18 Feb

Improving Cash flow for Hire Rental Management Companies

An increasing number of our hire and rental customers are talking to us about they can improve cash flow in these tough economic times.

Cash flow is crucial to the success of every business, especially to hire businesses and rental management companies.

Delayed customer payments can tighten your company’s access to working capital, thereby restricting your capacity for growth. This is the most common discussion topic amongst our customers – payment deferrals by major accounts and long term hires.

We use Ezidebit to manage our cash flow and payments, it has worked brilliantly for us. (please note we have no financial relationship nor related business ownership with Ezidebit.)

Ezidebit provides you with tailored payment solutions to minimise these cash flow concerns and enable your business to grow and prosper into the future. Ezidebit offers a fully automatic collection solution, suitable for regular recurring fees, variable invoiced payments or payment plans.

We have found that with Ezidebit’s direct debit payment system we have gained not only gain greater control but a real reduction in outstanding payments. More importantly we no longer have the emotional and time drain spent in chasing payments.

Ezidebit can have your business set up and signing up customers within a day.

Their contact information is www.ezidebit.com.au , phone 1300 763 256 or email info@ezidebit.com.au

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

Free Wedding Planning Software

Here is a great value add to wedding hire or wedding rental companies clients.

Wedding Decorating Ideas is a blog with a great range of wedding decorating ideas.

It also has Free wedding planning software

The site doesnt compete with you as it doesnt hire or rent wedding equipment.

However just be aware of the annoying pop up that appears occaisionally.

Remember if you are a Wedding Hire or Wedding Rental company we provide the world’s most innovative wedding hire software or wedding rental software business management system to help run your business. Includes complete booking management, financials, digital and social media marketing PLUS MORE.

About Us

18 Feb

Twitter Spam

Rarely do we make any third party posts, but we recently came accross this one by Bernard Moon on Mashable.Com

It is well worth reading, the link is below

Twitter Spam: 3 Ways Scammers are Filling Twitter With Junk

About Us

Posted using ShareThis

18 Feb

Political Cartoonists and Advertising – what is the link?

| 1 comment

The question is what have Political Cartoonists got to do with the Business Advertising, specifically advertising?

On face value the question would seem quite silly, but it is not.

Print Media advertising has a been a key part of the hire industry and rental industry advertising mix for decades!

But is print media advertising it still effective?

Traditional newspapers and serious print media are under serious threat. Not convinced, then consider this – In 2009 alone nearly 90 USA newspapers or magazines have closed or migrated to just web delivery. Taking nearly 9000 jobs with them! Erica Smith a journalist herself has been mapping the decline of the traditional media for years, her blog is universally regarded.

Update an article just published today, 1 Sep 09 on social mashable that Newspaper revenues have declined by 29% compared to the same quarter last year. This is a dramatic drop. To read the full article click here

Why the decline?

The traditional business model of Newspapers is advertising revenues fund quality journalism which attracts a readership demographic. The attracted readership demographic appeals to particular advertisers who in turn then pay for the newspaper advertising. However things are changing:

Increasingly people would rather go on line and read what they want from where they want when they want.
Secondly, user generated news content is replacing serious journalistic analysis and commentary.
Finally, as readership has declined companies etc have moved their advertising from print to digital.

So back to the Political Cartoonists

Political Cartoonists have become a barometer of the health and relevance of the Traditional Media. As one USA political cartoonist during a NPR radio interview stated, a decade ago their were over 300 print media employed political cartoonists in the USA now their are less than 50. The reason is that the advertising revenues of newspapers has declined, forcing newspapers to cut back on staff, including the visual editorial staff such as cartoonists.

Cartoonists like journalists are critical in attracting or maintaining a readership. Each incremental loss of such staff, eg cartoonists, reduces the newspapers readership appeal or reach into a market demographic. It is this market demographic reach that appeals to the advertisers.

So if newspapers are cutting back on quality journalism, including political cartoonists then the effect could be a reduction in their readership. Therefore if readership declines (market demographic reach), then the effectiveness of advertising through such newspapers begins to become a consideration.

Print Advertising

The question then arising for all businesses (or our focus specifically Hire and Rental companies) becomes is newspaper advertising still an effective marketing channel?

Judging from anecdotal evidence many businesses, hire and rental companies included, have voted with their keyboards and have begun to spread their marketing budgets into on-line marketing and even social media. Evidence also exists in other industry sectors, eg in a recent article in Tire Business one owner cited that in 5 years his print advertising budget had been reduced from over 50% to 11%, (click on quote to access the full article – well worth reading)

..., who operates 15 stores across Michigan, said half his ad budget goes to direct mail and TV, but only 11 percent goes to newspaper advertising. Five years ago, more than half of Northwest Tire’s ad budget went towards newspaper ads.

The Answer

So the question was what have political cartoonists got to do with advertising trends? Well the answer is – as the number of employed political cartoonists in the traditional print media declines so does the business spend on traditional print media advertising.

About Us

Hire and rental management systems like HireEzy make the use of such on-line marketing easy to use and part of the natural hire and rental business process. For more information contact us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

New survey shows social media hitting critical mass for marketers.

Great article based on a survey on the adoption of social media marketing.

Useful information on the rapid adoption of social media marketing by smaller companies at the apparent expense of traditional marketing expenditure.

May be its time to consider social media marketing for lead generation for your hire or rental business.

New survey shows social media hitting critical mass for marketers.

Posted using ShareThis

About Us

18 Feb

SMS can reduce booking cancellations

Research in the USA has shown that SMS reminders can reduce booking no shows by as much as 25%.

Reminding clients the day before the booking is due for collection can reduce your no show cancellations.

If a client does not appear for an appointment, that costs a business money. It’s a missed opportunity for the organization unless a punitive “no-show” policy is put into place. An SMS is a polite, unobtrusive way of delivering this reminder.

For Companies that hire services or even equipment a no show is simply lost revenue.

Most hire and rental companies even if the hire or rent equipment are effectively selling time. If that time is lost, it can be regained. For example, if a client hires or rents a service from 10am to 12 pm and doesn’t show, then revenue for that time slot is lost. Unless a walk in customer appears there and then or another customer can be brought forward.

Even rental of equipment is impacted. If a client confirms a booking of a equipment for the day and then doesn’t show the sale for that day is arguably lost.

Therefore taking simple cost effective measures to reduce booking cancellations is worthwhile.

People Quicker to Respond to Text’s

It is not just the cost saving that drives SMS effectiveness it is people’s attitudes to text. Research by USA Telecommunications Company Sprint has shown that people respond quicker to text’s than voice mails.

all age groups are more likely to respond to a text message more quickly than a voice message. Predictably, among adults under 30 years of age, 78 percent say they respond immediately or within minutes to a text message. Even 54 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds said they respond to a text

Integrate SMS in WorkFlow

For hire and rental companies, SMS is integrated into HireEzy. Simply opne the client booking, click SMS, icon, type in the text you want to send and transmit. The SMS message is then automatically recorded against your customer record.

SMS is an effective tool in that for a few cents, can reduce lost booking revenue of multiple dollars.

Using SMS with HireEzy is easy.

SMS credits are available from us, at discount rates.

