Presentation is everything in business and if you offer your customers CDs or DVDs either as products in their own right or as part of your marketing, there’s little point unless they are produced professionally.

I’ve produced CDs for two of my businesses. For one, I was acting as a mini duplication company for a client and for another the CD was part of the product. Our options were either to have an external company produce the CDs on CDR and using inkjet printing on the surface for the label or to buy in the equipment to do the same ourselves. We opted for the latter and it was profitable enough.

But next time, I’ll do it differently. Kunaki.com is an online CD/DVD duplication “machine” that allows you to produce small quantities of completely professional CDs and DVDs at a tiny cost. For example, as a test, I had 5 copies of an audio CD produced. They came shrink-wrapped in a jewel case with full colour printed insert and rear insert. The CD face was beautifully printed and the CD itself looked as though it had been stamped rather than burned (can’t believe it was, however). All in all, a lovely result – the cost was around £1.25 per CD. It was only that much because of the shipping.

To use the system you download a piece of software which walks you through the process. You can use your own artwork (this is one area you should NOT scrimp) or provided templates. You get to see how the end result will look from all angles. Then, you put the original CD/DVD into your PC’s disk drive and the software reads it off the disk, compiles it all up with the artwork and uploads it. Once this is done, you can order as many copies as you like. You can even have Kunaki drop ship to Amazon or take payment from your customers on your behalf and ship for you. This works best if you’re based in the US as the shipping costs are lower and I’m not sure whether the integration with Amazon applies to the UK site but still, it’s a fantastically cheap way to get excellent results- especially if you get them to take payment or if you charge a good price for your product.

The biggest problem is that it doesn’t offer quantity discounts – it really is no cheaper (and sometimes it’s actually more expensive) to buy 100 than 10 or even 5. But if you’re selling a CD product for £20, for example, then buying 5 at a time will cost you (including shipping) $3 each (around £1.80 at present) for a completely professional result.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

First impressions count. Boring, clichéd but true.  An amateurish or incomplete website, for example, destroys the credibility of any small business. The same applies to your paper-based communications. We may live in a digital world, but paper’s been around for 4,000 years and it’s likely to remain important for the foreseeable future.

For most small businesses, the day to day production of paperwork is handled in-house and this presents two problems. Firstly, you need to have some understanding of design to come up with a professional look and for this I strongly recommend the Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams.

The second problem is translating your design into reality. Most small businesses use Microsoft Word but Word is not up to the job of creating sophisticated layouts. Word’s purpose is to make the job of generating documents quick and efficient. This is fine for reports and letters but if design is a key component of the document then a more sophisticated tool is needed and this is where desktop publishing comes in.

I’ve been involved in DTP since the days of Ventura running on the first PC GUI: GEM (a straight rip-off of the early Mac OS). Ventura cost a fortune, as did its successors. QuarkXpress, for example, will set you back around £900 plus several weeks of learning time. Adobe InDesign is more reasonably priced but will still cost you around £300 and, again, the learning curve is steep.

A desktop publishing application aimed at small business needs to satisfy four criteria:

1. It must include all the features they’re likely to need
2. It must be easy to learn and use
3. It must be capable of professional results
4. It must be cheap!

In my view, UK software publisher Serif’s PagePlus X5 is the only tool that meets all four criteria.

Features

PagePlus makes it possible to create everything from business cards through compliment slips, brochures and letterheads to newsletters, menus and postcards. PagePlus has a range of good quality built-in templates for you to base your documents on, each of which can be altered once you’ve created the document.

The latest version introduces “multiple master pages” which allows you to have, for example, one design for odd pages and a different design for even pages. Think of these like PowerPoint’s master slides – the more you can put into the master page, the less you have to repeat on each page.

PagePlus includes built-in drawing and photo manipulation tools – including an easy to use and fairly effective image cut-out tool which allows you to isolate the main image from the background. These tools are ideal for basic editing but can’t match Photoshop.

One of the most exciting features is PagePlus’s ability to import (as well as export) PDF documents. In practice what this means is that once the document is imported, it’s converted to PagePlus objects and you can then edit it or, most usefully, base your own document on the PDF’s layout. If you’re like me, you download PDFs on a regular basis and this is a fantastic way of learning design by basing your documents on an existing layout with the minimum effort.

In short, there’s NOTHING missing for business document development.

Easy to learn and use

If you can use Word and PowerPoint, you can use PagePlus X5. Most of the text formatting processes will be very similar to using Word whereas the drag and drop positioning of text and graphics is very similar to working in PowerPoint. Indeed, you can import text from the latest versions of Word and preserve most of the formatting so you can use the two alongside each other.

Of course, there’s a bit of learning to do. I also find the grid snapping clunky and inconvenient but it’s a small criticism. I would defy any reasonably proficient Office user to struggle with PagePlus.

Professional results

Just as having a copy of Word doesn’t make you a novelist, having a DTP package doesn’t make you a designer (see note above about how to fix that). However, PagePlus’s design templates at least give you a fighting chance.

