A common question I get at the office when WordPress is at the forefront of discussion is, “if WordPress gives away it’s software for free then how do they make money?” Recently at the Economist Innovation Conference in Berkeley, California, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg answered this question in front of a few hundred people in the audience. The answer he gave was simple. Back-up services, Hosting, Anti-Spam, and a few other paid upgrades for it’s WordPress.com user base.

Back-up Services + Hosting + AntiSpam + Upgrades = WordPress Revenue $

Really? Yes Really! Even though there is not a large percentage of WordPress users who opt-in to these paid services, the total number overall makes WordPress as a company profitable. And more importantly profitable enough to keep the development of the WordPress project moving forward.

How much does WordPress actually make? Not really sure. But for Automatic (the company behind WordPress) to get a cool $30 Million in Funding last year, they must be earning enough to make that possible. Let alone the huge earning potential that they do have.

The point is this. You can create a true Open Source Project and still make profits. Your software just has to be good enough. Make your software amazing, open sourced, and easy to use and it will spread like wildfire. The profits will naturally come there after.

What open source project are you going to create?

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What is your motivation to get better at what you do? One of the things I have been thinking alot about lately is how the Internet can sometimes lure us to sleep and deprive us of our motivations to improve ourselves. The web in all it’s glory is a self improvement dream with resource upon resource of free information, all of which is at our fingertips. But I have noticed in my life many instances where I have taken these privilages for granted.

Why is this so? I think sometimes it becomes so easy for us to learn and advance ourselves with new skills thanks to such tools as Google and Social Media, that we lose our drive and our hunger to succeed. The game gets too easy, and therefore we become relaxed.

Keeping Yourself Motivated

If you do experience this from time to time like I do, I would like to share with you what I do to keep that motor running and get that motivation going.

1. Reading always gets me remotivated. Learning new concepts whether it be in business or in software gets me excited about implementing what I have learned.

2. Take a break! Sometimes it’s good just to take a break for a while. For me, I’ll play some Basketball or go to the movies with my Wife. Something to get my mind off things for awhile.

3. Revisit your goals. Sometimes in the mix of it all we can forget what all this work stuff is all about and why you got involved in what you are doing in the first place. Go back through your goals. Make adjustment if need be. Create new ones. Get your mind thinking about the bigger picture again.

These are 3 things I do when I feel a drop in my overall motivation. I hope these are helpful to you too. Remember now is the time to succeed in whatever it is you are wanting too accomplish! Don’t let a lack of motivation drag you down!

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I’m sure you have heard of Warren Buffet? He is depending on the time of year, the richest man in the world. He runs a company called Berkshire Hathaway which is worth more than $150 Billion dollars. The guy is ridiculously rich. He has more dough than anyone would ever know what to do with. His personal worth is valued around the $37 Billion mark. He even has billionaires like Bill Gates looking up to him as a mentor.

But Warren Buffet is not who you think. You would think that a man with the riches that he has would be living the billionaire lifestyle. But that is far from the case. Take a look at these videos from a recent BBC documentary that was done on Warren Buffet, taking us inside the life of the multi-billionaire and what he’s all about. You will be surprised by what you see. There is quite a bit to be learned from this man!

Warren Buffet Biography Videos – Watch Here

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I’ve spent the past few days playing around with Collabtive, the open source project management or collaboration application. I’ve been hooked using it because of it’s easy to use interface. It appears after all this time that somebody finally got it right with open source project management. Not only is the application totally usable, to top off all it’s amazing features it’s licensed under the GNU General Public License, so you know this project’s future looks bright.

There are 8 reasons why I think you are going to love Collabtive as an open source project management tool for your web projects. Collabtive is written in PHP and MySQL and works fine on all major web browsers. Collabtive is intended for small to medium sized businesses as well as freelancers of all kinds. Let’s take a look at the 8 things I love about Collabtive.

