Eliminate the frustration - Part 2

Many business people are frustrated by the problems that we have with computers. They don't do what we want, they have problems, they are complex to learn and understand. They take time away from running our business.

My whole career has been spent in IT, and I feel that way as well. I know how to go about solving these problems and I still get frustrated, because they get in my way.

The other day, I described how a good computer support company can improve the quality of service that you get. Today I want to take a look at another side of the problem and describe what you can do as a small business owner to solve these problems. I will not describe any technical solution, because I know that this would simply frustrate you more and take you away from what you really want to do. Go find that supplier! This relates to what you can do in your business.

In order to address this, I have to start with the attitude of most small business owners. When we go out to buy software, we want to OWN it. OWNING IT puts us in control. Or so we think. If we own it, then we can do whatever we want with it. When we rent it, we pay and pay and pay. So we want to own it.

Microsoft and other PC software suppliers love us for this. Because we buy and install our own software, they can upgrade it and even though we think we can put off the upgrade, they know that in order for people to work together, they often must have the same version. And look what they do to us. We can't buy the old version, so they make major changes to it, causing us a huge amount of effort to change. Look at the Vista fiasco. Not only were there many problems, but we had to relearn everything. Huge cost for NO VALUE. Problem #1.

Windows is a messy system and every time you install something, you update the registry. The more installs and deletes of software, the messier it gets. Not only that, but every software supplier is responsible for cretaing the "package" to install their own software. Some do it well, some make a mess. I worked with a large business to improve the installation process to prevent errors. We had to repackage everything to make it work properly.

Who is responsible for solving this problem? You are! All of these software developers are creating this problem and they want you, the computer user to solve it.

The more change you make on your PC, the more space is taken up, the more problems are potentially created, the more support problems you will have. Unless you feel that you are in a position to solve the problems created by software suppliers, you should be looking for another way.

Wouldn't you know it? There is one. And that future is being discussed by many technicians today, and many suppliers. They call it Software as a Service (SoaS. As a business owner, you don't care about SoaS and this is the last time I'll talk about it. But the benefits to the small business are significant, and that is what you should be interested in.

The solution and its benefits will be described in my next post.