Are you in a Perceived Staisfactory Relationship with your IT suppliers

In a recnt discussion with an IT supplier, he described one of the challenges that he faces when speaking to potential clients. They are in a perceived satisfactory relationship. They are not ready or interested in a new supplier.

Having worked for large companies with many suppliers, I can understand the situation. There are a lot of articles out there about customer relationship management that describe how it is easier and less expensive to keep and grow an existing customer relationship than it is to build one. The same is true of suppliers. I have had many poor supplier relationships that were turned around. It is much easier and I fully support it. Changing suppliers is a major distraction and keeps you away from your priority, building your own business. You focus on your major suppliers, who are very important to your business.

Unfortunately, computer support is not a priority for most businesses. They must use computers, but it is a distraction. We see this not only in small businesses, but also in large ones. Many CIOs (Chief Information Officers) have complained for years that they should be at the executive table. In those situations, since the experts are in the company, we can say that it is their own fault. They haven't shown how important Information Technology can be to the business, so why should be business care?

In a small business, there is typically no one with a good combination of business and technical skills to guide the company in exploiting technology, so perhaps that is understandable. But what is the impact?

Before discussing the impact, let's look at the source of the problem. Most computer support companies and staff that support small business are technically skilled and experienced. They speak technical language to their customers and expect them to do the same. They look down on anyone who can't speak their language and make their customers feel inferior.

Albert Einstein said "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". That is the problem. The suppliers and technicians don't understand the issues well enough and they need to show their superiority by using technical language. As a result, business people suffer from a low expectation of what they can get from an IT supplier and changing suppliers is painful and doesn't produce value.

There are a few suppliers out there that can speak the language of business. Business owners and managers need to start looking for them and expecting to be able to get the kind of service and language that they need.

Some of the expectations that you should have and should get:

• Your computers should provide a stable service. Failures and problems cost you time and money.
• New software should increase productivity, reduce costs or increase quality. There should be a rapid return on investment.
• You IT suppliers should be able to speak to you in your language, expalin the business issues without technobabble.
• Your suppliers should be coming to you with business solutions, not another sales pitch.
• Your suppliers should make it easier to make use of computers, not harder.
• Your suppliers should help you learn to adapt to the new technology, not drop it in your lap and have you learn through a fire hose.

There are probably more things that should be expected. Start not only expecting this, but demanding these from your suppliers. This is the only way things will change.

Small Business pays for Technology supplier's mistakes

I have run across two instances lately of a small business that paid for mistakes made by their technology supplier.

Most suppliers to small business are small businesses themselves. When they make a recommendation of a solution to their customer, they tend to charge in two parts. The first part is for the hardware and software. Since they must purchase this themsleves, they tend to charge for it up front. They charge for their time later. This is something they can control, and it is where they make their profit.

All of this is understandable, and if the solution was guaranteed, it would not be a problem. But since the supplier had to pay for it up front, if the hardware doesn't do the job, new hardware must be bought. The client ends up paying for this. The first purchase is a loss.

This may be understandable except for one thing. In both cases that I mentioned, the supplier had made an assumption. They assumed that because this was a small business, they did not want to pay for a top of the line solution. They bought a cheaper solution, because they assumed the client would not pay for it. The client wasn't given the opportunity to choose. The quality of the hardware may have been ok for most situations, but not all.

Technology suppliers need to change their approach with small business. They need to assume that their clients are intelligent, even though they don't know the details about the technology that they are buying. They need to make clients aware of the options and the risks that exist. If they do that, then their client will have more respect for them and trust the solutions that are recommended. Until that happens, small business will continue to feel that they do not have any control and will not trust the solution providers. That is one of the reasons why many small businesses are reluctant to take advantage of new technology. They knwo that they are likely to get the shaft. They only go there when they have no choice, or have totally satisfied themselves that the solution is right. Both delay the implementation of solutions that could bring productivity advantages to their business.

Eliminate the frustration of managing computers - Part 1

As a small business owner, it is difficult to get the expertise necessary to manage computers well. The cost of an experienced technician is too high and even if you could afford to hire him or her, you couldn't keep them happy or satisfied.

Hiring a computer support company is a better and cheaper solution. They have the expertise and can solve problems much faster than a less experienced person. The good news is that this improves your productivity, because your computers are down less time.

As small business owners, we are often concerned that we can afford the downtime while we wait for a technician to get on site. The problems can be solved by the time that the technician arrives. If you are having this problem, then you have the wrong supplier. A good support company manages your computers for you and prevents these problems from occuring. This means that you have fewer incidents and therefore you don't need immediate response.

