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PLUSS Corporation Newsletter August 04

1.)      PLUSS Corporation News
2.)      PTM - Quick Tips
3.)      Computer Maintenance
4.)      Control & Effective Management of Your Business – Introduction
5.)      Are you breaking the law?
6.)      The New Tool
7.)      Product Showcase for August

1.) PLUSS Corporation News

PLUSS Corporation is proud to acknowledge that Todd Adams, Pamela Cowley, and Jeremy Martin are now members of the NTEA Young Executive Network.  All three individuals have been with PLUSS Corporation from more than four years.  Pamela is now reaching her sixth year.  For more information about the NTEA and the Young Executive Network, please visit www.ntea.org.

Next month The Customer Corner will be introduced and will feature an interview with a PTM / PLUSS business success story.

PTM

2.) Quick Tips

* (N.E.A.F.B.) From the PTM main menu.  Payables report for invoice paid with a specific check
* (N.E.O) From the PTM main menu.  Financial report for adjustments
* (Stand Alone Timeclock: Administration & Setup documentation) From main menu Alt+H. Alt+A

HARDWARE

3.) Computer Maintenance?

COMPUTERS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT

Many people get frustrated by the fact that computers are not perfect.

Hmm, this seems to be a given doesn’t it?   However ridiculous it may sound, the fact is, that people will get angry over the fact that their computer has failed without realizing that the computer that they are using is working in an environment that is FAR less than Ideal.

Let’s take a look at some of the Ideal environmental conditions for a computer to operate in.

1.     The temperature where a computer operates should be between 40 and 45 degrees F year round.
2.     The air content must be 99.9% DUST FREE.
3.     Every workstation must have at a minimum an anti static pad for you to stand on, an anti-static pad for the keyboard to rest on, and anti-static pad for the monitor to sit on.

There are others but these are the most important of the 3.  Now, let’s examine the reality.

1.     Is your office, shop, warehouse kept at a comfortably cool 40 to 45 degrees F year round?
2.     Is the Air constantly washed by water and hepafilters that remove 99.9% of the dust and other particles?
3.     Have you invested the money it would take to outfit all of your workstations and server with anti-static protection?

If the answer to ANY of the above is no, then you have a potential disaster on your hands.

Sound scary?  It should, you have a device (most have more than one) sitting on your desk that you do not think twice about until it fails.  You allow people to smoke around it, you allow people to bring drinks around it, and you allow people to eat around it.  You play with the keyboard with dirty/oily hands.  You don’t clean it; I’d dare say you might even get physically abusive with it.

Yet when it gets to the point that it does not do the things you want it to do you let it get you angry.

Keeping in mind the small list of things that we have already discussed, let’s go on and show you some ways that you can help to minimize the problems you may have.

BASIC COMPUTER MAINTENANCE

It’s a foregone conclusion that you do not have enough hours in the day to properly maintain your computer system, but there are a few simple things you can do to insure that any potential loss of data does not cause you permanent financial damage.  Here are a few of them.

1.     BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP:  Yes, I said it that many times.  The reason I did is because NOTHING else you will do in the course of the day has as much potential to SAVE you from disaster as this one simple step.  Backups should not just be a procedure in your daily function; they should be a RELIGION.  I cannot count the number of times that frightened secretaries or upset business owners have called my desk and asked me to help them restore data that they lost during a system crash.  Folks, if the data wasn’t backed up and verified, there’s nothing that anyone on this planet can do to help you quickly and cheaply restore that information.   Did you hear what I said?  NOTHING anyone can do that will quickly and cheaply restore that information.  Once that drive crashes it takes a special set of tools and a special skill to recover that data.  Generally speaking you are going to pay anywhere from 600 minimum up to 4600.00 to get that data recovered off of your hard drive.  They have to do a sector by sector analysis on that drive in order to find anything that might be useful.  This is time consuming and VERY expensive.  Tape drives are inexpensive and easy to learn to use, as well are Read Writable CD’s and DVD drives.  You should learn your backup procedures in and out so that you can restore your own data quickly in case of a crash.  Backups are more than just putting data onto tape, there are a lot of considerations when backing up your HD and you need to come up with a disaster recovery plan that you can put into place in case something happens.  Then you need to practice it, learn it, know it like the back of your hand so that in case the worst does happen, you are prepared for it and your business doesn’t suffer for a day or 2 while you try to get someone else to help you get your system back up and running.

