Celebrating Entrepreneurial Spirit – 2009 Miles Young Entrepreneur Awards

Armed with only an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for technology, I founded Miles Technologies at the age of 26.  Having no outside capital to support my endeavor, I could have told you even then that entrepreneurship is not without its challenges.

Today, young entrepreneurs know this all too well.  Confronted with the challenge of thriving within the new economy, these individuals bear the responsibility of fueling the much needed economic growth for our nation.

In light of these new challenges, the Miles Young Entrepreneur Award, recognizing progressive young business owners in southern New Jersey, means more this year than ever before. 

I would like to personally extend an invitation for all business owners under the age of 35 who are operating in southern New Jersey to apply for the 2009 Miles Young Entrepreneur Award.  This year’s award is presented in partnership with Rowan University and the Entrepreneur’s Forum of Southern New Jersey.  Applications will be accepted until August 1^st and winners will include the following:

1 Overall Miles Young Entrepreneur Award Winner

3 Emerging Young Entrepreneur Award Winners – Business owners under the age of 25 who may not meet all of the specific criteria of the Young Entrepreneur Award but who are operating unique and growing businesses.

1 Mentor Award Winner – An individual who has counseled and truly inspired a young entrepreneur.

1 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner – An inspiring individual whose career as an entrepreneur began at a young age and continued throughout his or her life.

I would also like to invite the entire southern New Jersey business community to join us for the awards ceremony on Thursday, September 24th.  Come to our newly renovated corporate headquarters, located at 300 West Route 38 in Moorestown, New Jersey for an evening of refreshments, business networking, and inspiring stories of entrepreneurship.

I look forward to recognizing this year’s winners for their perseverance, resilience, and ambition.

For more information about the Miles Young Entrepreneur Award or to read about eligibility requirements and sponsorship opportunities, please visit milestechnologies.com.

Findmymenus.com: Your South Jersey Menu Solution

Why is it that the more options there are, the harder it is to choose? Take South Jersey, for instance. We have plenty of great places to eat, yet deciding on just one restaurant that everyone in your family will enjoy isn’t always as easy as driving down the block and stopping at the first place you see.

When our team designed and developed findmymenus.com, we wanted to create a free, useful menu directory for members of the South Jersey Community. The site has menus from some of our best restaurants, representing nearly every type of cuisine from all price ranges.

You can narrow your choices down by location, and then click on a restaurant to see its menu. This way, you can settle on a place that everyone will agree on before you leave the house.

The best part about the site is that it’s free for restaurants, too. Any South Jersey restaurant can have their menu posted at no charge just by calling us at 800-496-8001.

So check out findmymenus.com the next time you’re looking for a restaurant that delivers lunch to your office, a caterer for your business meeting, or the perfect place to celebrate a special occasion.

Driving the Future of Business Technology Solutions

In the twelve years since Miles Technologies has been in business, our technology consultants have traveled in their own vehicles to provide onsite support to customers of all industries. I am pleased to report that this is no longer the case. We’re still traveling onsite, and we’re still providing the same comprehensive support, but now we are doing so in our Miles Technologies branded vehicles.

With the arrival of our first fleet of automobiles just three weeks ago, our employees are now traveling onsite in customized Ford Focuses. The cars have been wrapped using a large scale digital formatting process and now display Miles Technologies’ logo and graphics, contact information, and business technology service offerings.

We chose Ford for several reasons. First, the Focus has an excellent reputation for fleet maintenance. As a company that is constantly striving to achieve efficiency, the time and money that is required to keep our vehicles running well is important to us. Most importantly, choosing Ford gave us the opportunity to stimulate our nation’s economy and specifically, one of our big three automakers.

It is our responsibility as a business to support the economy that we depend on everyday and to provide our customers with unparalleled responsiveness in our service offerings. The Miles Technologies fleet is helping us to do both. With our growing employee and customer base, there is a good chance that we will be adding to our fleet in the future.

So be sure to say hello if you see us out on the road, and give us a call for technology solutions that get your business up to speed.

Smart Marketing – Part 2: Using Online Marketing to increase advertising response

Right now, I can’t think of a single business that can afford to spend money on advertising that will be ignored by potential customers. That’s the beauty of Online Marketing – it actively reaches out to your target audience, rather than waiting around to be noticed.

