Eric of Delta PointSolutions recently turned me on to a new add-on for Outlook 2003 called
“>Business Contact Manager. I had recently migrated all my contact, calendar, and e-mail to software other than Outlook so I have the unfortunate joy of migrating everything back to Outlook. But Business Contact Manager makes the move back worth while.
A full fledge CRM solution is overkill for my organization White Peak Software making Business Contact Manager ideal for me. It allows you to manage business contacts, accounts, which are tied back to business contacts, and opportunities. BCM gives you the ability to link e-mail messages, appointments, phone calls, and more to contacts, accounts, and opportunities making it much easier to find information. And the auto link feature for e-mails is perfect for managing the countless e-mails that flow between me and my business contacts and accounts.
The add-on is very easy to learn and those already familiar with Outlook 2003 will be up to speed in minutes. It includes reporting capabilities, and helps small business owners manage opportunities. The opportunities management is one of my favorite features of BCM. I can track the progress, cost, sales stage and more.
If you are a small business owner using Outlook 2003 and CRM are overkill for you, I suggest you check out Business Contact Manager. It’s definitely worth the pain of migrating my information back into Outlook.
I’ll be in St Louis for the next few days. Send me an e-mail or give me a ring if you are interested in meeting up for happy hour on Friday.
Attention @thecave e-mail users. The default for spam filtering is as follows:
- Messages with LOW spam probability will remain in your Inbox with the subject prefix “SPAM-LOW:”.
- Messages with MEDIUM and HIGH spam probability will be moved to the Junk E-mail folder.
You can override this by going to Settings|My Spam Filtering.
This notice is for all @thecave.com e-mail users who use the web interface. SmarterMail 2.0 was installed last night. It offers dramatic changes over the previous version include:<ul>
<li>Completely redesigned interface</li>
<li>More logical organization and structure</li>
<li>Foreign language support for the interface and spell check dictionaries</li>
<li>HTML creation of messages</li>
<li>Improved Help documentation</li>
<li>More robust spam detection (including Bayesian filtering)</li>
<li>Improved Content Filtering</li>
<li>Much more</li>
</ul>Email accounts will not actually be converted to 2.0 until they log some type of activity (e.g. if you log in to the mailbox, or even if you simply receive an email). Therefore, once you initially log in, you may see a longer load time. During this process, no emails or users will be lost.
Two things you will want to check after the conversion are your spam and content filters. The content filters should not be affected, but Spam options will default to the new SmarterMail 2.0 settings. If you want to utilize custom settings versus these default spam settings then you will want to go into the spam filtering configuration and make any changes you feel are necessary. When checking your spam settings, pay particular attention to the use of the Bayesian filtering option as this is what you use to “teach” the mail server what you consider to be spam.
I think you will find this laest version is far better than the previous version. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions regarding SmarterMail 2.0.
Seems that there is something in the water down in Memphis because my family has recently gone baby crazy. Congratulations to John and Lisa for the arrival of Elizabeth Marie. Congratulations to Bill and Melissa for the arrival of Matthew Cole. Congratulations to Michael and Kimberly for the arrival of Gracen Brooke, and sorry for the misspelling. I didn’t receive an official announcement e-mail with the correct name spelling. I’m not even sure I know the name of Rip’s offspring.
And for the really big announcement, congratulations to Tommy and Renay (my little sis). The two are expecting a new homo sapiens arrival of their own. It will be interesting to see how the baby blends in with the personal zoo they have. Will the baby sleep in the same room as the frogs, snakes, rats, bats, and giraffes? Will he or she crawl around with the 12 dogs and 18 cats? Seriously, Melanie and I are both very excited for you guys.
And congratulations to all, and to all a good night.
For CEOs, offshoring pays - News - ZDNet: “Chief executive officers at the companies shipping the most U.S. jobs overseas seem to be pocketing some of the savings, according to a new report.”
I was heading up to Connecticut for an afternoon meeting so I scheduled a morning meeting at Grand Central Station. As we drank our coffee and talked business, 18 year old “kids” (military of course) walked around carrying semi-automatic weapons. Police were in full force at all the train stops from the West Village to Grand Central. Officers performed random sweeps on the trains including the one I took up to CT. Definitely not a typical day in the office.
On a related note, I had time to kill between my meeting at Grand Central and the train ride up to CT. I decided to check my e-mail so I walked out of the station in search of a Starbucks. To no surprise there was a large Starbucks just a block and a half away. I have often joked about Starbucks being on every corner but today it paid off. And it paid Starbucks as well as I order an ice coffee and signed up with T-Mobile for a day pass. Gotta love the convenience provided by Starbucks.