About Us

Vlingo Research: 94% of Teens Use Mobile Phone to Text (debaird.net)

18 Feb

Hire Rental Marketing Options for the Economic Recovery

Over the last 12 months many hire and rental companies have been facing tough times.

However even with the first green shoots of recovery appearing many companies are still forced to ensure that costs are contained.

The question is should the marketing budget be one of the areas in which costs are cut?

Reduce Marketing Spend Yes or No?

For some the question became should you cut your marketing promotion?

The simple answer was no!

According to Malcolm McDonald, emeritus professor at Cranfield University School of Management in the UK, recessions can “focus the mind” and lead {sic companies} agencies to “cut out the waste”. He advises brands to focus on core customers in needs-based segments, adding: “Whatever you do, don’t cut promotional expenditure in the core business. [There is] massive evidence that cutting promotional spend in a recession is disastrous

Green Shoots of Growth

Now the green shoots of recovery are upon us, and many are now beginning to plan for the long term. The most recent McKinsey report shows that this longer term planning focus is now starting to creep back in to business thinking. But it also makes the point that many companys’ are still focusing on containing costs. click here to read the article.

The recession has created opportunities for hire and rental companies that have survived. Such opportunities include picking up new clients from competitors that are less well placed or who have closed their businesses.

Low Cost Marketing Options

There are a range of alternative low marketing options that can now be considered, the most effective of these is digital marketing.

Why digital marketing, well because as previous research posts in this blog have shown, web leads now account for over 55% of new business for progressive hire and rental companies. If you are uncertain about digital or social media marketing then read this article, 13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is worth your time

Achieving such increases though does depend on doing some basics:

Web Site: Enabling customers/ prospects to browse your service/ product offering and place in a booking request.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation this is a range of things you need to do to help Search Engines, hence your customers find you.
Blog: Grossly under-rated but shown in the latest UK research to increase web traffic for small business by over 50%. This is where you post about your solutions, eg how to plan a party, or examples of Marquee Weddings, etc. Content people are looking for to read and find information, before making a decision to purchase.
Twitter: Singularly the most effective business tool for letting people know about your latest blog posts or catalogue item changes.

There are a range of other tools that you can use. But as a basic plan

Making it Easy

If this sounds hard it is not, but it does take commitment. This is where we can help. HireEzy provides you with a hire and rental business management solution that has:

WebSite: A fully integrated web site in which customers can browse and place orders requests directly in to your HireEzy system. HireEZy’s unique web integration tools, any changes you make in your catalogue can be immediately published to your website, if you so choose. What this does, is to increase your search engine rankings, if you make changes often, that in turn improves you lead generation.

Integrated Digital Marketing Tools: Furthermore it includes a full range of digital marketing tools including Twitter and blog integration. A very effective way of maintaining your marketing effort whilst containing costs in times like these is to use HireEzy. HireEzy comes with an inbuilt range of marketing tools, to assist you producing low cost but highly effective brochures, newsletters etc. All tools are inbuilt in your Hire Software and are linked to your product catalogue, so that with simple one click steps and you can email, tweet, post on line or print a range of high graphic image marketing collateral.

What more information or an on line demo, then go to our website www.makinglifeezy.com.au or email us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

Understanding Social Media Marketing

The array of terms and sites, even the barrage of icon farms at the bottom or articles you now read can be a confusing introduction to Social Media Marketing.

To assist Hire and Rental companies understand how it all works, we recommend going to the Social Marketing Journal – link below.

Social Marketing Journal – Social Media Marketing Optimization Blog

About Us

18 Feb

Why Communicating With Customers Is Now Harder Yet Easier

| 1 comment

Communicating with customers/ prospects is now both easier and yet more difficult!

Easier because there are more channels available to communicate with customers / prospects such as Social Media.

Yet more difficult because customers or prospects have more choices from which to receive communications and more selective in who they invite to send information.

Note: In this article the term customer is used to cover both existing customers and prospects.

Why Is It More Difficult!

Communicating with customers even five years ago was fairly straight forward. You could communicate directly through email, mail or even the telephone. Or you could advertise in the newspaper, yellow pages or if you could afford it Television or Radio.

But all of these are now less effective than five years ago

You may well have your customers address, email or phone number

but are you actually reaching them?

Traditional Mail

This is not new we have all known this for years. Companies are increasingly using electronic means to communicate and invoice and pay bills. For example according to the Washington Post, the US Postal Service has ..

That downward trend is only accelerating. The Postal Service projects a decline of about 10 billion pieces of mail in each of the next two years, going from a high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion projected for 2010.

And nearly half of this is junk mail!

the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivered 153.8 billion pieces of mail, of which 43 percent, or 66.4 billion pieces, were junk mail.

Decline of Email

Email is beginning to decline in popularity, as more communication options become available.

In 2003, people spent 46% of their time online using sites which fall into the “communications” category – that is, sites whose core capabilities are email and instant messaging. By 2009, that usage dropped to 27% or a 41% decline in overall use.

May be spam has contributed to the decline in people’s focus on email as a primary source of communication.

In Microsoft’s latest biannual report on the state of computer security, the company says that in the second half of 2008, a full 97.3 percent of email traffic was unwanted spam (or malicious email like phishing attacks and outright viruses).

Tele-Sales Now Seen As Least Effective

Business to Business tele-marketing or sales is also in decline for a number of reasons, not the least of which are changes in the legislation’s around the world governing tele-marketing practises. Many now view out bound tele-marketing as the least effective option.

90% view Telemarketing as at least as effective as their other marketing mediums.

Decline of Yellow Pages/ NewsPapers/ Television

Even these – the stalwarts of advertising for decades are in decline, see previous post Advertising media types

So Where Are Customers Going

Well it appears they are becoming more interested in Social Media. However social media whilst opening up new channels also poses some interesting problems.

It is Discretionary

Yes you can communicate with customers now by using Twitter or Facebook etc. However it is at the customers discretion as to whether they allow you to communicate with them. Either by adding as a Friend on Facebook or Following You on Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter are arguably direct communication social media type but there are more indirect channels.

Common Interest

Many years ago I read the Dale Carnegie Classic – “How to Win Friends and Influence People” . In that book, I remember reading the story of how he (or someone) had tried to make an appointment with a prospect for years – but failed. He then found that they both had a common interest in something. From this he was able to develop a friendship which led to sales.

This can be the same with Social Media!

For example through say Social Book marking sites (eg Digg, Stumble on) you may find that you have common interests in similar articles. Developing relationships this way can lead to either direct sales or them even referring you on to their community or contacts. It also provides a means to commence a discussion leading potentially to being invited to join their discretionary social media sites.

Social Media provides opportunities to engage prospects and customers indirectly, by finding things of common interest.

It Works!

For example, our software is developed for hire and rental companies. One of our major points of difference is integration with the Web and Social Media. We therefore are genuinely interested in both subjects. We write about it (blog posts), we read about it and we comment about it. Through this process we have found similar like minded companies and individuals and built really good communities on Facebook (>350 friends), Twitter (>3000 followers) and also on Digg and Stumble On. It does deliver results for us:

We trailed just using Social Media Marketing for three months. We dropped Adwords all together and found that our sales leads increased by over 80% and our Alex Web Site ranking went up 1000% in the same period. See full post – “Is Social Media Marketing Worth The Effort”

Summary

So yes on one hand their are more ways to communicate with your customers yet at the same time it is more difficult. We are entering a period where increasingly customers are gaining control over who, what, when and how they are communicated with. This will pose a both challenges and opportunities to marketing people for in the future.

