Have you ever experienced that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realized that your PC hard drive has crashed and you do not have a recent back up? Not only that you do not have a recent back up but you don’t even have a single back up. It’s been on your list of things to do for such a long time.

You know you should have backed up your data because this is not just a personal computer with all your family photos and vacations of long ago but it is also your business computer. It houses your bank data, invoices, customer names, phones, email addresses and tons more important stuff.

When would NOW be a good time to especially think about:

#1 – Buying a backup drive, hooking it up to your PC AND actually doing a complete backup of your data?

#2 – Using a web-based software to store customer information, horse maintenance history, invoice data so it is always available even if a hard drive crash occurs on your PC and you are down for the count.

Backup drives are relatively cheap and fairly easy to install which would definitely take the edge off if you boot up one day and got the ominous ‘blue screen of death’. And it makes it much easier for your PC technical person to reformat and reinstall your files. A lot less costly in more ways than one.

Just imagine how good you would feel, though, knowing that even though your PC is out of commission – you, your farm staff and your boarders would still have access to their horse data, invoices, maintenance history as long as you could grab a computer with internet access and log in to LaRaedo.

Ring in the 2011 New Year by keeping your valuable data safe and always accessible. You know you’ve been wanting to do this for a long, long time. Do it Now!

I stopped by a new networking place in Santa Monica called Coloft. It’s a place where technical entrepreneurs come together to talk about what they are doing, work on their current projects, and help create ideas for future projects. It offers meeting rooms for presentations, fax machines, projectors, whiteboards, and printers and of course lots of hot coffee. It’s basically a collaborative, co-working space.

I met with Avesta Rasouli who is one of the Founders of Coloft. As he explained to me the concept behind Coloft, I instantly saw the correlation between what they were doing with a physical location and what I have created with a web-based location in LaRaedo.

Businesses need to create a place where information and ideas can be exchanged with their customers in private and at the same time have the ability to share to all.

For instance, with Laraedo, horse farm owners have the ability to update and provide information to one customer or share information with everyone across the board (customers and staff) as easy as creating one single event and clicking the submit button.

Horse owners can also see how their horse is being maintained, communicate privately with their trainer, and know what to expect on their upcoming invoice. Farm staff or trainers can update the customers with how training or lessons are going, or upload photos and videos of a session. Laraedo is a hub that keeps the community connected.

This appears to be what is happening more and more in the social media environment where sites like Facebook allow you to let everyone know what’s going on with your life or to send a private message to just a few.

I think that it is becoming more than just a passing trend that businesses are using the Internet to connect with their customers and it’s only going to become more important.

What are you doing to move forward in your horse business?

What is a Web-Based Application Software?
A web-based application software, such as LaRaedo, is any application that uses a website as the method to log into a subscriber’s account. The subscriber can access the application from any internet connected computer simply by going to the website that the application is located.

Eight Advantages for Using Web-Based Software:

No Software to Install or Update

You just need to log in to your LaRaedo account from any web browser whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. It is quite similar to accessing your email account.

Web-based software does not take up any of your computer’s hard drive space. It is located on a separate secure server which has all the latest virus protection and operating system. It has the same feel to it as if you were accessing the application from your desktop.

Always Available

As long as you have an internet connection to a computer or a mobile phone, you can access web-based software. This comes in handy if you are away from your computer and need to borrow your friend’s computer or even the library or hotel computers. As long the computer is connected to the internet, you can access the software.

Works on All Computers

There is less wear and tear on your PC or laptop and LaRaedo web-based software will not take up any disk space because all the data resides on the secure hosting server. It doesn’t matter if you have a Windows based PC, laptop or a MacBook Pro, you will not need to download anything which will save time, money and headaches.

Never Lose Data

Because the application and software resides on a secure hosting server, if for some reason your computer goes on the fritz and your hard drive crashes, you will not lose the data from a web-based application. It’s on a secure server that is backed up daily so there is never a worry of any data loss.

Enables Social Possibilities

Many web applications like LaRaedo have the ability to ‘speak’ with others that have similar things in common such as horses. This is something that could never happen with installed software on your desktop. It makes the web-software much more social because you are connecting almost real time with others on your team or in the case of LaRaedo, customers with boarded horses. The world is becoming more and more social – people want to collaborate and work online together.

Real Time Data Availability

This ability to connect with others using the same web application allows information that pertains to their horse to be immediately viewed by others that have permission to view the data. There isn’t any need to call them (or them to call you) unless you want to remind them where to go to gather their latest information.

Increase Cash Flow

With the purchase of software that is installed on your desktop, there is an initial one-time often large cost and smaller charges for updates to the software. Web-based software only requires a monthly subscription fee to use it so it will not place a huge immediate drain on your cash flow. With LaRaedo, you will be sharing this software with your customers, therefore, you may even want to add a fee to their monthly horse board and have the software pay for itself.

Security

Web-based applications are hosted on secure business hosting servers and are monitored for any virus threats, maintained by administrator experts and backed up nightly. Most people don’t even back up their PC or laptops on a monthly basis let alone nightly so the chance of storing valuable data on your own PC has a much higher risk of data loss or even virus infiltration.

