Virtual Workplace Dear subscriber,
I'm grateful for the opportunity to address you this month in my new role as Microsoft General Manager for the Midmarket in the U.S.
This newsletter is aptly named Momentum to reflect the excitement and potential of the midsize market. Many of you are adopting or experimenting with various aspects of the virtual workforce, and in this issue we provide information about how to make a remote workforce one of your most productive assets.
I look forward to ensuring that Microsoft understands the needs of customers in this very broad market segment and to helping tailor our product offerings to best meet your needs. Please send comments, complaints, and insights to mo-info@microsoft.com.
Sincerely,
Christoph Wilfert
General Manager
US Midmarket Business
Microsoft
|  | | Featured articles |  | |  | | The virtual workforce today: It's all in your head | | While some technical and cultural hurdles remain, evidence points to growing popularity of and support for remote workers worldwide. Advances in technology continue to help remote workers be as productive as those in the corporate office. |
| | | The virtual manager must communicate, create trust | | Remote workers can be more productive and have greater job satisfaction than those working in a main office. But managing virtual workers is a challenge that demands communications, trust, and the appropriate tools to succeed. |
| | | | | All systems go for the communication revolution | | Unified communications improves productivity for both employees and IT staff by allowing users to access all their messages in one place. Here's how Microsoft is contributing to the trend. |
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| | Technology at work | | |  | | Understanding the differences between Groove and SharePoint | | Many people have trouble determining whether Microsoft Office Groove or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is the better fit for their collaboration needs. Though the two products have similarities, they serve distinctly different purposes. |
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| |  | | Is Windows Mobile 6 for you? | | Device makers are now taking advantage of improved usability and added support for Microsoft Office features in Microsoft Windows Mobile 6. Find out what it means if you're currently running Windows Mobile 5. |
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| |  | | Productivity secrets in Outlook 2007 | | Everyone needs to save time at work, but where do you find the time to learn how to save time? Here are a few places to get started with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Take five minutes to read this article and 10 minutes to practice, and you will get back the time—plus a lot more. |
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| |  | | 6 tips for remote IT support | | As your company grows, it becomes harder for the IT team to walk over to workers' desks and troubleshoot problems on the spot. Here are some best practices for handling IT issues remotely. |
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| | | | | |  | | Undermining the rule of paper | | The paperless office may still be elusive, but law firms that embrace technology, document management, and case management tools are better able to compete with the giant firms. |
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| | | Reader spotlight |  | | Who says the mail must go through?
By Pete Bartolik
The term "snail mail" virtually drips with sarcasm. It evokes images of tattered magazine covers, painful memories of anticipated letters never received, and even jokes and nightmares of enraged carriers "going postal."
But what if you could view and sort your paper-based mail electronically, and-at the click of a mouse-send unwanted paper to the shredder, have checks automatically deposited, and designate for physical delivery only what you deem essential?
The Seattle-based startup Earth Class Mail Corp.'s service allows consumers and businesses to directly command the retrieval of a single document or piece of mail through the Internet from anywhere in the world, and order it to be scanned, forward-shipped, archived, duplicated, or destroyed.
"If somebody mails you a letter and it's lost in the mail, it's lost," says company CEO and co-founder Ron Wiener. In contrast, he says, mail that comes into Earth Class Mail "is tracked through its entire life cycle all the way to destruction or forward shipping."
Earth Class Mail picks up mail from the post office daily and, using the company's .NET-based platform, scans in images of the sealed envelopes for users to view online and designate which is to be opened, forward shipped, shredded, or recycled. Opened mail can be read, saved, stored, printed, and archived in digital or physical form. Wiener says his customers will soon be able to view a video log of the mail being processed, which is handled in a "double secure" clean room.
Currently, about two-thirds of customers are individuals, with the remainder business accounts, primarily small and midsize enterprises, he says. Business travelers on the go and expatriates can receive mail anywhere in the world they can access the Internet, while foreign companies can set up a U.S. mailing address without having to rent a physical location. "VoIP is easy, e-mail is easy, everything is easy except your postal address," Wiener adds, claiming that Earth Class Mail completes that last part of the virtual address.
The company is more than happy to share its expertise with the USPS and other national postal services. In fact, it has designs for huge "Megasorter" machines that it wants to license for large postal operations to speed up mail handling.
One of the motivations behind the company, Wiener claims, is the impact the service can have on the environment. Only 7 percent of physical mail is forwarded, with two-thirds of the remainder being recycled and one-third being shredded. The goal is to deliver currently shredded materials directly into paper-processing vats.
Pete Bartolik edits Microsoft Momentum and monthly shreds a cubic foot of credit card solicitations sent to his Hopkinton, Massachusetts, office.
Editor's Note: We're soliciting ideas for future Reader Spotlights featuring stories that are interesting, unusual, or humorous. If you have a story you think should be told, send us a note at
mo-info@microsoft.com. |
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| | | |  | Archives |
| | | Previous Issues
of Momentum:
| | Virtual Workplace
June, 2007
| | A Fresh Start
May, 2007 |
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