1. Creating business cards. If you’re self employed or run a small business, you know how expensive printing business cards can be. If someone leaves your employ, or the phone area code changes, all that money is down the drain. Most printers and stationers work to standard designs anyway, so your business card looks pretty much like all the rest. With your own DTP software you can really let your imagination rip, and design a unique and memorable card. You can then print it out on your colour printer and save a bundle - you can even get pre-cut card to print your design out on that can make your work indistinguishable from a professional job.

2. Designing letterheads. Just like business cards, really, only bigger. You can get them offset printed by the ream, or save the design as a file and print out the letterhead every time you print out a letter.

3. Custom DVD covers and labels. Making movies is fun (I know), but if you make home movies and videos, and burn them onto disk yourself, the label that comes with the disk looks pretty boring. It’s easy to design an insert to go inside the DVD case - and a matching label - using your DTP software. Now your epic can take pride of place on the shelf alongside the professional ones from the video store.

4. Making banners and posters. Throwing a party? Want to advertise your goods or services? Got an event you need to publicise? Banners and posters are a simple way to catch someone’s attention. The traditional way of creating them is by using markers and paints. A combination of your DTP software and colour printer is much quicker - and less messy!

5. Designing flyers. Scale that banner or poster down to half a page, and you’ve got a flyer to hand out.

6. Typesetting newsletters. A newsletter is the easiest way of letting customers, or members of your club or other organisation, know what’s going on. Typing them up on a word processor is fine, but use your DTP software to make them more eye-catching, and your newsletter is more likely to be read than trashed.

7. Magazine layout. Go one further and layout your own glossy magazine with pictures ad text put together in full colour. It’s easier (and cheaper) than you may think.

8. Product packaging. Think package design is the preserve of expensive design shops or advertising agencies? Think again! Most package design these days is done using computers. "Reverse engineer" a package by taking a similar sized one apart to get the dimensions, build your own template from the measurements, then let your imagination run wild. You’ll be surprised at what you can come up with - and how little it will cost.

9. Laying out a catalogue. If you sell multiple products, or just want to let customers know what’s in your shop or store, a catalogue can keep you uppermost in your customer’s mind. Designing it using your own DTP software means you can easily update it without having to pay a fortune to an agency.

10. Designing a yearbook. Don’t let precious memories fade away. A yearbook isn’t just for high school. Use your DTP software to organise pictures, facts and reminiscences into a document you’ll treasure forever.

Shaun Pearce is a writer and video maker. His latest production "DTP Master" shows you how to get to grips with desktop publishing, comes with free DTP software, and can be downloaded from http://www.learndtpfast.com.

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM data conversion deserves FAQ type of article, where IT people could get initial directions. Even if it seems as a trivial task, we would suggest you to think about these possible scenarios: objects mapping between your legacy CRM: GoldMine, ACT, Siebel, Lotus Notes Domino. When you think about MS CRM switch over – do you think just to transfer master records: Leads, Contacts, Accounts, or you are thinking about historical activities: emails, faxes, calls, appointments, etc?

• MS CRM Import tool. You can import contact and leads using MS CRM import, your source files should be text files and import tool doesn’t validate duplicates, dirty records and similar potential pitfalls. Well, Import wizard comes free with MS CRM purchase, but in our opinion, you should just continue reading and go to the next bullet.

• Scribe. This is the first professional level option you should consider. The nicety of scribe lays in the fact that it has mappings for ACT for example and you will need just select the destination. Again, please understand that each CRM solutions has its own master and activity objects categories. Scribe should resolve 85% of your conversion issues and if not you should check with scribe. Some issues are not resolvable in scribe: Siebel email attachments, records duplications and others.

• Microsoft CRM SDK. MS CRM SDK is the ultimate tool to migrate whatever is possible and impossible into MS CRM. However – we have to warn you that in this case we have to do custom data conversion and our programmers dedicate their time to help you out. We expect your participation in objects mapping. Plus you should be ready to allocate substantial time to test the conversion, prior to going live. So, the expectations should be set that your have to budget 50 hours or more

• Security Model Concerns. Microsoft CRM has advanced security model, and technically it can serve up to large corporation with regional and worldwide offices. In this case you usually deploy objects sharing technique and deploy teams and role (MS CRM Business Units and Sales Territories doesn’t allow your CRM users to be in multiple units or at the same time serve several territories). If initial data conversion requires security consideration – you should consider MS CRM SDK approach – even if you have to pay higher price for the conversion. Large business should consider the risk of exposing records to unauthorized employees

• MS CRM Integration. Using MS CRM SDK you can integrate CRM with your third party financial applications, such as Navision, Axapta, Solomon, Oracle Financials, SAP, PeopleSoft. Software Development Kit allows you to integrate your custom SQL, DB2, Oracle or other ODBC and OLEDB complaint application.

Currently we are confident in MS CRM ability to automate the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Advertising & Publishing, Distribution & Logistics, Beverages, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Pharmaceutical, Nonprofit, Healthcare/Hospitals, Wholesale/Retail, Manufacturing/Assembling, International Business/Multinational Corporation, Government.

You can always have us help you, give us a call: 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is consultant and CTO in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Business Solutions partner, serving clients in Illinois, New York, California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Minnesota, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, Russia. He is Microsoft Great Plains certified master, Great Plains Dexterity, Microsoft CRM SDK C#.Net, Crystal Repots developer. You can reach Andrew: akarasev@albaspectrum.com