Interested in more articles on Social Media and Marketing?

Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Networked Blogs or Stumble On

About Us

Google Already Indexing Twitter? (techie-buzz.com)
Facebook Guide For Professionals: How To Succeed In A Networked Economy (allfacebook.com)
What Is Next For Social Media? (regulargeek.com)

12 Feb

Thumbs Down – Techo Twitter Posts week ending 18 Oct

Welcome to the Thumbs Down Edition of my review of the week in tech.

Each week I’m picking out the things that I thought were a stupid idea, a bad thing to happen or just payed out on a tech company deservedly that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

I missed out on doing this weekly review on time as it was all hands on deck in Making Life Ezy putting the final touches on HireEzy 2.1 before release that week. We’re all done now and everything is back to normal.

This week in Thumbs Down I found myself highlighting Google‘s lamo attempt to control the internet and picking out a HUGE problem with Apple‘s new operating system which deletes all user data. Yeah, you read that right – and people whinge about Windows. Gosh.

Haha – Google Wave – Early Impressions: Too Much Effort & Unintuitive http://tinyurl.com/yzhn4st

I’ve blogged before about how I think Google Wave is/will be stupid, worthless and pointless. But don’t just take my word for it, other people are saying it too – as evidenced by this article. Don’t know what Google Wave is? Well, who cares. If you do, it’s supposed to be an email/twitter/instant messaging alternative – replacement, whatever. C’mon Google, you employ 20,000 of the smartest people on earth and not one of you can figure out that most people won’t want to ditch email because they can barely breathe without having access to it. #FAIL

Interesting read, if you’re a geek – YouTube‘s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net http://tinyurl.com/yfhcuuv

Well, I know most of you aren’t geeks and won’t read the article, so I’ll paraphrase here to outline why I thought this article was interesting – basically, Google has a direct optical fibre connection to the core movers and shakers that make the internet connect to everybody (in fact, I read recently that Google accounts for 6% of all internet traffic in the word at the moment, an astounding statistic for a company that didn’t exist 10 years ago), which means that Google don’t need to pay for internet traffic. So, all of those YouTube videos are just beaming out of the place with the computer infrastructure built into the rest of Google’s fortress of computer power, essentially making what most people would think to be an extremely expensive operation in pushing out online video actually cost them basically nothing to run – all those ad impressions are pure profit. This is an amazing contrast to an organisation like Facebook, which spends $1 million a month of infrastructure to make their service super snappy and fast for users. What the article goes on to detail is how Google hold so much power already, that instead of internet providers charging places like Google to have direct access to each other so that company’s internet users their their site quicker, Google are so powerful that they can charge internet companies to have better direct access to them to provide their services faster to their users. In the next 3 years this will be a huge debate in the US as their government is trying to regulate this stuff and don’t really know how to approach it properly. Public outcry ensures. It’ll be an interesting development.

LAME – Google enters the e-book arena http://bit.ly/wFDAM

I’m sure if I stood in a newsagent taking pictures of each page of a magazine so I could read it later without having to buy the magazine in the first place I’d be chased down the street by the shop owner and probably have the cops called on me. Google send people to libraries to scan books digially, build a whole online book store full of inventory and they call it a “business“. This is criminal. That’s all I have to say.

WOW Mac Users should read this – Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data http://bit.ly/10PdGD

So, being the good samaritan that I am, I’ll give you Mac users this tip – don’t allow anonymous logins on your computer. You’ll have your login that you use and just keep using that – don’t switch to another user and use the anonymous feature, as what happens is that you’ll go to log back into your computer as you and everything will be gone. Yeah, it’s pretty awful and embarassing problem. I tweeted this last week and I’m not sure if Apple have patched this problem yet but keep your eyes peeled on the Apple Software Update feature – last I read Apple were looking to put out a 10.6.1 update that addresses this and other problems.

About Us

Confessions of a Google Wave Fanboy (elasticvapor.com)
Weekly Wrapup: Google Wave, Real-Time Web Trends, And More… (readwriteweb.com)
Facebook Wave: Why Facebook Should Clone Google Wave (mashable.com)
VIDEO: Google Wave Gets Explained (mashable.com)

12 Feb

Event Hire and Rental statistics and opportunities

| 2 comments

(Source Reuters) News reports in the USA have pointed to a savage downturn in the $175 billion corporate meetings market.

Driven by companies slashing their conference, event and major meetings budget. Such budgets incur not only event equipment rental and event hire costs, but also travel, accommodation/venue costs.

Surveys indicate that over 60% of all companies intend to reduce their spending on meetings next year. Industry professionals such as Kevin Maguire, President of National Business Travel says ” I have been in this business for over 40 years and I have neer seen anything like this before”
The issue at hand is not that there is a downturn, that just has to be accepted, but rather what to do about it.

The hire and rental sectors most impacted would be event hire, event rental, av hire and av rental, with some flow over in to the party hire or party rental markets. There are some potential solutions.

Event Solution versus Event Product provider.

If you are a provider of products to the events, ie you react to orders from marketing departments or venue organisers, you may be in a difficult position. Because you are effectively removed from the Corporate decision makers who make decisions on whether to hold events or not. Often the first thing you know about it is in your sales figures as the orders dont come in.

However if you offer event planning as a service to support the hire or rental of your products then you will be better placed. The reason why you will be better placed, is that your engagement with the Corporate decision makers will enable you to understand what their company is doing and more importantly why.

Why is important to know? Whilst some companies will be adamant that the cuts will be made, others will be less rigid. The corporate person you normally deal with will generally be keen to see events re-instated, as often it is an important part of their role. If you can help them by assisting them to sell the business value of holding events then not only will it aid you in potential sales it will most definitely aid you in gaining a long term relationship.

Selling the Business Value of Events

So if one of your market segments is the corporate event marketing then ask yourself the question can you sell the business value to them of maintaining or even increasing their event budgets?

If you can not, then do you know management consultants, meeting facilitators etc who also target the same market. Remember many of these consultants are also impacted by the downturn. They are often key participants, organisers etc of such corporate events. Such consultants are specialised in selling business value.

Meeting with them can assist you in understanding the key issues and focus. Consider the information you gain from the meeting, is there an opportunity for you to partner with them. Ie is there a mutual value for both of you to be gained from such a relationship?

Finally a downturn is an opportunity for some a threat to others, it depends upon your attitude.

HireEzy is committed to helping our clients turn the downturn in to a business opportunity.

About Us

12 Feb

Hire Software and Rental Management Software Just Gets Better

HireEzy is taking the world by storm, finally a hire software and rental software solution that meets the needs of smallest to the largest companies.

Not just in managing bookings, but in marketing, sales it even has on inbuilt online store!

HireEzy made by Making Life Ezy is World’s most innovative leader!

As one client in recently put it, “we have been looking for twelve months to replace our old system, your software is years ahead of anything else on the market”

So why is HireEzy so far ahead of the rest!
Companies now have three domains that the need to manage the:

sites- albeit sales staff operating off site or people working from home or remote offices.

