For SMBs, Your Interactive Web Presence Need Not Be Expensive

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For small and medium businesses, developing and maintaining an interactive web presence may be expensive.

First they have to worry about the development of its web sites and more importantly, its contents. Infrastructure may not be something to worry about but it also matters when the platform to run the web site is to be considered. Secondly, who will maintain the web site and its database? With a limited number of personnel, it is better for the owner and its existing staff do the work physically than virtually.

After all of these have been decided, there is still no assurance that the web site will really reach the market place it intended to penetrate. What with the billions of web sites competing for your favorite search engine placement.

With all of these serious considerations, is it viable for any small and medium sized business to have a presence in the virtual world of the internet?

Discouraged? Don't be! There are more ways than you can know how to make your interactive web presence a not so expensive endeavor.

First let us map the road we have to take in developing a successful web presence.

1. Your web requirements and strategy.  How do you want your presence to be felt in cyber space? Do you want to have an e-commerce capability? As is any venture, a business has to have a clear understanding of what it intends to accomplish and how to accomplish them. Having a web presence is the same.  
2. The Web site requirements. First to consider is who will build the site - do you need to outsource or do you have the capability? How is it going to be built? What is the infrastructure needed? What kind of platform to use?
3. Web content management. What does your business stand for? What services or products do you offer? How would you like these to be presented to your intended market?
4. Web marketing strategy. This is a very critical part of your whole web presence strategy. What with a hundreds of thousands competing for every keyword you have chosen for your business. It is not that easy to land in the top five pages of every search engines where every web surfer usually start for their search. 
5. Web maintenance. How are we going to react if the web site goes down? Is the database growing unexpectedly affecting web speed? Will we still have our data should we decide to transfer our domain hosting?

Once you have decided on what and how your web presence will be, building and putting your ideas into action is easier than what you think. Developing a web site nowadays need not be built from scratch. There are quite a number of companies offering web services either as an (1) Infrastructure as a service [IaaS]; (2) Platform as a Service [PaaS] and (3) Software as a service [SaaS].

Let me explain briefly what these services are:

1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is offered as an alternative for companies that do not want to build their own data centers. The cost of building and maintaining data centers is very prohibitive unless you are a global company earning a global profit. Some of the well known companies that offer IaaS are: Oracle, Dell and IBM.
2. Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud offering for companies that shares their data centers to their clients. These cloud services evolved as an inexpensive alternative for companies that would like to develop their web applications without the cost constraints of building their own infrastructure or the more expensive IaaS. Mostly, the PaaS offers specific e-commerce applications which you can develop yourselves.
3. Software as a service (Saas) is a type of e-commerce cloud services that offers several shared applications such as Customer Relations Management, Enterprise Resource Planning. These applications are quite expensive if installed in-premise. 

With the diversity of these cloud services being offered at reasonable prices (depending on the plan you will purchase), investing on such software or applications has gone down considerably.

I have already shown you that to establish your cyber space presence, your whole infrastructure need not be expensive through the sharing arrangements several cloud services are offering. Now how about the other matters I have mentioned like web search strategy and web maintenance? This where an IT consultant comes along. SMBs can profit considerably on the services of such professionals as they do not have to hire additional staff or for owners and existing staff themselves to handle the job which may be an additional burden for them.

Google Drive Is An Integrated Project Management Tool

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For my latest project, I was looking for a cloud based service that I can use together with my colleagues as our project management collaboration tool.

I have been using the TeamLab services for a time. It has somewhat served me and my previous colleagues' needs, however, I was also looking for something that is easier to manage and use. Also some member of the team I previously worked with impressed in me that they cannot follow everything posted in the site. Another thing is I was looking for something that I can manage all the tools within only one web service which TeamLab has failed to satisfy. (This does not mean I have given up on TeamLab, it is still a great project management tool offered as a cloud service and improvements are ongoing. But my own set of criteria for the moment tells me I have to.)

Fortunately, I didn't have to look far and wide, I have discovered that Google Drive can satisfy my and my team's needs for a collaboration tool. Aside from being a files cloud storage, it has some additional web applications that can be useful as a tool for my profession and services. And what I experienced was truly amazing. In the course of finding useful tools, I discovered four cloud project management services that can be integrated with all of my Google services.

The application I've integrated with my Google Drive were:
1. Gantter Work Schedule. This is a cloud based service that works like Microsoft Project. It can even import files done with MS Project or saved as an mpp file. The WBS file you have created can even be shared to your co-workers either through the Gantter services or if you preferred to save the file in your Google Drive, then share the generated link directly. Even saving the file in Google Drive, you have to install in your Chrome browser an application to open and edit the file. There is no need to download the application to your computer as working in Chrome browser is also fine. The service is offered free and the browser application works only for Chrome, though the service platform is available for all browsers.

2. Mindjet Project and Task Management. I find this task management tool a better alternative or a complimentary service to Google Calendar's task management. Each task can be categorized as personal or  a project management task. The best feature is it can be integrated with your Google Calendar and can use Google's reminder facility like sending a SMS message. Though I like very much the Mindjet's email service that sends you a daily reminder.

For project management use, create a project folder, add members and assign tasks. Project members can view or create tasks. A report can also be generated to monitor status of the project and each tasks.

Another feature of this service is its mind mapping tool which is a great way to record ideas and concepts. This tool is very versatile as it can also be used for charting. Files created within the service can be directly saved to or opened from your Google Drive.

3. LucidChart. Another valuable tool that can be integrated for charting or mapping processes, organization, and other charting needs of projects. The service is not completely free. Number of pages or objects are limited for each file created on a free account. If you decide to buy a service, then the limitations are nil. Files created in the service are interchangeable with MS Visio.

4. Yam Labs. Having a meeting? This is another invaluable tool which everyone in your project can view and follow while the meeting is being conducted . What ever is being discussed are recorded and can be viewed instantly by everyone on their own devices. Within the service, there are many tools useful in any meeting. The meeting's minutes, the discussions, action plans and ideas generated are instantly recorded. All of these can be accessed by every attendee in the meeting and can be sent to anyone immediately right after the meeting ended. Talk about speed, huh.

These four cloud based services which I integrated with my Google Drive did the job as I expected. I will appreciate if you can recommend some more which you have experienced.