Wayne Schulz

Don't follow me - I'm lost too!

0 notes

Ahhhhh, The Tweet Life. If you are participating on Twitter, aren’t you interested to know more about your tweet success? I recently wrote a piece about Feeling Twitter-pated or Twitter-hated? to help people find their ‘twitter flair.’ However, that article didn’t focus on the tools and tricks that can help you maximize your efforts on twitter. So what can you do to evaluate your tweets? See who is following you (and more importantly unfollowing you)? Make tweets easier? Time your tweets? And more….? These tasks seem daunting - YET - there are many applications out there to easily track & trend your tweet success! Monitoring, measuring and maximizing your tweet life will pay off.
The Tweet Life: 10 Twitter Tools You Need | Social Media Today

10 notes

No other radar detector provides the portable convenience and protection of the SOLO S2. It’s easy to own and operate. No more cords—just stick it to the windshield, turn it on, and you’re ready to go. The SOLO S2 cordless radar detector is ideal for the person who is constantly in and out of rental cars, or just wants the easiest-to-use radar and laser protection.

No other radar detector provides the portable convenience and protection of the SOLO S2. It’s easy to own and operate. No more cords—just stick it to the windshield, turn it on, and you’re ready to go. The SOLO S2 cordless radar detector is ideal for the person who is constantly in and out of rental cars, or just wants the easiest-to-use radar and laser protection.

Filed under deal fatwallet

Notes

22 Social Media Alerts Your Business Should Be Using

Here’s a great post showing 22 different keywords you should be keeping an eye out for online.

These keywords can appear in Twitter feeds, blog posts, news stories, or just about anywhere else online.

Keeping track of keyword mentions is a great way to track what people say about your competitors and your own company.

My favorite alert system is Google Alerts - which is completely free and can alert in real time or daily.

http://www.google.com/alerts

Filed under google alerts google social media

Notes

MAS90 May 2011 Roadmap

Sage MAS90 Roadmap May 2011.pdf Download this file

The last time we took a tally (probably 2.5 years ago) the install based figures that my 90Minds crew settled on seemed likely to be in the 35,000 to 38,000 range. Sage just released their public road map for Sage ERP MAS90 and MAS 200 dated May 2011.

They state that their installed base of customers (which I’m assuming is users on maintenance) is 45,000.

Have a look at the document. We’ll have more insight on http://www.s-consult.com

Posted via email from Wayne Schulz | Comment »

0 notes

Honestly at least take a look at my site before proposing an unrelated link exchange

More ammunition for my personal belief that many SEO folks are just dumb,   unemployable morons.

————— Forwarded message —————
From: “Dealigg Blog” <support@dealigg.info>
Date: Apr 30, 2011 3:55 PM
Subject: Hi, do you run http://www.s-consult.com? Check this out !
To: <support@s-consult.com>Hey there,

My name is David. Basically, what I do is find a new partner for my site. I just did a search on Yahoo.com for “free after rebate” - don’t ask, haha ;-) Anyway, there you were, s-consult.com, and so here I am! :-) Well, it just occurred to me that we are both targeting pretty similar web visitors on our sites. Would you ever consider doing a link exchange with us? I have added your link already, check it out at http://dealigg.info/partner/s-consult.com I hope you like this I wasn’t sure what your email address was so I had to guess. I hope this gets to you :-)

Thank you David

Posted via email from Wayne Schulz | Comment »

Notes

SalesLogix

I have a two word thought about this spam. 
- Wayne 

Sent from my iPhone 

Begin forwarded message:
From: “Jennifer Gates” <jennifer.gates@globaltechusers.com>
Date: April 7, 2011 12:57:39 PM EDT
To: <wayne@s-consult.com>
Subject: SalesLogix

 

Hi,

 

What difference does it make to your organization if you are given a perpetual license to reach out to 8,334 SalesLogix users via permission based email addresses and complete business contact information?

 

Let me know your thoughts on this.

 

Appreciate your response.

 

Thanks and Regards,
Jennifer Gates
jennifer.gates@globaltechusers.com

 

Disclaimer: If you have received this electronic mail by error or if you’re not the right person to speak with in this regard, I’d appreciate if you would be so kind as to forward this email to the right person or the person in charge.

 

If you are not interested in receiving further communication from us, please reply to this email with subject line “Leaveout”.