Most suppliers today also have remote management tools. They can diagnose and resolve problems without coming on site. With the preventative maintenance and remote support, you get more reliable service and faster response at a cheaper rate.

Why would anyone not want to have this? There is only one issue here. And that is the relationship with your supplier. Unfortunately many suppliers see themselves as technicians and not as partners in your business. You get the most value if they treat your business issues as their issues and help you to solve them, without costing you a fortune. This is an area where an employee may have a different attitude, or at least you might help them to learn to have a different attitude.

Having a supplier that you can trust and cares about your business is a great solution. But there is another question. Why do you need so much support and preventative maintenance? Why can't those computers just run.

To quote Jef Raskin, a human/computer interface expert:
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

There are a lot of reasons why we have these problems. But this is another topic and I'll describe them in a future entry.


the problems of PC based applications.

What do you expect from your IT supplier?

A recent incident with a client, brings me to this discussion and what a business should expect from their IT supplier.

This IT supplier advertises themselves as a small business' IT department.

First, some background. This client is very non-technical as are many small businesses. I had helped to define the original requirements, since the organization didn't have the understanding of what they required. The supplier installed the complete suite of hardware and software, and had recommended the anti-virus, backup hardware and software, etc. So they knew and understood the situation completely and knew the skill levels of the staff.

When the organization needed to expand, they purchased an additional 3 PCs. They knew that they wanted Microsoft Office and specified the additional licenses. What they didn't understand was how the Anti-Virus licenses worked. When they ordered the PCs, the supplier did not say anything, just ordered exactly what was asked and installed the additional PCs with no Anti-Virus. Of course they encountered a problem, after which the supplier said "well, you didn't order the Anti-Virus".

For an organization that advertises itself as "your IT department", this is unacceptable. As far as I'm concerned, it is unacceptable for any supplier.

As the specialists, we need to help our clients do what is best for them. They don't know or understand the complexities of IT and they shouldn't have to. If we are to do the job, we need to understand the client's needs and specify exactly what is needed to address the problem, clearly (non-technical) the issues, the benefits and risks of the recommendations. If the client is willing to take the risk because of the costs involved, we need to understand and offer them options which mitigate those risks.

I doubt if any client would risk losing their business because of a $35 expenditure.

This is just another case of poor customer service.



Talk about the issue of buying a computer and not being told that they need anti-virus

10 Reasons your small business needs a technology services provider

I found a blog entry that described these ten reasons and they are excellent points.

There is one issue that isn't mentioned though, and that is your service provider's focus. Many IT service providers to small business take the "break-fix" approach. That means that they wait until you call and fix the problem that you have identified. They have better skills and can fix the problems much more quickly than internal staff, but that is only a very small benefit.

The real issue is that technology can be managed, problems can be prevented. When well managed, the number of service incidents can be reduced, which means that you don't get the interruptions at all. This is where the real benefit is.

Read the 10 reasons

Stage 1 - Managing IT for the non-technical manager - Basic Infrastructure

Many business owners are frustrated that their computers don't just run. Everybody tells them that they need to become more technical. Everybody that tells you that is wrong. You don't need to be more technical. You need to understand how to manage Information Technology so that it supports your business.

The first stage of managing IT is the basic infrastructure. Before getting any value from IT, you have to buy hardware and software. This doesn't do anything for you except give you access to tools that will help you run your business. Managing IT at this level means that it has to work.

Those who are uncomfortable with technology, or just don't want to spend their time there, tend to ignore it, or "delegate" it to some junior technician in their business. Typically this person is technical, is comfortable with playing in technology and will find a way to fix problems that come up.

What they won't do is manage the reliability of the technology, because they don't have the experience to do that. You will get a reactive situation. Problems will occur, and your staff will be unproductive during those times. The bigger problem will be that you don't know what is lurking. Since the technology is not being managed, you won't see a problem until it occurs. Then it will likely have a significant impact on your business. A client of mine recently experienced a 3 day outage due to a minor problem with the server. It took 3 days to diagnose and fix. During that time, their activity didn't stop, but the business processes did. They couldn't invoice and it took weeks to catch up.

Trying to hire someone to support IT in your business is a real challenge. You can't pay high salaries, so you get a junior person. Hiring a senior at a high salary doesn't work either. They just get bored and leave.

Contracting with an outside supplier seems to be a good solution. If you "delegate" the support to the outside supplier, you may be somewhat better off. You no longer have to worry about hiring, training, etc. But if that's all you do, you will not gain much benefit unless your supplier is managing IT for you and not just reacting the way that your staff did. And unless you have defined the goals that they are managing to, you still may be subject to failures that could have been prevented. (the client mentioned earlier had outsourced IT support).

