October 2011
In this issue:

HTS Referral Program

The highest compliment you can give us is the referral of a new client. If you know of anyone who could benefit from any of the services we provide your company, please keep us in mind.

Learn how you could earn a $100 American Express gift card in return for your referral!
 

How Smart Is Your Phone?

Millions of BlackBerry users around the world had their work, business, and social lives severely affected recently after a server crash that disconnected smartphone users across the globe. The three-day outage interrupted email messages and Internet services for customers spanning five continents.

In today's world of continuous communication, a network disruption can be detrimental to your business. Below are some simple tips to keep you and your employees connected during an outage.

► SMS Text Updates: Regardless of the severity of the interruption, it is important you have a way to notify employees, clients, and stakeholders. SMS text messaging has proven to work when other mobile functions are down.

► Backup Contacts: Keep your contacts updated across all channels, including phone, email, and social media. This will make it easy to reach out to the right people quickly.

► Have a Backup Email Provider: Keep a list of your key contacts in a separate web-based email system such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or myAgility. This will allow you to access your contacts and send updates from anywhere with an internet connection.

► Update Your Website: Know how to quickly update your website to address the situation. Consider having a pre-populated webpage that can be activated on short notice to provide information during an emergency.

► Follow-Up: Always inform your employees, stakeholders, and clients when the outage has ended and steps you may be taking to prevent future interruptions.

Just for Laughs

Quote of the Month

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

 — John F. Kennedy
 

Brand New, Dial 2 for Service!

Here at HTS, we are working every day to find ways to serve you better. On Monday, October 31st, we are launching a new Client Care Team (CCT) to handle your service requests. We created the CCT to ensure that you receive the best customer service we can give. This dedicated team will ensure that you get the right resource to solve your problem as quickly as possible.

What changes will you notice when you call us? We are moving to auto attendant so that you can go straight to the CCT no matter where you are. Just dial 2 and you'll be connected directly to the team. We’re also implementing an awesome feature of our new Mitel phone system – just say the name of the person you want and it will ring directly to our office phone, cell phone, or maybe even our computer.

In addition to calling us for service, you can use our support email addresses:

• Ames, IA: support-Ames@heartlandtechnologies.com
• Harlan, IA: support-Harlan@heartlandtechnologies.com
• Joplin, MO: support-Joplin@heartlandtechnologies.com
• Kansas: support-Kansas@heartlandtechnologies.com
• Muskogee, OK: support-Muskogee@heartlandtechnologies.com
• St. Joseph, MO: support-StJoe@heartlandtechnologies.com

Your email will automatically create a service ticket and will notify our dispatchers. One of them will call you back promptly to schedule a technical resource.

We remain committed to providing the highest levels of support, and our centralized Client Care Team will provide you with faster response times and better oversight on your request for service. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact your Account Manager or your local HTS Sales Team.
 

We need your feedback on our website!

We have heard the feedback that you, our clients, have given us, and we are in the process of making some changes that will help us server you better. But we need more!

One of the big changes we having come at the beginning of 2012 is a new website with an updated look and new features.

What we want to know is – what do you want?

We want to add features that will help you. But instead of trying to read your mind, we thought we would just ask!

We have set up a survey to find out if you are interested in the new features we are considering and to let us know if you have other ideas. So please take 60 seconds to take our survey and we'll send you a $5 Starbucks gift card in return!

Give us some feedback!
 

The HTS 2011 Webinar series is back! Our next webinar will be on November 8th, 10:00 AM CST.

Web based attacks on businesses are becoming more frequent and large enterprise companies are no longer the only targets. Hackers are now setting their sights on small to mid-sized organizations as the primary targets for financial and customer information. In 2009, attacks on businesses with 100 or fewer employees made up 27% of attacks—by 2010, that number was 63%.

Next Generation Firewalls with Application Control can bring order to the application chaos that is impacting the performance of most business networks. With SonicWall you can easily create bandwidth management policies based on logical pre-defined categories (such as social media or gaming), individual applications, or even users and groups.

Join us on Tuesday, November 8th at 10 AM CST to learn about the latest in network security with application control technology from SonicWall (the Next Generation Firewall) and see how you can better protect and gain more insight into what is really going on inside your network.

SonicWALL Channel Systems Engineer Dan Schmitz will explain how this new technology will impact your organization and show a real-time demonstration of the platform.

All attendees with receive the free e-book "11 Cool Things Your Firewall Should Do", and we will be drawing for a $25 Target gift card.

Register for this webinar today!
 

Need a way to summarize a large amount of data or crunch numbers better?

Enter the PivotTable feature in Microsoft Excel 2010. A PivotTable takes your dataset and lets you choose the fields and filters to build a report and PivotCharts.

Watch the video about this powerful way to glean meaning from your data
 

My parents always told me, “choose your friends wisely, you are the company you keep.” I believed them and recently I really saw how powerful that statement really is. I spent the last week at Expert’s Academy in San Jose, CA. Some of the biggest names in the business were there sharing their wisdom. In addition to the host of the event, Brendon Burchard, we heard first-hand from David Bach, Dean Graziosi, Debbie Ford, Rick Frishman, Scott Hoffman and Frank Kern. They talked about how they ran their businesses, how they have gotten to where they are today and gave us how-to advice on how we could all get there as well. Their goal was to enable us to jump forward from where they originally had to start.

Attendees ranged from people who had founded and sold Fortune 500 companies to individuals who wanted to teach others how to get fit inside and out. There were multi-millionaires in the audience and others who were just starting out but had a story and a message to share. What they had in common was a drive to excel at what they do and to do it for the good of all. They also were all about the company they keep.

John Maxwell uses the term, “Only Quality People”. Randy Gage says, “If you are the smartest person in your group of friends, find a new group of friends.” They are all saying the same thing. Gather people around you that challenge you. People that encourage you to step outside your comfort zone so you can be everything you are meant to be. Surround yourself with people that are willing to tell you the truth and the reality versus placating you and yessing you to death.

Continue reading
 

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