Take your e-mail mobile with Windows Mobile

It’s actually hard for me to remember what it was like running a business without e-mail. E-mail is as relevant to your business today as letters written by hand were a century ago. I can’t say I remember anything that long ago, but I do know that customers didn’t have the same expectations as today. Today, if a question from a customer sits in your e-mail Inbox for four hours or so, they’re likely to think you’re out playing golf or you just don’t care about their business.

And if you are out of the office on a sunny afternoon—maybe you are playing golf—you can keep the wheels of commerce rolling by carrying a Windows Mobile smartphone, so you can receive and respond to e-mails on the go. Without one, you are more likely to be out of sync with business associates, miss important changes of a meeting place or time, or find it difficult to get data when you need it to do your job.

Changes happen in real time and if you can’t keep up, you’re liable to be left behind. Many small business owners and employees spend a significant part of their day out of the office. Imagine these situations:

All these stories could have a happy ending—time saved, successful sales call, satisfied customer—if the sports medicine manager, book distributor, and real estate agent carried a Windows Mobile device and had access to their e-mail while they were out of the office.

Windows Mobile offers familiar features, including several choices of how to let your e-mail keep up with you in real time, that make it easy to use. Making the leap from the desktop version of Microsoft Office Outlook to Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile on your Windows Mobile smartphone isn’t really a big jump at all. You can use many of the familiar e-mail messaging features such as viewing and sending e-mails in HTML formatting with bold, text color, and underlining to make your points and keep up your professional appearance. I also like having the familiar folder structure; I can check the Sent folder to see when an e-mail went out and go to the Deleted folder to retrieve an e-mail that I previously deleted. It’s also helpful to be able to set up messaging flags or reminders, just as you can with Outlook on your desktop computer. Another Windows Mobile feature that makes it easy to keep connected to your e-mail accounts and your personal information up to date is constant synchronization of Outlook, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks.*

One of the capabilities of Outlook Mobile I value very highly is the ability to download and save e-mail attachments such as Word files and photos to my Windows Mobile device. I routinely review and even edit documents, and using Outlook Mobile send a response back to someone right away with no loss of formatting or images. Whether you choose a non-touch screen device (Windows Mobile Standard) or a touch screen device (Windows Mobile Professional) will determine how fancy you can get with the formatting. My company recently upgraded our smartphones and there was no question that for me it was going to be a touch screen model. Since I do a lot of writing, I like to be able to use the enhanced editing features in Word Mobile that are available on the Professional (touch screen) version.

Setting up e-mail on my Windows Mobile 6 smartphone was even easier than before. Best advice is to follow guidance from your mobile operator and review the step-by-step e-mail setup instructions on the Windows Mobile Web site.

You have three good choices for getting your Outlook Mobile e-mail on a Windows Mobile device. Which one you choose depends on your business and personal needs. Let’s look at these choices through the eyes of the three businesses I mentioned earlier:

Whichever e-mail choice you make, Windows Mobile with Outlook Mobile will help you and your colleagues stay connected to the things that matter.

* Some features require Microsoft Exchange 2003 or 2007 Server.