The Changing Face of Software

The right software can greatly enhance the productivity of business users. However, traditional tools are not always suited to the modern business landscape, where people may work from home or a local Starbucks as easily as a cubicle. Likewise, associations and nonprofits may have committees and boards who lack access to the same physical network, creating a barrier to collaboration.

Software as a Service

Fortunately, the last two years have seen a remarkable level of growth in decentralized, Web-based applications, often described by the term "Software as a Service" (SaaS). Because this type of software is accessed through a Web browser, it's available to anyone with an Internet connection. Even better, many of the most useful tools are available at no cost. When there are fees, SaaS applications have an additional (and significant) advantage over traditional offline software. Pricing usually takes the form of a subscription which can generally be changed or canceled at will, making the cost of commitment very low.

Alternatives to Existing Software

With a driving interest in technology (not to mention enormous resources), Google is a leader in providing excellent tools for free. One of its most notable offerings is a collection of applications called Google Docs. This system provides an online alternative for creating and editing text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It can open and save standard Microsoft Office documents and makes it very easy to share them with others for review and collaboration. Google provides a number of other tools (nearly all free) which provide Web-based alternatives for email, calendars, and even payment processing.

New Opportunities

Web-based software also offers new possibilities for accomplishing tasks that traditional office applications don't handle well. For example, many people resort to email for group communication when it's really better suited to one-on-one correspondence. Services such as our own GroupLoop.com, a committee management tool, aim to solve this problem by organizing discussions and providing specific features for certain kinds of communication like RSVPs and reminders. A business-oriented group chat application called Campfire provides an excellent way to hold a discussion in real time while maintaining a permanent, searchable archive. Blogs and email newsletters provide much more economical and timely methods of communicating with members than traditional printed mailings.

Integration

A common question when considering the adoption of new technologies is how well they may integrate with existing systems. Specifics vary, of course, but in general this is an area that SaaS vendors have worked hard to address. Many services provide open access for developers to write software that extends features or provides access to data so that systems can work together. New data standards are making exchanges of information easier than ever. For example, using Google Calendar to schedule events automatically makes a data feed available that can be used to display those events on a website.

Privacy and Security

Many business users are also concerned about the security of data hosted by Web-based applications. Working this way does mean giving up a certain amount of control. However, it's worth noting that the network-level protection offered by service providers like Google is typically far more robust than what an average business employs to protect its data. The same common-sense guidelines apply to Web applications as offline ones, such as choosing strong passwords. Many providers make their services available over encrypted connections for additional security. It's always a good idea to review a service provider's policies before trusting them with sensitive information, and when the Web browser becomes a platform for delivering software, it's also critical to keep up to date on patches.

The Bottom Line

The modern software landscape offers many new ways of delivering both existing and innovative services through the Web. Adopting SaaS technologies can be an excellent way to gain efficiency while reducing software costs. With a generally low cost of commitment, there's almost certainly at least one area where Web-based software can benefit your business. If you're able to identify such an area but can't find software to meet the need, CWS specializes in developing custom Web applications and we encourage you to contact us for a risk-free discussion.

New GroupLoop Feature: Additional Email Support

One of our most common feature requests for GroupLoop is tighter integration with email software. The application already offers several features for notification by email, like when you post a new message or document, or set a reminder for calendar events. But now GroupLoop can accept incoming email, too. You can send a message to your GroupLoop account and it will be automatically forwarded to other members while still maintaining the central archive that makes GroupLoop so useful.

Here's how it works. Each GroupLoop committee can now be assigned a "drop box" email address that allows it to process messages. To start using the feature, you'll need to assign a short name to the committee (no spaces or special characters) that will form the email address.



For example, say the account cws.grouploop.com has a committee called GroupLoop Developers. We might assign it a short name of "developers." The email address for that group would then become developers.cws@mail.grouploop.com.

Only people who belong to the committee can send messages to the address. When they do, the text of the email will be created as a new GroupLoop message, and a copy will be forwarded to everyone in the group. If a member replies to the email, their message will be added as a comment under the original posting. This helps keep email conversations centralized, permanently archived and collected by discussion, without requiring a login every time you want to add to the conversation.

To assign a short name to your committee (only account administrators can do this), click the "People" tab and then the committee name under "Manage Committees" in the right sidebar.

We hope this new feature saves you time and helps to make GroupLoop an even more useful part of your workflow!

Jim Fogarty Joins CWS

CWS is honored to have Jim Fogarty join CWS as Director of Business Development. Jim is a Rochester native, graduating from John Marshall and St. Cloud State University. He comes to CWS from Home Federal Savings Bank where he has been a Business Development Officer for the past 2 1/2 years.

Jim will be focusing on business development for our RapidNewsletter.com and GroupLoop.com product lines. Jim is currently an Ambassador with the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce and enjoys photography, hunting and the outdoors. He can be reached at 507-289-2229 x206.

Reminders for the GroupLoop Calendar

GroupLoop gets tweaked a lot in response to feedback from our users. While the application is purposefully simple, from time to time we roll out new features to make it just a bit more useful.

Recently we've added a feature to set automated reminders for upcoming calendar events. This can be handy if you populate your calendar well in advance of events or if you just need to draw people's attention to an approaching item.

Reminders will be delivered by email, but they also tie in with the iCal / Outlook integration feature. If you designate a reminder for an event, anyone who drops the item on their local calendar will have an alarm set automatically.

If you work with a group that could be better organized and haven't tried using GroupLoop, set up a free account in just a few seconds and take a look!

Show me, don't tell me

I nearly passed over a house that I ultimately bought, just because the pictures of it on the Internet looked terrible. Seeing it in person told a completely different story.

Likewise, it's hard to describe a web-based application in print. Even screen captures don't really give you a feel for what it's like to use software. For example, a large part of good user experience comes from the responsiveness of a tool's interface. This is why a number of product reviewers like Screeniac (motto: "Screenshots Suck! Screencasts Rulio!") are taking advantage of the growing availability of broadband and capturing full-motion video to show what it's really like to drive around a Web-based application.

We decided to put together a guided tour of GroupLoop to help people better understand what the software can do and how nice it is to use. Although GroupLoop's signup process is pretty painless, some of us just don't like registering for anything until we really know what we're going to get. Plus, it's hard to see how an application can be useful when there's no data in it.

The demo is pretty quick to watch, but it will give you a good idea of what GroupLoop does. Of course, you're always welcome to take the wheel yourself by creating an account on our Free Plan. There are no ads or obligations for free accounts.

The tour covers all of the latest features we've added, too, like RSVP handling and integration with Outlook and iCal, so if you haven't seen the product since it was first launched, you're sure to notice some nice improvements.

See the demo at http://demo.grouploop.com.