These past few months, we have been focusing on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions being launched. The main questions being asked (which we shall answer) is: What is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) an what are its benefits?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has its origins in cloud computing. Cloud computing gets its name from the drawings typically used to describe the Internet. Cloud computing is a new consumption and delivery model for IT services. The concept of cloud computing represents a shift in thought, in that end users need not know the details of a specific technology. The service is fully managed by the provider. Users can consume services at a rate that is set by their particular needs. This on-demand service can be provided at any time.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a cloud computing model is designed to provide everything and simply rent out the software to the user. The service is usually provided through some type of front end or web portal. While the end user is free to use the service from anywhere, the company pays a per use fee.

1. Save money: SaaS requires minimal upfront costs, as you pay only for what you use. It helps to reduce physical and financial resources.
2. Minimal Risk: You’ll sleep easier at night knowing that your systems are always available and secure for your users. Your cost base is predictable and if the system fails you’ll be able to recover it. SaaS offers a Try-Before-You-Buy option where users can sign up and use the application before making the decision to purchase.
3. Concentrate resources on the business, not IT: With SaaS, you will concentrate on using capital funds in areas where they improve and add value to your business and not on IT infrastructure and maintenance.
4. Use it whenever, wherever you are: So long as you have access to the internet, you can access the service from the office, on holiday, on the road. With SaaS your Multi-site businesses can be supported at no extra cost.
5. Rapid deployment, configuration and integration: SaaS offers rapid deployment, configuration and integration of the software for your present and future needs.

These are just a few of the benefits you will derive when you use our SaaS solutions for your business. Contact Mauco Internet Consultants if you have further questions or queries or need a live demonstration.

Realty Engine on the SaaS platform

This Online Realty Engine is ideal for Estate Agents who want an attractive and engaging website that is dynamic and database driven. Give your clients a stress free experience in getting their new property. Stay ahead of the competition and attract new clients with this our new Realty Engine on the SaaS platform.

Key Features

1. Database- driven dynamic website
2. Attractive and engaging layout
3. Property search feature
4. Property print view
5. Login and property registration for users
6. Renting Property
7. User Account
8. EMI Calculator
9. Borrowable Amount Calculator
10. Glossary

Send email to info@mauconline.net to request a Free Demo or for more information.

Online Marketing

As we come to the end of the first half of 2010, businesses in Nigeria need to look to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile and social customer. It’s our opinion that the businesses in Nigeria that will be the most successful are those who adapt their strategies to align with shifting online trends.

The adoption of new online marketing techniques will also be paramount to keeping a competitive edge and ensuring return on investment (ROI). To help point you in the right direction, we have identified five trends likely to impact online marketing ROI in 2010 and beyond.

• Email Marketing: Contrary to speculations, email is not dead. With its low cost and targeted reach, it is the perfect base from which to build other online marketing initiatives. Email is the most measurable marketing channel, with proven and reliable high rates of return on investments (RoI). And when combined with other online marketing channels it becomes even more powerful and effective.
• Online Marketing Analytics: If your business has an online presence (not just a website!), improved integration with online marketing analytics tools will empower your business to extract detailed data reporting, offering new opportunities for you to optimize your marketing campaigns, show results and demonstrate market share. Currently there are several companies investing huge resources to ensure that they improve internet connectivity in Nigeria. Therefore, your business most be prepared to explore new opportunities.
• Blending Email Marketing With Social Networking: Social networking is now being described as the number one activity on the Web and it plays an integral role in a large majority of customer buying decisions. When you blend email marketing with social networking, it becomes more effective and can extend reach, enhance engagement, grow customer opt-in lists and build customers’ trust and loyalty to your brand.
• Mobile Marketing: The presence of different telecom operators in Nigeria has opened up different avenues for mobile marketing. Mobile marketing reaches your targeted audiences and drives the urgency of your message in real-time while extending marketing reach, building customer retention and loyalty, and building a strong, interested and opted-in customer base. Mobile’s low execution cost means maximized campaign effectiveness.
• Integrated, Online Marketing: In 2010 your business now has the opportunity and the ability to easily create integrated online marketing programs – joining email, search, social, mobile and other online marketing channels – and most importantly measure and optimize those programs with integrated metrics.

