MVPs in Russian and the Commonwealth of Independent States are stepping up to help small- and mid-sized businesses stake their claim in these evolving economies by leveraging technology.
The Microsoft SMB Portal in the region seeks to serve as a resource to these businesses, but what they needed was real-world advice on how to create solutions that would make a difference for their customers. Eight MVPs volunteered, writing a whopping 25 articles in less than a month. In fact, their articles have been so well-received that unique users to the site increased 10-fold. Now the regional Microsoft office is planning on posting an average of 12 MVP articles a month.
SMB Online Marketing Manager in Russia, Alexey Shelaev, explained, “The main purpose of the project is to tell our SMB customers and customers-to-be the benefits of using MS products to solve their daily business tasks. And to tell it not in marketing language, but in a language they understand and which is appealing to them.”
Excel MVP Nikolay Pavlov agreed: “This project is a unique chance to deliver thаt huge amount of useful information that MVPs know, not only to technical specialists, but to directors of all levels in small and medium businesses.”
As always, MVPs are providing invaluable tips and tricks based on their in-depth, hands-on expertise. “I try to show and describe the features of SharePoint which are given very little attention,” said SharePoint Server MVP Sergey Belskiy. “I also try to show how to adjust SharePoint to small and medium companies and how to automate business processes with the help of it.”
Windows Expert – IT Pro MVP Dmitry Bulanov added, “I was interested in this project because in most cases system administrators of small and medium business do not have a full understanding of group policy technology and how they can configure clients in the organization. This technology is critical to organizations of any size, because through group policy you can optimally configure clients, end-users, as well as remote desktop servers, print servers and more.”
Alexey reports they are planning on growing the project to include a series of webcasts with MVPs and possibly involving MVPs in some offline events. Also they are exploring creating a series of real-time Q&As with MVPs on their SMB social media channels. Already, the MVP articles are cross-posted on the regional SMB Facebook page and on Twitter.
Here’s a sampling of the published articles:
How to plan Active Directory domain structure in the company Introduction to Windows Group Policies
Is Server Necessary for a Small Company?
How to Plan Active Directory Forests in the Company's Infrastructure
How to plan the deployment of Active Directory Services
New Possibilities of Outlook 2010
New Possibilities of Visualization of Business Reports in Microsoft Excel 2010