Magical Moments and Elite Party Rentals
Magical Moments and Elite Party Rentals Gains Efficiencies with Microsoft Windows Vista
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Company Overview
Like many mothers, Kari Smith struggled for years with the challenges of balancing her responsibilities at home and a busy career. Smith wanted to be home with her newborn but still needed to contribute to her household’s income
Business Challenge
She began to want a career with more flexibility. Smith always immensely enjoyed cake decorating so with the encouragement of her husband, she turned this passion into a business that she could operate from home. This formula proved to be successful. Smith booked 26 weddings within her first year and her business began to flourish. Within ten years, Smith had grown her cake decorating business into Magical Moments and Elite Party Rentals, a full-fledged wedding planning and rental operation with five full-time employees.
As a small business owner, Smith is accustomed to being her own marketing department and has even designed her own website. Because her companies are both based in the small town of Moonstone, Ontario, the Internet has been a major contributor to her success. Her website has generated inquiries from as far away as Japan and Australia, although the majority of Smith’s business comes from the Greater Toronto Area.
With such a heavy reliance on the Internet, Smith needed a secure IT solution to protect her customers’ personal information. She also wanted to upgrade her productivity solution so that she could produce professional looking marketing materials at home and reduce the expense of outsourcing these items.
“I spent countless hours promoting and organizing my businesses,” says Smith. “I wanted my IT solution to help me become more efficient so this expansion didn’t affect my family time.”
Smith turned to Microsoft to find a solution that worked for her Small Office/Home Office (SOHO).
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Solution
Smith relied on productivity software from Microsoft to help organize her growing businesses. She used Microsoft Outlook® to help organize her days and meet the needs of all of her new customers. Microsoft Small Business + (www.microsoft.ca/sbplus), a free online resource that provides access to business and software training, provided her with helpful tips and tricks on how to improve her productivity. Smith says this improved efficiency helped her to find the time to open her second business. She was even able to find time to teach a cake-making course at Georgian College in the neighbouring city of Barrie, Ontario.
“I found Small Business + to be very helpful,” says Smith. “The Microsoft online training helped give me the competitive advantage I needed to get ahead and helped me strike the right balance between my work and my family life.” When Windows Vista was released in January 2007, Smith began to investigate its potential benefits for her business. Her companies’ data was becoming unmanageable and she wanted a faster way to search, organize and use information so she could continue to focus on growing her business and responding to customers.
Smith was impressed with the visual elements of Windows Vista. With the new Aero interface, Window borders are wider, making them easier to grab and resize. Smith says the Aero desktop’s “glass” effect helps her find the open application or window she is looking for quickly by giving a glimpse of those underneath. In addition, the common tasks and folder navigations are now available in the same view. The Address bar, Tasks bar and Search functions take less space, leaving more room for her to work with files.
With the live thumbnails in Windows Vista, Smith can view the contents of all files that are currently open, including multiple files belonging to a single application, allowing her to work faster and get more done in a day. The content of each window is displayed by resting a mouse pointer over a taskbar item. The live thumbnail is displayed whether the window is minimized or not, and whether the content of the window is a document, photo or even a running video.
But it was the improved security features in Windows Vista that helped convince Smith to upgrade her PC. As she began to take her business online, she wanted to better protect her clients’ information. She invested in a complete upgrade and quickly began seeing the benefits of using Windows Vista with the added protection of Windows Live OneCare and the 2007 Office system.
Business Benefits
The new IT solution helps Smith save time and money every week, allowing her to focus on the things that are important to her business and her family.
“My new solution is much more intuitive, so navigating the new operating system was easy to learn,” says Smith. “My productivity has improved dramatically and the quality of materials I am able to produce at home amazes me.”
Smith estimates she will save hundreds of dollars creating her own promotional materials using Office 2007, and feels more secure thanks to Windows Live OneCare.
Enhanced Product Portfolio
The Gold Certified Partner designation gives Accellos access to a wide range of marketing tools and support, helping the company reach the mid-sized business market and fill its sales pipeline. The sales teams regularly collaborate with Microsoft on various marketing initiatives, from events to telemarketing campaigns to sales pitches.
