Elizabeth W. Brown is speaking at Newbury College on 3/25, sharing her experience as a woman business owner and how she grows the business.
SOFTEACH and Newbury College
March 10th, 2010Try it, You’ll Like it.
March 8th, 2010Some of you will remember that immortal line from old Alka-Seltzer commercials in the 1970’s. They featured one person feeling some discomfort, but uncertain about trying something new to deal with the problem. Lucky for them they had a wise wife/husband/mother/father/friend, etc. around to show them how easily Alka-Seltzer could relieve their pain.
Technology over the last twenty years (at least) has changed so rapidly that it’s often difficult for people to keep up—particularly if they are a little uncomfortable with it to begin with. While technology has evolved to make our lives easier, and to make us more productive, sometimes the learning curve seems overwhelming.
One area that’s changed is employee training. Taking a training class has historically meant going to an offsite facility, or to a designated training area in-house and bringing an instructor in to work with your employees. While effective, this is an expensive proposition, both in terms of the actual dollars spent to conduct the training and in the time employees spend away from their desks. In today’s world where companies are trying to maintain high productivity levels with fewer staff, this is no longer a viable option. As with everything else, technology is now available to give companies an alternative: E-learning – training conducted with your Internet access.
The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) recently published the results of new research they conducted, “E-Learning Trends 2010,” in which they polled their readers on how they’re using e-learning in their organizations. Some interesting facts they uncovered:
- 25% of respondents say that e-learning or blending programs are 40% or more of their training budgets.
- 34% use e-learning for end user/desktop application training.
- 23% of these companies use virtual classrooms.
Regardless of your company size or industry, e-learning is a great way to resolve the time and money issues while still giving employee’s high-quality, effective training. SOFTEACH specializes in providing live, interactive, customized, online training, and can answer any questions you have about how to integrate it into your existing training program.
Give it a try. You may find, to quote another 1970’s commercial for Life cereal, “He likes it, hey Mikey!” You can contact SOFTEACH at 800-815-5424, or request a free quote online.
Inserting Rows Tip for Excel!
February 25th, 2010To insert 5 rows at a certain row (with or without data), select five rows, choose Rows from Insert Menu. Voila!
SOFTEACH Software Tip for YOU!
February 24th, 2010When your Junk Mail Box is free of valid email, press CTRL-A & CTRL-D to quickly empty it. Enjoy! Your SOFTEACH Friends
SOFTEACH & Social Media
February 23rd, 2010Elizabeth W. Brown, SOFTEACH president, spoke before The Commonwealth Institute in Boston, MA this week, presenting the SOFTEACH Social Media Plan. SOFTEACH is a customized online and on-site national computer training firm. The audience is a group of women business owners who are looking to better understand how to use Social Media for their businesses.
Client Spotlight: Miken Builders
February 22nd, 2010Miken Builders needed training for Microsoft Project for their project managers, project leaders, and some of their administrative support staff. While their staff was familiar with the software, it hadn’t been used to its full potential. When Miken received a Workforce Training Grant from the government, they contracted with Softeach to help their employees maximize their use of the software based on their objectives, processes, equipment and standards—and ultimately to improve productivity.
Two days of customized on-site training was set up, and included Saturday training so that project staff wasn’t away from their job responsibilities too long during the busy work week.*
“I was very pleased with the attention and professionalism your entire organization showed us,” said Lindsay Maurer, Marketing Manager with Miken Builders, “The Softeach instructors were not only experts, but went above and beyond to use examples our team could relate to and learn from. I wouldn’t use another computer training company.”
* Unlike plumbers, Softeach doesn’t charge extra for Saturdays.
Microsoft Office 2010–What Will it Mean for You?
February 15th, 2010We can’t cover all of the changes coming with Microsoft Office 2010, but we wanted to highlight some of the more popular ones:
Customize the Ribbon: Microsoft is now allowing users of Office 2010 to fully customize the Ribbon, adding the ability to customize or create your own tabs on the Ribbon. The Ribbon also provides contextual tabs, for example, when you select a picture in Word a contextual tab will appear on the Ribbon allowing you to edit or format the picture.
Office Backstage: Microsoft ditched the “Orb” style from Office 2007 and decided to go back to the ‘File’ menu in Office 2010. The main reason behind this decision was users constantly asked IT departments and support lines “where’s the file menu?” The “Office Button” will be replaced with a menu button that leads to a full-window file menu known as the Backstage View.