There’s no question that email marketing is the anchor for online marketing, and significant opportunities exist for your business to take advantage of synergies between online marketing channels.

Mauco Internet Consultants is ready to assist you with your online marketing efforts. We have made it our goal to help your empower your business online to make you more successful. Contact Mauco now if you need help in developing an effective online marketing strategy.

This Online Test Engine fires a series of objective type questions and stores the marks scored in the server. It is simple to use and easy to setup. Presentable time limit to answer the question. The questions need to be of the objective type and can have 2 or 4 options. It calculates the score and the total marks scored at any point of time will always be visible at the top.

Key Administrator Features

1. Ability to initiate and monitor test
2. Question Management
3. Score and Improvement Validation

Send email to info@mauconline.net to request a Free Demo or for more information.

New Learning Solution Launched on SaaS Platform

A Learning Content Management System (LCMS) with the following key features:

Key Features

Student Features

• Student Profile
• Course List
• Test Engine
• Shopping Engine
• Course History

Administrator Features

• Manage Course
• Manage Corporate Users
• Manage Course Access
• Coupons
• Shipping
• Order Management

Send email to info@mauconline.net to request a Free Demo or for more information.

We would like to introduce you to new applications launched under the SaaS model.

Products launched as follows:

1. Learning Solutions
2. Online Testing Engine
3. Renting & Purchasing Marketplace
4. Fully customizable Dating Engine
5. Directory Listing Apps.
6. Extensive Media Sharing System for artists and general portal users

Feel free to contact us to know in depth for either of the applications you might be interested in. We are also picking custom development enquiries on iPhone Apps. and Share point implementation.

5 Rules of Social Media Engagement

Are you one of those that have jumped on the social media bandwagon to promote your business? Were told social media would boost your sales, improve customer relations, manage your online reputation, and reduce every bit of overhead you have? So what happened? Why have you not started reaping those benefits, despite the fact that your having a presence of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc?

What most business owners fail to understand is that social media is not just a two-way communication between you and your customers, social media is rather a multi medium that lets your customers have conversations with other (potential) customers.

Your potential customers/target market would prefer to learn more about your brand from your existing customers rather than being bombarded with print/electronic adverts. Social media is the perfect platform for this to take place. Since social media a relationship driven multi-medium, there are 5 basic rules of social media engagement that you need to respect. The rules are:

1. Relationships come before sales: Building relationships takes time because building trust takes time. Social media can only impact your sales after you have built a strong relationship with your customers to become more loyal customers. These loyal customers will in turn refer their friends and family to you.
2. You go to the community, the community doesn’t come to you: Don’t wait for your customers to come to you, rather you should go to them. If you target market are using Facebook, join the Facebook community, if they are on Twitter or LinkedIn, join those communities too.
3. Communities are grown, not built: Once you’ve got your social presence set up, go out there and talk to people. Get to know them, and start building relationships. Don’t just expect that since you’ve setup and account on Facebook or Twitter, then they should automatically start flocking to you. You still have to put in some effort. You have to make some noise. You have to go out of your way to make friends. You have to show your friends and your community what you can offer them.
4. Don’t try to replace the community: Don’t try to re-invent the wheel by building your own customized online communities from scratch to compete with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Instead concentrate on adding value to these communities through your brand’s presence on these social networks.
5. Content is king: On the worldwide web, content is king! Content can be anything from articles, blog posts, pictures, tutorials, videos, reviews etc. So if regular content production isn’t part of your social media strategy, it’s going to fail. But it has to be relevant to your customers’ demographic and it has to be regular. Because once you stop producing content, you stop participating, and relationships whither.

 So if social media isn’t working for you, ask yourself if you are breaking any of these rules.

Tips To Save Money In Your Business Using Technology

Business owners are always looking for ways to save money in running their business. Adopting technology in the daily operations of your business is a good way to acheive this.

Here are a few ways your business can save money by using technology.

Adopting A Paperless Office Strategy

Invoicing, accounting, HR and other business processes can be automated. Automating these processes will save you and your staff a lot of time and money. Your customers would also benefit if you automate these process as it will enable you serve them better.

Adopting Instant Messaging Systems

Using Yahoo/MSN Chat, Skype, VOIP calls, video chat, project management software and the various cloud document storage facilities available, will empower you and your staff to get more work done even from remote locations and eventually make your business more efficient and profitable.

