#xamun

We can often hear “work-life” balance in motivational posters around the office or it might be mentioned on one of the lifestyle pep talks HR offers but does it remain less in practice, or worse, stay in theory?

Weekends are most looked forward to but from experience it’s not the free time per se we desire. What we look for is essentially the freedom from the constraints of work. Before anything else, yes, we love our work but there are times when we just want hit ourselves on the head for missing a family gathering or skipping out on our children’s first school play. This is where the concept of telecommuting comes.

At this day and age, I’d like to think we are enlightened workers, knowing how to utilize the tools made available for us to our own advantage. Technology and the internet have allowed us to have an alternative work-site where our work comes to us and not the other way around. We are not bounded by physical restraints of the location.

Telecommuting is described as a work arrangement which employees enjoy flexibility in work location and hours. The most common term for telecommute is “work from home” but since it’s operating virtually, we can now absolutely work from anywhere in the world be it home, a coffee shop, or even your vacation house in Rio.

Telecommute has plenty of mention-worthy benefits such as increased job satisfaction, reduced stress from commute time and finances, work interruption, and reduced job related costs. However, one benefit that we like to associate with telecommute is having the quintessence of freedom—freedom to choose when to work, where to work, and who to work with.

The statistics are right on chart as well. According to a CIO Insight report conducted in 2010, U.S. businesses can save an estimated amount of $400 billion due to virtual work policies; $124 billion can be saved from reduced office costs; $31 billion saved through reduced employee turnover annually; and employees will save two weeks of free time by not commuting to an office.

Did you know that you can start and operate a virtual company with people you know globally? You can ask them to join you full time, part-time and/or hire freelance experts by just using two tools: Xamun and a PayPal account.

The point is not only to do it but to do it well. With the following steps you can have a virtual company with systems and processes that can be ISO9001 certified: Step 1 : Get an account in Xamun for Corporate

Step 2: Setup your company and add licenses for adding your other officers and employees.

Step 3: Synchronize your contacts from MS Outlook and invite consultants to join Xamun Freelance. Then associate them with your company on Xamun community.

Step 4: Sign up or use your exisiting a PayPal account to manage billing payments and other expenses.

Step5: Get a Xero accounting subscription and connect with Xamun

Step6: You're now ready to use Xamun!  Set-up Client, Project, and Resource management applications with your managers to start your business.

2011 has been a great year for social media, especially in terms of social media sharing—this generation’s second coming of the word of mouth. Last year, Facebook made 52.1% of web sharing while Twitter came in strong at 13.5% which also showed growth at 576.9%.  Google+ (introduced in the same year) got 373% of growth sharing while Tumblr rose at 1299.5%.

The influence of social media will definitely get stronger for 2012 as new blood and traditional sectors continue on adapting social media to its marketing, branding, and customer support. You can expect the rise of new breakthroughs like Klout. Klout created noise by launching an online application that can be likened to Google’s Analytics. Klout’s feature includes measuring social media influence. Measuring social media influence will determine your true reach, amplification, and the network you influence based on your social activities on the internet.

Social media will also widely affect search results. Earlier this January, Google has changed its search algorithm creating personalized search results based on your social presence on Google+. This has earned negative reactions from other search sites like Bing and website Gizmodo. Even Twitter expressed its disapproval on the move.

People also want control over their online social history. 2012 will have a great demand for tools that will quickly edit photos, wall updates, twitter status, etc. There will also be a demand for a single app that will be able to do all these edits. With that, you can also expect increased collaboration through social media within the work place. File sharing, instant messaging and remote collaboration are some of the elements that will push this need.

In 2011, television and social media started their collaboration. This 2012, watch for its steady interactive growth and visibility. Streaming and live tweeting events and updates will also be on the rise especially now that tablets and iPads are successfully putting their foot down on the market.

Social media games as a form of promotion will also be a boom. We can see these kinds of activities on twitter such winning a promo for being the (insert number) tweet. Discounts are still appreciated but nothing beats on winning an easy challenge.

Are you ready to experience these trends that will roll out on 2012? What are your expectations on 2012’s social media? What are the trends that you have adopted in your strategy?

Get Satisfaction is known as a customer community software platform that caters to customer-centric discussions and information exchange. In its conception, it showed results of customers wanting to help each other out by answering questions, posting queries and offering suggestions.

As a business solution, Xamun found GetSat to be an intuitive and friendly environment that in turn reflects our philosophy as a company. Such philosophies that mirror ours are: receptiveness to opinions and ideas, transparency in discussions, and providing simplified answers to complex questions. If you’re following our twitter feed, you’ll see that we’ve housed a more elaborate FAQ section on GetSat where you can post follow up questions and discuss best practices on approaching certain roadblocks. The community is up and being maintained by our earnest Support Team and we will continually build other sections such as videos, tutorials, etc.

You don't have to sign up for Get Satisfaction although it is greatly recommended especially if you like to proactively participate in the community. You can easily log in with your Twitter, Facebook, Google Account, Windows Live, and OpenID and you can already start posting!

Freelance Features List

Xamun Freelance edition is now available! Check out the features in this release that are tailor-fit for today’s freelance consultants.

  My Profile

This section is all about you. Setup your personal profile; update your educational information, skills, and employment history.

Dashboard

Your Personal Dashboard includes the modules Client, Engagement Calendar, Project, and Timesheet Management. It’s your one-stop dash that connects to your business essentials.