Let’s say that you own a flower shop, and that you want to advertise a Valentine’s Day sale on roses. A one page ad in the newspaper costs you $600 per day. You want the ad to run for five days, which costs you $3,000. How do you know who is going to see your ad? What are the chances that people who see your ad will actually respond to it? There’s no way to be sure.

On the other hand, you could run a five day pay-per-click online advertising campaign. Let’s say that you are willing to pay $3 per click, and that you set a daily budget of $600. You only pay when a customer clicks on your advertisement, and here’s the best part: people who see your advertisement are actually searching the internet for roses, on sale, in your area. Your ad is now much more targeted and much more efficient. You can even see exactly how much it costs you in online advertising to make a single sale. There’s no better way to determine whether or not your advertising efforts are providing value.

Questions about Online Marketing?  Call us at 800.496.8001 or visit us at www.milestechnologies.com.

Smart Marketing – Part 1: Attracting the right traffic, at the right time

It doesn’t matter how well-designed your website is, you will never make a single sale unless your customers know who you are and where to find you.

With more and more business being conducted online, it has never been more critical to have a strong internet presence so that you can be easily found by potential customers. If you aren’t aggressively pursuing internet visibility now, then you should seriously consider reevaluating your marketing strategy to make the shift.

Traditional marketing broadcasts your message to a passive audience who may or may not be interested in what you have to say. But Online Marketing appeals to a different kind of audience – potential customers who are actually looking for your products and services. The right online advertising campaign can help you to attract visitors to your website at the exact time that they are seeking your services. The idea is to gain more visibility and as a result, more sales.

Thanks to free programs like Google Analytics, it doesn’t get much easier to track the success of your campaign once it’s up and running. By showing you things like how many times your advertisement appears and how many potential customers respond to it, Google Analytics helps you to figure out exactly how well your Online Marketing is working and even helps you to fine-tune your efforts accordingly.

Measurable precision; you just can’t get that from print, television, or radio advertising.

Questions about Online Marketing? Call us at 800.496.8001 or visit us at www.milestechnologies.com.

Software That Makes Sense

Using software that is not adding value to your business is like keeping a car in your driveway that doesn’t have an engine. You can do it, but it won’t get you very far.

The right software should add value to your company, not cost. So how can you tell if your existing software is increasing your profitability or just weighing you down? It’s not as difficult as you might imagine. A good way to start is by taking the time to answer the following questions:

- Are you still doing a lot of things by hand?
- Do you have to enter data over and over into multiple in-house systems?
- Are you unable to get the reports that you need?
- Do you use MS Excel to manage key areas of your business?
- Have you ever felt that the present system doesn’t work the way your business does?

If you answered yes to any one of these questions, then it is probably time for a change. Advances in technology have brought forth some fantastic software solutions that can be tailored to fit the needs of your company.

Having the right system in place and knowing how to use it can produce a high return on your investment. Using technology to make business more efficient- it’s the heart of what we do here at Miles Technologies.

Want more information on how software can help your business run better? Give us a call at (800) 496-8001 or visit our website at www.milestechnologies.com.

A Proactive Approach to IT

What does system downtime mean for your business? Lost uptime usually means lost conversions, lost customers, and lost revenue. Those are things that few businesses can afford, and yet few take steps to avoid.
A proactive approach to IT can help your business to minimize downtime and keep systems running smoothly. Here are two simple ways to be proactive about your IT systems.
1. Monitor Your Networks
Ideally, your business should have someone watching over its network, servers, workstations, and applications all day, every day – not just during regular business hours. This way, in the event of a system crash, the issue can be resolved right away, minimizing downtime for your website and avoiding prolonged service outages.
Not only will IT monitoring keep your networks operating at peak efficiency, but by identifying and resolving system limitations early, you can also prevent costly collapses before they happen.
2. Protect Your Networks
Another proactive approach to maintaining your IT systems is through firewall implementation and management. A firewall is a hardware or software device that limits access to a computer network in order to prevent unauthorized intrusion.
A firewall is an important component of your overall IT maintenance strategy, working to prevent dangerous intrusions that not only pose a threat to information security, but can infect and shut down your entire system, resulting in unnecessary downtime.
By employing Proactive Information Technology Services to keep systems running smoothly, your business can optimize its time on the web, safeguard important information, and run at peak efficiency.
Have questions? Call us today at (800) 496-8001 or visit us at http://www.milestechnologies.com/.

Making the Most of Your Online Reputation

Never underestimate the power of word of mouth, especially when it’s traveling at megabits per second.

