In Russia and the CIS, MVPs Mean (SMB) Business
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