Adopting Open Source Solutions

When it comes to ways to save operating costs in running your business, we are strong advocates of adopting free and Open Source software. If you can’t spend money to get the original software, rather than opting for pirated software, we recommend you use open source software.

Adopting A Social Media Strategy

Do you know how much it costs to personally create a Facebook page or Twitter account to promote your business within your local community or to your target audience? Nothing! Its only when you cannot afford the time to do so yourself that you need to get a Social Media Expert like Mauco Internet Consultants to do same for you. Many small businesses have cut marketing back to social media alone and have seen substantial returns from focusing their efforts on a medium that truly works.

These are just a few tips we feel you can implement to save money in your business using technology. If you’ve got tips to share or ways you’ve used technology to cut work hours and save money, be sure to let us know about them in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

10 Tips For An Eco-Friendly Office

April 22 is Earth Day. This day is set aside to encourage humans to live in an eco friendly way. We have compiled a list of 10 eco friendly tips for your office/company.

1. Clean your office or company and donate your unwanted, but still good items, to a charity.
2. Use email instead of paper whenever possible.
3. Replace normal light bulbs your office with energy saving light bulbs.
4. Buy and use office products made from recycled materials.
5. Avoid printing documents that could just as easily be emailed, and print or photocopy necessary papers on both sides.
6. Place a plant in your office or company premises.
7. Conserve energy by turning of the lights, computers and other appliances when out of the office.
8. Donate money to your favorite charity (preferably a green cause charity).
9. Consider replacing aging desktop computers with laptops instead, which can use up to 70 percent less electricity and generate less heat waste.
10. Instead of buying new furniture, consider refurbishing old ones. It may be less expensive than buying new and its certainly better for the environment.

Living in an eco friendly way should not just be practiced once a year on Earth Day. Rather let’s make living in an eco friendly way a daily habit both at home and in the office.

How To Optimize And Maintain Your PCs

Regular maintenance is the key to keeping your laptop or desktop PC in peak working condition. So what sort of maintenance is required? We have listed just a few that we fee that the average laptop or PC user (using Windows OS in particular ) can conveniently handle.

Keep Windows Operating System and essential Applications up to date.

Regularly download the latest updates from the internet on a regular basis. On some systems this process is often automated and all you need do is to select install updates when prompted by your system.

Keep Firmware and Drivers up to date

Firmware updates can keep systems and subsystems current for the best performance. Driver updates can also optimize performance.

Keep Antivirus and Anti-Spyware definitions up to date

Consider using automatic updates to pull down the latest definitions for your Antivirus and Anti-Spyware programs. We recommend using tools like Ad-Aware by Lavasoft for extra protection against Trojans, browser hijacking, and other malicious activities.

Regularly run Defrag and the Disk Cleanup Tool

When last did you defragment your hard drive? Defragmentation is a regular occurrence on systems that are in regular use. Defragmented drives slow down the performance of your laptop and desktop PC, so you need to run the defragment tool regularly. Running Disk Cleanup can optimize systems by emptying the Recycle Bin and deleting Temporary Setup Files, Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, Old Chkdsk Files, Temporary Files, Temporary Offline Files, Offline Files, etc. All these a paramount to ensure that your systems work at optimum condition.

To ensure regular execution, you can run these two tools mentioned above as a scheduled tasks.

Check your Services Configuration and Device Manager

On Windows Control Panel, open the Services applet to verify that the Windows-based services that are running and set to Automatic at Startup are consistent with your configuration. Open the Windows Device Manager to look for any devices that are not operating correctly or that may have been removed.

Check Power Quality

Sadly, we have a poor power system in Nigeria so its a matter of common sense to get a good UPS and Surge Protector. If you have a UPS battery, ensure that it is satisfied with the power supplied to it. If you aren’t using one, check that the power source is a good circuit and is correctly grounded. Also make sure that your Surge Protector is working correctly at all times. Also ensure the all cables are properly connected at all times.

Clean Your Systems

Computers are like dust magnets. Therefore ensure that you clean your system regularly to remove accumulated dusts on the outer surfaces, keyboards, external drives, etc. Also ensure that you use your system in a proper operating environment as recommended by the manufacturer.

Do you have any favorite PC maintenance tips you would love to share? Please feel free to comment below.