HireEzy provides one fully integrated solution to enable this to happen!

This is the reason why we are growing so fast globally. Businesses want a fully flexible solution that meets there real business needs. HireEzy does that! It is not just about the flexibility but the true cost saving, by eliminating mulitple systems and replacing it with one.

Many customers cite savings in excess of 30% of related operating costs. Plus because of the inbuilt digital marketing and sales tools, many claim to have substantially increased sales.

So even if you are on older platforms, dont worry we regularly migrate customers off older systems to ours so that their historical records are transferred across in to your new HireEzy system.

Here is a short overview of some of the functionality included in HireEzy.

Marketing- Customer relationship management
- Customer transaction history, including damages
- Customer contact records
- SMS marketing and reminders
- High Graphic brochure production
- Integrated web content management option
- Integrated online catalogue option
- Product Marketing brochure production
- Product Combination brochure production
- Inbuilt email for brochures
- Lead Source identification and analysis
- Management Marketing Reports

Sales and Bookings- Equipment Sales
- Equipment Hire
- Equipment Availability
- Calendar view of equipment bookings
- Sales lead management
- Process credit card payments
- POS integrates to most hardware
- Professional high quality quotes
- Licence Scanning to customer record
- Quote to Invoice conversion
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing
- Long term hire and Cross hire
- Hire Item Packages suggests and manages sub component hire items
- Existing Customer discounts
- Management Sales Reports
Inventory- Bookings generate warehouse pick slips
- Stock purchasing
- Service and Maintenance scheduling
- Service and Maintenance history
- Inventory levels by product
- Bill of Materials for combination hire items
- Management Stock Reports

Delivery and Collections- Bookings generate delivery requests where delivery requested
- Delivery schedule planning
- Complete integration with Google Maps for delivery planning
- Integrated collections planning with delivery
- On-site servicing or inspections requirements can be integrated in to route planning
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing

Finance and Accounting- Bookings create accounting transaction records
- Payroll option
- General Ledger
- Profit and Loss Statements
- Long term hire monthly/ period payment processing
- Links to Ezidebit for 3rd party collection of period payments
- Financial Management Reports

Technical- Operating systems Windows XP, Vista and Mac
- Minimum requirements Pentium III 500Mhz
- Network up to 250 users

About Us

HireEzy is the innovation leader for the global rental and hire industry!

12 Feb

Finally – a business solution for Franchise based Rental and Hire Companies

Over the last 6 months we have been investing heavily in developing a complete business solution for Franchises businesses in the rental and hire sector.

Working with a number of high growth franchises, we developed a complete business solution that addressed the competing needs of:

1. Providing a Corporate Level solution that provided the functionality they needed to run the franchise

2. Improving automated data collection for more accurate and timely management reports

3. Yet still providing a business solution to franchisees that was affordable and fully met their operational needs.

The other key business factors solved were how to:

1. Provide franchise systems training and support effectively, and

2. Minimize business risk, by ensuring key franchise operations documents were maintained and distributed such that only the latest most accurate document was being used.

3. Provide a franchise corporate web marketing standard, yet still enabling franchisees to have their own maintainable web presence.

One recent client with a rapidly growing 40 store operation, said that the lack of a complete solution was constraining their business growth.

We had spend substantive sums trying to contract developers to build and modify existing rental solutions, but with out any success.

We could not believe just how comprehensive the HireEzy franchise solution is, the benefits it delivers were way beyond what we were even planning.

About Us

12 Feb

Rental and Hire Software for Macintosh Users incl. iPhone & iPad integration.

HireEzy is believed to be the World’s only true full function business management software system for Rental and Hire Companies using MAC computers providing the full functional business requirements needed to provide all rental and hire management needs

HireEzy includes the following features:

Marketing ( includes option to integrated your catalogue directly with your web site)
Sales
Bookings
Inventory
Delivery and Collections
Accounts

It even includes the most powerful range of inbuilt marketing tools, SMS, POS, Google Maps the list goes on.

To make it even more attractive to the dedicated Apple Mac Business community, HireEzy will sit accross mixed networks of Macs and the Windows.

HireEzy is ideal for a wide range of rental and hire companies in Canada, USA, UK, Australia and NZ for the following sub segements:

Party Rental and Hire
Event Rental and Hire
Audio Visual (AV) Rental and Hire
Tool Rental and Hire

Get your information on the go.. View, edit and search your HireEzy records on your iPad or iPhone!

Top Uses for HireEzy Mobile

- Warehouse Inventory checks
- Onsite sales orders
- Tracking job statuses
- Update job while traveling
- Drivers getting real time data

�

Fill in the details below to contact us or request a Demonstration Version of HireEzy.

Enter details:

*(denotes required field)

Name: *

E-Mail Address: *

Company *

Best Contact Phone *

Country *

Subject: *

Message: *

CAPTCHA Code: *

12 Feb

Advertising – media type considerations

| 2 comments

There is structural change going on in the world of advertising, in part it is being accelerated by the global downturn.

The structural changes relate to the decline of traditional advertising stalwarts, the yellow pages, print media and television advertising.

Firstly the Print Media

The print media has long been the main source of news, and hence advertising. However, good journalism, even bad comes at a price. The print media’s classified and advertising revenues have long funded their journalists and distribution costs. But that is no longer the case.

NEWSPAPER REVENUES FALL 29%

Internet news is cutting deep in to the traditional print media. Many companies have tried to build business models that are Internet friendly? Albeit that they are extensions of the old business models, such as subscription services. Such models have generally failed, for a variety of reasons, but one in particular dominates all. There is a perception amongst Internet users that information on the net is free or should be free. With so many other sources of information to choose from, browsers simply err away from subscription services to other free sources of information.

Journalists are having debates over the fact if you want good information you need to pay for it. That may be true, but at this stage of the Internets maturity, people appear to be less discerning in the quality of information they receive.

The Canadian Company Dialect has published a list of newspapers around the world that have been closed down,

Secondly Television Advertising

I read recently, unfortunately I can not remember the source, that over half the world’s television advertising spend is in the USA. Audience fragmentation is a main issue, people have choice now in their visual home entertainment, from free to air television, cable tv, Internet programs, even video games and dvd’s etc. This choice range acts to fragment the audience, and even the audience with in a household. Consider the old images from the 1950′s and 60′s probably even the 70′s of families all sitting around one TV watching the hit shows of the day. Now days, it is more likely that mom is watching on one TV, Dad on another, the kids in their rooms either on MSN messenger or playing video games.

Here are some statistics, in the UK there forecasts indicate that advertising revenue is expected to fall by nearly $0.7 Bn US in three years. The USA television bureau is forecasting another 7% decline in advertising across the sector.

Finally Yellow Pages

Increasing research in the US and Australia has found that the use of the traditional yellow pages is declining.

People are increasingly turning to the Internet to find information, even local information. Some figures suggest that this the use of on-line search can be as high as 80% of all information searches.

Even Wall Street acknowledges that the days of printed directories like Yellow pages are numbered. The Wall Street Journal reported that advertising in US print directories is expected to fall 39% over the next four years. In there words as people migrate en masse to the web.