As Google secures its status as the go-to place for any and all information, the use of internet forums, blogs, and discussion boards is becoming increasingly influential. The instantaneous pace of global communication is changing the way the public sees you and your company – and what’s being said online matters like never before.

When search engine results make your first impression for you, your reputation is at the mercy of online word of mouth that is easy to pass along, yet difficult to reverse. Positive reviews are highly beneficial as they’re more visible than ever, but negative reviews that stem from disgruntled customers or personal agendas can cause immediate, significant damage to your personal and professional reputation. No one can afford that kind of adverse publicity, even if it is free.

The question is – exactly how do you protect and defend your reputation from unpredictable public scrutiny? Ideally, you could try to prevent negative reviews before they happen, but that isn’t always going to be feasible due to the impulsive nature of some internet users. When hostile reports just can’t be avoided, you may need to rely on Reputation Management to restore your good name.

Reputation Management can defend against personal attacks and preserve your company’s positive brand image by using strategic Search Engine Optimization and profiling to generate positive material and make negative results difficult to find. Whether you’re suffering from the effects of a damaged reputation, or making a proactive attempt to monitor and bolster your image, every individual and business can benefit from Reputation Management.

Right now, public opinion is more powerful than ever. Make the most of it.

For more details on Reputation Management, call us at (800) 496-8001, or visit our website at www.milestechnologies.com.

Maintaining Information Security

Your customers trust you with their private information. So how safe is your business from an online security breach? If you don’t know, chances are you haven’t taken the proper precautions to protect confidential information from unauthorized access.

Nearly every business has at least some personal information on file – Social Security numbers, credit card information, and addresses are all needed for everyday tasks such as filling orders, billing, and completing payroll. Your customers and employees need to know that you’re doing everything you can to secure their privacy by employing the very best Information Security practices. Their privacy should be as important to you as it is to them – because when security is breached, not only do individuals suffer, so does your bottom line. Lost business, lawsuits, and bankruptcy can all occur as a result of compromised security.

It’s never too late to develop proper Information Security guidelines for your business. Here are a few tips on how to protect your company from a security crisis.
1. Know your database: Be familiar with what type of personal information is kept in your computers, laptops, flash drives, and other media. Talk to your staff and service providers about who sends personal information, how personal information is collected, what kind of information is collected, and who has access to the information.

2. Decide what to keep: Do not keep or obtain any information unless it is absolutely necessary for conducting business. When personal information becomes irrelevant, dispose of it immediately and confidentially. If you do need to maintain sensitive information, develop policies that outline what information should be kept, how long it should be kept, and how to dispose of it when it is no longer needed.

3. Protect your information: Make sure that your software is regularly updated. Run anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on a regular basis. Use secure connections and web applications for online transactions. Avoid using Social Security numbers as identification numbers. Safeguard your files with strong passwords that are only accessed by authorized personnel.

4. Train employees to follow proper security procedures: Make sure your employees do not share passwords or store passwords where they can be easily located. Instruct employees to keep computers logged off when not in use. Keep staff updated about new security practices.

Ongoing Information Security is not only vital to the continued success of your business, but to your peace of mind as well. Don’t let a security breach damage your company’s credibility. Protect your information today and protect your profitability tomorrow.

Need help getting started? Give us a call at (800) 496-8001 or visit our website at http://www.milestechnologies.com/.

Managing your business efficiently- Part 1

Increasing efficiency by automating certain processes is something we at Miles Technologies feel very strongly about. Fact is, a lot of businesses don’t seem to realize that their staff resources are being wasted by having to perform the same, redundant tasks over and over again.

Sometimes it’s obviously repetitive work like filing or sorting, but there are other time wasters that aren’t obvious, like business decisions that the owner or other high level management person has to make every day. Having these decisions automated will save time for the business owner or manager, which becomes very valuable because they can spend more time growing the business.

A good example is automating the sales estimation process. For a big job, you know you’ll quote less of a margin, or for a small job, you know you have to increase the cost since more time may be spent on the detail work, but your employees have to come to you or other managers to make that decision.

What if you could automate that process so your employees could create quotes that you know will follow your guidelines and feel comfortable that it’s still going to be both profitable AND competitive? Imagine what you could achieve with that extra time.

It’s wonderful what technology can do- make it work for you!

Think we can help? Give us a call at (800) 496-8001 or visit our website at http://www.milestechnologies.com/.