I have created a horse farm software that I want to share with the world. When I tell people about it, I feel inspired. My whole being wants to shout out loud ‘Here is what you have been looking for; look over here’! So I am using today’s post to simply tell you about how my dream can help you move your business into new revenue building territory and offer it to you for FREE. Interested? then read on ….

It’s all about mind set. Many of us have heard this phrase repeated again and again in recent months. But what does that really mean? To me, it feels like a change of thinking, of opening up to new ideas.

There is so much talk about social media and how facebook and twitter and linkedin can help us build relationships and, for those of us in the business world, help us grow our business.

LaRaedo horse farm management software is very similar to those social medias but rather than building relationships with an entire ocean of people, it is about building relationships with the pond or lake in your own backyard.

LaRaedo is a web-based software. What that means is that the software resides on a secure server. The farm owner logs in, creates accounts for their horse boarding customers and staff. Then with the help of the farm’s staff, trainers or barn managers, keeps the horse boarding customers informed on the health and maintenance of their horse.

What better way to build relationships than to keep your own boarding customers happy and feeling like they are important. And, of course, they are! You need them and they need to feel your appreciation.

Remember that this software is an investment to the future of your farm business. Just as with social media, it takes time to get the word out that you offer something unique and satisfying at your farm. Something not offered at most barns.

You are the new age boarding farm that uses technology to build a better, more improved relationship with your boarders. As they say in social media, after a period of time, building a trusting relationship becomes viral and suddenly you have horse boarders waiting in line to board at your farm.

Why, because you care about them and want them to know it. You took that extra fifteen or twenty minutes each day to keep them informed about their horse, lessons or training.

You provided them with a means to connect with you; the opportunity to send you message alerts. Each day you quickly review your boarders messages and respond. You may not have an immediate resolution to their request but you listened and responded.

Imagine the fun for you and your team to keep your boarders informed about training or lessons by extending them links to YouTube so that they can see a short video of training or one that you took of them from a recent horse show.

At the end of each month, your horse boarders receive notification that their invoice is ready for viewing. They log in to their account and review not just a simple dollar amount bill but a full, line-by-line itemized bill that provides a date when these items occurred and a description of each item.

There is no confusion as to what and when because they were able to view each expense during the month every time they logged into their account. It’s all in there, when it happened, who it was assigned to and when the task or event was completed.

You can send them a notice when the bill has been paid or if it becomes over-due. They can view and print and have a history of what they have been paying you each month for the care and feeding of their precious investment.

Now here is my offer to you. For the next FOUR DAYS, from March 22 through MARCH 25, I will offer this software to any farm owner that wants to use it for as long as they want to use it FOR FREE.

I want you to see first hand how this product will bring revenue to your farm! I believe in it and know that you will too once you take the time to start now and move toward building more revenue for your business. This is the year for YOU and your FARM.

All you need to do is sign up for the newsletter on the upper right side of this blog and I will contact you with the details. We will walk through the process together so that you completely understand how to use it. Should only take an hour at best. This is truly a simple program, it just takes initiative on your part to change your MIND SET today!

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started TODAY!

Since our launch on December 11, 2009, we’ve been getting one question in particular from our farm owners before they sign up for our 15-Day Free Trial of our horse boarding management software, so we thought it would be great to answer that question on the blog to ensure that you understand LaRaedo completely as well.

That question is:
LaRaedo is a Web-based equine management software – What does that mean for me?
If you use e-mail like Gmail or Hotmail or if you access your bank account, credit cards or your child’s academic status on-line, you are using a web-based software.  Basically, it is software that you log into over the Internet via a web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, in order to access your information.

LaRaedo also works on any platform, so it doesn’t matter if you are using a Windows PC or a Mac, how big your hard drive is or the processor speed.  If your computer is connected to the Internet, it can access LaRaedo.

That is what makes using LaRaedo so easy because you don’t have to worry about anything.  You just log in, manage your daily tasks and everything else is left up to our server management support group.  We will make sure that your data is backed up on a daily basis and secured.  All our software updates occur on a regular basis, and are applied directly to the server database, so you won’t be hassled with downloading and installing these updates. We’ll simply send you an e-mail notification from time to time, letting you know of any latest and greatest features that have already been added to the software for you.

With traditional software, the data is saved on your computer which can lead to security issues or data loss if the computer is stolen or if back ups are not performed on a regular basis.  Not to mention, hard drive crashes or viruses that can wipe out data completely.  With LaRaedo this is never a worry.

In addition, what is nice about using a web-based software like this is that it can be accessed from any Internet connected computer at any time with your own personal member login. So if you are miles away at an expo or horse show or even on vacation, you can always access the software and your information securely.

And since everyone on the horse farm works from the same centralized database specific to your farm, everything is in one place.  No worries as to who might have the latest information.  Everyone has it.

So what are you waiting for?  Sign up for your Free 15-Day Trial of our horse farm management software today!