MC+A

We believe in the benefits of effective search. At MC+A, search is more than an add-on or after thought. We strongly feel that search should be at the core of your IT efforts to help you work better. It today’s market, even with talk that the worst is behind us, reducing cost of technology investments is important. IT investments need to produce results and justify their cost.

Along these lines we’re proud to announce a new Search Hardware Renewal Program, design specifically to help our current Google Search Appliance users to renew their solution along with the services they need to maximize their return on investment. Effective November 1st we’re offering all renewing Google Search Appliance customer a discount on our renewal hardware packaged with our Search Best Practices service review. We are hoping to help our clients continue their enterprise search initiatives, maintaining a substantial ROI and competitive edge due to less wasted time and resources searching for documents.

What is the Search Hardware Incentive Program?
The program is straight forward. Current customers will have an opportunity to trade in their old end of license GSA for a discount credit toward their renewal.

Simply turn in your old GSA for a brand new yellow box (GB-7007 running version 6.0) and MC+A will provide a 10% discount on renewal hardware with our Search Best Practices package. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

What is in it for you?
Keeping up with the latest Google search technology. There have been three major releases in the past 12 months and a new appliance platform the GB-7007.

MC+A implementation experience. Over 75 implementations in the past two years. We’ll help you maximize your ROI and leverage your search technology so that you’re effectively using it shortly after your purchase.

So, how does it work?

1. Inform your sales rep that you would like to take advantage of SHIP.
2. MC+A will process your hardware renewal and execute the SBP review.
3. Once your new hardware is up and running. MC+A will process your hardware trade in. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

Truly see what the Google Search Appliance can do for you an your business. Renew today.

If you can believe it, it is April already. Time seems to be flying in 2009. This becomes a great lead into the topic for this month. This month’s topic is the time saving search appliance for business. The Google Search Appliance provides a great wealth of information in sub-second speeds.

An analysis of knowledge-workers’ time illustrates the importance of a fully-functioning search appliance for organizations. Without effective and efficient search, half of employees’ time is spent non-productively. This means that for every hour of work, thirty minutes is utilized on: gathering information for documents, converting information from other formats, unsuccessful search for documents, and recreating previously created content. From a management standpoint, knowledge workers should have the information in front of them instantly and be able to use the information productively.

In addition to the wasted time recreating content and changing formats, employees also spend 25% of their time searching. Successful enterprise search should give the users information and they should be spending, on average, 5-10% of their time locating essential information. Ultimately, this means that only about 25% of workers’ time is spent on the core task. Obviously, this is discouraging to any manager or executive.

The problem only gets worse though. With each passing day, month, and year of an organization, the amount of information is exponentially rising. Another study performed by IDC, says that most users do not attribute speed as a factor for their searches. However, with an increased content count and proprietary search slowing down as a consequence, users will drop the search after a few seconds. Users have become used to the Google.com sub-second response time, and assume something is wrong when these results are not produced.

This is not even to mention customer frustrations. When a customer goes to a site, they are expecting to find the product, service, or information quickly. But when a proper search is not in place, studies have shown that individuals will leave the site if search is timely or non-existent. Users will also abandon their searches if it takes too long to produce results. Thus, by decreasing the response time by 30%, an organization can effectively increase customer satisfaction and increase site traffic by 25%. These are impressive numbers.

Time is extremely valuable to organizations of all industries, verticals, and sizes. The more time wasted on searching for content, the less time using that content to create essential information for product launches, documentation of projects, and even customer sales. It is well understood in the global business market and with the speed of business, that both workers and customers know that sub-second results are possible.

If searching and recreating content takes time, and time is money…you can do the math. Happy Searching!

Most likely, you have heard this saying before, but have you really thought about what it really means?

Quite frankly, there are times when I have felt like it would be better when I win and the other party loses. This may be true in cheering for your favorite sports team or even more so if you are on the team. However, in business, it’s different. Think about it. Do you really want the cheapest price? Or would it be more accurate to say you want the best value?

Before you answer, think about this.

Cheapest price = short term actual cash leaving your company’s balance sheet and going to the company you are buying’s balance sheet. If short term is ALL that you are interested in, then this may be a good philosophy. Granted, in business, the “what have you done for me lately” philosophy will always be a factor. But, more importantly for most of us, we want and need to be a going concern for the long term. With this in mind, my argument for having a win / win philosophy fits the business model more appropriately. Let’s say that your company can buy a widget from “The CP (Cheapest Price) company” or from “The BV (Best Value) company”. Buying from the CP company, like I mentioned before, means the least out of your Cash Account……for now. What about the support that you need later? Is it possible for a company to sell at the cheapest price AND to be able to pay a competent support person to provide you support later when you need it? Good luck, you’ll probably be on your own, wasting time and money. One step further, will they even be in business for you to contact them?

Let’s take your company’s need to implement a GSA, Workshare, or Connectbeam solution. That’s where MC + A becomes the BV company. You could buy the GSA, for instance, from a reseller and pay your IT professionals their salary (time and opportunity cost) to figure out a basically one time, one use implementation and not know if you are getting the full capability out of your GSA… or you could engage MC+A and have your GSA up and running, using very little of your own IT resources and know very confidently that you are making the most of your new GSA purchase in as little as a few days.

That’s win / win.