2.     PHYSICALLY CLEAN YOUR COMPUTER:  From time to time on a regular basis your computer needs to be cleaned of dust and other nasties that will settle on the motherboard and inside the drives.  The best thing to use is a source of clean DRY air.  They sell canned air in stores made just for this purpose.  You can use these to blow out floppy and CD drives, and to blow dust off of the internal boards.  The power supply also needs to be periodically blown out because this is a high source of heat.  This simple step performed on a regular basis can and will extend the life of your system.  Heat is one of the biggest problems that computers have these days and an excessive build up of dust and grime inside the computer case will only make it worse.


3.     RUN SCANDISK AND DEFRAG OFTEN:  There are 2 internal Microsoft tools that should be run manually on your computer at least once a month.  It would not hurt the system to run it more often, but they do need to be run at least once a month.  Scandisk finds and repairs problems with files and sectors on your hard drive and Defrag does exactly what it’s name implies.  It “Defragments” the hard drive.  As your computer works during the day, files are not put back onto the drive where they originally came from.  In most cases they are “fragmented” onto different areas of the hard drive and this requires the HD to work harder just to pull up the same information.  Your computer will start imperceptibly slowing down until one day you will notice that your old speedy machine no longer runs quite as fast as it used to.  Defrag will help prevent this from happening.

In closing, I have covered just 3 simple things that you can do to help prolong the life of your system.  There are many more that will be discussed in the coming months, but these are things you can implement now in order to safeguard your business and livelihood from a catastrophic loss of data.

Andy Alford

MISCELLANEOUS

4.) Control & Effective Management of Your Business –  Introduction

Do you feel like you are in control of your business?  If the answer is yes, then I bet your current outlook and future looks pretty bright!  You are effectively managing your company and in TOTAL control!  Everything is exactly how you envisioned it, right?

Okay, now… let’s be honest!  Could it be your business is controlling you?  After a moment of honest reflection, maybe managing your company right now is exhausting and non-productive and the results less than desirable.  Maybe the future is not so bright after all.  Don’t feel alone!  Get in line because many business owners are feeling the same way right now!

This Management Strategy Series is very powerful and will be divided into 8 parts beginning in September 2004.  It is not Management Training in a newsletter and it is not designed to provide you global answers.  What it is designed to do is let you know that no matter how successful you are now, there is more success, profit, and free personal time waiting for you!  Conversely, if profits are “mediocre” at best and managing your company is painful, an injection of powerful strategy and exciting new ideas are exactly what you need at this point.

So, you decide you want to engage with PLUSS Management Consulting but you really don’t know where to start.  Here is how it begins.  After closely scrutinizing your financial and operational data, our Specialists identify procedural problems that need to be solved and then incorporate operating characteristics of other successful companies achieving “higher than average” profits.  The purpose is to create benchmarks of your company’s performance against your peers in the industry.  Then,  they analyze expenses as a percentage of gross margin rather than gross sales to gain insight into expense management.  By doing so, they can help eliminate differences resulting from the varying sales mix.  A comparison of your company numbers is then done with other similar size companies in your industry to show you where your company standing is.  The numbers they use for comparison are a confidential cross-section of industry data averages.  From this point a customized plan is developed to provide you a specific Management Training and Consulting program.  Sound exciting??!!  It truly is!

Watch for Part I (Questions every business owner should know) in the September newsletter.  If you want to get a jump on it now, call the Sales Department today for more information and get started right away in learning how to manage your company at the highest level!

Kenny Nau, Director of Sales

5.) Are you breaking the law?

Compliance is sometimes a hard road to follow in today’s changing business environment.  There is a fairly new law that was passed in May of 2003 called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and states that if you are a financial institution, you are legally responsible to take certain measures to protect your customer information. 

Section 4 (k) of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 identifies that companies that offer leasing are considered a financial institution.

FTC Financial Information Safeguards Rule Takes Effect

The Federal Trade Commission's Safeguards Rule, which implements the security provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), becomes effective today. As of today, financial institutions subject to the Rule must have in place a comprehensive security program to ensure the security and confidentiality of customer information.

The Safeguards Rule was published in the Federal Register one year ago [67 Fed Reg 36484 (May 23, 2002)] and can be found on the Federal Trade Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/safeguards.html. Financial institutions covered by the newly-effective Rule include companies that engage in a wide variety of "financial activities," such as brokering or servicing consumer loans; transferring or safeguarding money; preparing individual tax returns; providing financial advice or credit counseling; providing residential real estate settlement services; collecting consumer debts; and an array of other activities that are deemed "financial" by pre-existing regulations. A list of the financial activities that trigger the Rule can be found on the FTC's Web site. The Safeguards Rule applies both to financial institutions that collect information from their customers and to financial institutions - such as credit reporting agencies, ATM operators, and check cashing services - that receive customer information from other financial institutions.

