Let financing take the strain

Setting rates: should you charge the same rates to all IT clients?

Saving power, saving money with a green energy audit: cut printer costs and create power plans

Cold mornings and the clocks going back are going to put up heating and lighting bills for businesses as winter draws in, but increasingly IT is putting up the electricity bill too. Power prices have increased significantly this year and it’s not yet clear whether they have peaked. Offer customers a power audit that covers printing, servers, desktop PCs, storage and peripherals or include it when you’re planning a new deployment to sweeten the deal — and try it out in your own office to find out how much you can save by managing IT power.

How to write an IT service-level agreement

Unplugging the PBX to sell a VoIP installation or hosted VoIP

Unless your clients have just returned from a stint on Mars, there is every chance they will already have used VoIP, though they may not call it that. VoIP, or Internet telephony, has been one of the undoubted technology success stories of the last few years. Skype alone claims 200 million users, many of whom work in small and mid-sized businesses.

How to get paid on time

Get your payment terms straight from the start and follow up on invoices professionally to deal with problem payers

Microsoft Support Lifecycle

Microsoft Support Lifecycle
When a new service pack is released, Microsoft will provide either 24 months of support for the previous service pack (for Windows) or 12 months for all other products. Keep an eye on what will need updating when, to stay in support.

Key Partner Programmes

Microsoft Partner Programme https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/

Signing up as a Microsoft partner gives you access to information, technical and pre-sales support, training (online and locally), certification courseware materials, analyst reports, sales and marketing tools

Selling the first server

A server can make life easier for a small business customer and for you – but how do you convince them of that?

Server installations go wrong for any number of reasons, especially when it’s the first time the business has had a server, and for the strangest reasons. The server was built to specification. The engineer was on time and eager to start. The problem? The customer didn’t like the colour.