closed padlock (or similar) displayed somewhere in your browser window. It is worth taking a few minutes right now to familiarise yourself with your favourite browser and discover the difference between a secure and insecure web page.
To help you with that here is an example of a secure page:
https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_send-money&nav=0.1
and an insecure one:
See if you can spot the difference!
Finally, if you are developing or specifying the creation of a web site for your own company and you expect your users to enter sensitive data, you must ensure that such pages use the secure protocol otherwise you will lose valuable business as potential customers will abandon the checkout process if they feel the security of their personal data is threatened.
Other useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP
http://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/https.html
Tips on writing effective documents
When proof reading your document, try reading it out loud. Anything you stumble over when reading probably doesn’t scan very well and needs rewording.
Tips on writing effective documents
The Oxford comma in a list of items (i.e. the comma before the ‘and’ at the end of the list) can be helpful, especially if the list is complex or has extra commas. For example, “we looked at Spain for sales, Poland for marketing, and France for quality assurance.”
Tips on writing effective documents
Using commas helps enormously with readability. There is a lot of debate on this subject and editors in the publishing industry are removing more than ever, but my advice is to use them wherever a natural pause is implied or required. For example, instead of “when it works it works really well” it is clearer if you put “when it works, it works really well”.
Tips on writing effective documents
Short punchy sentences work best. Don’t be tempted to stretch things out when simply starting a new sentence would make things clearer.
Tips on writing effective documents
Be careful of tense changes. For example, in a list of bullet points, if the first one is in the past tense then they all should be. This makes that section easier to read and understand.
Portals and directories - vital online marketing tools for your business
Now more than ever, businesses need to make the most out of all possible marketing channels. I was always taught to have a good spread of marketing and PR activity. These days, this includes the increasing number of online business directories and supplier portals that are available on the Internet.
A lot of these services are either free or have an entry-level option that is free, so it makes no sense in these cases not to have your details registered.
Some of the directories, such as hotfrog.co.uk, include your details automatically as a way of attracting you to use their site. Only simple contact details need to be entered, such as your company name, address, telephone number and website, and it takes little time to set up your entry.
The benefit is that they often feature highly in the search engine rankings, so it’s worth having your details registered under search terms relevant to you or your competitors might be getting the work instead of you. Equally, you could be missing out on an opportunity to drive useful traffic to your own website.
Portals are different. You don’t usually get on there by accident and a lot of time and effort is needed to get your profile right. Sites like supply2.gov.uk and competefor.com are a way for the public sector to publish contract opportunities for potential suppliers to view and register their interest. Opportunities are matched by the system to your own products or services, based on a coded list that you have to provide, and a daily alert list of matching opportunities can be sent out automatically by email, if required. Some portals are completely free while others have a free service, e.g. contracts in your area only, but there is an upgrade path to access more opportunities for a fee. A number of detailed questions about your business are asked by these sites as part of your profile setup, and the answers need to be carefully considered, as they are scrutinised by the buyers that use the system, to determine whether you would be a suitable supplier. This setup takes time and effort to do, and some of the questions are not straight-forward. However, these portals all ask similar questions so each one is slightly easier to do than the last, as you begin to have a standard set of answers to the most common questions.
Some of the sites, like supply2.gov.uk, have a further option to provide a profile that gets put directly in front of buyers when they are searching for potential suppliers, before opportunities have even been published, so it is worth completing this area of these sites, as it increases your exposure even more.
A key area is deciding how to map your products or services into the standard list that each site has. Also, some have a restriction on the total number of products/services you can be registered for, which complicates things further. If your offering is fairly simple, e.g. you manufacture bolts, then life is made slightly easier. However if your product or service is complex or varied, then you will have a hard time choosing the relevant areas. It is worth getting this right, however, as it will get the right opportunities in front of you and reduce the number of irrelevant hits you have to ignore.
When registering your interest in an opportunity on these sites, it is possible for the buyers to ask further questions they feel are relevant to the contract. This takes the form of a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire. Some of the questions are merely repeats of questions you should have already answered in your profile. However, the buyer can ask anything, so be prepared to answer some qualifying questions that can be tricky. Once again though, the more of these you do the easier it becomes, as the same questions come up time and again. Also, it’s worth keeping a note of questions asked and what answers you gave to save re-inventing the wheel next time.
Other portals such as supplierbrokerage.co.uk and suppliermatching.co.uk are a way of connecting your business with potential customers belonging to a third-party. In these 2 cases, the third-party is Business Link. Having provided advice to a customer about strategic business direction, Business Link often need to select potential suppliers to help their customer implement the actions discussed. At this point, they use these 2 portals to search for suppliers that offer the relevant product or service, and have appropriate experience.
In addition, some sites have extra questions designed to help the third-party decide what other areas you could help them with. For example, supplierbrokerage.co.uk has a section to express interest in speaking at Business Link events, and a section to indicate a willingness to provide services under the e-voucher scheme set up to provide funding to start-ups. If you aren’t registered then you could be missing out on these other opportunities.
Not all sites will benefit every business. But, it is well worth exploring what is available and relevant to what you do. Whether you decide to spend any of your hard earned marketing budget is totally up to you, but it’s certainly worth at least registering your details on the free sites, and on the paying sites but at the free level, to gauge what sort of opportunities come your way. You can always upgrade later, once you can see the value in it.
If you take no action, you could be missing out on a vital way to bring your business to the attention of potential customers, using the power of the Internet.
Tips on writing effective documents
Think carefully about your headings and the structure of your subheadings. They should be adding to the readability of your document by breaking it down into smaller chunks. Also, they should explain the content of the section. Don’t make them too wordy or the benefit is lost.