On Tuesday, Google's Apps went down for 100 minutes, read the story here. This outage left users of all Google tools without access during the middle of a business day. Companies that rely upon these applications for email, word processing documents, and spreadsheets, were left out in the cold as their customers wondered why they were not being tended to and projects were delayed.

Free or very cheap software as a service (SaaS) products like Google Apps provide a nice entry point for many companies that cannot afford reliable, more established services. However, if your company provides a service or goods to organizations with high demands on performance and reliability (what company does not now?), then you should ensure your vendors have a long history of performance before implementing a system. This is how Zepol does business and how we choose the companies that we do business with. We do not choose fly-by-night organizations, but rather heavily research vendors, ensuring they are not only reliable and established, but also do business the right way.

From our experience in the trade data industry, we know there are many companies that work like ours, researching vendors before subscribing to the service that may not be the least expensive, but provides the lowest cost of ownership and most benefits. There are others that choose providers based completely on cost and ignore the time wasted when they experience inevitable down times that come from vendors using either antiquated systems or unreliable outsourcing vendors to cut costs.

In the last week, several companies in our industry have experienced interruptions in service to their email programs and databases because they outsource their business applications and storage to companies that are unable to maintain the huge computing requirements in this industry. Because outages affect our core business (providing timely, on-demand data to our customer base), Zepol ensures that we fully vet our vendors, own and manage the most advanced server technology on the market, and have redundant systems to ensure our customers and prospects always receive the best care.

Recently, I was looking at several software vendors that have the same type of business model that Zepol uses, software as a service (SAAS). I grew frustrated with a couple of the providers because they would not offer a free trial of their service before I purchased a subscription. Frankly, buying a product like Zepol's, a several thousand dollar yearly investment, without trying it for yourself first is like purchasing a car without a test drive or house sight unseen.

How, as a decision maker, are you supposed to make an informed choice on whether the product will meet your needs without first having it in your hands? While video demonstrations provide a nice picture of what a product can do and some of the functionality, in the end, they are a commercial made for selling you on the glossy features. Companies often produce these even before they have a fully functional application to sell, thus videos hide almost every real life usage scenario that you will do in the course of your subscription. Making a purchasing decision completely based off watching a video is simply uninformed and, in a business environment, irresponsible.

Other companies provide in-person or web demonstrations of the products. These are much more realistic than video demonstrations, but still can be gamed to show you, as the prospect, an unrealistic view. Not every company selling SAAS products are honest when they provide face-to-face demonstrations. Some use a separate database from the one given to customers to conceal a slow or buggy application. I have learned that it is sometimes necessary to ask the sales person to login using the same application that I would have access to.

At the end of the day, it is essential that when purchasing a SAAS product, trade data tool or otherwise, to insist on using the actual product that you are purchasing before you sign any contracts. Use videos to get an idea of what a product does and let a sales person in a face-to-face or web demonstration show you what it can do, but insist on a free trial to ensure a product will meet your needs.

If a company does not provide any of these methods of viewing a product, especially a free trial, ask yourself, "What is this company hiding?" and "Why are they afraid to invest so little in me as a prospect before I give them my company’s money?" In addition, if they do not provide options for free trials, demonstrations, or videos on their website, "How serious about this business are they?"

As you can see from our website, Zepol provides each of these methods for learning about our products, but we have always done so, considering it as an honest, open business practice. We have video demonstrations, the ability to participate in personalized webinars, and, of course, a live free trial of TradeIQ, check out www.zepol.com for more information.

I have written about the uses of trade data and other topics that touch our industry like Competitive Intelligence, Importing, and Brand Protection, but this post is about something a little different. Every day I hear from our customers that one of the things that separates Zepol from other vendors is that we provide excellent customer support.

While I am very proud of the support we provide, our customer service philosophy comes down to what I learned at my very first job as a teenager: if you treat every one of your customers with the same level of respect and appreciation as you do for your biggest client, then they will reward you with continued loyalty.

Zepol does not do anything revolutionary. We simply provide our customers with things that we want when working with other companies:

• Timely, thorough responses
• Professionalism
• Simple proactive measures to enhance the user experience
• Kept promises
• Personalized support for each customer

As basic as these concepts are to provide, there are far too many companies that struggle to execute consistently good support. In our industry, users utilize the data differently, so if support is not tailored to a user’s situation, then it is not as valuable. This also requires Zepol to provide support in a number of ways in order to allow users to access help in the manner they want.

Your customers should want to work with you. They should feel that if they call your support line, it will be answered. If they leave a message, it will be returned as soon as possible. Support personnel should have the training and authority to fully help a customer without having to ask a manager. Above all, they must act professionally and be experts in the subject they work in every day.

By providing the kind of support we do, our customers realize additional value beyond raw information. Trade data raises many questions that are above simple 'how-to-use-the-tool' inquires; diving deeper into issues about how to build value from the data and our tool, TradeIQ™. With the focus we have put on support and product usability, our customers add hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of value to their subscriptions that our competitors cannot match.

As we launch our blog, we want to use our first post to explain why we decided to begin blogging. At Zepol, we believe that companies and organizations can use the U.S. Import Data we provide to make smarter decisions by knowing more about their markets, competition, and suppliers. It is part of our mission to educate both our subscribers and the international business community about the international trade data available and show those new to the data how to use the information.

There are a lot of questions regarding the trade data we provide and we hope to use this blog to provide answers and information about the data to the international trade community. We believe that there are many great uses of this data that not only benefit individual companies, but also the general public. To help remove the mystery from U.S. Import Trade Data, we will use our blog to show how the data can be applied to the decision making process and how innovative companies are using our data to drive revenue, reduce costs, and minimize supply chain risk.

Some of the topics that we will discuss in the Zepol Blog are:

• Current events and how companies can use trade data to their benefit
• Stories on how companies are using trade data in their everyday business processes
• Product announcements
• Explanations of different international trade data sources
• How To’s and best practices for trade data analysis

This blog will provide a voice to not only Zepol, but also to the users of trade data. We invite you, as a reader, to comment on our posts and suggest topics to discuss. Expect us to post regularly and respond to comments quickly, we see this blog as a great way to answer questions about AMS and other types of data. Finally, check out our links to see some great places to find different sources of data that Zepol does not currently provide.