I recently wrote the article below but have not published it yet. I am working on an article section on the White Peak Software web site but I haven’t completed the software change yet. So instead of waiting longer, I decided I would post a draft of the article here on the blog.
Road to Independence (Part 1: How I Got Here)
Kirby Turner
White Peak Software Inc
July 2, 2004
Introduction
Earlier this week I told my employer that I resign from my position so that I may pursue a career as an independent consultant. This has been a long time in the making. It is both an exciting and scary move for me.
Although it has been done before, I thought it would be fun to share my experience as I journey down the road to independence. This article is the first in a series I plan to publish where I share the good, the bad, and the ugly of going and being an independent consultant and running my own software company.
Disclaimer: This first article is more about my history and less about lessons learned. Future articles in this series will be more practical for the individual considering a move towards independent consulting.
How Did I Get Here
The first computer I ever played with was a Sinclair 1000. It was my father’s and I was immediately fascinated with it. A few years later my high school was selected as a pilot school for hosting a computer class. Note this was in the early 1980’s. The class focused on the history of computers for the first half of the school year. I was bored and sometimes disruptive in class. Needless to say I did not make a good grade nor did I leave a good impression on the teacher who was considering kicking me out of the class before the start of the second semester.
During the second half of the school year the class focused on programming in BASIC. My boredom quickly left and I completed all of the class assignments for the second semester within the first few weeks. From that point on I helped other classmates learn how to program. It was my first experience as a mentor.
An advance computer class focusing on PASCAL programming was offered the following year, my senior year, taught by the same teacher. Before teaching these classes, the teacher taught math. While teaching she returned to school to studying for her master’s degree in Computer Science. Once again I finished the class assignments early in the school year so the teacher gave me assignments based on her own college assignments to keep me busy.
She resigned from her teaching position at the end of the first semester, but she agreed to continue teaching the advanced computer class through the end of the school year. She left teaching to start her own computer consulting company and I was her first employee. I was still in high school getting paid to write software for customers of the teacher who was considering kicking me out of class a year earlier.
Over the years since that time I have spent most of my career as a computer consultant writing software for different clients. I have also worked for a few ISV which is where I got exposure to commercial software development. I went independent in 1999 as a sole proprietor but that lasted only a year. I learned I wasn’t ready for the responsibilities of being an independent and I didn’t have the skills I felt were needed to grow a business. It was back to regular employment for me.
Working Smarter Not Harder
It was during the next four years that I learned about running a business and how to engage other businesses. It was also during this time that I became increasingly more frustrated with my career. Although successful during these years, I saw things happening that I did not agree with. And I was constantly telling myself and those around me that if we used this or that approach we could improve and do better. We could work smarter, not harder.
The idea of working smarter not harder became a top principal held by me and one that started guiding my career towards independence. It gave me a new way of thinking about my career and how it fits into my life. I was tired of giving up my life to work harder. I was tired of working long hours, 60, 80, and sometimes 100+ hours per week. Working smarter was my only option.
There was another motivating factor for working smarter. While I was learning more about business over the last 4 years, I was also an exempted employee which meant I did not get paid overtime. The real kicker though was that if I worked 60 hours during a single week for a customer that customer would be billed for 60 hours even though I was getting paid for only 40 hours. For me, working smarter was also about not giving my time away for free to someone who is profiting from that time.
Life Goals
Working smarter gave me a new way of thinking about my career and how it fits into my life. I had learned the importance of life outside of work and I no longer wanted to be a workaholic. Working smarter allows me to be more productive than working harder while at the same time keeping reasonable hours. As a result I have been able to enjoy more out of life with this new balance between professional and personal life. But I wanted more.
Last year I looked around and asked: Is this what I want to do with my life? Do I want to continue working for others, helping my employer make more money while I make the same amount I was making 4 years ago? The obvious answer was no.
I enjoy creating software and helping customers meet business objectives through the implementation of software solutions, but I also want to spend more time with my wife and family. I want to spend more time on the wintry slopes snowboarding, and I want to spend more time pursuing career goals and interest that I otherwise have not been able to pursue while employed by others. Yes, there still is a bit of the workaholic in me but remember computers are just as much a hobby for me as they are a career.
I remembered my time as sole proprietor, which was one of the highlights in my career. It only made sense for me to return to that career life but this time leverage the business skills I had acquired. Thus began the concept of White Peak Software Inc.
Last day for the All For One season pass at cheap, cheap prices.