Latest IT News and Information

Socitm, an association for ICT professionals in Local Government released information yesterday about the impact of ICT in saving money when handling customer enquiries.

"Data from the Channel Value Benchmarking service puts the comparative cost to councils per enquiry at £7.40 for face-to-face, £2.90 for the telephone and just £0.32 for web enquiries...." The article then says that because councils are not investing in the internet enough they are not satisfying their customers... "Information from Socitm's Better connected survey suggests under-investment in the web is the cause of its current low performance and this needs to change. Investment in the web that will reap significant returns because of the potential to reduce the cost of meeting customer enquiries"...

That's an estimated saving of about 95% comparing face to face with online enquiries and a saving of approximately 89% compared to telephone enquiries!

It's nice to see some real figures to back up a principal we've been promoting for years. This is why we developed the SpartFAQ website plugin, which provides our clients with a way of easily publishing FAQs that can have text, images and even video. FAQs which stand for Frequently Asked Questions, are a great way of saving money by providing the answers to questions your clients regularly ask. This means your staff don't have to spend their time and your money answering those questions on the phone, face to face or by email.

Just another example of how our SpartPlugins help your business to be even more successful.

For full details read the original article here.

The next Business Forum meeting will be held at the Hall Place on Tuesday 14th September  2010 commencing with networking, breakfast and coffee at 7.45 hrs (finishing approximately 10.30 hrs) and we invite you to join us. The cost of the event is £10 payable by cheque or cash on the day.

The topic for this session is Social Networking - making it work. Our last session on Social Networking has definitely whetted the appetite for more information on the subject, but focusing more on the practicalities, moving on from our look at the business benefits.

So this time we will look again at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and through demonstration and discussion will address:

• Setting up your pages and profiles
• Finding (the right) friends & followers
• Tips on the etiquette of Social Networking
• Tools to save time and give you focus

This session will be all about interaction so please come along prepared to share your own experiences with the group.  Your facilitators will be Sharon Wilding from The Purple Edge Marketing, who is also a very active member of and presenter for the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), and Mark Zaretti, Director of Sparticle Limited, specialist in successful online marketing strategies for businesses.

To book a place email fonte-maria.totaro@canterbury.ac.uk or call on 01227 782666. Places are limited so contact us now to secure your place.

Hall Place Tuesday 14th September 2010 commencing with networking, breakfast and coffee at 7.45 hrs (finishing approximately 10.30 hrs). Cost £10 payable by cheque or cash on the day.

We look forward to seeing you on 14th September 2010!

In June, we presented a workshop in Poland where Director Mark Zaretti addressed a forum of professionals, SMEs and sole traders and provided insights and training into how to use professional websites as part of a wider online marketing strategy. Bartek Popiel, one of the delegates and a lifestyle coach working in Warsaw has provided feedback and a review which you can find in Polish here: Bartek Popiel reviews Sparticle Limited's Business Training.

We were recently contacted by the director of Independent Pharma Consultants (IPC) and asked if we could improve their established website. We have many years of experience at migrating and improving existing websites.

Here are some of the things we improved:

• The site was migrated onto our professional secure servers
• The Spartpresss plugin was added so that the client can update their website with latest news whenever they want
• The Styles and colour schemes were modernized
• The site was imrpoved for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Much of the original content and images were preserved to keep costs down

The whole process only took a few days and we worked collaboratively with their own in-house designers.

I'm really pleased to let you know that I'll be co-hosting a business training seminar on the 6th July from 07:45 till 10:30 at Canterbury Christ Church University's Hall Place Business Centre in Canterbury, Kent.

With co-presenter Sharon Wilding from Purple Edge Marketing, we'll be looking at the opportinities that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook present to businesses and helping you to answer the question "Is it for you?"

The event details are here on the business forum website.