Unprecedented times are upon us. The Covid-19 crisis is affecting all of us. In particular, it's forcing many organizations to send their employees home to work remotely. This sounds like an easy thing to do - work from home. But for those of us who have been doing it for years, we know there are some things you need to do and do them quickly. It's all about staying sane while working from home.  Once you have figured out how to access your business data and applications (blogged about

With v21, Act by Swiftpage released a new product called Act Marketing Automation (called AMA for short). Ok, cool. Now what? Here's why you care. Martech. Martech, what is that you say. It's the cool new buzz word for something we all want - a way to automate our marketing processes so we can go do what we do best - our business. It stands for Marketing Technology and it's basically anything you use to reach your customers - using technology. It could be as simple as an email marketing tool

Many of you know we are a computer consulting practice. We also do process improvement (on a small scale) and give advice on sales processes (again on a small scale). We do not in any way claim to be experts in selling. We are however pretty knowledgeable about what sales people will or will not do when it comes to using technology in their daily life. Boy are we experts. We have heard every single moan, groan, complaint, lament there is to why someone should not need to use a CRM or tool in

It's a new year and time for new year's resolutions. A few years ago I started calling  them "goals" because a goal has, hopefully, a finite deadline. Resolutions often don't. As I sat here pondering what were my 2019 personal goals, I also starting putting together my business goals. And I came up with a fun way to match up common terms we use when creating personal goals and relating them to business. Here's what I came up with. 1. Managing weight. Just like we personally want to

Chattanooga, TN – January 25, 2017 – Patricia Egen Consulting, a provider of business consulting services, located in Chattanooga TN, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Kristi Smith Consulting, located in Lincolnshire, IL. This acquisition strengthens our reach into the Midwest as well as bringing to our group a custom vertical CRM database designed for Physician Recruiters and Liaisons. Kristi, a highly respected and talented consultant, will continue on in a sales and strategic

Last week, during my 3rd Act! Deep Dive, I talked about finding "gems" of data in your database and then taking actions on them.  It reminded me that I had written an article years ago about this topic. When I went and found it I realized it's still relevant and I've resurrected for a blog post today. This is the article with a few modifications to bring it current. In the past I have written articles and blog posts talking about drilling down into your customer data.  No matter

As a small business owner, you just spent a lot of money to purchase new business-critical software and the hardware to run it. How much of that investment may be wasted because it is not used it to its potential? Did you just load the software on workstations and say, “Just figure it out. How hard can it be? - Oh, and by the way, get all your regular work done too.” Have you given your staff members the tools they need to use the new technology more effectively? Do your business processes

Recently I got back from a much needed vacation and was lamenting about how much work and emails had piled up in my absence.  Yes, I have an amazing crew who handled the majority of the calls, but they too were very grateful we were back because we as the owners were the ones with some of the answers or who several of our clients insisted were the only ones to talk with. Sigh. That’s when you start asking yourself is it worth it as a small business owner to take a vacation because of