1. Perform All Tasks Quickly – The Main Interface

The main screen for each individual project allows you to quickly and easily perform a variety of tasks for your projects at the click of a button. This makes project management easy and takes no time to do. So you can spend more time on your actual project.

2. Project Milestones

Milestones are created for each individual project to help you track the overall progress of your project. You can break your project into individual milestones, each milestone having a deadline making sure it gets done in your desired amount of time.

3. Project Tasklists

Tasklists are a list of tasks that are assigned to individual milestones. This way you can make sure that everything you need done actually gets done. Through this tool in Collabtive you can provide better communication to your team members of what specifically needs to be done.

4. Project Users

Creating and assigning users to specific projects is so freakin’ easy with collabtive. There are three types of users. Admins, Clients, and Users. Each with their respective user privileges. As you can see with the screenshot, you can very easily assign and un-assign users to your projects.

5. Files Attached to Projects

One of the most common needs in project management applications is the ability to add files such as images, documents, spreadsheets etc. to those projects. This creates a higher level of collaboration as members of the team can so easily share file and communicate notes with those files. Collabtive makes it easy.

6. Track The Time Of All Efforts

The TimeTracker tool with Collabtive allows team members to track the time of all efforts they perform on each project. Each log through the TimeTracker is assigned to a specific task within each tasklist. So as the project manager you can see how long each individual task is taking.

7. Send Messages to Team Members

Message sending is so critical in a project collaboration environment. It’s sad that many small businesses and freelancers are still sending emails to each other. Using the Messaging tool in Collabtive allows everyone involved in the project, from Admin to developer to designer to the client, to send messages to each other quickly and to use those messages to help build the project more efficiently.

8. Import from Basecamp

Basecamp is probably the most common name associated with web-based project management applications. It’s a popular service based application to help you manage your projects with a variety of different tools. If you already have a Basecamp account and want to go the Open Source route, you can import all of your BaseCamp data into your new Collabtive self-hosted application.

There are some other really cool features other than these mentioned. There are RSS updates from projects, as well as email notifications to keep team members coming back to the app to update projects. Overall I find Collabtive to have a friendly, easy to use, and professional user interface (GUI) that makes the application pleasant to use.

Be sure to check out Collabtive and to try out the demo. Remember it’s fully Open Source licensed under the GNU General Public License so feel free to use it for commercial or personal use.

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I’ve had my share of ups and downs professionally. None more than this past year. A recently failed business. A few burned personal and professional business relationships. And thousands of dollars wasted. But after all the misery and pain this has caused me, I’m still standing!

I’ve learned so much in the process. The jokes about “the school of hard knocks” is no joke. The school is real. The curriculum is legit. And I have the scars to prove it. Much of the valuable information I learned I wish somebody would have just sat me down and taught me before hand. But I guess some mistakes I had to make on my own.

I want to explain to you what I’ve learned in hopes of you taking in this information and not having to make the same mistakes as I did. This of course is relating to m Online Business ventures of the past year.

1. Discipline

With discipline I mean specifically in terms of your online projects. I have too often spread myself thin by working on multiple projects rather than focusing on 1 or 2. Don’t do this. Focus on 1 or 2 projects and give them all you got. Have the persistence to see them all the way through. No matter how long it takes.

2. The 10% Better Rule

There is so much content on the web, its hard to find something that has not already been created. Do not waste your time worrying about whether or not someone has already used up your idea. You can pretty much guarantee that someone else is already doing what you are thinking of doing. Just concentrate on making yours 10% better!

3. Do What You Love!

Last but not least, do what you love doing. Stay away from the naysayers. Follow your gut. Why work your tail off to fulfill someone else’s dream? It took me building and designing over 300 custom blogs before I finally stopped. You know why I stopped? Because I found that I loved blogging. Not building blogs for other people. Blogging is what I wanted to do all along. But for the first couple of years I let money make the decisions for me. It took me a whole 2 years until I started following my instincts and doing what I love. Don’t make this same mistake!

Best of luck to you in your online business ventures. Or should I say Adventures! I hope you can take these 3 things I learned and apply them to what you are doing. Stay positive at all times and good luck!

