Businesses Should Get The Little e

By Jay Fridkis

Most business people are getting comfortable with e-mail, and many are even finding the service to be more critical to business success than the fax machine. E-commerce and e-services are all the rage, and many of these services may quickly become as valuable as e-mail is today. Many of the products can be integrated easily in the office environment, and offer real benefits to improve office efficiency and operations.

E-Fax and similar products are a boon to travelling staff and offer a method to get fax messages through your e-mail account. Since most business people who travel are already accustomed to getting their e-mail with a laptop computer or via an Internet connection, this service enables the user to give out a “generic” fax number and have the document forwarded to whatever e-mail account is specified.

An alternative product is fax software on your network server. With this product, an incoming fax document is first “intercepted” and imaged on the computer server and then forwarded to a printer. If someone misplaces a paper fax document, you can always reprint or forward the document by e-mail. This solution works well in smaller offices or departments where a staff person can monitor the incoming fax traffic.

E-stamp is the first PC-based product approved by the U.S. Postal Service for printing postage from a PC using a standard laser or ink-jet printer. The recent addition of an integrated digital scale offering makes this product valuable to the small business that finds it inconvenient to stock postage stamps to accommodate a variety of package weights (the service is not yet ready for a larger office since a network version is not yet available). The basic installation is easy, but there seem to be several technical glitches with the scale that are not easily handled by the toll-free technical support. A new software release is forthcoming this winter. The product fully integrates with Microsoft Word and makes printing postage for a letter on a standard envelope a breeze. The software calculates the cost of postage for all categories (1^st class, Priority, Next Day, Parcel Post), but due to USPS restrictions, special labels with a fluorescent strip are sometimes needed (available from E-stamp and Avery products).

E-backup is another useful solution for small businesses and traveling staff. A company called Driveway.com offers users space to store files using an Internet connection. The service is free to individual users, and there is a direct connection to the product from within Microsoft Office 2000. This service also enables the user to later retrieve the files from a different computer or location, making it a useful tool to transfer files while traveling.

How about E-time? We all like to joke about how difficult it is to set a VCR clock (most of us won’t admit that it is true), and a PC’s internal clock is no more dependable. A new service available from the U.S. government offers users the ability to synchronize their PC clock with the official U.S. atomic clock. Go to http://www.tycho.usno.navy.mil to try it for yourself. A commercial product with more options is available from ActiveEarth.com. (The business angle is that your employees can never again claim that they were late for a meeting because the office clock was slow.) Now when will they offer the service for TVs and VCRs?

Another recent development is the growth of “renting” software over the Internet, delivered by companies called Application Service Providers (ASP’s). For many mid-sized companies, the costs of installing, supporting and upgrading software can be prohibitive. As high speed Internet connections become more affordable, using software over the Internet becomes a viable option. A company called FreeTimesheet.com offers companies a simple human resource process to track employee time using a web-based database which can be accessed by employees regardless of their location (another vendor is at Journyx.com). Other companies are offering commonly used software such as QuickBooks and Microsoft Office for a monthly fee per employee. The ASP company manages the software on their computer network and can offer help desk support and software upgrades as part of the package.

Full-time Internet access is finally becoming an affordable reality to the small- and mid-sized business. While large companies can afford fast, T-1 data access and home-based businesses have been blessed with inexpensive ISDN or cable connections, those in the middle have been saddled with a choice between high prices or slower, dial-up connections. Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL service, is quickly becoming a viable alternative. DSL service offers full-time Internet access speeds typically in the 144Kbps-1Mbps range (three to 20 times faster than a 56Kbps modem) for prices starting at just over $100 per month. The catch is that DSL service is very distance-sensitive, meaning that businesses must be located nearby a Bell Atlantic Central Office switch (there are several in Columbia alone) to even qualify for the service or be offered the benefits of the higher speeds. It is also possible that the DSL companies are going to over-subscribe their capacities in order to make money on the product, but time will tell. In the past year, however, DSL installation delays have progressed from a nightmare to reasonable, and there is a definite value to small businesses to having a dedicated Internet connection.

Jay Fridkis is the President of MSGI Technology Solutions. He can be reached by e-fax at 801-697-9306, as well as through more conventional means (tel. 410-309-9676).