Vertigo / Group

Streamline Your Business Systems

Automation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Organization, Remote Office, Research, Simplicity, Technology

Over the last few months I have been looking to streamline my business to the absolute necessities. I set out to accomplish two primary goals: (1) reduce expenses and (2) reduce administrative overhead, both constraints must be accomplished or I will not proceed with a given process redesign. My lofty goal; operate on a budget for less than $500 a month and free-up time.

In the consulting business there is really only a handful of tools necessary to operate; phones, internet, email, website, business software, and some specialized pieces of software required for ones vertical market.

I have accomplished my goal of getting costs down to $500 a month by utilizing the following pieces of software:

For phones, I moved to both Speakeasy VoIP and Google Voice.

For website and email I moved from my internal servers to Media Temple hosting. This allowed me to attain greater uptime and removed the need for static IP addresses with my ISP.

For Internet access at my home office, I moved from a business FiOS account to a residential FiOS account. The change reduced my costs by 50% and increased my upload and download speeds by 24%.

For business software, I utilize a combination of Dropbox, Evernote, Basecamp, Campfire, Highrise, Backpack, and Logmein.

I do use some specialized software such as iWorks, Aperture, FCE, LE, CS5, etc…

In short, I have substantially reduced costs and increased my available time so that I can focus on what matters, service existing clients and generating new business.

Host Your Own Media, Or Outsource It: Vimeo or YouTube?

Automation, Business, Simplicity, Technology

I have been on a recent kick of outsourcing most of the tasks and systems that originally resided in-house. For example, my recent articles on the benefits of Evernote and Dropbox. Well, this mantra has now carried over to media as well. I still keep my iTunes music, financials, copies of my business and personal files, and personal videos onsite—housed on my servers—however media for my websites and public domain, such as for this blog, my business, etc… I have now begun to host with a third-party.

Why? It is easier and less time consuming. In an age where the selection of available services and products is increasing and time is decreasing for people—personal and business—many, myself included are simply looking for a solution that just works with the least amount of effort as possible. Case in point, I have wanted to add dynamic content such as videos to my website and blog for a while now, but held off adding said content until I was able to implement an HTML5 solution.

I know, HTML5 is easy to encode—simple video tag will do—but many web browsers have yet to embrace the new standard (as far as I’m concerned). If fact, only two major browsers currently support HTML5, Safari and Google Chrome. This means when adding dynamic content in the form of HTML5 to a site, a developer has but two options; (1) strict encoding being compatible with only a few browsers (huge disadvantage as you start to alienate your audience), or (2) encode for all browsers, thus making HTML5 backwards compatible.

I have spent the better part of a day researching and attempting to encode a backwards-compatible encoding set that I was happy with—remember, I love simplicity—but I was not able to do it to my liking. This left me with three choices; (1) go the flash route, but prevent mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad from viewing the content, (2) encode only in HTML5 and alienate my viewers, or (3) find a service to do it for me. I went with option 3 for a simple reason, I am done playing around: I simply do not have the time to mess with these types of things.

I already have a MobileMe account to post family videos and photos and a Flickr account for this blog as I didn’t want to code out lightbox, so the next logical step would be to find a video hosting service. Really, it came down to two possible solutions, (1) YouTube or (2) Vimeo. I chose Vimeo without hesitation. Allow me to explain; YouTube certainly has a lot of content—most of which is crap—and certainly has the highest user base, but the poorest quality. It seems they went for quantity instead of quality. Vimeo on the other hand is not as popular with general users, but very popular in the business community and with the tech savy.

Vimeo has already embraced HTML5 and by default encodes all videos to be viewed on all devices and browsers. Granted, there is a small cost associated with Vimeo if you wanted some of the advanced features, but like Evernote, the cost is minimal (somewhere around $50 a year). With a premium account, you are allotted 5GB of transfers per week with a single upload not exceeding 1GB. The best way I can equate YouTube versus Vimeo; Windows versus Mac. Figure out which is which…

Now, it’s as simple of uploading my video, coping the embedded code, placing it in WordPress and then I’m done. Simple, efficient, and effective.

Case Study: MySQL/DB2

Automation, Business, Health Care, Technology

We were recently mentioned in a case study by Hit Software. Below is the excerpt from the case study referencing Vertigo Group. The complete white paper may be accessed here: Whitepaper HIT Software MySQL DB2.

Oregon Health Systems (OHS), a leading managed care organization, has a provider network of approximately 1500 physicians. OHS’ sophisticated medical management system serves thousands of workers in its region for workers compensation plans and care.

OHS, as an independent managed care organization (MCO) of physician and clinical treatment for occupational injuries and illness, is responsible for managing the patient history from enrollment through resolution, identifying key events and communicating on a regular basis with physicians and claims adjusters. First certified in limited areas in 1991, OHS now offers services to workers throughout the entire state of Oregon. It is the only MCO certified for the entire state. OHS also offers managed care services in Montana as Montana Health Systems, and other case management and cost containment services in several other western states.

MCOs are utilized by workers’ compensation insurers and self-insured employers to provide injured workers appropriate, cost-effective medical treatment and disability management, and to ensure the claims process and medical care are moving forward. Oregon Health Systems requires the ability to integrate patient, insurance, treatment and disability information in their process of overseeing worker care.

According to Ryan Hopman, Systems Integrator and Consultant, Vertigo Group LLC(3), “OHS faced a common situation where they had to integrate data from various formats and databases. As a management service, they have to be able to see data holistically in order to determine optimized treatment and physician recommendations, as well as track the patient history.” OHS’ critical requirement was to be able to use IBM DB2 data in their provider management system, and key considerations were time-to-value and a streamlined and efficient IT system. “Using HiT Software’s DBMoto data replication capabilities, we were able to quickly and easily integrate data from MySQL, IBM and other systems in our solution for OHS, as well as reduce development time,” added Hopman. “OHS now has a reliable solution that can scale to fit their growth and expansion plans.”

(3) Vertigo Group is a business management and technology consulting firm located in Portland, Oregon. The company specializes in low-risk, high-return consulting with customized solutions. Vertigo Group solutions are based on extensive industry expertise, broad and evolving service offerings, expertise in business transformation outsourcing, a history of technology innovation and implementation including research and development, and a proven and experienced management team. Vertigo Group is committed to long-term relationships with its clients. www.vertigogroup.com