Out-of-the-box PDF Support: Users will also be able to edit images directly within Office apps. These changes probably won’t be very popular with Adobe.
New Paste Preview: This will allow you to view your work to be sure it’s formatted correctly in the document before you finalize the paste command.
Free Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote: This will allow people to access and edit documents anywhere, anytime. The Web-based versions will work in all popular Web browsers, and can be used whether you’re working on a PC or a Mac. According to Microsoft, they will preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of the device you’re working on—even if it’s your smartphone.
PowerPoint Media Enhancements: You’ll now have the ability to slice and dice video into a presentation.
Outlook Social Connector: Microsoft has introduced a Outlook Social Connector (OSC) straight into Outlook 2010. The Connector provides a stream of content from SharePoint, Windows Live and other social networking sites. At the bottom of Outlook emails users will be provided with contacts’ latest Facebook and Twitter posts.
For those of you still using Office 2003, you probably already know that mainstream support for the product ended on April 14, 2009. Extended support is still available for a fee, but other than that Microsoft will only support this product going forward by delivering patches and bug fixes until April, 2014.
And for anyone who wants to upgrade their Microsoft Office Suite now, but doesn’t want to wait until June for Office 2010, Microsoft has also announced that anyone who purchases their current version, Office 2007, between 3/5/2010 and 9/30/2010 will get a free upgrade to Office 2010.
Microsoft has also announced that the Mac OS X version will be released in 2010 as well. Office 2011 for Mac will include more robust enterprise support and greater feature parity with the Windows edition.
Five Key Principles of a Sound Data Security Plan
February 8th, 20101. Take Stock. Know what personal information you have in your files and on your computers.
Effective data security starts with assessing what information you have and identifying who has access to it. Understanding how personal information moves into, through, and out of your business and who has—or could have—access to it is essential to assessing security vulnerabilities. You can determine the best ways to secure the information only after you’ve traced how it flows.
2. Scale Down. Keep only what you need for your business.
If you don’t have a legitimate business need for sensitive personally identifying information, don’t keep it. In fact, don’t even collect it. If you have a legitimate business need for the information, keep it only as long as it’s necessary.
3. Lock it. Protect the information that you keep.
What’s the best way to protect the sensitive personally identifying information you need to keep? It depends on the kind of information and how it’s stored. The most effective data security plans deal with four key elements: physical security, electronic security, employee training, and the security practices of contractors and service providers.
4. Pitch it. Properly dispose of what you no longer need.
What looks like a sack of trash to you can be a gold mine for an identity thief. Leaving credit card receipts or papers or CDs with personally identifying information in a dumpster facilitates fraud and exposes consumers to the risk of identity theft. By properly disposing of sensitive information, you ensure that it cannot be read or reconstructed.
5. Plan Ahead. Create a plan to respond to security incidents.
Taking steps to protect data in your possession can go a long way toward preventing a security breach. Nevertheless, breaches can happen. Have a plan in place to respond to security incidents. Designate a senior member of your staff to coordinate and implement the response plan. If a computer is compromised, disconnect it immediately from the internet.
What are YOU doing to protect data security at your company? Post a comment on our blog sharing one of your techniques by the end of day Friday, February 12th, 2010 and be entered into a drawing to win a $25.00 Starbucks gift card. Share this blog with your friends so we can get their ideas as well!
Harmony Development Company Advances
February 5th, 2010Rhonda Hill says:
February 4, 2010 at 10:20 am (Edit)
SOFTEACH Experience
A few years ago we had a diverse group of associates working for our company with different levels of skills and knowledge of Microsoft Excel. Upper management agreed that everyone willing to expand their knowledge could take a course in Excel.
I contacted SOFTEACH and they are one of the most professional accommodating companies I’ve ever worked with. Due to the number of participants, they sent a representative out to our office location for training for the day. Before the representative came out, together we planned an agenda and that worked really well. She was very knowledgeable, informative, and was very patient when someone asked questions. The entire training session was a benefit to the company.
Since the session, SOFTEACH has periodically followed up to see if we need training in other areas. I would definitely recommend their services to anyone anxious to gain knowledge of software applications.
Thank you
Rhonda Hill
Harmony Development Company
Harmony, Florida