Dr Lynella Grant is the author of Yellow Page Smarts, she makes the point that relying on just yellow pages is now longer safe. She makes the points that over half of all customers now go to the internet first to find information even for local products. This is not too say you should not have Yellow Pages advertising, rather you should not be singularly reliant on it.

As an example, speaking to one of our customers recently, he said. When Dad run the business we use to spend up to $15-$20k a year on yellow pages advertising, we now spend $2k. The reason is that our leads for our small print business are increasingly coming from both business and private customers finding us on the web – even the locals!

So what is going up

Well not surprising internet advertising is growing at around 10% per annum. Again this is not surprising either when you go back to fundamentals. The media companies whether TV or print provide information and entertainment. But so does the internet!

The yellow pages provided information that was traditional inaccessible – a list of all service providers in a category. But again so does the Internet, but it does so with the user being able to source information of their choice.

So what to do

Firstly, your advertising mix still needs to contain elements of each of the media services. Obviously depending on your target market and budget. Most companies are well versed and educated in advertising in these traditional forms, so there is not much point discussing them further.

Although it is worth mentioning that for small business it may be worth looking at TV advertising as the costs may be more palatable now, relative to the results.

What we would contend is that companies need to have a well considered marketing mix. The element needed though is to create a digital marketing foundation. An subject discussed in the next blog post.

About Us

12 Feb

Businesses and Adults use Twitter not teens

Well this brilliant but short article certainly challenges the perception that Twitter is for teenagers.

Click here to link to the Article

12 Feb

Sample Rental Agreement Contract

Many hire and rental businesses often look to update or review their current rental agreements.

If you are, then it pays to look at other rental agreement contracts to see if you have all the necessary clauses and conditions etc.

One place to search for such examples is Docstoc , a great website with professional templates and documents. For example here is one sample rental agreement contract we found.

Equipment Rental Agreement –

About Us

05 Feb

USA Independent report validates need for one integrated software managment system for hire and rental companies

HireEzy has long advocated that hire and rental companies can only achieve operational cost savings by having one integrated business management system that provides a single version of the truth.

An independent report from a USA consulting company has now valdiated that statement.

Extract From Constuction Hire: AN INDEPENDENT research report by Tech-Clarity has found that hire equipment owners and dealers need to have centralised, efficient software systems if they are to be competitive in the market.

Tech-Clarity’s report shows businesses that integrate service requirements into their managing software are more effective than those that don’t. read more go click here

About Us

04 Feb

26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog

| 1 comment

Creating a blog for your rental or hire business is an essential element in your digital marketing strategy.

Yes we make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.

Free Image Sources

Often finding images and other multi-media can be difficult and expensive.

This list below is excellent and a great resource for you.

26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog

Posted using ShareThis

Yes make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.

04 Feb

Starting and Surviving in Business

: Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr

Starting your own business, whether home based or otherwise, is a big step. Any new company, large or small, is going to take time to get off the ground and start generating any kind of substantial profits. Saying that is one thing, but if you’re one of the people embarking on the task, the obvious question is, “How do I survive while waiting to start making money?”

The fact is that unless you have a hefty amount of personal savings, which you are prepared to diminish, you are probably going to need some kind of alternative income source during this period. After all, any money you do make during the initial start up period may well need to be channelled straight back into the business in order to help it grow. The good news is that with some good advice and solid forward planning, surviving those first few months may end up being slightly less intimidating than first thought.

The first thing to do is take a good hard look at your current personal finances and be brutally honest with yourself about your needs over the first few months of your new business. Take account of everything, from rent or mortgage payments, food and other routine household expenses. Once you have had a good look at your personal spending needs, you will know how much money you require, on average, for the first year or so of your new endeavour. You have to be honest with yourself and not be unrealistic, either about how much money you will need to survive or the level of income you expect to take during those first few months.

The way to go about preparing a realistic estimate of your business profit prospects on start up is to assess the expected sales levels and how much you expect to be paying out in costs and expenses. Take a look at the difference between the two figures; if the expenses are greater than the sales figures, which they are most likely to be during the start up phase of your enterprise, you will have a good idea of how much money you will need to find from alternative sources. This will probably mean taking out loans or selling some personal assets.

Another way of surviving financially might be to continue working for your current employer until your new business takes off. Many new business proprietors take out bank loans to get them through those first few months, but before you take on such a debt you need to be certain of all the details. Find out what would happen if you failed to make the necessary repayments and found yourself with a hefty overdraft.

Other options might be to simply find ways of reducing your business or personal costs, such as using public transport instead of your car or finding the lowest possible prices for goods that you buy. Running your new business from home if possible, rather than having to rent commercial premises would be a highly effective way of saving a considerable amount of money.

Starting up a new business can be relatively simple providing you plan ahead.

Naz Daud – CityLocal Directory

Copyright information: This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety, including live links to the following websites:

http://www.citylocal.co.uk/

http://www.citylocal.co.uk/businessfranchise/

http://www.citylocal.ie/

& this copyright statement must also be included.

04 Feb

Business Need will Drive Creativity in 2010 – Hire Rental Industry

| 1 comment

: Image by Saurabh Goswami via Flickr

Necessity is the mother of all invention!

A mantra my father drove in to my head when I was a growing up, not once but repeatedly.

Recently I was reminded of this little childhood memory when reading a recent article by Michael Roth (writes great articles) on Rental Industry Makes Positive Efforts in Midst of Recession .

Michael made the point that companies will be forced to innovate, given the slow recovery. Innovate because they have to.

Great Point But Where To Start To Look For Innovation?

Keeping things basic, there are only three simple things you can ever do in a business:

Increase revenue
Cut Costs or
Reduce Risks

So What Are Some Ideas for Innovation?

Well look towards Social Media and Digital Marketing as a prospective source. There is massive opportunity to be had for creative hire and rental companies in adopting Social Media and related digital marketing.

Why, because overall the industry has been incredibly slow to adopt it.

That’s great for innovators as it means there is massive untapped opportunities out there!

First - Increase Revenue

Social media marketing has been shown to be a great way of increasing sales leads if done properly. A well planned and executed social media strategy ( it’s not hard at all) can really be effective in driving more traffic to your web site, hence your offer.

Articles
Why Social Media is a Natural Channel for Hire and Rental Companies

Aligning Social Media to the Buying Process

Second - Cutting Costs

Social media can be used to cut hire and rental operating costs. For example cutting website development fees by having self web content management embedded in your rental software or hire software. Not only does this cut operating costs it also can improve search engine rankings, through more frequent changes.

Articles
Options for Reducing Costs

Benefits of Supplier Relationship Management for Rental and Hire Companies

Reducing Risk

Reducing business risks can be in part by considering the use of Social Media, for example using YouTube to show clients how to maintain, set up or dis-assemble equipment.

Articles:
How Hire and Rental Companies Can Use YouTube

Safety Instructions Using Social Media

Still Unsure?

We are offering Hire and Rental Companies a free advisory service to discuss how to use Social Media in their business. No obligation etc. Why? Because we dont sell Social Media services – we simple offer our globally recognised skills in Social Media back to the industry. See our press release for more details, click here.

What do we get out of it?

Well we believe that if you begin to use social media and digital marketing effectively, then you will appreciate the value of the integrated social media and digital marketing tools in our hire software and rental software.

