Hello,

It is with great pleasure that I am welcoming you to this new June 2007 Quick Formations newsletter, Quick e-News. From this month onwards this newsletter is going to only subscribers of the newsletter through Quick Formations, as our exciting news for this month is that Sift Media acquired the UK Business Forums from us.

Sift Media are well versed in managing online communities, such what is prominent on their AccountingWEB website with its accountancy professionals community, and the acquisition of the UK Business Forums is a great addition to the new BusinessZone portal. Sift have some very exciting plans for UKBF, and for more information and to see the forums develop why not visit www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk and join their already very active and helpful business owners community.

Coming soon Sift will be launching the PracticeWEB branded company formation service provided by Quick Formations, which will enable any users of the PracticeWEB web portal and website solution to have the facility to utilise our award winning company formation and filing software from within their own websites or Intranets. Very exciting times!

A little business tip for this month.

I’ve been working some more with our new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software in the office this month and I must say I’m amazed that more businesses do not make use of this sort of software. It is quickly becoming invaluable to our business, helping us keep on top of customer communications, audit trails, enabling all staff to know who has said what or sent what to which customer, and even remembering to schedule follow-up phone calls and meetings. CRM software when used properly means there is a significantly reduced risk of forgetting a customer, a follow up, a potential new lead, and if used currently by all staff it means everyone within the business can talk to a client knowledgably about a topic whilst you are out. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you investigate the possibility to implementing a CRM system into your business.

They do not need to be complex for any small business. If you use Outlook in your organisation then consider installing the free Business Contact Manager available from Microsoft which plugs straight into Microsoft Outlook on your computer. Extremely easily to use and will help you run newsletters, and manage your customer communications. In case you missed the best bit, it is completely free, for more information have a look on the Microsoft website here

Delayed Server Upgrades

We hit some technical glitches with our server upgrades this month (the servers didn’t fit in the space available!), so we have delayed the upgrades until some more space becomes available in Telehouse for the equipment to be installed. This should be in August and I’ll provide more information in the July newsletter, or sooner if anything changes beforehand.

Finally, Duane Jackson on the UK Business Forums has been asking if any small business owners have been sold accountancy software from their banks, and would be interested in talking to anyone who has. You can find out more about this at http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=36396

That is it from me this month. I hope you enjoy the articles included in this months newsletter, and remember if you or your firm provides a newsletter and/or articles yourself why not send some in to me and if suitable I’ll be happy to feature them in this newsletter.

Kindest Regards,

Richard Osborne

richard.osborne@Quickformations.com