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Adding Email to your iPhone

We were just with a friend this afternoon and we came across a bugbear that should be an easy one to fix; adding your email to your iPhone.

If you have your business email account and it’s coming in on your laptop, but not on your phone it can lead to frustrations. Quite often your hosting company sends you IMAP this and POP that; none of which helps you get the email on the phone. Life can be made simple.

iPhone email and the meaning of P

As way of a bit of background it might help to explain the different methods of getting the email on to your phone. All these nonsensical words end in P because the P stands for protocol. Much the same as you have a set of rules that differ between meeting a native Indian in the rain forests of Brazil and the leader of the free world in the White House, so too you just have to match up the rules.

In this case the best protocol to use is IMAP as it is the most secure and does the most things for you without you having to do that much thinking – you’re here to run a business not an email server. You can also use POP3 which is the fire and forget of getting your email – effective, but a toothbrush is effective when you have to clean a floor. The SMTP is a middle of the road way to get your email delivered.

iPhone set up for your email account

1. Go in to:

Settings
Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Add Account

2. Once you are in there you will see the list below:

At the bottom you can see other, choose that.

3. You are going to add an email account so choose Add Mail Account…it is this simple.

4. Put in the details that you have. The “Name” field is what you want in there, so put in what you want your customers, friends and family to see when you send them an email. I would usually put in Hugh O’Malley for a business email or Hughie for a personal one. The “Description” field is only for your own benefit here, so just explain that it is the office email account, ie “Office Email”.

In the Email and Password fields, put in the email address that you are adding and the password that goes with that email address. The hosting provider or system administrator or IT guy will have given it to you (failing that just ask them).

Then Press Next in the top right hand corner.

5. Right we are on the final lap.

Above is two screenshots of the same page. You will have to do a bit of scrolling down to fill it in. You will need to put in your Name, Email and Description again; keep them the same as the previous page.

At the top of the screen choose IMAP, it’s the simplest one in the long run as a rule.

In the Incoming mail fields plug in the details that you have been given. Host Name is interchangeable for server or mailserver. This will usually be in the formation mail.yourdomain.com or smtp.yourdomain.com. The same IT person that gave you the email details will be able to give you the Host Name details too.

The same goes for OUTGOING MAIL SERVER. Then Press Next in the top right hand corner.

6. You may get told that nothing can be verified in a pop up, just hit “Continue” if this comes up. The final screen you will get is below:

Then Press Save in the top right hand corner.

7. At that stage you are done. Email will start flowing and you will be part of the connected generation.

Ensuring a Successful Data Migration

Amazon Webstore to Close. Avoid pitfalls in Moving your Online Store.

Author: Charlotte Breen

Selling Platforms are consolidating and the timelines for migrating from one to another are short.

Last July, EBay confirmed it would close ProStores and MagentoGo. 10,000 Small Business customers were given until Feb 1st, 2015 to migrate to another platform. That was a 6 month migration deadline.

Yesterday, Amazon announced that it would close Amazon Webstore. This time, you will have over a year to migrate, with July 1st, 2016 as the announced deadline.

Here are some “best practice in data migration” pointers, to help along the way.

Data Migration is rarely a one-step process. You will need to export it, clean it, change it into the new format, and then load your data into your new store.. It’s called Extract, Transform and Load (ETL).

First: Clean it.

Much like moving house, you start with the intention of recycling, discarding and taking with you only the things that matter. You will have a smooth transition, where the boxes you have carefully colour coded as “Kitchen” end up in the kitchen.

What actually happens is that you leave it too late and end up either shoving everything in bin bags and boxes and promising you’ll clean at the other end of the journey.

Or you leave it so late, you need to pay for professional help in getting it done on time.

Plan on exporting your data and spending some time cleaning it. And while you are at it, try and make sure you improve it. E.g.

Tidy columns and fields.
Make sure your numeric identifiers are in text columns and your numeric measures are in number columns. You carry out calculations on numeric measures. Numeric identifiers, such as telephone numbers, or invoice numbers, are better stored as text.
Ensure you have permission for the data you hold and are complying with all data legislation.

If you access your data at any stage, try and leave it in better condition than when you opened it. Ideally, try to spring-clean your data on an annual basis, or it will clog up with errors.

Second: Arm yourself with a Must-Have list.

Do your research.

Ensure that your Must-Haves and Nice-To-Haves are listed and prioritized. Understand in advance where you can compromise. E.g. Theme, Transaction Fees, Point of Sale Options and Email/Newsletter capability.

Formalizing your list helps you avoid panic shopping and impulse spending.

Know what your Must Haves are called.

Use comparison sites and reviews, to figure out what each of those Must-Have functions is currently called in the marketplace.

Demo at least 3 platforms.

Armed with your list of function names, (Must-Haves and Nice-To-Haves), you should now demo at least 3 products that seem to match your list.

Use your list to firm up the spin and sales patter.

Does it do what you need it to do? If so, does it also do things that are on your Nice to have list? Make notes or a scoring system on these points to keep track.

Working down your list, you can work through the demo to ensure you are getting all of the relevant information you need. E.g.

Can I see the Newsletter functionality? (Tick Y/N )
And how do I import into that? (Tick Y/N )
And does it manage it’s subscribe/unsubscribe permissions? (Tick Y/N )

Third: Plan your Migration. All of it.

You need to export and clean your data. You need to transform it into the appropriate format for the new platform you’ve chosen. You need to load it, and test it.

You’ll need to plan whether your old store will close before your new store opens, or else you’’ have to decide on how you’ll integrate and synchronize live orders and events during your migration. If at all possible, put the store in maintenance mode to simplify matters.

This is not a one step process. There will be research and testing, and migration and testing, and reviewing and more testing. Or there will be “issues”. And bugs. And downtime.

When choosing your new Store Platform, you should do some research on portability and migration, both into and out of your chosen platform. After all, this may happen again, and next time, you’ll have a plan in place. You’ll be able to take your data with you.

Import links for Store Platforms

BigCommerce
Shopify
Magento
Woocommerce
Mozu

Export links for Store Platforms

BigCommerce
Shopify
Magento
Woocommerce
Mozu

Fourth: Your Go-Live Event is NOT the end of the process.

Once you have tested and confirmed your migration, and your store is working again, Carry out a post-migration data check. Make sure that your data transferred cleanly and didn’t leave any odd and unexpected issues, like turning a text field into a number field.

So you pointers to a successful migration are:

Clean your data
Research your options
Plan your migration
Realize that data maintenance is a cycle.

If you don’t maintain your car, it quickly becomes unsafe to drive. The same applies to your data.

Author – Charlotte Breen

How to make your service dance

How to make your service dance from HughAppeerio

Recently I was honoured to be asked to talk to the Sligo Tech Meet-up. It was a great evening with a lot of interesting folk there. I have finally gotten round to sharing the slides.

As part of the talk I went through how I had gotten to where I was – some of the hiccups and some of the funny dalliances. There was the security auditor finding the passwords and usernames written on white stickers attached to the firewalls. There was the case of the electrical wiring error that blew the power units in a national financial institution. All these were disasters, but not catastrophic. In fact they are quite amusing at this stage.

What is catastrophic though is a loss of your service’s integrity. Accountants deal with this as a Goodwill balancing figure. Call centre managers aim to achieve a Net Promoter Score. CTO/Operations Manager’s use indices like Mean Time Between Failure and robustness calculations. All these are trying to quantify a good service.

There is a fallacy that if you have an internet business you do not need good service standards. That is rubbish. It may no longer be the obsequious shop clerk, but a system that is up is part of a good service. An intuitive interface is part of a good service. A timely set of communications is part of a good service (check out appeer.io for how to do communications well). If you didn’t get it, I believe service is central to what we all do.

Have a look at the presentation and I hope you enjoy it.

Programme Health Check

Tavne, in conjunction with our partner The Pollen Shop, has started providing a cost effective health check for programmes that are slowing down, moving off track or have reached a road block.

Sometimes even the most experienced programme managers need an independent view on how to move things on. We can work with your team to understand the issues that are preventing the programmes achieve their goals. Our approach is robust, honest and because it is respected by sponsors, other senior leaders and the programme team it defines the right level of both risk and resources that are required for any mitigation. This is partially useful when programmes are initiated by consortiums or across organisations with different programme cultures.

With extensive experience across health, government and financial sectors we have a full programme analytical tool set that we can adapt to your programme environment.

Our goal is to deliver a practical response to you quickly; because we understand how a timely intervention can make all the difference to the long term success of your programme.

Delivering to the UK Public Sector

As we build out the Tavne/Pollenshop offering, we are also building up the collateral that goes with it. Below is a link to the programme management documentation introducing us to the public sector.

Delivering to the UK Public Sector

Public Sector Partnership

Building on great relationships in the UK Public Sector, Tavne has a new IT offering. With our Partner The Pollen Shop we are offering a micro IT consultancy to the UK Public Sector.

Delivering in to the UK public sector is to a greater extent going home for Tavne. Most of us started our careers in the work for or in UK academic institutions. It then makes perfect sense to return to the scene of the crime with everything we have picked up over the last twenty years.

The Pollen Shop is a micro consultancy with a great track record in the UK public sector. Tavne and The Pollen Shop (Hugh and Gwilyn in effect) have a professional relationship stretching back 20 years. Now we are turning that expertise and knowledge to technology in the Public Sector.

To find out more about our offering, check out the link below.

Public Sector Partnership

Appeerio goes Hollywood

After a lot of hard work and effort, Appeerio has come through the Innovate Ennis programme.

Appeerio is Tavne’s startup. It is a piece of marketing automation infrastructure that will fit in to the cloud to make getting the right message to the right person at the right time with the right content in it using the right mode a little easier.