You need to set goals for your supplier, that leaves you in control, but lets them manage the support on a day-to-day basis. Each business will have a unique set of targets, but the goals will fall into the following categories:

1. Asset management: What hardware, software and other components do you have? What did they cost you? Are they up-to-date? Are they properly licensed? Upgrades are often required to software. Some of these drive hardware upgrades. If you have this available, it will cost you less to get an assessment of future upgrades and may also prevent problems, or ease recovery from major problems.
2. Risk management: This includes anti-virus, security, non-business use. This area is the source of many problems. If managed properly, you can prevent problems from occurring, or at least identify them more quickly, speeding up recovery.
3. Backup management: Do you have backup? Does it work? How would you recover from a failure? Many businesses have difficulty focusing in this area, because of day-to-day pressures. You can define the needs once and have your supplier commit to this area on a day-to-day basis.
4. Reliability management: Do you track service incidents? Does your supplier? What is the business impact? What can be done to prevent these incidents? An analysis of these inciedents will identify actions that should be taken in one of the other areas.

Setting up these management processes, a one time event, will mean that what you spend on software to run your business will have the opportunity to provide the return on investment that you were looking for.

It will also reduce your frustrations, and provide you with the feeling that you are in control, not just subject to the whims of computers or computer technicians.

This first stage is the foundation. If your technology infrastructure is not stable, the only thing taht you will accomplish by putting in more software is to increase your frustrations and opportunity to be affected by failures.

Does technology frustrate you?

I just read a blog by George Zgourides, a clinical Psychologist titles Dont Let Technology Psych You Out! In it he talks about people who get frustrated with computers or anything else that frustrates them in their day to day work. It's kind of long, but at least worth checking out.

I see this problem all the time when I work with clients. In many cases they aren't comfortable with technology and use it grudgingly. This sets them up for frustration. Software fails. Get used to it! Software wasn't written for people, it was written by software programmers for software programmers! We get frustrated because it's too complex and doesn't just help you to do the job.

I've spent my whole career in technology. I've been a programmer, an analyst, a designer and I still get frustrated. I normally use a very small portion of a software product, but have to deal with all its features every day.

The key to minimizing that frustration is to focus on what you are trying to achieve and set yourself up to do that very well. I see the problem in every assignment. A business buys new software. The software supplier comes in and trains them on everything the software can do. People remember very little of this content, because it has no context. How do I do what I want to do? The software supplier doesn't know your business, so he can't tailor the training to your business. He can't spend the time to leaarn your business, because you won't spend the consulting fees to let him do it. If he's a software programmer, it may not help anyway.

The key to reducing this frustration is to get somebody who will manage the technology for you (Outsource it!). If you get somebody proactive, they will prevent problems and allow you to focus on your business. Then focus on your business process. Find out how to do what you are tryoing to do by using the software. Often the supplier will tell you that can't be done! Bull! They reason that they say this is that they don't understand what you are trying to do.

I encounter this all the time. With my experience as a programmer, I know what can be done. I also focus on the business process and look at other mechanisms which might give us an equivalent solution. I have found that knowledge is not the most imporatnt thing. Persistence is. I believe that when somebody can't make me underswtand, they have a problem. It's not my lack of knowledge, but theirs.

Focus, and will are the keys to eliminate frustration.

All you need to do is........

This is a common statement by most people who are comfortable with computers. It is also used by most technical support staff and companies who support small businesses.

What many technical people fail to realize is that small business owners have no interest in doing it, no matter how easy it is. They want to run their business, not dabble with technology. They may recognize that doing regular backups, maintaining virus software, security, etc., is needed, but they don't want to think about it. They are busy doing other things. If they are comfortable with technology, they may do it (even then they often can't be bothered).

Most IT outsourcing companies that support small businesses operate as technicians, fixing problems when they come up. They know what should be done and tell the owners they should do it, but stop there. The don't think of the impact that these failures have on small businesses. They don't think of offering a service that eliminates the need for the business owner to think of such things as backup. The owner time is far more valuable focusing on revenues.

Large companies learned a long time ago, that it pays to prevent problems and they know that no business person wants to think about backup, security and virus. They want it prevented.
We need IT maintenance companies that provide service to small business, not just fix computers.

In my experience, I haven't found many IT Service companies that think this way. Most just want to fix problems, and maybe that's because most small business owners just want their problems fixed. I think small business owners need something different, but may not know how to ask.