For more information Email Us

Use Social Media To Expand Your Business (lazerpromotions.com)
Social Media Infecting Every Aspect of Business (ducttapemarketing.com)

03 Feb

Next Generation Hire Software & Rental Software for Construction Rental & Fencing Rental Hire Companies

| 2 comments

The next generation of natural business flow software for Temporary Fencing and Construction Rental and Hire businesses has been released. It now also enables you to control your own website content and catalogue.

Construction hire and rental companies, particularly temporary fencing have some unique hire and rental requirements specific to their business sector. Previously many such companies have had to rely on multiple systems to manage their businesses.
Not so any more!

HireEzy v2.1 has been released with all the specific needs of Construction hire and Rental companies, particularly temporary fencing. Such companies need specific functional in addition to normal hire and rental functional requirements.

HireEzy 2.1 includes all standard hire and rental functionality PLUS
1. Estimation tools to support quotes
2. Management of services to support rental or hire solutions
3. The need for staff and contractor management
4. Issuing and tracking of safety data to meet safety requirements
5. Flexible payments and recurrent billing options.

HireEzy is a complete business solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies.

Natural Business Flow

HireEzy is a natural business flow software, part of the next generation of software solutions that are easy to use but also fully integrate with the internet. Natural business flow software follows the natural way businesses operate.

The natural flow in general terms construction rental and hire companies, specifically scaffolding, fencing and roofing rental and hire follows these broad business processes.

1. Market to create leads
2. Quotes supported by simple estimation tools and booking availability.
3. Convert quotes to invoices and confirmed bookings.
4. Manage and allocate materials and labor resources – (either internal or contractor).
5. Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect.
6. Account for the money.
7. Manage existing clients to generate new business.

HireEzy assists you to manage each of these processes with not only the tools you need, but some you may not even have thought of. Each of the processes will now be briefly discussed.

Marketing

The primary purpose of marketing is to create sales leads. HireEzy provides a full range of in-built marketing tools to enable you to produce your own high quality brochures, catalogue, e-mailers and newsletters. Most importantly it enables you to control your own marketing from one location.

Marketing – Integrated Web Option

The internet is now increasing the primary source of lead generation for most businesses. However for it to work for you it must have a high search engine ranking. That is if “scaffolding hire Melbourne” is typed by a prospect, your company web site must appear at a minimum on the first page of listings. It is worth noting, research has shown that prospects will click on a search result (organic result) over a paid ad appearing on the same page.

HireEzy’s web integration option can significantly help here. By integrating your hire or rental catalogue to the web site, any changes you make in the catalogue are published to the web site. Such changes ensure more frequent web site changes. This in turn means a higher search engine ranking, increasing the chances you will appear on the first page.

HireEzy is the only known system in the world to offer this fully integrated functionality – a critical business tool.

Quoting

HireEzy has some simple inbuilt tools to support your quotation process, such as:
1. An inbuilt length estimator,
2. Contractor resource availability,
3. Inventory availability for a given date range, and
4. Discount rate for approved clients

Such tools simplify the quotation process, meaning all information is at your finger tips. Once a quote has been produced, a simple high quality quotation with graphic images can be produced, and emailed to the client or printed and handed to them.

Invoicing

Quotes are turned to invoices with one click. Or allow quotes to be adjusted to reflect any changes in the original quote. Industry payment terms and conditions are included, such as recurring billing for long term rental or hire, part de-hiring of long term rental or hire items, even allows for adjustment of payments for stand down days.

Manage and Allocate Resources

There are primarily two resources you need to manage, your inventory and your staff/ contractors. With HireEzy you can effectively manage both of these key assets.

The inbuilt inventory management tools enable you to manage your inventory purchasing, receipt, maintenance and dispatch to a job. Accurately providing you with real time information on your stock on hand. If you have depots, no problems, HireEzy can manage your inventory at each site.

Your staff and contractors are essential to your service delivery. HireEzy provides the tools to improve your management of your most valuable asset – people.

Like an item, the availability of staff and contractors is managed in HireEzy. Both can advise of leave periods, other jobs etc and these can be added to the system to provide accurate forecasts of availability. Got a new job and want to confirm a contractor availability then just click SMS, and an SMS is sent straight to the contractor with the job details and dates.

Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect

HireEzy comes with the inbuilt transport planning tools to enable you to schedule deliveries and collections, including assigning tasks to drivers and co-drivers such as:

• Assembly/ disassembly tasks,
• Payment collection,
• On-site period inspections, and
• Collections.

It even includes full integration with Google Street maps to provide directions. On site conditions, limitations including access times etc are also included.

Accounting

Most accounting packages rely on data being transferred from business operations. HireEzy accounting package is driven by your hire transactions, saving enormously on double handling of data and the associated risk of errors. For example, creating an invoice in HireEzy immediately creates an Account Receivable record. If you still have other accounting packages then we could provide data export to those systems. HireEzy accounting module has a full range of financial reports needed to run your business. HireEzy accounting module is included with your purchase.

Manage Your Clients

The old adage is that it is 15 times harder to win a new client than to retain an existing client. HireEzy’s inbuilt management tools, such as contact management, newsletter productions and customer discounts etc, ensure that you have the tools at hand to support your on-going client retention.

HireEzy is the ideal solution for temporary roofing, scaffolding and fencing hire/ rental companies who want to grow their business whether in the USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom or New Zealand.
If you are interested in more information or an online demonstration then please contact us or book a demo on line at www.makinglifeezy.com.au

About Us

Making Life Ezy developers of HireEzy and AgencyEzy.

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Agt-Home

02 Feb

Global List of Rental and Hire Associations

Here is a useful set of links to the main international rental and hire industry associations, in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Such associations can often provide useful business advise to Rental and Hire businesses, especially in times like these.

Amercian Rental Association

Canadian Rental Association

New Zealand Hire and Rental Association

Australia Hire and Rental Association

United Kingdom Construction Rental

European Rental Association

South Africa Contractor & Plant Hire Association

If you know of any more please let us know and we will add them to the list

About Us

02 Feb

7 Steps to Off Page SEO Techniques

ArticleCoop | 7 Steps to Off Page SEO Techniques

7 Steps to Off Page SEO Techniques

By: Bill Wynne

Off page SEO Techniques are very important for any website, blog or otherwise that wants to harness the power of organic traffic from the big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process that includes a number of elements to insure a more favorable position for your website in search engine result pages like those of Google, Yahoo and Bing. The success of your online marketing is greatly enhanced when you can increase the ratio of your organic traffic to 80%. This traffic is free and very valuable.

There are two kinds of SEO, on page and off page SEO techniques. We will only discus off page SEO techniques in this article. Off page SEO are the things you need to do to get a higher page rank (PR) and a good position in the search engines like Google for your website after you launch the website.

What are the off page SEO techniques? Off page SEO techniques are always connected to building your link popularity. Link popularity represents the number of back links or links back to your website from other websites that your website has. To check you website’s current link popularity, go to Link Popularity and use the free tool to check your website’s link popularity. The greater link popularity that your website possesses the higher your page rank (PR) will be. To build your link popularity you need to increase the number of websites that link back to your website.

