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.

Computer Training and Support - Return on Investment (ROI)

Many businesses look at training as an expense to be cut whenever times are difficult. They also look at computer support in the same way. They don't get support unless they have no other alternative.

This article that I found talks about these two "expenses" as something that should be looked at as an investment. Although much of the content is worthwhile, the challenge is to show that benefit. Some of the recommendations in terms of in house support is something that I disagree with.

First let's look at training. A lot of the article talks about measuring the value of training. This is one of the BIG issues and is the primary reason why training is often cut when it is needed the most. How do you measure the value of training. The article talks about how much people have learned. Is this measurable? The real issue is that training is of little measurable value unless it returns something to the business. Generally, we know and understand very little about the capabilities of the software that we buy. There is plenty of opportunity to use much more of the software. But whether we know how to use it, whether we use it, and whether we get business value from it is the important question. If we start with the end in mind (getting business value), then we can get a return on our training investment. If we become more productive, if we get information we didn't have before, if we are able to increase revenues, then we have created value. This is how we get ROI! Training does not provide value! The results that we achieve by the training is what is important. You canlook at the article to see how you can make it happen.

The second area referenced is support. The article recommends that every small business find themselves a good computer support company. If the support company is proactive (fixes problems before they happen), then what you gain is increased productivity because you don't sit around with failing equipment. You also will get better performance and response time. You get better technical skills and don't spend your time on trying to hire capable computer technicians. Unless someone deals with computer support every day, they aren't good enough. Your son or the neighbour's son, who is great at games and social networking is not good at maintaining a stable environment. This savings will far exceed the cost of preventative maintenance.

However, I disagree with a few recommendations related to what should be done in house vs outourced. For inhouse support:

1. I agree that staff should maintain a list of all day-to-day problems. This is necessary to identify whether adequate support is provided and whether it is getting better.
2. I disagree with running of tape backups should be done in house. In house staff are focused on day-to-day production. They don't understand the implications of backup and recovery. When something goes wrong, they invariably do the wrong thing. I have seen many cases where backup fails and they are "too busy" to take care of it, or have a problem with testing recovery, but don't get it fixed. We now have remote backup services that can be monitored and managed by a supplier.
3. I disagree with handling all first level Microsoft/Desktop issues. Many problems are created by staff trying to fix problems. If the problems require fixes, they are installed improperly and your supplier doesn't know what was done. If the questions require a how to, the scope of the solution is based on the skills and knowledge of the person answering the question. The training portion of the article describes the problem here. Most of our staff don't have a good understanding of the software being used. So look for expertise and measure the results.
4. I disagree that strategic planning should be done by the outsourcer. This is a business issue! The business may not have the technical skills to define the technology strategy and they will need support for this. But they must define the business strategy. Their supplier can help them to identify the technology that will help to deliver it.
5. I disagree that the outsourer should develop the Disaster Prevention and Recovery plan. This is a business issue! Business recovery involves much more than technology. Only the business managers understand what is needed. The supplier can help to develop solutions.

The two issues identified are valid as well as a lot of their responses and recommendations. If you want to see the full article, check

Why IT Training and Support Makes Business Sense

Unlicensed software a source of system failure?

A recent study by The Harrison Group on behalf of Microsoft has found that mid-market companies that have unlicensed software are more succeptible to system failures than companies that acquire their software through legitimate means.

Their analysis simply reports that this is the case, not explaining why. It also references the growth rates and identifies that the companies buying legitimately tend to grow faster than the others.

In my experience, licensing is simply an element of how Information Technology is managed in a business. For many small businesses, computers are looked at as an expense to be reduced. There is little recognition of the value that it can bring to the company. Under these circumstances a number of things occur. They include:

• Acquiring unlicensed software.
• Using software that is no longer maintained.
• Reacting to software problems after they occur, thereby encountering outages.
• Minimizing the cost of support by attempting to fix it themselves.
• Not using the software as effectively as they could.

All of these issues are symptoms of treating technology as a cost of doing business. Typically, costs are minimized, but there is no recognition that outages can cost money. When systems are down, people are unproductive. This can lead to overtime, customer dissatisfaction and lost sales.

