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Tips On Running Your Home Office  

How to Run Your Home Office without Letting it Run Your Life

Having email accounts that do what you want, when and where you want is the key to efficiently running your home office. If you run a home office then you know the distractions and challenges that exist. How can you save time, present your business professionally and meet client demands with out a big business staff or budget? Here are some ideas.

Eliminate Home Distractions by Leaving the Office

Have you ever sat down to your computer to check your business email and been lured into checking your check your hotmail account or your family yahoo email at the same time? Or do you feel obligated to check every ding! of your inbox in case it’s a critical message. That’s why so many home business owners are afraid to stray too far from their computers. If you’re still striving for that elusive work-home balance, you’re in luck. The latest in remote email technologies might bring a bit more sanity to your home office.

Features of your Email Accounts

Use your professional email features such as the calendar planner feature. Use it to schedule your tasks, as well as your meetings. Set start and end times to your workday and respect those times. If you have obligations that are not work related, remember to include them as well, so everything is centralised on

your business email calendar and nothing is missed. There are even options available that will let you edit your calendar with your Blackberry or mobile when you’re far away from home and office. How’s that for freedom?

How Remote Email Brings Balance

What if there was an anywhere email option that would call you every time a new email appeared in your inbox? Remote email will allow you to stay on top of your business email by allowing you to check it from anywhere using your PDA or Palm Pilot. Email alert devices will ensure that you can deal with orders, questions, concerns and more as soon as they arrive, even if you are not at your desk.

You can also use this feature to screen emails, and deal with only the time-sensitive ones immediately and the rest during regular business hours. Anywhere email of this type also allows you to not only access your own email, but the address books and calendars of other people in your company. This facilitates the set-up of meetings, locating information and keeping on top of things.

The added bonus of remote email is that things are always up to date, whether you are at your office, your home office or away from it all. You’ll always have the most recent information at your fingertips. A very cost-efficient way to bring this technology into your small business is through Software as a Service (SaaS), which eliminates the usual cost of servers and IT support that usually comes with remote email.

Professional email features, such as those we’ve discussed, will allow you to be much more efficient in your work life and actually leave some time for your personal life. Learning to use your business email in the most efficient way possible can make huge improvements in your home office and your life.

Rodney Alison has served as Systems Architect on many international projects for over a decade before turning his expertise in engineering, physics and technology into the development of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the Quincerto Group. To find out more about the mobile technologies that Rodney and his team offer small business owners across Australia and New Zealand go to www.teamanywhere.com.au.