There are a number of off page SEO techniques

1. Email site webmasters that are responsible for websites similar to yours in content and ask them for a link that you will reciprocate on. There are sites that have a page full of links and the links are not relevant to each other as far as content is concerned. Link Farms can damage the reputation of your website with Google instead of helping it. It is not advisable that you take the easy route and join in any link farms. Link schemes are not approved by Google and before you take what may appear to be an easy route for getting back links you should read information on Google’s site about illegitimate linking methods, this will assure you of more success with Google. One strategy used is to launch a lot of fraudulent sites to create lots of links to one site or more. Google has ways to track this and the sites involved could likely be blacklisted by Google.

2. Content – The best way to conduct your off page SEO techniques then is to insure that you have unique, highly informative content. When you have great content other webmasters will want to link to your site. If they just copy and paste your content on their website that is a violation of intellectual property copyright laws. Make people want to link to your website. This is the best of all off page SEO techniques to increase the number of websites linking to yours.

3. Article marketing – There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories on the Internet. You can submit articles to these sites and for every submission, you will be allotted a resource box in which you can introduce yourself and share a link to your website. Some of these article directories have high page ranks. If your articles are accepted, they will be included in their pages. Having a website with high PR linking to yours would go a long way in increasing your own page rank. Additionally, if you will submit just one article to a thousand directories, you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website! Sounds like a daunting task? There are services detailed on my blog that you can use for monthly fees or software that is automated.

4. Forum marketing – There are online communities that are dedicated to the subject of your website. Find those forums, join them and become part of the community. You want to leave relevant valuable comments showing you are part of the community and not just spamming. You will be seen as a spammer just there to post a link and you could be banned from that forum. In the forum you will be able to have a signature box that will accompany every post or comment that you make in the forum. Your resource box allows you to have one or two links to your website. For every post you make, you will have a link to your website.

5. Craigslist – Craigslist is a well-known classifieds website with a PR7. A PR7 score is very high! Having a link on a website with a PR7 will give a boost to your website. To have a link on Craigslist go to the site, choose the category that is relevant to your website, post your advertisement with your link of course and see what happens. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads your ad. The object was to have a link to your website on Craigslist. Your ad will expire so you should have a way to remind yourself to post there when your ad expires to maintain a constant link there.

6. Look for partners who are willing to include your list in their pages. The easiest way to do this is to use the free tool at Webconfs

7. Triangular linking – Google does not like reciprocal linking but triangular linking is one way of getting around this limitation. Look for webmasters who will work with you on this one of the off page SEO techniques. Webmaster A posts a link to Webmaster B’s website. Webmaster B posts a link to Webmaster C’s website. Webmaster C posts a link to Webmaster A’s website. It is the same principle as reciprocal linking, but the search engine spiders are not programmed to determine this type of linking.

Author Resource: Find more related information on Article Marketing on Bill’s Blog. Since 99′ Bill Wynne has successfully used the Internet to effectively convey information for profit and not-for-profit. Recently, Bill created a blog to share his experiences in Internet Marketing. His blog offers free tools and articles like Off Page SEO Techniques

Article From ArticleCoop

01 Feb

Thumbs Up – Techo Twitter Posts week ending 15 Nov

Welcome to the Thumbs Up Edition of my review of the week in tech.

Each week I’m picking out the things that I liked the most that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

This week in Thumbs Up is all about handy Windows apps, plus some interesting statistics about social media in the enterprise:

Hey cool! This will be handy – New App Links SkyDrive to Windows Explorer http://bit.ly/ncuiT

If you haven’t heard of Windows SkyDrive, it’s basically a free online storage solution provided by Microsoft which gives you 25gb to store whatever you want on the internet so that you can access from anyway. It’s not really pushed at the moment which is why not many people know about it, but that will certainly change once Office 2010 is released, as it is heavily focused on extending the Office experience beyond the desktop allowing people to create and save MS Office documents online using online browsing versions and store them in their SkyDrive using the Office Live plugin. Personally, I’ve found it really handy and I use it alot. What this application does (which was NOT created by Microsoft, by the way) is install your SkyDrive as another hard drive on your computer in the Explorer shell, so that you can simply copy and paste to it like any other hard drive – the online difference of course is that you are storing your stuff on Microsoft’s servers. This is really great for backing up all of your critical information so that if your machine breaks down or is stolen, you can simply replace it and remap your SkyDrive to the machine using this application and voila – you have all your information back. Highly recommended.

Very interesting – Palo Alto Networks: Twitter Usage Soars in the Enterprise http://bit.ly/TBJt1

There is another article of similar theme that I tweeted as well this week, which you can read here – http://bit.ly/1P8llM – which also touches on how social networking usage is exploding in the business and enterprise workplaces. The reason why? It is a far more effective way of engaging your audience and getting your message across. I am willing to bet my left kidney that Google will shell out somewhere in the vacinity of $2 billion to buy out Twitter and position it as it’s newest advertising medium, considering that many businesses are telling the same story as we are – Google Adwords is a WASTE OF MONEY. Our company stopped using it earlier in the year and we now exclusively advertise our products and services through Twitter (and Facebook to a lesser extent) and the result has been a 700% increase in sales leads. True story. We are so happy with the results that we will never use Google Adwords ever again – which by the way supplies Google with 97% of their $16 billion a year in revenue. You do the math – Google will have to radically adjust their business model or risk becoming irrelevant and having their revenue dry up big time.

Good article – Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough [Opinion] http://bit.ly/19flzZ

I’ve blogged about Microsoft Security Essentials before – if you haven’t yet heard of this program, it’s Microsoft’s version of a free anti-virus program – and since it’s release I have been surprised about the amount of articles likes these that are getting published which are complementary to Microsoft for this being a great release. What I would add to the fact that it is a good enough security program is the fact that it DOESN”T ANNOY YOU. I’ve been running it myself ever since it was released and not once ever has the program prompted me to interact with it in any way. At first I was a little worried that perhaps the virus definitions weren’t up to date so on the odd occasion I opened it up to check – I was wrong, the program is updating itself almost daily and it isn’t doing anything annoying on the screen to indicate that it’s working in the background. In my opinion, that is the ultimate security program, as I often forget that it is there. I have been going through the process of uninstalling AVG and other virus programs on the computers that I come across and have been installing this instead, it truly is a nice, solid release and I’d recommend it to anybody. If you’d like to try it yourself, you can download it for free at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials.

Awesome app – Paint.NET Releases Big Update, Still a Killer Photoshop Alternative [Downloads] http://bit.ly/2Ok9bW

Photoshopping has pretty much become a verb now, on par with Googling a search of Tweeting a message and yet Photoshop is an extremely expensive piece of software that only business professionals can afford. This application – Paint.NET – which has been around for a while, is a FREE program that gives you all the basics of image editing and some advanced options too. I’ve been recommending this to people who are uploading graphics to their website and want to do some basic image manipulation themselves and this program will do it all for them for the nice price of nothing. I’d recommend this to anybody – it’s a Windows only release, but let’s face it, the majority of Mac users probably have Windows installed as well, or will need to install it soon. Grab this and enjoy (and check out the article for more tips on how to use the program).

