many vendors were rushing to market 802.11a (up to 54Mpbs) wireless Ethernet products that were supposed to be the next wave in wireless networking. However, at the same time, an “in-progress” standard called 802.11g may supplant both the original 802.11b and newer 802.11a standards. So frankly, the “safest” bet for now may be to seek out wireless Ethernet hardware that supports all three standards: 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g.
Wireless Ethernet as a Business Opportunity
As an IT consultant you should be aware that wireless is a great business opportunity for savvy computer consultants. However, since there is a fairly large installed base of 802.11b (11Mbps) products already, and most 802.11a products are not backward compatible with 802.11b products (although many vendors are rushing to market with hybrid 802.11b/802.11a products), this 802.11a standard faces an uphill battle in the marketplace.
The Bottom Line about Wireless Ethernet
While wireless Ethernet will likely overtake wired Ethernet (Category 5) as the dominant small business networking standard at some point in the future, the “when” and “how” is still very unclear. In the meantime though, many small business computer consultants are still finding wireless Ethernet to be a tremendous marketplace opportunity.
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Wireless Ethernet: A Viable Business Opportunity for the IT Consultant
Computer Consultant Startup: Identify Your Business Skills
Since you're taking the time to read this article right now, it's a good sign that you have what it takes to become a computer consultant. You're in the small minority of people who have recognized that this is a business and needs to be run like one.
A Good Computer Consultant Has More Than Just Technical Skills
It's not about playing with the latest routers or wi-fi device or VPNs or firewalls. Sure, you have to have a certain amount of skills to make a successful computer consultant because people are buying your expertise. At the end of the day, though, it's a business.
In order for the business to be successful, you have to know a few things about getting revenue in and keeping your expenses down. You also need to forecast and be able to bill, negotiate, and network properly.
There are a lot of stubborn techies out there who think that studying the Windows Server Resource Kit is going to tell them what they need to know about running a business. Not true. It's going to teach you about registry keys and directories and things like that.
Even a Computer Consultant Needs a Good Resume
If you're currently self-employed, you may not have an up- to-date resume, but for most people looking to transition into the business to become a computer consultant you probably do have a resume. Take out a copy of your resume and a yellow highlighter marker and go through and highlight every sentence or phrase in your resume that describes a project or a job or a skill that you think would be relevant or marketable to the owner of a small company.
Categorize the Items on Your Resume
Go through it and look for all the phrases and the jobs and the projects that you've worked on for the past couple of years and think about what's going to catch the eye of a typical small business owner or manager. Once you've done that, go back through each highlighted item and mark whether it was IT related, whether it had to do with understanding how to run a business or whether it had to do with being able to communicate effectively.
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Computer Consultant 101: How to Build a Stable Business
Know How To Bill and What to Charge
Without knowing how to bill and what to charge, you’re going to lose a lot of money that’s really yours. If you get your billing and pricing wrong as a computer consultant, you'll send a bad message to people that you’re trying to quote for business.
You'll be screaming that you’re a rank amateur rather than a skilled computer consultant. It could take you years to recover from this. A lot of times you would need to scrap existing clients and completely start over because certain clients you brought in at the wrong level.
Perform IT Audits
If you know how to do them right it’s an incredibly powerful technique. You get paid to write proposals and do needs assessment work. If you don’t know how to do this you’re going to wind up doing a lot of exploratory work for free. You can actually get paid for your initial consultation time for doing the technology assessments and the IT audits.
Build Local Partnerships
You’ll need partnerships as your computer consultant business evolves. These will get you some of your best clients along the way. If you don’t have good local partnerships, you can almost guarantee that you’ll lose clients along the way with this as well. You need to learn how to find these key players and how to negotiate with them.
Exceed Client Expectations
If you want to get paid the big bucks as a small business computer consultant, your clients will expect a lot from you. Your clients' idea of perfection may be different from yours. You need to learn the magic words you need to know to avoid a lot of the stress and intense pressure. You want to come out smelling like a rose to exceed their expectations.
Maximize your Utilization Rate and Profitability
Making as much of your work-week billable as possible and eliminate a lot of the non billable, time-draining non revenue draining computer consultant activities. It’s all about delivering small business virtual IT services and how to build a stable business; how to get clients for life.
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Business Portal – Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 – highlights for consultant
Microsoft Dynamics GP is new name for Microsoft Great Plains and first wave of former Microsoft Project Green. You probably have the impression that Microsoft is leveraging all the set of its technologies: .Net, MS SQL Server, Sharepoint, Visual Studio, Active Directory, MS Exchange, XML Web Services. The fact that Microsoft has several ERPs: Microsoft Great Plains / Dynamics GP, Microsoft Navision / Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Axapta / Dynamics AX, Microsoft Solomon / Dynamics SL, Microsoft CRM / Dynamics CRM makes the Project Green realization direction to turn to the thin client interface as the bridge between database structures of ERP solutions. Business Portal realizes this strategy. Microsoft idea goes deeper, but the format of small article dictates the rules of genre.
• From Reporting & Analysis to Transactions Entry. Microsoft has wisdom and ability to launch technical solution not as a technical solution itself, but also as a probe to be the future market guide. Look at eConnect, primarily created for eCommerce developers to connect to Great Plains objects – Customer, Sales Order, Invoice. Now eConnect is the middle connection level for Dynamics GP, Integration Manager and Business Portal. Initial idea of classical (non Microsoft) Business Portal of 1990th was primarily reporting and analytics. When Microsoft released MS CRM as Web Interface – the idea to move transactions to the web became popular
• From Analysis to Workflow. The idea of Microsoft as we see it is to make it invisible for the user to judge – where is say, Microsoft CRM, Business Portal or where is Sharepoint. Sharepoint is the platform for workflow and document management, and being integrated into Business Portal it can compete with traditional workflow management tools, such as IBM Lotus Notes Domino.
• Human Resources. Probably, if you are customer – you don’t want to pay full price for concurrent user license – if the user is your manufacturing or service employee, in this case you should purchase relatively inexpensive Business Portal user license and utilize employee self service.
• eOrder fate. eOrder was legacy IIS product and it will be rewritten in .Net web services platform.
• Screenshots. If you read this article at albaspectrum website you should see screenshots, otherwise please contact us for details
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