Official Web Site for SBSC Partner Area Leads

Social responsibility

"The first responsibity of business is to make enough profit to cover the costs for the future. If this social responsibility is not met, no other social responsibility can be met."

Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management.

Ready for business

The SBSC Partner Area Lead program is built for supporting the community of Microsoft Small Business Specialists.We had our second meeting, this time in Houston, and we have decided to improve the communication in a Worldwide level with the following goals:

  1. Register the progress of the SBSC community in different countries around the World.
  2. Register best practices and share ideas.
  3. Create a common are for networking between SBSC from all around the world

Blog
1/29/2009

Women In Leadership and Technology Event - March 9, TORONTO

Women in Leadership and Technology Event in Toronto

Date: March 9, 2009
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Microsoft Office - 1950 Meadowvale, Mississauga, ON

Women in Leadership & Technology are pleased to invite you to our first Canadian “Meet & Mingle”. The purpose of this event is to network with women in technology and leadership at Microsoft, women in technology and leadership in the partner channel, and women outside of the channel who are considering the benefits that our eco-system can offer.

The evening will include many opportunities to meet new colleagues so bring lots of business cards.

There will be both an informal and formal portion with both Microsoft and IAMCP presenting. The intention of Women in Leadership and Technology in Canada is to form a consortium that serves the needs of our community, so, bring your ideas, there will be opportunity for you to give us your feedback both at the event and afterwards.

We look forward to meeting you. It will be a wonderful evening. Please feel free to forward this invitation on to any colleagues who might be interested in attending.

Light Refreshments will be served.

About IAMCP Canada

Women in Leadership & Technology is a networking and mentoring group of like-minded women professionals in the Microsoft Partner eco-system who are committed to advancing the mission statement of IAMCP and upholding the highest standards of business ethics.

Register Online at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=135084


1/29/2009

Plug it in. Plug it in! The tale of Microsoft Round Table and the teeny weeny technical glitch

Remember those silly Glade commercials for their Glade plug ins? Well today was a real stinker of a technical glitch that just goes to prove that you need think of the dumbest thing when something won't work and that's probably it. Today I was retestign RT with another web cam. Round Table delivers a great picutre (okay it should be for that price)  BUT remote users need a good and I mean good web cam if they're to ensure a decent experience for the people sitting at Round Table and looking at you. For that reason I teste the Logitech Orbital Webcam. WOW. However before getting to that point I had set up the RT and of course plug it in. Well it decided it would light up but not all the way??? After a few moments I did what any good tech would do. I got mad and decided it might be my OS so I changed machines which meant changing locations and wall plugs. Seems RT did not like my power bar. Directly into the wall the whole things lit up and it showed up on my desktop within seconds. Go figure.  SO if your RT is being picky then don't waste time.  Plug it in, but just not into a power bar!

1/24/2009

So now what?

January is almost over and already I have seen or been part of some really interesting "things" for lack of a better word.  In the first week we saw a kind of confusion over what we might expect after ending the year with the still devastating stock market collapse and continuing bank instability. Mind you that didn't stop them from notifying me this week that they are raising their interest rates!!! Are you kidding me??? How can they possibly do this on my back when they've already helped deplete my retirement savings, thank you very much.
 
Walking into clients offices was a bit like walking into a myriad of differing viewpoints, concerns and also hopes that business will "carry on".  Into week two and I was busier than ever with clients deciding that technology investments were still a good investment, especialy when they see productivity increases as we saw going into week three.  I also was a part of a soon to be released article in Momentum magazine and Redmond Channel Partner Magazine. As the founder of and current member of the local and international committees of IAMCP's Women in Leadershp and Technology, RCP made a great story about the bottom line profits that can be increased when partners by bring more women into leadership roles in their businesses.  With work skills shortages looming in the near future and in some areas already affecting partner's businesses , WIL&T is very much about bringing more people into the tech sector to fulfill those positions.  On March 9th 2009, Microsoft will host the inaugural WIL&T networking event at the Microsoft Canada's head office.  We will have speakers including Lora Gernon and Carol Terentiak.  A link and detiais will be in a future post. 
 
And then there was a nice surprise when the Big Easy offer (see prior post) was not only relaunched but with more product rebates.  I took advantage of it immediately and plan to be able to sell even more sooner.
 
The only thing that has me unnerved in Canada is the increase of prices at the pumps when oil is at an all time low.  Maybe they haven't heard of the word collusion but I can tell you that when every station on the island of Montreal raises their prices 20 percent something stinks and it isn't the smell of gas fumes but corporate greed. SO much for helping out the little guy and helping ease market issues.  
I ended the week with having done more hours with clients than I would have imagined a month ago. Good yes, but the year has only started. So the thing we all have to do is keep our eyes and ears open and certainly think about what we can do to build a good momentum going forward.  What will you do?