Furthermore, PagePlus X5 makes it easy to provide a professional printing firm with the PDF format they need. This includes crop marks and very specific compression and resolution settings to suit the document size. Any self-respecting printing firm should be able to take your files and output your leaflets or brochures without fuss.

Cheap

PagePlus X5 costs £79 – a tenth the price of Quark Xpress (you can get it for less from Amazon). I’ve used it for creating a 60 page ebook, promotional postcards, stickers, instructions and letter headed paper. But what about Microsoft Publisher? Publisher was, for a long time, the only choice at the lower-price end of the market. However, quite apart from the fact that it costs 50% more than PagePlus, Publisher simply cannot compete feature-for-feature. And it’s refreshing to be able to buy a product created in the UK and set up out of the box for English English.

Overall, PagePlus X5 is the only realistic choice for small business desktop publishing. Its short learning curve, low price, high quality end-results and feature list would be enough on their own but the low price makes PagePlus X5 an essential part of the small business toolkit.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

As a business owner, keeping organised is critical especially if, like me, you’re naturally disorganised!

I’ve been using Backpack by 37Signals for a number of years and all of my businesses have a separate Backpack account. It’s a very easy to use, fairly free-form organisational tool and I use it largely for keeping track of information. For example, I keep notes about any interactions with the tax man, record customer conversations, software licenses – in fact anything I may need to lay my hands on later. Each of these is recorded in a separate Backpack Page.

It includes a calendar which can be shared amongst multiple users and also a simple writeboard with version tracking. You can also set up reminders to be sent to your mobile and even keep a journal of your daily activities.

Pricing starts at $24 per month (£17) and it pays for itself time and time again in convenience and peace of mind.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

Whilst primarily a piece of blogging software (this site uses it), WordPress is also used for creating fully-featured business websites. Indeed, unless your website is your business (eg ecommerce or web applications) WordPress is likely to be the best way to achieve an effective, professional online presence that you can then easily update and manage.

Installing WordPress is fairly straightforward and you should always install it onto your own domain rather than using the WordPress.org service – it’s a matter of credibility. Once installed, you can then change the look, feel and functionality of your site by adding a “theme”. There are many thousands of free themes whereas Thesis costs $89 (£56) so why would you want to buy a theme rather than use a free one?

It’s certainly not the case that paying for something on the internet necessarily makes sense. PHP, the programming language that underpins much of the internet (including WordPress itself) is open source and free. Apache, the web server software and Linux the operating system this site uses, power the majority of web servers worldwide, both are free. WordPress is also free.

However, in the case of Thesis, paying is definitely worthwhile unless your requirements are very basic. Buying Thesis has five main advantages:

1. It enables you to make significant changes to the look and feel of your site from within the WordPress control panel rather than having to dig into the code – this saves a huge amount of time
2. If you do want to do something a bit more radical, Thesis includes an easy to use editor – again this is a big time saver
3. It has built in Search Engine Optimisation features that make your site easier for Google to correctly index
4. It has world-class support from a dedicated user community
5. You only pay once: you get lifetime upgrades free of charge.

I’ll cover this in more depth in future articles but for now, if you have WordPress installed, I recommend Thesis as your theme. If you don’t – it’s time to consider moving across to the most popular content management system bar none.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

If you’re hiring serviced offices then networking will be taken care of for you but if you work from home, you’ll need some way of reliably connecting to the internet from your home office/spare room and accessing extra storage. Having additional storage means you can keep project files on that storage device and then access them from more than one computer in the house or this can be used for backup purposes.

There are a number of storage devices such as this: they’re called Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Which one to pick? Personally, I used Buffalo’s Linkstation products but whatever you choose, I recommend that you select one that supports RAID. This is a technology that allows two hard disks to be kept synchronised moment by moment. What this means in practice is that if one of the hard disks fails, the other one is a complete copy of it and therefore acts as an automatic backup. There’s no setup required beyond telling the device which form of RAID you want (you should select RAID 1 if you want the backup capability).

Connecting the network together

You’re probably aware that there are traditionally two ways of setting a network up: wired or wireless. Creating a wired network involves running ethernet cable around the house, usually from the ADSL router to each computer and to the NAS device. Wired networks perform the best but they are extremely disruptive to set up at home and it’s awkward to move computers around later.

Wireless networks are the most common form of home network. Once set up they’re fine, although they perform much more slowly than wired networks and you’ll certainly notice this when you connect to another computer or to your NAS device. There are also likely to be places in your house where the wirless reception is poor, making performance even worse. If you work in your shed, for example, you may well only get a very weak signal.

There is a more recent, third option. It’s possible to buy devices that plug into your mains power sockets and use the power cables already laid through your house to transmit the network traffic. Setup is as simple as plugging one of these devices into the mains socket nearest the router and another into the socket nearest each computer. Connect the router, the computer and any NAS device to the plug socket via an ethernet cable and you have an instant network.

Networking through the mains is almost as fast as an ethernet connection, is dead simple to set up and you can reposition the adapters around the house by simply moving them from socket to socket: no further setup required. If you’re working in the shed, simply use your power sockets in there.

