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magazine
23
SME buying group goes
national
A B2B buying group that connects small
businesses with local suppliers has started offering
national deals on aWednesday, in addition to its
Monday offer for London-based businesses. Each
week BusinessCrayon.com offers a select number
of deals from approved suppliers, which it is able
to provide at a discount due to the greater buying
power of a community of businesses. Once
enough businesses have made a commitment to
purchase, the deal is activated and buyers make
their payment, which is then passed on to the
supplier minus a small commission.
www.BusinessCrayon.com
Reliability trumps brand
value in the office
When it comes to office tech, brand values come
a long way behind more practical considerations
such as reliability, according to a YouGov survey
for Casio Projectors. Its study of 1,200 office
workers found that even though two thirds of
respondents (64%) felt that brand affects their
perception of how a product performs, just 1%
said brand was important when choosing office
technology. Reliability came out on top with
55%, followed by performance with 31% and
product and maintenance costs with 8%. Only
four out of 10 people (38%) surveyed could
name more than two brands in their office.
Telecoms comparison site
A new online comparison site has been set up
to help businesses reduce their telephony and
broadband bills. My Business Saver.com searches
for deals across a range of major telecoms
providers, listing options that it says could save
businesses an average of 37% against their
current provider and in some cases as much as
70%.
www.mybusinesssaver.com
Smarter colour
Brother has started a new blog to help
growing businesses improve their presentation.
ColourWorks provides tips on design, graphics
and colour, and includes free design templates
for letterheads, posters, booklets and other
documents. There will also be regular guest
posts from design industry professionals.
www.colourworks.brother.co.uk
Desktop phones for SMEs
Snom’s new line of business VoIP phones, the 7xx range, is designed for small and mid-sized
businesses requiring an enterprise-class desktop phone on an SMB budget.
The snom 720 and snom 760 combine the
multiple programmable buttons and standard
business functionality of the snom 3xx series with
the advanced functionality, sleek styling and Gigabit
Ethernet switch found in the snom 8xx.
Both the snom 720 and 760 offer automatic
provisioning, wireless LAN connectivity, USB ports
and snom’s wideband high definition voice quality.
Thanks to the Gigabit Ethernet switch, they can
transfer data at a speed of 1000Mbits/s without
slowing down the network or a connected PC.
The snom 760 also features a high-resolution
colour display, making it ideal for business
environments that require visual data, such as photo
IDs of callers.
www.snomchannel.co.uk
Luidia eBeam technology is being used
in the Polycom UC Board, which the
videoconferencing specialist is introducing
to overcome the difficulties remote meeting
participants have viewing content written
on traditional whiteboards.
Designed to be connected to a Polycom
RealPresence Room HDX solution, Polycom UC
Board consists of a plug and play receiver that
can be retrofitted to any LCD monitor or display
surface and a wireless stylus that can be used
to write or draw onscreen. The pen can also be
used to annotate presentations displayed on-
screen. Remote participants see the results in
real-time on their own equipment. Polycom UC
Board costs £1,114.
www.polycom.com 01753 723130
Virtual whiteboard
...in brief
Customer
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For more details now,
call our Sales Line:
0845 271 3288
www.aastra.co.uk
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