My name is Sean Watson. I have lived in Gainesville for 24 years. I have been married for 10 years and have three terrific kids aged 14, 7 and 3 (two boys and a little girl).
I am the Sales Training Director for Florida Pest Control & Chemical Company in Gainesville and have been with this organization nearly 17 years. This is my final year at UF and I will graduate this August.
After completing UF, I hope that more opportunities will open within my company or I hope to have more doors open at other organizations with good growth and potential.
A copy of my resume can be found by clicking here.
A Web presence is essential for any sized business because a website exposes the company to a large number of potential customers. More people are using the Internet to find information. The people that visit the website are already interested in the company's products or services, so your business is more effectively targeted.
It is easy to locate a business with the vast number of good search engines and online directories. Visitors can browse a website anytime they wish, day or night in the comfort of their homes. A website places the potential customer in complete control of the purchasing process.
Businesses can post their product or service manuals on their websites to provide the user with detailed information whenever they require technical support. It is also a means to acquire customer feedback via online surveys and email follow-ups to provide high quality customer service.
Podcasting creates ways for companies to build their brand. It’s a powerful marketing tool, because it is a cost-efficient way of delivering relevant and specific information to your target market. Businesses use podcasts to provide a way to stay in touch with their customers. With conventional audio means, like the radio, an audience must remember to tune in and listen to the content. This is not always possible, even if the content is of high interest to them. Podcasting helps businesses build and develop better relationships with their customers. In order to build relationships, businesses need to show emotion and passion for their industry, their particular business, and their customers. Podcasts are the medium in which this can be conveyed. People who know, like, and trust the company, will buy from that company. Many companies have implored business strategies using podcasts to generate sales leads, to use customers as company spokespersons (customer casts), and even as a customer retention tool. They also use podcasting for training sessions, executive presentations and for internal company communications. When used properly, podcasts can add a new marketing dimension to a firm. Podcasts can help the company reach the target market they desire, in an effective manner that is easy to set-up and easy to use.
With the increasing reliance on technology hardware and software, businesses need better data protection. Now more than ever, moving incredibly large amounts of electronic information quickly and safely is an important need of all businesses. Businesses should consider the use of encryption techniques in their emails to keep their important data secure and private.
The basic idea of encryption is to keep confidential information, confidential. Encryption can be used to secure email on public and private networks. Unlike e-mail on a private system, which goes directly to a mail server and remains there until it is retrieved; Internet e-mail jumps around from server to server as it makes its way to the recipient. This makes the transmission channel almost impossible to secure and provides numerous opportunities for interception.
The Internet, once a research tool, has grown into a mammoth educational, entertainment and commercial implementation. The advent of commerce on the Internet exposed the lack of security over this public network.
Part of the solution is to secure important data, more specifically, using a strong encryption system. For businesses that need to protect private or confidential information, or doing business online, they should implement the use of encryption and/or digital signatures. This ensures that confidentiality is maintained and significantly reduces the odds of information theft.
Collaborative computing is a technology that allows employees, no matter their location, to create, edit, and use common databases. It facilitates cooperation and coordination between team members by allowing common information to be easily stored, shared, and communicated. Some of the functions of collaborative computing include, email, Whiteboard capabilities, and video or audio conferencing.
In my company, we often use audio conferencing and electronic messaging for workgroup computing. We have four offices located in the panhandle area of Florida, which can make travel expensive and time consuming if a manager from that location needs to visit the corporate office in Gainesville. So to help reduce those expenses, conference calls and email collaboration are utilized. This way each employee can be involved in the group discussion and make any comments or changes, quickly and effectively.
In our collaborative computing groups, we used Microsoft Windows SharePoint. Windows SharePoint helps teams stay connected and productive by providing easy access to the people, documents, and information they need to make more informed decisions and get the desired results. It makes it easy to share documents, track tasks, and share ideas and information. Other key points of this program include: 1) It provides a single workspace for teams to coordinate schedules, organize documents, and participate in discussions. 2) Makes it easy to create and manage documents and provides the ability to view past revisions and restore to previous versions. 3) Helps teams stay on task with a variety of communication features that let users know when actions are required or important changes are made to existing information or documentation, including announcements, alerts, surveys, and discussion boards. 4) It provides forums for brainstorming ideas, building knowledge bases, or gathering information.
Collaborative computing is a dynamic technology that continues to improve the way we work. It can potentially transform the culture of an organization. The technology better utilizes resources, increases communication and collaboration, and help reduce unnecessary clutter from an abundance of paper-based products that were the old way of doing business.
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I use Excel frequently, but my skills thus far have been pretty basic. With this project, I used functions that I never know were available. By dividing the State and Zip code, and then retrieving the region from another Worksheet, I was able to learn function that I can use in my worklife.
I was unaware of most of the functions in Excel. I currently use some simple sum, average, and minimum and maximum functions. With these functions, especially the lookup function, I will be better able to use the spreadsheet to track data.
The pivot table was particluarly interesting. I think the uses of this feature are, literally, endless.
This was my first experience with Microsoft Access. I typically work with various spreadsheets, so I often use Excel in my business. For tracking purposes, Excel has proven to be effective. However, one of the things I learned from this project was the ability to further manipulate data. Another of Excel’s downfalls is the lack of reporting capability. I was impressed not only with the look of the reports in Access but with the ease of designing the reports.
While I was aware of the compatibility of all of Microsoft Office’s programs, I was unaware of the importing capabilities of Excel into Access. My goal is to take this back to work and try and import my stored Excel data into an Access database.
In my job, training salespersons throughout north central Florida, I hope to be able to use Access to better track where I go, whom I train and in what module they have been trained. It will allow me the opportunity to import sales tracking data from Excel and, in turn, develop a useful database.