 

Posted via email from Wayne Schulz | Comment »

0 notes

Hipchat Firewall Fail

Screen_shot_2011-03-08_at_8

Update 3-9-2011: Turns out Peer Guardian was somehow blocking port 5222 which is required by the HipChat application. I’ve no idea why any of the other remote apps that I run daily (GotoMeeting, Logmein, Join.Me, SocialCast, Yammer, Trillian, etc) did not have any issues.

Congratulations to HipChat on being the first chat application that I can remember that has ever reported firewall issues on my computer. Can you imagine rolling this out to 10 to 20 (or more) people and having to debug everyone’s firewall issues? 

I can’t.Uninstalled. Test drive over.

Posted via email from Wayne Schulz | Comment »

6 notes

Jim Hart Brings Cutting-Edge Cloud Solutions to His Clients

An interesting post from Scott Cytron in Accounting Software 411. He interviews Jim Hart, practice manager of SingerLewak Systems where he oversees the firm’s cloud computing (SaaS) practice.

It’s an interesting read as Jim describes the success that his firm has had with Intacct as a SaaS offering for their clients.

What stands out for me the most is when Scott asks him to describe one of his greatest success stories.

One of our clients is a franchisor providing centralized operations, billing and a call center to more than 60 franchisees across the nation; the business is also rapidly growing. Intacct enabled the client to deploy a central accounting system allowing all of its franchisees to access the system and create expense reports, view dashboards, receive billings and collaborate on financial decisions affecting the overall enterprise.

If this were deployed with traditional on-premise software, our client would have needed to create a secure network and infrastructure for the 60+ franchise locations. Beyond the purchase of servers, operating systems and network services, they would have had to install software on desktops within each location, and maintain that software with patches and upgrades. With Intacct, all they need is their favorite web browser.

The key takeaways for me from this article is that SaaS knocks it out of the park in situations where:

  1. The company using SaaS is fast growing
  2. The company using SaaS has multiple locations with a strong need for remote access
  3. The company using SaaS has failry simple core accounting needs (GL, AP, AR, Reporting)
  4. The company using SaaS has a CPA or financial advisor who is forward thinking and proactive in assisting them in establishing a modern financial reporting system.

Right now I’m not seeing the demand for SaaS for large numbers of companies who don’t fit into most (or all) of the four above categories. Given time and market pressures I expect that to change drastically.

To capture a more significant market share SaaS will come down in price by a factor of 50% and lose some of the pricing complexity that you won’t learn about until you try to configure a workable setup.

There will always be companies more comfortable keeping their accounting records “in house” on servers they control. These will primarily be transaction heavy wholesale distribution and manufacturing. 

I’m watching for SaaS computing to pick up real steam in 2011 and 2012. A SaaS offering is a great tool for CPA firms to provided a higher level of service for their clients while completely removing technology complexity that drove many of them from supporting clients on pre-packages (on-premises) accounting systems.

On premise providers will be forced to look very closely at their offerings and ensure that upgrades not only deliver customer perceived value (my suggestion is that each upgrade contains 12-14 features that wow the bookkeeper - not the IT department) but also greatly streamline the upgrade process.

Upgrades for on-premise solutions are too difficult and some publishers have done nothing more than off-load the labor and troubleshooting to the field rather than make their installation routines trouble free.

The next two years are going to be interesting as SaaS ramps up their offerings and on-premises publishers look to compete. Competition is a good thing in the marketplace and should result in a better overall customer experience. 

Filed under scott cytron accounting software 411 jim hart IT Alliance AICPA Intacct SaaS Cloud Computing

Notes

When Sage Holds An Analyst Day - Shouldn't There Be Some Analysis

Here’s a surprise - Sage held an analyst day where they were described as providing “enthusiastic response to that question” when asked if they’re changing to be more customer focussed.

Brian Sommer of ZDNet is out with his summary of the event - essentially (my paraphrase) - “Yup, Sage says they are now more customer focussed”.

No, I’m not joking. Read it for yourself.

Really.

At an event promoted by Sage they came out and agreed with the topic of the event? 

Where’s the analysis?

I’m not saying that Sage is — or isn’t — customer focussed. But rather - isn’t the job of analysts to provide some value to what they’re being told rather than re-hashing the PR event?

Filed under sage zdnet customer brian summer