Leadership is “one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth” wrote one man in a position to know. In business writing, the subject has been divided into three:
This is a style of management commonly referred to as mbwa. It is variously lengthened to management by wandering about, or management by walking around. mbwa usually involves the following.
Lured by the emerging benefits of integrated multi-media messaging, end-to-end tracking and value-added services, businesses are expected to make electronic messaging the next hot area in IT outsourcing. Managed messaging represents the logical evolution of a technology — electronic messaging — that has already sparked a revolution. Empowered by the Internet, electronic messaging has in a relatively short time transformed the way organizations communicate. In the hands of outsourcing experts email marketing technology promises to forge even greater communications innovation in the months to come.
The message store is open. With visionary storekeepers like USA.NET, business customers are lining up to get a piece of the communications future.
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Publisher of Pricing Manuals for Technicians Writes New Chapter in Messaging Cost Savings
As a publisher of pricing manuals for commercial and residential plumbing, electrical, and heating and air conditioning technicians, Callahan-Roach knows a little something about costs. But it wasn’t until the subsidiary of Group Maintenance of America Corp. was ordered to outsource its fundamental IT services that Callahan-Roach discovered the business sense of managed messaging.
The escalating cost of maintaining Callahan-Roach’s company intranet led the company to turn over the job of designing and running its email system to USA.NET. By partnering with USA.NET, Callahan-Roach was able to discard its client-side email software, eliminate an in-house IT position and assign the dramatically reduced administrative tasks to a secretary-level staff person.
“The savings are pretty astronomical, when you consider that the time associated with managing and maintaining the company’s email system has been completely alleviated,” says Steve Harris, director of IT for Callahan-Roach. “We now have a fixed-cost solution that is centralized and allows for remote access.”
Cost savings weren’t the only benefit, though. Callahan-Roach is also using USA.NET Professional Messaging features to distribute training information to customers signed up for its training courses. Each customer receives a special Web-based email address that serves as a conduit for course material, administrative information and links to related course sites.
As the company that introduced managed messaging for business, USA.NET has a special stake in analyzing emerging technology trends and business developments to create a coherent vision for the future of messaging.
One way to create a short list of potential messaging partners is to find the innovators in the industry. USA.NET, the largest independent email messaging provider in the world, was the first Messaging Service Provider to offer Web-based email in 1996 — and the first to introduce managed messaging for businesses in 1997. The Colorado-based company, which started out as an Internet Service Provider in 1991 (the same year the World Wide Web was born) today offers email and managed messaging solutions for businesses, service providers and consumers. The company manages more than 11 million mailboxes and processes nearly 200 million messages a month via its patent-pending “message store” technology. Read the rest of this entry »
In an industry as new as managed messaging, choosing the right Messaging Service Provider might just be the most important decision you make concerning the future of your company’s messaging system. The right provider will offer the right technology, the right services and the right support and management tools. Here’s a checklist that can help you choose wisely: Read the rest of this entry »
In fact, although integrated messaging has yet to be fully realized, businesses are already feeling the financial pinch of supporting in-house messaging systems. Creative Networks Inc. (CNI), a leading IT consultancy firm, estimates that the cost of in-house hardware, software and technical administration for a typical messaging system exceeds $650 per employee per year. Despite this hefty investment, many organizations still have to deal with significant downtime, constrained capacity and rapidly outdated technology. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rise of Electronic Messaging
It’s hard to imagine a world without email, probably because the technology has so quickly insinuated itself into everyday life. This year, an estimated 1.4 trillion email messages will be sent worldwide (Figure 1). By 2002, more than half of the men, women and children in the U.S. are expected to regularly use email. Read the rest of this entry »
The case for handing over responsibility for building and maintaining your company’s email and advanced messaging infrastructure to leading Messaging Service Providers like USA.NET® grows stronger every day. Read the rest of this entry »
The hierarchy of needs is an idea associated almost entirely with one man, Abraham Maslow, the most influential anthropologist ever to have worked in industry. New York-born Maslow did anthropological research among the Blackfoot Indians in Alberta, Canada, before working in industry. He subsequently became professor of psychology at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.