Whose Calendar Is It Anyway?

Hi everyone. I’m pleased that the CatalystOffice buzz is getting stronger. We asked bloggers around the web to review our software and I like what I am hearing.

Here’s one excerpt from Jennifer Chait, at www.OfficeStuffer.com:

“The [C]ontact[s] section (in CatalystOffice) was so much better than Outlook. However, remember I am biased because I already dislike Outlook. Still, in Outlook you have to click on a section and then a box comes up which may or may not fit the address you type. Here there was simply one basic add contact section and in the popup box you could add everything all at once – no more clicks. Ah, ease of use. Awesome.”

Please check out the links on the right, for more blog news.

One of my favorite aspects of CatalystOffice is the Calendar. Building an enterprise-grade calendar is not an easy feat. Microsoft had a team of programmers working for about 8 years to create their calendar, and it’s still not as feature-rich as most small business software users would like. I think it was really important at the beginning of our development process to identify what calendar-related issues small business owners said were important to them. For example:

• Most small business owners are on the go, so an ideal calendar would remind you about appointments via desktop, email or text message
• Small business owners often mix work with family, and there was a demand for multiple calendars – a public one for business appointments and a private one to remind you about your daughter’s piano recital
• You want to delete future meetings in a series of meetings that have been canceled but still retain a record of past meetings
• Business owners feel that privacy is important, and they might want an intern for example to add new calendar items without being able to view the entire calendar

Do any of these sound like your concerns? If you haven’t yet tried out CatalystOffice, why not try it for three months free? Visit www.catalystweb.com. And keep your questions coming.

-Bob

Take Back Your Email

Hello everyone. We are very excited that CatalystOffice is finally live. I am glad that bloggers like Ramon Ray at SmallBizTechnology.com are commenting that CatalystOffice can help small-business owners maximize their productivity for minimal cost or tech issues.

Since CatalystOffice does some unique things with email, I wanted to share some thoughts about how powerful some robust email capabilities can be for a small business.

First of all, to project a professional and “big” image you really need an email domain of your own- mary@abctravel.com, not marylou123@yahoo.com. A lot of businesses get that. But you also need an email address that’s not tied to an individual person. Very few of us have made it that far, living in the Microsoft world.

But with CatalystOffice, it’s a different world. Here’s what I mean:

Mary is the president of a 6-person travel agency. She often competes with the larger travel franchises for corporate business (and often loses!) Then she sets up a profile in CatalystOffice that both she and her business partner can access. Now her corporate clients send RFP requests to inquiries@abctravel.com and they send service questions to helpdesk@abctravel.com. No one needs to know that these emails are actually going to Mary and her single business partner at a tiny travel agency! And both of them can respond to these emails without having to change their account settings 3 or 4 times a day. Better yet, each can tell whether a reply has been sent by the other.

For a small business, that’s just one way to save time and play big.

If you’re interested in trialing CatalystOffice for yourself, visit http://www.catalystweb.com/. And if you have questions or comments, or just need help, just leave a comment below. I would be happy to walk you through it.

-Bob

Introductions

Hello everyone, my name is Bob Mathew and I’m very glad to finally be able to say that CatalystOffice is launching next month! It has been a long three years but I believe it’s been worth every minute of hard work.

Check it out for yourself, and sign-up early for a trial of CatalystOffice at our landing page, www.yourdreamoffice.com.

CatalystOffice is the new way of combining all the best features of Email, Calendar, Tasks, Notes and even enterprise-level storage solutions served up using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, to save small businesses money and headaches. As business owners, we want to help you focus on what you do best, not on IT needs. That’s why I created CatalystOffice.

In my last job, setting up communications for a conferencing company, I first came up with this idea of creating a productivity suite for small business that would run through your web browser, people thought I was kind of wacky. But now look at the computing world – SaaS has become a genuine competitor to traditional software. Even Microsoft is showing respect for SaaS, and maybe even a little trepidation. I expect small businesses to benefit the most from SaaS products like CatalystOffice, because they’ll benefit the most from lower operating costs and fewer IT hassles. You can’t create more hours in a day in a small business, but you can use the few hours you have more wisely.

Over the coming months, I hope to use this blog to update you on our progress launching CatalystOffice into the SaaS market. I especially want to show you how real small business owners are putting it to use, and why CatalystOffice answers many of the “little details” missing from current office suites – the details that inspired me to start this journey and introduce CatalystOffice to you.

-Bob