Hi Wendi.  I know you've gotten a ton of good info, but I'd like to offer a "whole package" consultant much like the other gentleman who responded.

My IT guy currently works full time in my office developing our own logging/tracking system.  This is set up (and being further inhanced) to allow us to expand quickly and easily into other states.  (We currently serve all of Michigan, and while business is down for us as it is for everyone, I think you can still consider us as "a thriving business".)  Josh (the AlphaGeek) can quickly adjust the program to whatever someone needs ... that's why he's built it literally from scratch.  (And it was set-up strictly for abstracting work.)  We are also working on having this combine with our faxing system.  We will use Heliofax (not sure I have that right...) that will combine with the index and allow us to fax in/out and retrieve all orders just by typing in some sort of search parameter.  Let's say you need to find an order for Weidenschilling that you KNOW came in 3-4 months ago (not a name you'd easily forget).  By typing in that name into our index, the order will pop up.  we can also sort and pull orders by putting in a particular client, a particular county, a particular date range, and a particular stage of production -- or any combination thereof.

Next, Josh used to be heavy into the communications industry and can give you the do's and don'ts of telephone and fax systems and how they mesh with (or don't) with a particular computer.  (Between he and I, we have the main computer server, two built-from-scratch systems with dual monitors, a Dell laptop [very satisfactory], and his programming computer which is a Mac.  He's the one who built the "from scratch" systems and put together our server (which is amazingly reliable and was VERY inexpensive with Josh doing all the work).

We don't want to use an outside fax service...that's why we're using an internal system.  If you'd like to call just to chat and pick his brain, I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige.  Please feel free to give us a call anytime.  It's usually slow during the noon hour (we're on EST) and we have a two line system.  Josh is usually here sometime between 9-10 and 5-6 (or 7 or whenever a physically throw him out the door...he gets sort of involved in what he's working on!)  517/437-1028
Alix
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