I’ve been using the Netgear Powerline range for the past couple of years with absolutely no problems. Other ranges are available but you should be sure to use the same range throughout the house.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

When you start working from a home office, the natural thing to do is to use your existing broadband connection and leave things at that. However, if your business depends on having a connection to the internet (and whose doesn’t?) then you need to have a good quality connection day to day and a back-up plan.

Let’s begin with the connection itself. Your existing connection is probably a standard ADSL package (through your BT line) or a Virgin Media connection through cable. If it’s the latter, then that’s likely to be fine as cable connections are much more reliable, on average, than those through the phone line.

For standard ADSL connections, the quality of your broadband depends on two things: the quality of the physical wires and their connection to the exchange and, secondly, the package you choose.

You can maximise your chances of getting a consistently good connection by:

• choosing the right provider in the first place
• choosing the right package
• plugging your ADSL router into the master BT socket (not than extension)
• making sure the router is at least a few inches away from any possible interference including power adaptors and low energy light bulbs

Choosing the right provider

If your business relies on broadband, it’s essential to choose the best possible provider. Personally, I recommend avoiding the low-cost services aimed at consumers since they are universally crap. Hell would freeze solid before I’d use BT for anything more than necessary and the services from Sky, TalkTalk, Tiscali and AOL are rated poorly.

The best recommendation I can give is to go to reviewcentre.com and sort the reviews so that the highest reviewed products are at the top. Ignore all reviews with fewer than around 50 people contributing. You’ll find that Zen Internet ranks very highly and it has also won several PCPro Awards (voted for by readers) so it’s a good, safe, choice. You’ll notice that Zen’s service includes an online utility to check how much of your monthly download allowance you’ve used at any point. Run for the hills from any capped service that doesn’t offer this as you’ll be guessing whether you’ve incurred additional charges in any month.

Preparing for the worst

The very best broadband service will fail from time to time so you need to have a backup plan in place. If you live in an area with good 3G coverage then it’s worth getting a mobile internet dongle for your laptop.
However, bear in mind that 3G coverage is notoriously picky and the best position in your house for coverage may well not be where you want to work. It is possible to shared the mobile internet with other PCs in the house (see the networking guide in Essentials) so you can continue to work in your home office while switching over to mobile internet and wait for your ADSL to be fixed.
Mobile internet is not, generally speaking, as solid as ADSL and the data caps tend to be lower so this is for emergency use or while travelling. Tariffs start from £20 per month and I’ve had good experience with Vodafone’s products but, of course, it depends very much on which network has the best 3G coverage in your area.
I suggest beginning with your existing mobile phone provider (unless they’ve really cheesed you off) and take your phone to different areas in the house (start at the top). Check the 3G coverage level on your phone and that will give you a good idea. If you don’t get good coverage on your phone, use other people’s mobiles (on other networks) and see which, if any, gives a high reading. This is much more reliable than the coverage maps that the networks publish.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post

When I set my business up in 1999 there was really only one choice for accounting software: Sage and you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was still the case given their marketing budget and visibility.

The consequences of choosing Sage were that I needed to employ someone specifically to use that one piece of software (I can hardly believe it even as I write that!)  and that I got very little use out of it, as MD, because I would have needed to buy an extra licence to view the information.

In my view, Sage accounting software is an utter nightmare and it completely taints your view of what accounting software can do for you. In desperation, last year I looked for an online solution and, thank heavens, I found FreeAgent.

I kid you not, if you’re a Sage user or if you find book-keeping a long winded, boring process that you do because you must, take a look at FreeAgent (http://www.freeagentcentral.com). You can trial it free for a month so there’s nothing to lose.

As an illustration, I’ve gone from having to employ someone three days a week to do the books on my main company to doing the books myself in no more than one hour a month. I kid you not. In fact, I also do the books for another business and that takes 30 minutes a month.

Here’s how it works (having set up your account) -

1. Download your statements from your online banking account
2. Upload them to FreeAgent. FreeAgent then tries to work out what each entry means and only asks for explanations of those it can’t be sure about. It gets progressively better at this over time and I typically only have a dozen or so transactions to explain per month.

…that’s it.

Doing the VAT? Just make sure your statements have been uploaded, click Taxes, VAT, and there it is: a visual version of the paper form for you to fill straight in.

How about sending the books to the accountant? Easy: under Accounting you’ll see a range of reports to send to your accountant along with the ability to export the whole lot to Excel.

Accountants are a conservative lot and many of them are tied to the Sage treadmill (of course it suits them to perpetuate the air of complication and mystery around accounting that Sage encourages) but I’ve persuaded my accountant to accept information in FreeAgent format (you could even add them as a user on your account). If they don’t: fire them! Remember, your Accountant works for you not the other way round!

FreeAgent ranks in my top couple of web applications of any sort. As an extremely busy person, I confess to almost enjoying doing the accounts now. When a business isn’t doing well, I feel better for knowing the worst. When it IS doing well, I get a warm glow from knowing just how good things are.

Use Facebook to Comment on this Post