Office Live Small Business: Case StudiesAlgarvesol
View the web site: www.algarvesol.co.uk/default.aspx Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Pink’s Green Cleaning
View the web site: www.pinksgreencleaningservice.co.uk/default.aspx Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Web2ConsultantWeb2Consultant is an online consulting site set up by Chris Wray, an experienced business consultant offering advice to professional service providers on the impact of Web 2.0. Chris is using Office Live to work with clients online and see how Web 2.0 concepts such as "software as a service" and "web components" work in practice. The site includes presence indicators, an online survey and many ways to make contact online. Chris is hoping to build interest in the concept of Professional 2.0 and by moving individuals online reduce "professional miles". View the web site: www.web2consultant.com Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk SublimeSylvia Garvin and her business partner were initially resigned to the fact that a Web site for their new mobile cocktail bar service, called Sublime, wouldn't be launched for some time as they worked to save the necessary funds. However, Sylvia came across an opportunity to try out an advance copy of Microsoft Office Live. "I was able to set up and design a Web site at no cost in just a couple of hours, and I can amend it from anywhere because it is Web-based. Microsoft Office Live removed all the barriers to our new project - Web hosting, Web design, domain name, e-mail addresses and even search engine optimisation. The new site has already generated lots of sales leads and is helping us to compete with bigger, more established companies. View the web site: www.justsublime.co.uk Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk BowShot
View the web site: www.bowshot.org Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Entrust Food Safety
Office Live gives the team access to customer workspaces 24-7 which means the company can now really punch above its weight and compete against much bigger competitors. The new site has already allowed the business to offer a lower cost offer for the provision of service but with the additional benefit to them of immediate and real time access to records for both commercial and audit purposes. Entrust has big plans to utilise all of the collaboration and workspace functionality over the coming months to continue to improve and expand its offering. View the web site: www.entrustfoodsafety.com Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Kamosa
View the web site: www.kamosa.co.uk Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Kurekodu
Kurekodu is seeing numerous benefits only weeks after setting up the site – staff are saving time and confusion in gathering and sharing information on client's properties; they can quickly share accurate information with prospects; and there is an increased confidence that all internal and customer information is safe, secure and backed up. The company has big plans for the future and is currently investigating an application that will directly support property management tasks - gathering details and pictures of a property for sale or rent and easily exposing these on the public website. View the web site: www.kurekodu.co.uk Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Chiltern Opticians
View the web site: www.chilternopticians.com Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Fluent French
View the web site: www.fluentfrench.org Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Fully Vetted
View the web site: www.fullyvetted.co.uk Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk Joanna Sowula
Whilst it’s still early days, Joanna plans to sell her art directly from her Office Live website and will be taking advantage of more of the features in future. View the web site: www.joannasowula.com Sign up now for Office Live Small Business: www.officelive.co.uk |
Emma Antunes and her husband had always dreamed of building a business in overseas property rental. But the couple were realistic about their ambition. They both worked full time, so it needed to be a business that could be set up at little cost and managed online, outside work hours.
Annie Trayhurn’s company, Pink’s Green Cleaning, provides eco-friendly domestic cleaning services in her home town of Norwich in the United Kingdom. Trayhurn knew she was onto a good business idea when she attended a local networking meeting. “At least five women were quick to mention they were actively looking for a cleaner,” she says.
BowShot is an active community of high-performance entrepreneurs in Dorset and Hampshire who meet together for mutual inspiration, challenge and support. BowShot operates a matrix of groups offering support for high growth organisations, those in the post-floatation or sale phase and also for those trading out of difficulty. Formed this year, the Office Live site has already placed them on the first page of popular search engines.
Entrust Food Safety is an international audit and food safety consultancy with locations covering all of the UK and France. It works with food manufacturers, retailers, service companies and Governmental organisations such as the UN, providing them with systems, training and audits. The company was set up as a virtual business with no bricks and mortar presence – this makes the internet an invaluable tool. As the company grew, it found that it needed a central repository where the partners could share the business’ information. Entrust had investigated buying a server but this would have cost at least £5,000 with additional costs for data protection and maintenance. Office Live, however, has allowed the directors to share important documents at no cost whatsoever. 
Kamosa is run by Sue Kamolwan, a mobile therapist service offering relaxing holistic therapies in the comfort of your home. Sue has been running the business part-time for ten years but now she wants to build the business, attracting more customers to take advantage of the increasing range of therapies available. A website had been on her wish-list for quite a while but concerns about complexity of the technology had always stalled the project. Following a recommendation from a colleague, Sue was able to get her website up and running in a matter of hours. The site has already been referenced on a number of forums and she’s starting to see comments coming through. Sue plans to make continuous improvements over the coming months as the business develops.
Kurekodu is a Baltic property search, procurement and management business employing three staff. Following 12 months of successful business, Kurekodu had developed its portfolio to the extent that it needed a web site to display the business’ contact details and advertise its services whilst providing an up to date list of properties for sale. Kurekodu had considered hiring a professional web design and hosting company but was able to set its own Office Live site up in a couple of hours at no cost whatsoever. Staff has found the private area of the website very useful to gather and share information on properties for sale. Also, as the team is split across countries, it has allowed them to more quickly pull together information for clients. Client service has improved as staff can now securely share complex invoice information direct with clients - this gives customers a detailed record of all costs incurred in managing their property. 
Chiltern Opticians has been in business for over five years and employs a team of four. It had previously tried building a website using conventional web design tools but found the experience both difficult and expensive. Since moving to Office Live, the experience has been completely different – the home page took an hour to build and further pages will follow soon. In order to drive traffic to the website, Chiltern Opticians has been using Microsoft adCenter to buy MSN keywords. Chiltern Opticians has found this a very simple, low-cost way to attract customers and is already reaping the rewards with a number of customers mentioning they’d used the site to get in touch.
Fluent French provides French lessons to individuals or small groups, in the home or in business premises. The curriculum covers personal and business French and is tailored to students’ needs. The Office Live website created by Fluent French took only two hours to set up and has already received many positive comments from customers. Future plans include offering students the ability to log into a private workspace to access their homework, lessons, podcasts, and more. Microsoft small business customer management module, Business Contact Manager will also be used to monitor contact with students.
Fully Vetted is the website of an established veterinary business that had been considering a website and business email for some time. Microsoft Office Live made the decision simple – it was so easy and inexpensive to implement. By managing the site internally it’s already saving on the £150 maintenance charge quoted by a web designer for only three edits a year, not to mention hosting charges. Future plans include exploring document sharing and collaboration within the business as well as linking the site to the fullyvetted.com blog run by one of the vets. 
Joanna Sowula is a student of art and graphic design. She heard about Office Live from a friend and immediately identified the opportunity to promote her work online. Joanna found the whole process of setting up the website really simple and was particularly impressed by the slideshow feature which is ideal for displaying her work. 