Wow – Firefox Tops Vulnerability List (internetnews.com) http://bit.ly/3lqzXF

It surprises a fair few people that I talk to when I tell them that I’m a dedicated Internet Explorer user, but truth be told, Firefox is a great browser but still has a ways to go. Do you ever wonder why Google invested a whole pile of money into building their own browser even though they pony up the majority of the funds that Mozilla uses to operate whilst building free products like Firefox? It’s because sometimes in situations like these where the browser is such an important tool, it’s beneficial that it is being designed and built by people who spend all day working in computer security for a wide range of software products, not just one. This article goes on to detail how Firefox is the most vulnerable browser to hack attempts and general exploits, even above Internet Explorer. Something else that most people don’t know about Firefox is that it is a memory hog. I’ve often looked at people’s computers who have Firefox open and 3 or four tabs open and Firefox is using around 180 – 200mb of RAM from the machine just to do that. It’s pretty ridiculous. My general advice is to stick with the browser that comes with the computer – IE on Windows or Safari on a Mac, as they are both acutely fine tuned for their respective environments. What about Google Chrome you might say? Well, you can always use that browser if you don’t mind the fact that it is butt ugly.

After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges (news.cnet.com)
Web browser Round-up : From ‘Most Popular’ to ‘Most Innovative’ (techpluto.com)
Browser-based Office shows its face (news.cnet.com)
Will You Use Microsoft Office Web Apps? (lockergnome.com)
Office Web Apps coming to Windows Live (liveside.net)

About Us

30 Jan

Audio Visual Rental Hire – Marketing Options (updated)

| 2 comments

The Audio Visual hire and rental industry appears to have weathered the recession.

The Audio Visual rental and hire industry had been experiencing solid rates of growth leading in to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

According to various reports many had been planning to increase staff and inventory prior to the GFC .

However when the GFC hit, there was some discussion and predictions of doom and gloom.

But the suddenness of the crisis was thought to have left many exposed!

Firstly there was concern that the predicted collapse of the USA $175 Bn Corporate offsite meeting market would impact the AV rental and hire companies. This figure includes all goods and services supplied to the market, of which AV rental is but one.

Discussions with our clients has indicated that whilst Corporate Off site meetings may have decreased. Demand appeared to shift to providing AV equipment for on- client site meetings.

Cash flow Impacts

Whilst many indicated that there had been a fall in demand, the biggest issue was cash-flow. In particular clients extending the payment term period.

Cash flow is the life blood for many AV hire and rental businesses given that many have large inventory debt costs to be serviced.

Many did not comment on the role of the banks in providing increased credit lines. However based on evidence from other sectors it is likely that the banks were not that forth-coming.

A common theme amongst clients was the focus on cost management. Those were able to identify, analyze and remove non value adding costs appeared to do well.

Cost management analysis must cover the entire natural business process from lead generation through bookings, service delivery, inventory to managing the accounts. This total analysis ability is critical, as without it companies can cut costs in one area, only to find that costs rise in another.

This may sound trite, but in an industry that has grew rapidly through the boom years, cost management was not in many cases of core management focus.

Downturn Passing

Now that the downturn is passing and the green shoots of recovery are appearing, those AV companies who survived will be well placed.

Whilst it is expected the cash flow may remain an issue for the foreseeable future, revenue is expected to increase.

Positioning for Growth

The focus now moves to positioning for growth, picking up new markets and clients.

Given the lagging issue of cash flow, many may not have the marketing financial resources to take advantage of the emerging opportunities.

Look to Social Media Marketing

AV companies that find themselves in that position should seriously consider using Social Media Marketing. Social Media marketing is growing rapidly, in particular by businesses of all sizes from Corporate to the Smallest.

Combining attraction tools like Twitter with content sources such as a blog can be incredibly effective. Evidence from the USA shows that web site traffic can be increased as much as 55% using such tools.

About Us

30 Jan

Series Two on SEO for Rental and Hire Companies

In the first article in this series we looked at the basics of SEO.

Now we will move on to getting started.

Step One: Analyse your current site.

Why? Because firstly it will give you a list of things you need to do to improve your SEO and secondly it will enable you to track your improvement overtime.

There are a number of great sites which help you do this, but we love Web SEO Analytics tools.

WebSEOAnalytics has excellent SEO analysis tools, best of all they are free. The first one to use is the Web SEO Analysis Tool, it will give you a comprehensive report on your current site.

Step Two: Get the SEO Tool Bar

Download the SEO tool bar for Firefox, it you have IE or another browser, you may wish to consider installing Firefox.

This tool bar gives you excellent analysis tools for every site you visit. The information it has is really useful as you go forward in undertaking the SEO yourself.

You could also consider using the Alexa toolbar as well, it has some useful tools in it as well. Alexa can help your search rankings as explained in a previous article

Step Three: Start Fixing the Issues

The Analysis Report you received from Web SEO Analytics may include some issues or errors you may not understand. Don’t stress, either go back to Web SEO Analytics web site or get this really good free ebook that can help.

« Newer posts Older posts »

Cross Platform
MAC & WINDOWS SOFTWARE

About Us

About Us

About Us

But is print media advertising it still effective?

Why the decline?

So back to the Political Cartoonists

Print Advertising

The Answer

About Us

About Us

People Quicker to Respond to Text’s

Integrate SMS in WorkFlow

About Us

Related articles by Zemanta

Reduce Marketing Spend Yes or No?

Green Shoots of Growth

Low Cost Marketing Options

Making it Easy

About Us

Why Is It More Difficult!

but are you actually reaching them?

Traditional Mail

Decline of Email

Tele-Sales Now Seen As Least Effective

Decline of Yellow Pages/ NewsPapers/ Television

So Where Are Customers Going

It is Discretionary

Common Interest

It Works!

Summary

Interested in more articles on Social Media and Marketing?

About Us

Related articles by Zemanta

Why

Resources

About Us

Related articles by Zemanta

Haha – Google Wave – Early Impressions: Too Much Effort & Unintuitive http://tinyurl.com/yzhn4st

Interesting read, if you’re a geek – YouTube‘s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net http://tinyurl.com/yfhcuuv

LAME – Google enters the e-book arena http://bit.ly/wFDAM

WOW Mac Users should read this – Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data http://bit.ly/10PdGD

About Us

Related articles by Zemanta

About Us

About Us

About Us

Top Uses for HireEzy Mobile

Fill in the details below to contact us or request a Demonstration Version of HireEzy.

About Us

About Us

One particular area we have concentrated on is the opportunities offered by Social Media!

About Us

About Us

Dr Tom McKaskill has just published a short article on where the business growth will come from?

Ok, I am an unashamed Dr Tom McKaskill fan!

Tom McKaskill’s Business Article Latest Article

Ok That’s Great But What Are Some Ideas For Business Initiatives?

About Us

Creating a blog for your rental or hire business is an essential element in your digital marketing strategy.

Free Image Sources

Necessity is the mother of all invention!

Great Point But Where To Start To Look For Innovation?

So What Are Some Ideas for Innovation?

First - Increase Revenue

Second - Cutting Costs

Reducing Risk

Still Unsure?

What do we get out of it?

Related articles by Zemanta

Marketing – Integrated Web Option

Quoting

Invoicing

Manage and Allocate Resources

Delivery, Assemble, Inspect, Dis-Assemble and Collect

Accounting

Manage Your Clients

About Us

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform