Smart cloud tools for smart business gals
One of the biggest changes many of us find on starting out on our own is coping with technology and being a fully functioning business without feeling like that duck with the hammer if you don’t have any IT helpdesk.
This blog post is the first in the series about my journey from corporate warrior with exchange servers, VPN’s and everything Microsoft, to a faster, nimbler and more agile remote office befitting a modern business consultant. While my business might be focused on marketing strategy for the Pharma and Biotech industry, you can apply the concepts and ideas to any small business.
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One of the first things I did was compare an Apple with a Windows laptop for my colleague and I; similarly spec’ed and priced, which one would win out?
After 6 months I gave up and bough myself a Mac too and never looked back! The biggest differences were in speed, stability, flexibility and general frustration levels. Hate frozen windows in the middle of saving, updates that start out of nowhere unbidden and printer drivers that don’t work with existing peripherals? Life is too short to be the frustrated consultant and since you’re only as good as your last project, you want it delivered on time and looking professional.
In the corporate world you have vast servers, overnight backups and a helpdesk that eventually responds to your woes when you ticket rises to the top of the pile. In consultant land, you’re on your own, so you better learn quick.
Aside from switching to a Mac platform and wifi, both of which are easy enough to do, you soon realize that you can easily drag and drop files across the wifi network between computers, do wifi printing from the garden to the office on the 3rd floor, for example. I never managed to get my Dell laptop to do either trick, so ultimately, it had to go.
The other thing you quickly realise is that if you don’t have a great memory or filing system, backups are critical. Part of my role as a science and marketing consultant is too consume vast amounts of data and package it as analysis for clients with clear insights and recommendations. To do that though, requires absorbing a lot of data for each project, literally bankers boxes every time if you printed it all out. That though, isn’t very eco-friendly or searchable. The solution is a small desktop scanner (eg a Fujitsu ScanSnap), which means you can scan and email signed files to clients or send them by email to cloud apps and back them up on your hard drive or the cloud apps. Either way, electronic copies are much more flexible for a consultant.
One of the first things I thought about was storage and filing. I don’t like either and am hopeless at both, so when someone suggested Evernote , I jumped at the chance to push everything to the cloud and then ruthlessly tag files by keywords. Searching for keywords rather than filing in folders is definitely the way to go. You can save all sorts of things to Evernote: pdf files, invoices, receipts, pictures, posters, spreadsheets, web clips, email, text clips, audio notes, whatever you like; it’s all archived electronically and providing you tag, eminently retrievable.
The other bits of essential kit I cannot do without are a reliable printer for client reports, a desktop photocopier, external disk drives, flash keys and an industrial strength shredder. They’ve all saved me considerable time and hassle over the last 6 years and were worth investing in.
An external disk drive saves you a lot of time, energy and hassle as well as providing piece of mind. I use ones from LaCie via Amazon; you can even travel with them and they’re very robust. They also work with Mac or Windows.
The one thing I never need? A fax machine, because these days clients and I can share things electronically either by scan and email or using a nifty file sharing device such as ZumoDrive.
ZumoDrive is brilliant for sharing huge reports or files over 10Mb. You create a link to a file using a person’s email address and email your client the link. It’s also great for sharing large MP3 files either for audio recordings, interviews, podcasts or music. I’ve also tried out Dropbox , but love ZumoDrive and the free tutorial you can do in stages then get 1GB free when you reach Black Belt. It’s a cool way to learn by doing.
Tagging is something I do religiously in email too. After experimenting with several business email tools, Google Business Email came up trumps. You can access from any computer or smart phone remotely from the internet to the cloud and also have your own business domain name too. Tagging emails makes search easier and faster then filing in folders.
Google also comes up trumps with Google Docs. You can create Office compatible spreadsheets, presentations and documents very easily and for free, as well as sharing files with clients on a public drive or via password access. What’s really cool is that you might be on the phone or Skype discussing a press release, presentation or spreadsheet analysis while editing and collaborating on it together in real time.
In the next two blog posts, I’ll talk about some more cool apps that you can use (many are free or available at a low cost) and in the 4th one, how you can start putting it all together in a seamless and functional way as part of being a savvy modern businesswoman.
What do you recommend?
About Sally ChurchSally Church runs a Pharma and Biotech consulting company, Icarus Consultants, for companies looking for a fast track to market. You can find her on Twitter @maverickNY
View all posts by Sally Church →
16 Responses to Smart cloud tools for smart business gals
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Right now, Sally, the only thing I could recommend is a notebook and pencil – largely because prior to now I have been the internet’s most fiendish Luddite.
However thanks to your post – and one or two others on here – I am beginning to emerge from my cave and think about the awful ways in which I’m still dealing with information. (And considering how to go about improving it.)
A great post, Sally. Much appreciated.
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
Right now, Sally, the only thing I could recommend is a notebook and pencil – largely because prior to now I have been the internet’s most fiendish Luddite.
However thanks to your post – and one or two others on here – I am beginning to emerge from my cave and think about the awful ways in which I’m still dealing with information. (And considering how to go about improving it.)
A great post, Sally. Much appreciated.
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
To be honest, Suze I wouldn’t be without my moleskine and fountain pen either, but some technology is actually very useful as you will learn over my mini series
To be honest, Suze I wouldn’t be without my moleskine and fountain pen either, but some technology is actually very useful as you will learn over my mini series
Ah, I wonder if I could trade in my back bedroom tech support guy for a Mac?
I’m terrible about tagging, am beginning to see that it could be useful but nearly everything ends up in miscellaneous.
I suspect I need a more orderly mind….
Ah, I wonder if I could trade in my back bedroom tech support guy for a Mac?
I’m terrible about tagging, am beginning to see that it could be useful but nearly everything ends up in miscellaneous.
I suspect I need a more orderly mind….
Miscellaneous is completely verbotten, Ann!
I tag with different cancers, different pathways, etc makes it much easier to find things across all sorts of platforms such as email, RSS readers, blog posts etc.
Think about what you do: stitching, dyeing, needlepoint, poetry, crime writing etc. Think about typical business tasks such as invoices, contracts, receipts, etc.
The neatest thing about Evernote is that any photo or picture you scan or save to it will automatically have any word readable when you search later.
I save scientific papers and posters to it, which makes them much easier to find
Miscellaneous is completely verbotten, Ann!
I tag with different cancers, different pathways, etc makes it much easier to find things across all sorts of platforms such as email, RSS readers, blog posts etc.
Think about what you do: stitching, dyeing, needlepoint, poetry, crime writing etc. Think about typical business tasks such as invoices, contracts, receipts, etc.
The neatest thing about Evernote is that any photo or picture you scan or save to it will automatically have any word readable when you search later.
I save scientific papers and posters to it, which makes them much easier to find
Great blog Sally – very useful info.
I shall be trying out Zumodrive.
Another tip; I’m a PC and have had several problems with harddrives – after a few expensive trips to a laptop doctor, I discovered that in 90% of cases, data is retrievable from broken hard drives. You can easily remove the drive from your laptop and then pop it into a reader (like the SATA reader on this link http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=226653) and then plug it into another PC to access the info on it.
Or maybe just buy a Mac;)
Elaine, that is just what I have been looking for, and will be up at Maplins the weekend. I have so much info on dead laptops and if I can get it back, life would be very happy indeed!
Glad to have helped!
That’s a neat idea, Elaine, will check it out for the old Windoze laptop that died!
Twitter: maverickny
Great blog Sally – very useful info.
I shall be trying out Zumodrive.
Another tip; I’m a PC and have had several problems with harddrives – after a few expensive trips to a laptop doctor, I discovered that in 90% of cases, data is retrievable from broken hard drives. You can easily remove the drive from your laptop and then pop it into a reader (like the SATA reader on this link http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=226653) and then plug it into another PC to access the info on it.
Or maybe just buy a Mac;)
Elaine, that is just what I have been looking for, and will be up at Maplins the weekend. I have so much info on dead laptops and if I can get it back, life would be very happy indeed!
Glad to have helped!
That’s a neat idea, Elaine, will check it out for the old Windoze laptop that died!
Twitter: maverickny