Client module allows you to add detailed client information for a more efficient customer relationship management. As a freelance user, you can also request for client connection through existing Xamun corporate users and delete or disconnect if deemed necessary. Manage your engagement calendar, contacts and documents through the Client module and sort them individually per client reference. You can also view the following integrated modules such as Prospects/Leads, Contracts, Invoices, Projects, and Reviews.

Engagement Calendar allows you to manage your existing projects and at the same time detail out your project descriptions and involvements. You can customize your calendar into the following categories: Daily, weekly, Bi-weekly, monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, and Annually.

Project module allows you to oversee all the aspects of your business activities. View current project listings and track their progress by accessing them through the quick search feature. Explore other opportunities by viewing project resource requests and assignments. You can also view the following integrated modules such as Task Management, Task Board Management, Milestone and Release Management, Impediments Management, Leaves Management, Timesheet Management, and Contacts Management.

Timesheet Management is your fully integrated timesheet tracker for your freelance business. Segregate task views as Billable or Non-billable, update timesheet, access your online and offline tasks and efficiently update them anywhere in the world.

Talkback

Talkback serves as your Xamun messenger. Communicate and collaborate seamlessly with your clients and colleagues.

Sales Contract

This feature allows you to view all sales contracts in a grid view.

  Invoice

Get paid on time! This feature enables you to create invoices and customize important details such as discounts, terms, and balance computations. You can save invoice drafts for later references. Choose to preview it in soft copy, have them printed or send through e-mail to clients. The invoice grid view will also give you an overview of your billings and invoices.

Notifications

Xamun Features List

Xamun Corporate edition is now available! Read more about how Xamun incorporates the art of collaboration in the consulting business.

  My Day

My Day is a feature of Xamun that lets you create, monitor and manage your daily business activities, tasks, and schedule. Manage your daily weekly tasks and have it readily assigned or approved. Monitor your business end by viewing your billable and non-billable tasks via the individual team member feature.

Contacts Management

This feature will help you in the basic set up of your contact management. Create and easily sort through your contact profiles. Integrate your LinkedIn account and synch your public contacts in Xamun. Same goes for synching and importation of contacts from MS Outlook and Constant Contact. Better manage your contacts by customizing groups according to your preference.

Support Management

Support Management is your ticketing application within Xamun. Create, manage, and assign tickets to the parties involved and attach files to support ticket requests. You can also archive ticket history for later reference.

Personal Dashboard

Set up your personal account information and settings in Xamun’s personal dashboard. Share messages, links, files, and tag comments with like or dislike on threads among team members and networks.

Your personal dashboard connects you to all the aspects of your business including leaves and training. Monitor the team’s organizational chart; receive training schedule notifications; track personal and team evaluations; and monitor their leaves and training.

Tenant Management

With Tenant Management, you can now set up and update your company information. Detail out your company departments, position, employment status, and initial employee information listing.

License Management

In this section, you can see your license acquisition and billing information update. Monitor and manage your available licenses and allocate, assign or reassign them accordingly.

Client Management Setup

In Client Management Setup, you can lay down your preferred sales processes and methods and your sales business rules and workflow. Define target quotas and incentives per individual or team.

Client

The Client module is your customer relationship management application in Xamun. For this release, you can now use lead management, opportunity management, account management, sales management, sales contract management, and sales invoice management.

Resource

The Resource module will enable you to access your Human Resource data. In this release you can access the following sections:

Employee Master File Management

Time off Management

Recruitment Management

Resource Skills Training Management

Employee Performance Evaluation and Management

Resource Package Adjustments and Movement

Resource Management Setup

This section will help you in establishing resource organizational information and structure; managing resource business rules and workflow; and defining your resource settings and standards.

Projects

Projects module is your project management application that helps you in performing your tasks in the most efficient way possible. Included in this release are the following functions:

Project dashboard monitoring

Project progress management

Project resource request or assignment

Task management (individual, team view)

Task board management

Milestone, release management

Impediments management

Leaves management

Timesheet management

Contacts management

Project  Management Setup

This section allows you to establish project type, methodology, task estimation, cycle, duration, work hours, main contacts, and initial velocity.

Strategy Management

The Strategy management section is integrated to four applications. Finance will allow you to view and monitor the Profit and Loss graph. For this release, you can now integrate the finance module to your existing Xero account.

Access the client module through Strategy and monitor your opportunity and accounts pipeline. You can also view your Projects and Resource modules. For this release you can monitor your project progress, resource recruitment view and resource position headcount.

Resource Allocation

Project management is one of the central cohesive sources of support of project managers and consultants alike. If the project is the heart, project management methodology is the process that maintains and sustains the project. Luckily enough, the present market provides project management software that help consultants on achieving essential activities, deadlines, and tasks that need to be delivered. The question though is that are their requirement boundaries meeting the consultants’ needs?

There are approximately 140 project management software available in the present market, most focusing on functionality like collaboration, scheduling and other threshold features. They mostly meet the basic essentials of project management but are those all that they need? Among the 140, 87% are designed for collaboration, 82% run online, and 67% are developed with issue-tracking systems. Other features include Schedule Management (76%), Resource Management (72%), and Document Management (75%) while license types fall evenly on proprietary, SaaS, and open-source.

Recent trends are now considering interface as a basic requirement for effective project management software along with easy navigation and project status overview; providers like Basecamp and Teamwork offer satisfying results for project consultants who work in the corporate segment. But this only reaches the project maintenance part. How about freelancers who require a network of community for opportunities? Project maintenance is one thing but sustainability is another. It’s great that they can manage their projects but the business side is left bare.