We now have a cut down version of what we are doing, a great mentor in the guise of Sandra Hennessy and a business canvas from which to build out our product.

While Darragh and Charlotte are working their way through how Appeerio will make market automation a better place, here is a first pass on what we are trying to achieve. Thanks a lot to Gert O’Rourke from Innovate Ennis for all her support with this.

New NTT Data framework partnership

Here at Tavne we are always trying to reach new markets. With our partner The Pollen Shop we are pleased to announce that we now access to the NTT Data ConsultancyOne framework with the UK government.

Due to massive growth over the last growth within The Pollen Shop, Tavne’s UK operation has been invited to build a strategic partnership in to the UK SME. We will be assisting The Pollenshop in bid preparation, pulling together consortia and delivering technology solutions in to the public sector market in the UK. This opportunity will build on the already strong export book Tavne has already secured in the last four months.

The services that we are going to be offering are:

If you want to find out more, please contact our UK sales desk on +44 (0)203 740 3431.

Get rid of the Server

How do you solve a problem like Maria? The last twenty five years of office strategy have given us a similar problem. How do we solve a problem like a server?

The Sound of Music gave us Eidelweiss; a lilting lullaby which eased the fear of a generation in war torn Europe. The lullaby of a whirring servers has lolled many a young office worker to sleep. Quite often a change in tempo and pitch has made many more finance departments run for the Purchase Order book. The changed noises coming from your server usually meant problems and they always meant money.

So, how do we rid ourselves of this problem. It is as simple as deciding to get rid of the server. First and foremost you have to decide why do you have a server in the first place. Usually it is to back up documents and hold the email.

There are lots of cheaper options to store your documents than a server that costs €5,000 to replace every three to five years. Then there is the whole problem around what happens when the server crashes and you have to work out where the backups were backed up. Don’t forget that the tax man says you need to keep records for six years.

As for email, most locally based server solutions are a stumbling block when it comes to doing business. How can you show the love to a customer if you have to get back to HQ in order to get your email? The cost of retro fitting email push solutions is a case of throwing good money after bad and that’s before we even mention that it is simply not reliable.

Google Apps and Office365 both give you email on the move seamlessly. There is a whole lot more going on there too, but let’s keep focused. What you want is access to your email and documents when you need them and the cloud delivers that to you. What you like is a reduced cost and the cloud definitely delivers on that too.

Get rid of the hassle, get rid of the server.

We are always interested in having a chat about making you money. For a free 15 minute review of your potential savings drop me a line on letstalk@tavne.com.

Incident Management in a SaaS environment

Integrating your incident management process using a SaaS toolset provides dividends to the organisation.

An unplanned event happens in everything we do in life. Whether it is spilling your drink in a packed bar or a child announcing they need the potty while driving to a Sunday lunch meeting with their grandparents, life throws you curve balls. How we react to them is in our genes. So why do we have problems dealing with these curve balls when it comes to Incident Management in a SaaS environment?

John Kenneth Galbraith used the term Conventional Wisdom to identify obstacles to newly acquired information. Conventional Wisdom sees Incident Management purely through the prism of firefighting. It is not until we integrate other data and processes with Incident Management that the organisation can add value. Driving down costs per incident, reducing the number of incidents and increasing average revenue per user.

Software as a Service is not new, but now an accepted mode to deliver business solutions. It is time to change the way we think about it. Even large enterprises are depending utilising SaaS. The example of Salesforce is but one.

Salesforce offers an organisation integration of Customer Relationship Management in a virtual solution. Specific to Incident Management, Salesforce allows for rapid sharing of information, insights based on the customer profile, behaviour and previous incidents and resource collaboration when finding a solution. All actions are tracked and stored for future reference.

Salesforce is not without its challenges. For instance if you want to integrate with your legacy billing platform the organisation needs to be on the Enterprise version of the Service Cloud. The impact here is a direct cost implication of a per seat license increase in excess of two-fold. The shortcut of buying the Web Services API module will not give the organisation the benefits in my experience; you end up finding you have to buy more modules that eventually add up to the same price.

There are indirect costs too when it comes to integration. In my experience with one such Salesforce integration house, Appirio, development was on time and to budget. Appirio, or saaspoint as they were previously branded, were also able to leverage off functionality already in the license bundle I had. Great when you are looking at building integration with other service solutions such as Splunk, Qualys or Smartsheet.com.

The power provided by Salesforce is that you have integration and sharing. The shortcut is to use single purpose call tracking tools to do the same job. Long term this is going to cause problems. Without integration, all you are doing is being effective, but you are not bringing efficiency in to the loop. The organisation will end up expending the same effort in five years time to bring a solution to a problem. Efficiency in that case will only be achieved by experience built up by the user and that is efficiency that never truly vests in the organisation.

Collaboration without integration is not a sustainable service improvement cycle. All organisations are better served investing in what creates vested wealth than achieving short term wins.

To find out more email letstalk@tavne.com.