New online business tool from BT helps SMEs run their business

January 17, 2007

BT Business has launched BT Workspace, a new online tool as one of its “Business Essentials” range of services designed to make it easier for SMEs to run their business.

BT Workspace is an easy-to-use, but powerful, web-based system that helps groups of people share information and manage projects. There are two versions, BT Workspace at £7.50
(ex VAT) for each Company Workspace user per month with 100MB storage each, and BT Workspace Lite, which is free for two Project Workspaces, two Company Workspace Users and 10MB of storage.*

Co-workers, customers or partners can help themselves to status updates of projects or associated documents instead of having to keep contacting the project manager. This means an end to the endless string of e-mails choking up Inboxes with countless responses to business issues and opportunities. And it will also call a halt to the nightmare of controlling different versions of documents as team members make additions and amendments. The end of poor project control and disjointed customer communication will help businesses avoid the loss of customers and revenue.

BT Workspace enables employees to manage company-wide information like accounts, sales opportunities, contracts, events and documents, giving the whole team visibility of sales opportunities and customer support tasks. Importantly, it also backs-up critical business data and documents daily.

There are three elements to BT Workspace:

Project Workspace – offers control of all the interactions and information to manage projects and collaborative tasks both inside and outside the organisation, keeping teams, customers and partners informed and on track. There is no limit to the number of Project Workspaces or the number of participants and any number of co-workers, customers, partners or external users can be invited to join at no additional charge.

Everyone invited to a Project Workspace will have access to Tasks, Contacts, Milestones & Events, Files and Documents and Discussions.

Inviting new participants to a Project Workspace is as simple as adding an e-mail address and a note to personalise it. Each member of a Project Workspace also gets their own complimentary Personal Workspace.

My Workspace - a simple, private, secure web page for managing personal contacts, tasks, calendar events, milestones and documents. It consolidates and provides “One View” of all the tasks or calendar events that a user has been assigned from different projects. This means that, for example, even if a user has been invited to ten Project Workspaces, they do not need to click on each one to get an update. It also provides a simple “dashboard” of most recent activity from all Project Workspaces and the Company Workspace.

Company Workspace - an easy-to-use environment that consolidates essential information – the business’s activities and documents. It offers a corporate intranet with a virtual bulletin board and calendar. It gives guaranteed backup of company files and documents, and allows the business to manage lists of customer account details, contact information, sales opportunities and pipeline reports.

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, said: “BT Workspace is a simple, powerful and inexpensive tool that enables small businesses to improve their customer relationships.

“It’s fantastic if you’ve got projects that are managed via e-mail, and as a result nobody has control of all the tasks, milestones and documents or if you’ve got a million different assignments coming at you from all directions and want a single, consolidated view across all projects.

“BT Workspace is always on, and available anywhere you have an internet connection. And you don’t need an IT team because we manage all the technology for you. Through our ‘Business Essentials’ range of services we’re committed to helping SMEs to thrive, making it easier for them to run their business by harnessing technology that’s effective and easy to use.”

BT Workspace costs £7.50 (ex VAT) for each Company Workspace user per month.** It comes with 100MB storage for each paid user. Additional storage is £5 for 1GB, per month. People invited by a user to a Project Workspace, this could include company employees, but could also include outside parties such as customers or partners, are free. This is because these users only see the Project Workspace to which they have been invited.

BT Workspace Lite is free. It offers two Project Workspaces, two Company Workspace Users and 10MB of storage.*

Signing-up is a simple and quick, three-step process at www.bt.com/workspace. Customers firstly name their Workspace, for example, http://XYZCorp.btworkspace.com. They then need to enter their company details. Finally they login and get started.

To view a demonstration or for more information customers should visit www.bt.com/workspace or call 0800 032 8498.

* Available from 9am January 18, 2007

**Minimum of two users per account. Requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 and later or Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and later

BT Workspace is a trademark of British Telecommunications public limited company.

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