To implement its information security program, each financial institution must:

Although each information security program must include these basic elements, the Rule allows companies to select specific safeguards that are appropriate to their size and complexity, the nature and scope of their activities, and the sensitivity of the customer information they maintain.

To assist companies in complying with the Rule, the FTC's staff will offer a brief training program concerning the Rule's requirements. The training program will be offered on two alternative dates: June 9, from 10-11 a.m., and June 23, from 2-3 p.m. Both sessions will be held in Washington, DC, at 601 NJ Avenue NW, in the FTC Conference Center, Room A on the first floor. The sessions are open to the public, and there is no advance registration. Interested parties who cannot attend are encouraged to participate by telephone; instructions on how to dial in will be posted on the FTC's Web site at www.ftc.gov one day in advance of each presentation.

Although the Rule takes effect today, it allows financial institutions additional time to bring certain service provider contracts into compliance with the Rule: specifically, for any service provider contract entered into prior to June 24, 2002, the Rule allows financial institutions until May 24, 2004, to add appropriate contract provisions concerning safeguards.

Additional information is available on the FTC Web site at www.ftc.gov/privacy or by calling the FTC's "Safeguards Information Line" at (202) 326-3425.

Jeremy Martin CISSP, ISSAP, CCNA, Network+, A+

PRODUCTS AND SALES

6.) The New Tool

Imagine that you are an employee; your boss purchases a new tool that promises to make the company more profitable.

Your boss brings the tool and a manual to you and says you have to learn how to use this tool.  Several return jobs and frustrated hours later you have a basic understanding but still wonder what all the extra parts are for.  You have spent so much time learning the new tool that your customer service ratings are down, your fellow employees are no longer talking to you due to your bad attitude, your family left on vacation without you and your boss is mad about the loss in revenue. 

But, what if your boss not only purchased the new tool but also brought in a specialist that knows how to use the tool.  Your boss brings you the tool and the specialist, the specialist helps you setup and learn how to use the new tool most effectively.  You are the hero, you can leave on vacation because other employees can pick up and use the tool, the company is more profitable, efficiencies are up and your boss is very happy.

What changed?  It’s the same tool, same person involved—yet the addition of a specialist made a world of difference.  It was not the tool that made the company more profitable, it was the person that learned how to properly use the tool and was able to share that knowledge.

Software is a tool.  You have purchased a new tool that promises to make your company more profitable.  Is this new tool making you more money?  Is it really up to the tool to make you more profitable or is it up to you?

You have taken the first step, you have invested in a software program for your company, now take the next step; invest in your company.  Invest in education!  Invest in your employees!  Invest in yourself!  We are here to help, but you have to allow us to help you. 

Our staff is devoted to educating owners and employees not only how to use the PTM software, but how to make more profit and save time.  We offer many industry specific classes and services; if you are struggling let us help you.  We can develop a rollout specifically for you and your company’s needs.  We offer On-Site Education (either at your location or at our office in Montana), Audio Video Instructional CD’s, Over the Phone Classes and On-Line Assistance.  You have the correct tool for the job; let us help you learn more to make the job even better!

For a complete list of our services and education go to www.pluss.net/services/class.html  if you see something that interests you or if you think we missed something your company needs please call me.

Pamela R. Cowley Director of Business Services

7.) Product Showcase for August

***WORKORDER SCHEDULING MODULE

If you did not purchase the Level II Version 6 Upgrade last November, you missed this exciting new module!

This enhancement is designed for scheduling Work in Progress.  With this enhancement, you can integrate your PTM scheduler with you work in progress and potential work.  A potential "job" can be scheduled without starting a workorder.  Your potential job can be inserted into the schedule for a technician, with unit information and the customer’s name.  When the job is brought in you can automatically start a workorder from the scheduler or if the job cancels, it can simply be deleted from the techs schedule.  While in an open workorder, you can schedule the job with the press of a button, assign the job to a tech, assign hours and then return to the open workorder!

Regular price:  $195.00

This months SPECIAL PRICE is ONLY  $99.00!!!!  CALL NOW TO ORDER!

800-835-9609

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PLUSS Corporation
5565 Hwy 2 West
Columbia Falls, MT 59912