1/24/2009

The Big Easy is back, BIGGER and BETTER

Big Easy?  Yes it is.

I was sitting at a client’s office yesterday madly installing and configuring some new stations when I received my Microsoft newsletter.  Taking a quick break I quickly scanned it and was hit right away by the Big Easy logo, which caught my attention.  Because I had learned in detail about Big Easy from our now infamous SBS web portal I pondered about checking it out just one more time. You have to know that in the past I have never found an offer for which my open licence purchases had ever qualified, so normally I gave up on looking at these “incentives” (okay BIG lie J, I looked but knew the only thing that was going to result was disappointment.)      But seeing that not only had they extended the offer but also increased the number of products they were offering rebates, piqued my interest. Since we’re all trying to “do more with less” the idea of saving clients money that they can pour right back into technology products or services, i.e.  you and I, I plunged into the site, with some reservation.  Often, not only are the rebates never applicable to anything I sold, but the paperwork had been, to put it bluntly, annoying. Well in about a total of 10 minutes (including reading and rechecking the list because of my utter disbelief) I had just fired of a request to save my client $1283. It took a few quick screens and the only thing I had to enter was the authorization and licence number and press submit, save for the screen where I go to input my partner info.  This is a service I did for my client, but frankly for the fact that it took only a few minutes I get a twofold “prize”. My client will be delighted I found this opportunity to do them a favour and I know this money will ultimately end up back in my pocket in some form.   And the added bonus?  Now my client will push ahead with the balance of the Office 2007 licences he may have put off to a later date.  And maybe just maybe add something else because the savings are just too good to pass up.   We all need incentives to push the economy along. I think the Big Easy is a big push towards making that happen in our industry. At the very least it’s a big step in the right direction.

Happy Sales!

Elisabeth


11/19/2008

Allison Watson webcast - Turning Economic Desparity Into Prosperity

 
Take a listen to Allison Watson on how to take advantage of the current economic uncertainty to keep revenues solid.  

Brad Kowerchuk

A place in the clouds – for VARs?

Larry Walsh wrote a great article entitled “Managing the Mass of Clouds, which you can find here . Here is some ramblings I replied to him with: VAR’s value the “R” (reseller) part of that, to our core. So, when it comes to choosing a vendor program we guard the client relationship part closely – “own the [...]

Will a slower economy accelerate cloud adoption?

As we are all aware, Microsoft is rolling out BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). Basically, you could compare this to a “rent” versus “own” conversation – in the past we have traditionally bought and “owned” our technology, and we are now considering “renting” these applications that will be hosted in the cloud. So, does the current [...]

New Vista Means Business training

Here are a few details of a new course around Vista, and an incentive to take the training: — Microsoft has launched the new Windows Vista Means Business course on the Partner Learning Center, targeting partners who serve small business customers. Partners that take the course and pass the assessment get entered into a sweepstakes for a [...]

Microsoft Change of Heart

As most of us know already, Microsoft sees their Software + Services as being the future of software delivery and expects that we, as partners, will play a large part in this. Probably the most controversial part was that Microsoft announced their intention to directly enter into the agreement with the customer, and to bill them [...]

Volume licensing for small businesses

I’ve heard that Microsoft is “seriously considering” a volume licensing option for small and medium businesses that would enable them to afford take advantage of features that Microsoft has reserved for its enterprise customers. Microsoft’s first step will be assembling an engineering team to look at what a small/medium business volume licensing package will look like, [...]

0% Financing from HP

HP has announced 0% financing. Here’s part of their announcement… In times like these, businesses face some tough decisions. To stay competitive you have to invest in technology. To stay lucrative you have to mind your cash flow. Who says you can’t have it all? Put HP’s reliability—and capital—to work for you with two new zero-percent [...]

Who is really qualified?

Sometimes I just feel like getting things off my chest, and today is one of those days. Do you ever compete against those who sincerely believe that they are qualified to do IT? I mean, they’re not arrogant, but they really do believe that somehow their hobby around technology makes them qualified to be an [...]

Effectively selling technology

Ok, so we all know we need new sales in the pipeline to grow our business. And, we all realize that selling technology is different than selling vacuum cleaners door to door. But I also think that to be good at sales requires an ongoing and committed effort – a lifetime of learning and progress. With the [...]

IT needs a paradigm shift

There is a great article from Robert M. Cohen about the need for a shift in how IT work with VARs to deliver solutions to the SMB market. See the story at… http://www.echannelline.com/canada/story.cfm?item=DLY010109-1 Here’s a couple of key takeaways: - VARs have strengths and weaknesses that are accurately outlined here. - VARs have declined in numbers from about [...]

Old year, new year

It seems that 2008 could not possibly be coming to an end, but here it is. This is the time of year to reflect on the successes and challenges of the past year, and to plan for the new year coming up. Here are a couple of things that can help: 1) Tune in Tuesday, December [...]