One of the tools that can help manage a business is to read material being produced by companies which have a stake in the small business marketplace. This is one of the primary purposes of this blog as we focus on helping business people learn about our area of expertise, Office Documents. This involves many areas of specialization and we use the resources of many of our suppliers to find ideas and to support our efforts.
One of those resources is Microsoft. Of course Microsoft is so big and covers so much of the business landscape it is impossible for anyone to become an expert in all of the areas they cover. One of the tools they use which has more of a focus on small business than many others is their Business Insights Newsletter. Their recently published August edition addresses several areas that are of concern to most businesses.
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Five key decisions that are core to most small businesses
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Sleep Easier: A case study of how one business used cloud services to gain reliability and disaster recovery.
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Should you blog? How one Canadian company has used blogging.
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Risky business? Are you at risk with Windows XP
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Should you move to the cloud?
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Reporting gaps in your business
Naturally, each area covered involves some of Microsoft's solutions to the issues. That's OK as we have to face it Microsoft has some pretty good answers in many fields. What is more important for most businesses is to address the ideas and think about how your company is responding to them. Have you considered all of these issues, some of those or none of them? Are they important for your business? How do they fit into your IT plans and your application of technology to stay ahead of your competition?
This Microsoft newsletter is only one of many that we read and consider each month. If these are issues for your business you may wish to sign up for this newsletter or similar ones to help you stay ahead. Of course you can also use the easy to sign up button on the side bar of this blog to get on the regular notification list for each article we publish as well. (Note this list is only used for blog article notifications, not any other purpose and you can easily unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of any article.) Try it out. You may find that you see material you never considered before in your business.
How do you keep up? What resources do you value and read regularly?
Please share your ideas in the comments below.
Lee K
Photo Credit: Microsoft Business Insights Newsletter.