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This is where affiliate marketing and open source meet. In talking about Open Source Business Models or how to make money with an open source application. The first one that I want to discuss is what I call the “Affiliate Model”. This model is pretty simple. After creating a demand with an application,  a community around that application, and then an audience you now have a bunch of users who you can market services too. In the Affiliate Model you are using 3rd party services. The following are a few prominent examples:

1. Web-Hosting Services
2. Design Services
3. Domain Names
4. Backup Services

WordPress Is A Good Example

WordPress is perhaps the largest open source web application project out there. With millions of hosted blogs on WordPress.com and just as many self-hosted blogs. WordPress is HUGE! If you browse around WordPress.org you will see the Hosting page located in the main navigation. That page looks like this:

A person that I know “on the inside” over a Bluehost web hosting told me that a majority of all their new signups each day are from that ad right on the WordPress hosting page! Let’s say at a minimum WordPress is getting paid $100 per signup that they refer to Bluehost. Let’s run these basic numbers real quick:

$100 (per signup) x 100 (#of signups) = $10,000

I’d be willing to bet that WordPress is generating this daily just from Bluehost. Not including all the other providers. But enough of the speculation. Do you see where i’m coming from here? The affiliate model as an open source business model works. As the creator of the open source application, you can recommend to your users where they should host the application you have created for them. Think of what your open source project could do with $10,000!

Build Your Affiliate Relationships

You want to build relationships with the companies that you are going to be an affiliate with. For example, the standard affiliate for Bluehost gets anywhere between $65 – $100 per signup. But because of WordPress’ amount of signups daily plus their personal relationship with them they most likely will generate more per sign-up. Something like $125 per or $150 per. Get to know these companies and share with them your Open Source vision and what it will mean to them.

Earning & Reinvesting

At this point it’s all about earning and reinvesting back into your open souce app. At the point to where you start to earn a little bit of cash through Affiliate advertising, just simply continue to multiply your efforts. If you are generating $2,000/month you are no IBM. But it’s a start. Keep building your application. Keep building your community. And you will see those numbers continue to increase.

You will need to reinvest some of the earnings you make each month back into your open source project. Whether it be to designers to help “beautify” your application. Or in marketing through the web. This will speed up the process much quicker and allow your open source project to grow much more rapidly. Here’s what i’m talking about:

The Problem With Most Open Source Projects

The problem with most open source projects is not that that their application isn’t cool. Or that it doesn’t work. It’s that nobody sees the benefits of using it. If you can explain your open source app clearly and make it look “eye catching” than people will connect with it. This is what has happened to the WordPress’s and SugarCRM’s of the world. They are eye appealing to the end users.

By following a model (the one shown above) you can make sure that all aspects of your open source project are being taken care of. But you gotta make money to reinvest money back into your project. And this is where Affiliate Marketing really comes into play with Open Source.

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This blog is written specifically to and for all Freelance Web Designers and Developers. In case you don’t know this about me, I too am a Freelance Web Designer and Developer. Yes I own & run a Web Development company, but my company acts like sort of a glorified freelance group. Most of my clients and leads come from online. And I work from home full-time. As freelancers we have an interesting business that can be both complicating and rewarding. One of the major obstacles that many of us freelancers face is Better Communication with our Clients!

Vera Raposa, an author from the Small Business Branding blog wrote an interesting article recently titled “10 Easy Steps for Better Communication with Your Clients”. The article was not directly intended for the “freelancer” in mind, but as freelancers there are many things we can take away from the article to help us in this area of business. I’m going to list her 10 steps in this article because they are so helpful to freelance web designers and developers.

1) THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

Just as it’s been said the best offense is a good defense, the same can be said for communication. Sometimes the best way to reach out to people is simply by listening to them. Clients will never be shy about expressing their needs and concerns. However, a lot of times companies have well developed sales approaches that don’t take into account the dynamic nature of client relations.

It is a good idea to know your strategy and have it firmed up; however, an essential part of that strategy should be formed around listening to what the client has to say on a regular basis. Good listening skills not only allow you to collect valuable information necessary to assist a client and answer their needs, but it also demonstrates sensitivity and understanding.

Listening will set the tone for the rest of your communication. It will direct your efforts. By actively listening to clients, you’ll know the best way to communicate with them. Whether through email or phone, listening skills will foster the next steps in client relations. This can not only help businesses fine tune their sales and implementation techniques but it will also help to create a long term client relationship, increasing visibility, referrals and market share

2) EMAIL ETTIQUETTE

Email has become the most effective and efficient way to communicate within the workplace. Almost 88 percent of all Internet users in the U.S. use email. This information comes from a survey conducted by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy (The UCLA Internet Report: Surveying the Digital Future. UCLA Center for Communication Policy. 2001).

According to the same survey, approximately 90 percent of those who use the Internet at work use it to access business email. It has provided its own unique set of issues to learn to navigate. Although, intended to be used to communicate ideas and concerns, as well as, respond to needs as they arise, if not used correctly email can lead to miscommunication resulting in negative consequences.

The use of email can have a dramatic impact on business, a powerful communication tool. Establishing an email protocol ensures that the client message remains on point and is done so in a The key components to this would be acknowledging emails in a timely matter, using appropriate tone and making sure to check each email for any spelling or grammar errors. Clients often may not notice the extra effort taken to deliver the perfect email; they will, however, be quick to point out any errors, miscommunications or poorly written emails.

3) PHONE ETTIQUETTE

The phone brings a real time approach to client interaction. It allows you to get the true pulse of how a project is headed or what a client needs. Having a team with proper phone skills are essential to any successful business. It isn’t just a matter of picking up a phone and dialing the numbers; it is about having a productive, meaningful and engaging conversation.

A good phone conversation has three key elements

1. The call should be uninterrupted and quiet – It should go without saying that the best place to call a client is from a quiet office and not from a mobile phone in a convertible. However, with technology allowing us to be accessible 24/7, sometimes a quiet office may not always be available. Still though, it is essential to find a location that will allow the topic of the call to be the focus and not background noise. If it is necessary to step out of a room or take a few minutes to find a location, let the client know they will receive a call back shortly. It is better to get back to them in reasonable time then for either party to be distracted.

2. An agenda should to be in place – It is not always the case that a formal agenda needs to be typed up and distributed ahead of time; however, there should always, at a minimum, be an outline of what needs to be taken care of during the conversation. In busy settings, it is important to take time to check in on clients, but also important to be aware of their time constraints too. A focused call will help achieve this. The tone of a call can be as formal or informal as needed; however, it still needs to be driven by objectives and follow-ups.

3. Follow-up – If necessary or requested, it is a good practice to send a follow-up email thanking the client for their time, reviewing the hot topics of the conversation and putting in writing any requirements that need to be addressed in future calls. This gives another opportunity to show clients that by active listening, their needs are being heard and their goals are being worked towards. It also allows an opportunity to clarify any issues or questions that may have come out of the phone call, but still require more information.

4) DEFINE THE PROJECT

Entering into an agreement with a client is the basic function of business. Someone sees a need and decides to fill it. Months are spent creating the perfect branding and marketing plan in preparations for opening the doors. The hard work of running a business is rewarded in the success of expanding a client base.

The most important aspect of doing just that is making sure that the needs of the client are met in the most effective way.

So often a client needs one thing and through a series of miscommunication and internal meetings, the client ends up receiving something other than their vision. Instead of being a business that revisits these issues in postmortems, a proactive way to solve this client killer is to develop a well defined project plan.

Having a definite project scope with appropriate follow-ups will help alleviate the stress of finding out mid course that the client is on a different page. Defining scope can be as simple as meeting with a client to review the basic needs to as extensive as hiring and assigning a project manager to work with the client in a creating and sign off of formal scope document. The level of defining scope will be dependent on the size of the project and the needs of the client. This also goes back to the importance of actively listening.

By taking time early in the process to actively engage the client in what it they require will help to firm up the understanding of the deliverable they are expecting. Putting the communication effort up front, can also be cost effective as there will be less potential for work spent trying to ‘fix’ issues as they arise. A successful project is one that continually moves forward. Moves laterally or backward are financially draining for both client and business owner.

Communicating scope at the beginning of the working relationship ensures that each day the project is active it is moving forward to both the benefit of client and business alike. In the end, a project that is defined will leave less room for error and more opportunity for repeat business and word of mouth referrals.

5) MAKE DEADLINE

Hand in hand with defining project scope is honoring the commitment promised to the client. Scoping out the project ahead of time will allow proper resource allocation to be towards the project from the beginning. Just as time is money for you, the client is dependent on your word to complete their needs in the time promised.

A delayed project not only adds more payrolls to the business expense, but it delays the end goal of the paying client. Whether the business makes t-shirts, hosts websites or performs online trading, the client is dependent on the expertise of the business. One component of that expertise is the ability to listen to the needs the client is presenting and turning that into a functional timeline.

Your business is making money off the needs of the client, however, the client is dependent on a promised turnaround in order to make money. A client is going to seek to hire those companies that not only provide the services they need but do so in the most cost effective manner. They will be taking into account not only price point when making a decision with who to work, but also turn around time.

A business is only as good as its reputation. And its reputation is solely based on that of its clients.

Communicating with clients on what they can expect is only half the battle; letting them know when they can expect it is the other. Everyone knows that not all projects are delivered on time. In fact only a small percentage of projects come in on time and under budget, so although hopeful most clients will be aware that there will be variables beyond control that can push a deadline.

However, how a company communicates that information to a client can be the difference between an angry client and a delayed yet very successful project. Any successful business knows that there will have to be a fair share of adjusting to situations as they present themselves; going into projects clients will be aware they may need to shift from time to time, open and timely communication to them will allow them to make the changes necessary.

6) EXPRESS NEEDS

Working with a client is a mutual relationship. Just as the client is expecting certain things from the business, it is expected that the business will have certain needs for the client. From the onset of the project through its completion, communicating on what is needed from the client will have a direct impact on how things progress.

As it is with the client conveying their requirements, taking the time to freely communicate expectations, concerns and preferences will help create a dynamic approach to the project and help build trust and rapport with the client. Communicating has both an immediate and long lasting impact. Instantly it sets the bar high for the project and lets the client know that they are working with a company they can trust.

7) ADMIT & CORRECT MISTAKES

Throughout the course of a business relationship with a client there are bound to be situations when what the client wants or expects is not done to the client’s expectations and, in turn, satisfaction. When things go amiss, it makes good business sense to take the time to review what went wrong and why. There are going to be times the ‘why’ is because the business made an error.

Never be afraid to step up to the plate and let the client know an error was made, and more importantly that it is being corrected – immediately.

Communicating issues with the client allows them to see that they have selected a company that both sees manages issues as they arise and doesn’t try to cover them up. It is often said that it isn’t the lie that befalls a man, but the cover-up. The same sentiment can hold true for businesses.

It isn’t the error that will hurt your relationship, errors happen; however, an attempted cover-up, denial or lie will have negative implications that can harm the ongoing project, as well as curtail any change of future projects with the client.

There will also be times after careful review it is determined that no real error was done, rather the client miscommunicated, change scope or is just being difficult. Inevitably at some point everyone will run into this situation; the edict, “The customer is ALWAYS right” applies here.

Treat the client as if they are right, even if it means gritting your teeth. Although easier, and often more rewarding to point out no error was made taking that approach, this will not move the project forward. Getting into a back and forth with a client on who was right and who was wrong can stall a project and create a new wave of issues to deal with.

There is no reason to admit fault during these situations, however, a skillful business person will listen to the needs of the client and communicate the desire to fix the issue. Taking steps to rectify the situation without admitting fault will keep the project moving along and will satisfy the concern of the client.

At this point it may become necessary to add more check-in emails or meetings with the client to help alleviate this type of problem in the future. And the good news is once the project is over it the decision can be made to avoid future relations with the client.

8. PROJECT TRACKING

As the start of the project nears it is a good idea to have a kick-off meeting with the client to review expectations, deadlines, scope, billing, and any other variables that will be tracked over the course of the project. Structuring expectations of the project from day one will help minimize confusion as the project begins to roll out.

One way to do this is to track all components of the project and provide the client updates along the way. For example, remember to track all time spent on the project; if billing is by the hour, make sure to send the client updates.

No client wants to be surprised by a large bill due to miscommunication of time spent working on the project. Keep the client abreast of the time it is taking to move the project forward, by communicating with them, it allows them the opportunity to make adjustments if necessary and will help to avoid any payment issues on the back end.

Also track as much of the client communication as you can too. A good system keeps track of every communication with the client and solves the “didn’t you get my email?” problem. An overall tracking strategy also allows you the freedom to provide feedback to the client on a moment’s notice. If they have questions as to the amount of time, the cost, or the overall efficiency of the project, it will be easy to provide them a quick response addressing all of their concerns.

9) LET IT ROLL OFF YOUR BACK

The business world can be tough. With the best team leading a project, the best efforts in place and the best outcome resulting, there are still going to be situations where it just isn’t good enough for someone. Even with all the best efforts put forward, inevitably a client will ask for a report to be worded a certain way or for a logo to be in neon yellow and orange.

Provide them a professional opinion of what better, however remember at the end of the day (and budget) it is their project and as discussed earlier, ‘the customer is always right” Criticism is bound to happen at all levels of the project, from the client to internal meetings, try not to take it personally and think of criticism as an objective opportunity to make the project better. The more often criticism is presented; the easier it will be to keep it in check, remember its importance and to use it as a tool to move forward.

10) CUSTOMER SERVICE | CUSTOMER SERVICE | CUSTOMER SERVICE

If as if they say, ‘location, location, location’ are the three most important variables in deciding where to start a business, then ‘customer service, customer service, customer service’ are the three most important to keeping it up and running. Communication is the core component to providing top notch customer service. From the moment a prospect calls with an inquiry into the services provided to thank you notes, communicating is the best customer service approach to let the client know they matter are appreciated.

One of the most important customer service skills is the ability to understand and effectively respond to the customer’s needs and concerns. Excellent customer service starts by first taking the time to get to know the customer, his situation, his vision, his frustrations and his goals. Providing great customer service is not difficult nor does it require a lot of effort.

What good customer service requires is a belief in the philosophy that the business is dependent on the client, and in turn will work to make sure the clients needs are the most important thing. Clients want to work with those businesses who demonstrate a sincere desire to help them with anything they need, and they are willing to pay for it. Yes, they want products to work and services that meet their needs. More importantly though, they want someone to care when something goes wrong.

Final Thoughts

In Web Design and Development, projects should have a collaborative feel to them. Meaning, it’s important that you and your client are on the same page working to complete a project. But the client has to be willing to communicate as well. It can’t all be the freelancer. Way too many times Freelance Web Professionals are overly criticized by their clients. And many times this criticism has more to do with the ignorance and arrogance of the client, not the freelancer. Nevertheless, it’s important to do your best in communicating and being open with your client. And these 10 steps will help you tremendously. Much thanks to Vera for this fantastic article! Keep up the great writing Vera!

• Some Additions to My Web Design/Development Contracts

Dreamtemplate.com offers over 300 free templates, and access to thousands of premium templates for $59.95. They are basically another provider of website templates on the Internet. The one thing I like about dreamtemplate.com is that they give you a different collection of templates than what you will find on other template sites such as Template Monster. If you are in the market to spend a few bucks and purchase a template for a particular website, then I recommend checking out dreamtemplate.com and seeing what they have to offer.

Tip: One thing that I do is click on the side navigation under Free Website Templates and see what free templates I can find! They always seem to have good free CSS templates to choose from. This is very important for me in my affiliate marketing, because I don’t have the time to put together a custom template for each website that I make. So I rely on either purchasing or finding a free template from sites like dreamtemplate.com.

Affiliate Program

If you are interested in promoting dreamtemplate.com they have a commission program that pays out 30% for every sale that you direct their way. So basically, refer 50 sales and because of their average amount of sale you would get about $1200. Not too bad for selling website templates.

A Note on Flash Templates

For you web designers/developers out there, it can be a real pain in the rear to create flash websites from scratch if you are ever asked to. Unless of course you are a “flash” kind of guy/girl who likes that sort of thing. What I have typically done in the past for people who ask me to build them a flash only site, I refer them to a site like Dream Template that sells flash templates and have them pick out there favorite one. Then I just purchase the flash template and modify it from there. Takes away alot of unnecessary work that doesn’t need to be done. Dream Template has a huge selection of Flash Templates that you can choose from covering all sorts of topics from Business to Entertainment.

Powerpoint & Word Templates

Dreamtemplate.com also sales Powerpoint and Word templates as well. These can be really nice when you don’t want to spend the time to create your own. Creating a Powerpoint or Word Template is not something that I enjoy doing and would rather never do. So if I run into a situation where I need one I just purhase one.

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CIS Group is a software solutions company providing sales automation software and is one of the largest providers of mobile software solutions in North America, helping companies maximize productivity, decrease distribution costs, and enhance profitability. They have 4 main products that they currently actively market and sell:

1. Companion Suite – this gives you mobile sales and merchandising, route accounting software (direct store deliver – DSD), effective management of your mobile personnel, and a back-end system that optimizes the management of your distribution activities. Better said it’s a solution for direct store delivery software!
2. Coach Suite – The Coach Suite gives you a solution to activity management for the people transportation industry. Coach Chartered is specifically designed for the chartered transportation sector. Coach Circuits is designed for the school, city and intercity carriers sector. And Coach Events which is for managing various events related to people transportation.
3. Rapid Suite – a complete integrated planning tool for the transportation industry. Instant tracking of all resources as well as providing at all times the trip status and exact operation costs.
4. Cargo – this system facilitates fleet management by providing real time info on the costs and performance of your different departments. It basically covers all transactions related to your vehicles.

Generally speaking, CIS Group has some fantastic software for businesses who require sales reps interacting with delivery personnel. Their software enhances the communication process between the two departments, keeping the business working smoothly at all times.

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Are you trying to build your own social network? Are you at least contemplating the idea in your mind? Than you are looking for Elgg- the open source social network platform. It’s open source, which means it free and customizable. It also means that it gives you a solid foundation to work off of. Elgg supports a variety of different plugins that you will find helpful such as the “Open ID” plugin which essentially gives your social network Open ID support. The invitation tool works like a charm with Elgg, giving your social network the physical capability to spread like a “virus” to many many users. I must say that I recommend Elgg to all as it has worked so well for me and my personal project Realedin.com – a real estate social network.

Fresh out of the box Elgg contains these fundamental facebook like features:

• Find and make friends
• create communities
• upload photos
• Your Profile Page

With some additional features of course:

• Your own blog
• RSS Reader

There are a few plugins I suggest as well. These plugins have worked very well for me in my projects:

• Bookmark tool
• Private Messages
• Suggestions Tool

And my final thought to round it all up. Many people have been throwing up Myspace Clone’s for the past couple of years now to build their own social networks. I cannot emphasize how big of a waste of time that is. Elgg is built on such a better foundation than Myspace ever was. Plus it has more features. Due to the fact that it’s a major open source project you will see exponential growth in the system in the months to come. So if you are serious about creating a social network of your own, than use Elgg. If you are not, and are looking for a stupid quick fix than go ahead and do a Myspace clone like everybody else.

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