Great program by Houston's own Susan Farrell of Captavi. How small businesses can make 21st century tools (and a few 20th century ones) work for them.

1. Collaborative Technologies

2. Quick Requirements Checklist
✓ Web-Based (Cloud/SaaS) Solution is Best
✓ Scalable (+/- Users As Needed), Subscription-Based
✓ Affordable
✓ Intuitive, Easy-to-Learn, Easy-to-Use
✓ Aligns with Your CURRENT Business Processes
✓ Easy to Invite Subcontractors, Vendors and Clients into System
✓ Separate Communications Between Groups

3. Project Management - Basecamp
PROS:
• Project transparency
• Production schedule
• Assign to-do tasks
• Auto reminders
CONS:
• Project transparency
• Requires some discipline
• Small learning curve
• Need to understanding project
management best practices

4. Sales/Marketing - Salesforce Chatter
PROS:
• Free for Salesforce users
and their “circle”
• Encourages Sales and
Marketing to talk
CONS:
• Requires one person in
group to have Salesforce
• Account/Account specific

5. General Team - Skype
PROS:
• Free
• Clear, crisp sound
• International scope
• Send files
• See reactions
CONS:
• Everyone needs to have
Skype and logged in to start
group chat

6. Virtual Meetings - GoToMeeting
PROS:
• Share screens
• See reactions
• Control other attendees
desktops
CONS:
• Can be slow, dependent on
all attendees bandwidth
• Requires download of
software plug-in, updated a
lot

7. Website Wireframing - iPlotz
PROS:
• Specific for websites, mobile
sites, mobile apps, etc.
• Move components around
real-time, while online
• Preview URLs
CONS:
• Some of the components are
great and some are basic
• Not as polished as InDesign
or Visio

8. Calendar, Documents - Hosted Exchange Server
PROS:
• Outlook Calendar
• MS Documents
CONS:
• Cost can get high with larger
organizations

9. Real-Time Team Documents - Google Docs
PROS:
• Free
• Real-time
• Can upload MS docs
CONS:
• Learning curve
• Sometime hard to up a doc
• Changes to docs sometimes
get lost
• Difficult to determine who
changed what

10. Thank You. . . Q&A