Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

I can’t name names yet, but I wanted to share this story which I believe is a powerful demonstration of how beneficial software automation can be, especially under the current economic climate.

A small loan company has adopted our software to streamline a number of software processes. By doing so they have become much more efficient and have been able to speed up processing times and reduce labour costs. This has allowed them to offer smaller loans which were previously not profitable.

Within their state two thirds of their competition have gone out of business because they were not able to handle these smaller loans. With the current economic climate meaning people are no longer taking on big loans and mortgages the only way to stay in business is to make small loans pay. Software automation has helped them achieve this. Those that failed to streamline their systems have gone out of business.

This particular company attributes the fact that they are still in business in large part to their use of software from MJT Net Ltd.

There’s never been a better time to cut costs and become more efficient.

We’re currently putting together a press release which will outline how different customers of our software are saving money through software automation.

If you are interested in being featured please let me know. We’ll need a short quote and we will provide a link back to your site. We would need savings translated to monetary terms (e.g. hours saved * average hourly chargeout/labour costs).

The aim of the press release is to demonstrate the kind of savings/efficiency gains companies can make through software automation. Something everyone can benefit from under the current economic climate!

I’m also looking for more case study participants. If you’d like to get some free publicity in your industry publications and showcase your company and demonstrate how you’ve benefited from Macro Scheduler, let me know and, if suitable, I’ll send you a list of questions to get things started.

Some examples:
http://www.mjtnet.com/case-studies/FSBAltusCaseStudy.pdf
http://www.mjtnet.com/case-studies/IowaLaserCaseStudy.pdf

Received an email today from a longstanding customer who is using Comcast as his ISP. Today he tried to access www.mjtnet.com and received this message:

WARNING!
This site is rated potentially unsafe by TrustWatch!

You have been redirected to this page as a service of Comcast High-Speed Internet, which includes the Comcast Toolbar. TrustWatch, a critically acclaimed, industry-leading website verification service, has restricted access to the site www.mjtnet.com for your protection. Accessing this site could put you at risk for identity theft or other financial fraud.

What the!? Identity theft? Financial fraud? Where ON EARTH do they get that idea? Who do these people think they are?

So I googled TrustWatch and found their website. I clicked on their About Trustwatch page to find a phone number. I figured I’d give them a call. I did. I got this recorded message:

The number you have dialed has been disconnected

Doesn’t exactly engender trust, does it, TrustWatch?

Update: I tried emailing them via the email address listed on their site – [email protected] – and it bounced saying an SMTP connection could not be established.

Update 2: Seems someone else had a similar experience trying to contact TrustWatch

Internal Efficiency Improves Customer Service
"Initially the IT division was on a theoretical ‘25th floor’ and everyone was taking the stairs," says Garry Petzold, the chief IT officer at First State of Altus, Okla. "To better serve our customer base, while also meeting the needs of our bank’s technology infrastructure, I started researching solutions that would automate business processes and improve workflow. More…

I saw a link to this great video on a forum this morning. Great marketing. Not unique – remember the Honda advert? – but still very impressive and it is clearly working because I’m linking to it here:

http://www.clustarack.co.uk/

There’s also a great “behind the scenes” video here, explaining how they did it:

http://www.clustarack.co.uk/video.html

Just had to share. Enjoy.

I posted a link to a list of system error codes before. But I recently found this handy little utility which gives you a quick way to look up a Windows error code and find out what it means. Good to have on your desktop.

PDF documents are everywhere, but most of us don’t have the means to edit them. I’ve often received forms or agreements in PDF format and have had to print them off to complete and sign them only to scan them again to send in an email. But there’s an end to this madness in the form of a neat and inexpensive piece of software called PDF Annotator from our friends at Grahl Software. PDF Annotator lets anyone edit directly on top of a PDF file – add notes, comments, corrections, drawings etc. Ideal for filling in forms, adding your notes to technical manuals, or correcting other people’s work.

PDF Annotator will be on Software Deal of the Day on Wednesday 5th March.