“Becoming a Gold Certified Partner to secure additional sales in this space was a natural step. We can now help accelerate supply chain success for our sales channel through the use of the Accellos One Warehouse for Microsoft Dynamics GP solution”, adds Elliott
More time to grow the business
Productivity is a key factor for mom-entrepreneurs when making IT purchasing decisions. Smith says her recent upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista has meant increased productivity, thanks to the new features and improved search functions in the latest operating system from Microsoft. “The live thumbnails in Windows Vista help me to flip quickly through open windows in a stack by scrolling the wheel on my mouse,” said Smith. “I can find and select the item I want to work on in moments with less toggling and hunting.”
The new desktop search and organizational features lets Smith work with her files and email more efficiently. The Start Menu also helps Smith find more than applications - it zeroes in on a match when Smith types an application’s name in the Instant Search box.
“Documents, email, contacts, appointments and even Internet favorites can be located anywhere on my PC with Instant Search,” says Smith. “I save so much time searching when I know exactly what I want.”
For more fine-tuned searches, Smith uses Instant Search in the right hand corner of Windows Vista Explorer. This Instant Search provides contextual results on whatever is in view. Smith says her documents are more accessible with Windows Vista and finding her files is so much simpler. She estimates she now spends only one business day a week in front of the computer, instead of a day and a half.
Cost-efficient promotional material
Smith needed an IT solution that could help her create professional-looking, low-cost materials for print, email and the Web. Smith put Office 2007 to the test and began to design pamphlets and gift certificates for a charity fundraiser her companies supported. .
By using Microsoft® Office Publisher 2007, Smith was able to create documents that had a more professional look by using rich design and typography tools, including 3-D effects, shadows, glows, blurs, and a gallery of many different standard chart and diagram types. She was able to choose from hundreds of professionally designed templates and customizes them with her own brand elements, including logo, colours, fonts, and business information. In addition, Smith can reuse text, graphics, and design elements and convert content from one publication type to another, making it extremely easy to complete the gift certificates once the pamphlet was completed
“I can save about $1,500 a year by creating my own marketing materials,” says Smith. “And with Office 2007, I can help customize them for every wedding show or charity event without having to pay for each revision.”The 2007 Office system also has an improved user interface that helped Smith create documents more quickly. Smith was so impressed with the results that she is now re-designing her business cards.
“It's impressive how much a small business owner can now do for themselves,” says Smith. “It’s becoming harder to find an excuse to leave my office”.
Increased Security
Smith says she would still be a hobbyist without the assistance of Microsoft FrontPage® web site creation and management tool and the related training she found on the Microsoft Small Business + website. The software and training helped her to design her own website and now, much of Smith’s marketing is done online. Smith now makes most of her business transactions using the Internet.
“Small business owners need to be online if they want to succeed with today’s tech-savvy consumers, but they also need to make sure their customers are protected,” says Smith. “That’s why I invested in Windows Vista with the added protection of Windows Live OneCare.”
Windows Live OneCare completes the Windows Vista security picture and helps small business owners like Smith safeguard her clients’ personal data and information. It builds on the safety features in Windows Vista by adding real-time antivirus protection and other important features that help manage the security and maintenance of Windows Vista PCs. In addition, OneCare combines antivirus and anti-spyware protection to help simplify ongoing malware protection against new and evolving threats. OneCare’s unified and easy-to-understand interface also makes it easy for users to take action when needed. As a Windows Vista user with an OneCare subscription, Smith receives ongoing service enhancements and updates
“Protecting my clients’ personal information should be a top priority for small businesses like mine that rely on word-of-mouth recommendations,” says Smith. “Just one incident can harm a small businesses’ reputation.”
Windows Live OneCare also helps simplify the ongoing maintenance of PCs by managing firewall policies and automating updates and administrative tasks.
“Using Windows Vista with the added protection of Windows Live OneCare makes me more confident in my IT solution,” says Smith. “It’s like having my own IT professional taking care of my PC.”
Smith now trusts that all her data and client information will be protected.
Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.
For more information about Windows Vista, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com
For more information about Magical Moments & Elite Party Rentals products and services, call 705-835-6248 or visit the Web site at http://www.elitepartyrentals.org:
