MCF Technology Solutions will be holding an Open House on May 23^rd from 4-6 pm to celebrate the opening of our new office in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. The office location is 2509 Professor Avenue.

The Open House will also mark two important events for MCF Tech and the Tremont neighborhood, the launch of the Spreadsheet Abuse campaign and the formation of the Tremont IT Association.

Spreadsheet Abuse (www.spreadsheetabuse.com) is a new initiative by MCF Tech to help companies that are using spreadsheets inappropriately to run core business processes. MCF Tech helps replace unwieldy spreadsheets with robust Webware applications.

The Tremont IT Association is being formed to help encourage other boutique and forward looking IT firms collaborate and help create a ripe atmosphere for entrepreneurship and growth in the Tremont area. MCF Tech founding partner Don Larson is driving the creation of the association.

For more information please contact Don Larson at dlarson@mcftech.com.

Actually, MCF Technology Solutions has been a Bedouin Business from our roots and we continue to live and exemplify the Bedouin Business Lifestyle.

What is the Bedouin Business Lifestyle?
For the full scoop on the Bedouin or neo-Bedouin Business please refer to the article by Greg Olsen, “Going Bedouin“.

To us the Bedouin Business Lifestyle means supporting a work environment that allows us to be effective from anywhere, anytime and with clients all around the world. This approach allows our team the flexibility to travel (for business or pleasure) without losing effectiveness and to plan our work in the most efficient manner possible.

Over the past six months our team members have successfully contributed to projects while traveling in California, Nevis (West Indies), Astoria (Oregon), and El Salvador. At the same time we work with clients and partners across the United States, England, Australia, China, Romania and Taiwan.

A Simple Case Study
More valuable perhaps than the global perspective of the Bedouin Business Lifestyle is the efficiency created by supporting flexible working conditions. MCF world headquarters (more a humble collection of small offices) is used for team meetings and as a haven for those who feel unproductive in their alternative work spaces.

Recently I started thinking about the price of gasoline and realized that my relatively short commute is costing me close to $100/month in fuel and consuming an hour/day in unproductive time . . . numbers that aren’t exactly trivial. Fortunately working from home requires no special adjustments, as the Bedouin Business Lifestyle has become a way of being.

By this time next week I suspect I’ll start feeling that my time spent at home is becoming immersed in Halo 3 and folding laundry . . . it’s back to the office.

Tools of the Trade
The Bedouin Business Lifestyle does require preparation, equipment and services.

Here’s my list:

- Laptop with mouse: It is possible to create services to access most necessary information from terminals with internet, but having a laptop makes things a lot easier. I also make sure to carry a mouse with me since I find my productivity drops substantially if I rely on the touch pad.

- Communications Services: Skype, Vonage and Gotomeeting handle our communication and messaging with our clients and team. Whatever the tools a Bedouin Business chooses, it’s critical to be able to connect globally and easily access communications services from anywhere.

- Coghead: We run our business using Coghead applications for lead, proposal and project tracking which means our whole team accesses, shares and works on the same information. Until now, web based collaborative work tools required expensive application infrastructure. Coghead makes it possible for us (the small guys) to utilize robust, collaborative, ERP like applications designed for our small business.

For more information on how MCF Technology Solutions can help your company develop business process applications to support the Bedouin Business Lifestyle, please contact us at info@mcftech.com.

Don Larson of MCF Technology Solutions teamed up with Kenji Miller of Coghead today to present a Webinar on How to Make Money with Coghead:  An Overview of the Charter Affiliate Program.

The Webinar offered details of the Coghead Affiliate Program as well as some great stories  from Don about recent Coghead deployments.

To view the archived Webinar please go to the Coghead Webinar Page.

For more information on the Coghead Affiliate Program, click here

A new breed of web tools that allow for rapid development and deployment of customized business process applications is changing the game in applications building. Up to now companies had to choose between complex applications designed to solve a specific set of business problems (out-of-the-box applications), or expend a high cost for the infrastructure and development of conventional custom applications.

THE PROBLEM WITH ONE SIZE FITS ALL
One of the biggest challenges with out-of-the-box applications is that in order to make a return on investment the developers are continually building in features they anticipate that many users will need. Ultimately no user or deployment utilizes all of the features. Over time the amount of unused options clutters the workspace and make applications confusing and difficult for end users to learn and operate efficiently.

THE PROBLEM WITH CONVENTIONAL CUSTOM APPLICATIONS
While out-of-the-box applications provide rich features to many users at a low cost, traditional custom application development is an expensive, time consuming and often overwhelming affair. Custom development frequently gets bogged down in infrastructure choices and technical hurdles unrelated to the actual business process. At the same time, the application building technologies are typically inflexible and difficult to iterate, creating huge projects before deployment, and a subsequent string of large projects to correct the problems discovered when the application is finally put to use.

THE NEW PARADIGM OF CUSTOM APPLICATION BUILDING
The new breed of hosted custom application builders, such as Coghead, create a paradigm shift in application design an deployment. The hosted platform takes infrastructure issues right out of the equation, allowing designers and business process owners to focus on the process requirements. The speed and flexibility with which applications can be developed and deployed allows for an iterative and interactive deployment process. This means applications can be released rapidly and continuously upgraded.

For the past two years, members of MCF Technology Solutions have been rapidly deploying hosted custom applications. Through this experience we have found that in many cases, out-of-the-box style applications can be designed for specific customer requirements at costs dramatically lower than conventional custom applications and tailored for an exact fit to business processes. We call this “Build it from the Ground Up”. This revolution in business process application design is shifting the cost benefit equation to allow businesses of all sizes to get tailored solutions, in an accelerated time-frame, at an affordable price.