When I am asked to help a company, they often have difficulties that are affecting their business. One of the things that I always look for is how is technology being managed. I usually find a break/fix mentality with an emphasis on mimizing costs. I also usually find that too much money is being spent... on the wrong things. And this affects their business performance. Money is wasted in some areas and restricted in others. Two of the areas where costs are restricted is in the purchase of software and in software maintenance. The result is system failures and lost productivity,

While the study talks about the relationship between unlicensed software and system failure , the real source of the problem is the mindset towards technology. It is considered a necessary cost of doing business rather than a value to the business. In my experience, if the value is recognized, the value increases. The report identifies that this does not nessarily increase the costs.

To see the full report, see http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/C/5/DC503630-3EDD-455D-B155-4FCCA6FCCEA3/TCO%20Global%20Final%20Whitepaper.pdf

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

The cost of cheap services

To quote Albert Einstein, "Sometimes one pays the most for the things one gets for nothing".

In my discussions with small business owners and not-for-profit organizations, I often hear the phrase "that costs too much". I see business owners going for the cheapest service that they can get. I see not-for-profit organizations getting volunteers to provide support for critical services. In both these cases, the cost of getting free or cheap services is often poor performance or a a poor result.

Obviously nobody should be spending more money than should for service, but what should they be spending?
I recently asked for professional help to develop a brochure. Instead of going for somebody that "I could afford", I went with experience. Two things happenned: One, I got a much better quality brochure; Two, I learned a lot about grphics and developing brochures. I will be smarter next time around.

The same is tru of support for computers. When you go with "Your nephew" or "your neighbour's son", you are unlikely to get the kind of skills that you want. You will most likely get someone who is comfortable fixing computers. But, fixing computers is not why you are in business. You are in business to deliver services to your customers and being paid. If your computers aren't helping you do that, or require constant maintenance, you aren't going to be productive. The cost of the productivity loss may be much more than the cheap support that you are getting. You may not have enough time or information to focus on new sales, or even worse, you will lose sales.

Not all junior people are poor solutions, just like not all suppliers provide good service for your business. However, if you set the standard expectation for how you want your computers and business software to operate, you will have a better quality, more reliable service, and this will help you to focus on growing your business.

Start by focusing on your business goals, and what you must have in terms of functionality and service in order to achieve them. Then look at the cost of getting that service. You may have to compromise, if you don't currently have the money, but at least you will know what you are missing and what you have to do when you have the money.

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.

What's a Chief Information Officer (CIO)?

In doing a search yesterday, I ran across hundreds of websites that stated that they offered CIO services.

When organizations first started to make use of computers, they called the manager of the group various names from Data Processing Manager, to IT Manager and most recently CIO. While most of these positions had a very similar role, that of managing the activities of the folks that supported computers at the company, the CIO was supposed to identify a new role, that of a business person who was responsible for helping the business to exploit IT to make it more profitable and effective.

While many CIOs still manage the IT function, it detracts from their ability to exploit technology to improve the business. If IT is outsourced, there still is a need for a CIO. Would CIOs be more effective in this situation? Could they add more value to the business? If the business didn't want to outsource would it make sense for the IT Manager and CIO to be two separate positions?

Many small businesses have outsourced IT support, because they just can't afford to hire the type of computer skills that they need. Even if they don't outsource, their computer staff do not have the business skills to help them take advantage of technology.

If they check the Internet for a CIO, most of what they find is IT support businesses that call themselves CIOs. They aren't. They are just computer and network support companies. They don't try to understand thye business, they simply fix what's broken.

If we really want to help small businesses to exploit Information Technology, then we need to focus on their business and not on fixing computer problems. That's not to say that keeping technology stable is not important (it is critical), but we should be past that. Maybe we need a new title instead of CIO, since CIO is being misused so much.

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.

Satisfying IT clients

IT organizations, whether internal or IT support organizations have the same problem. They think of themselves providing a technical support role. If they make keep the technology running, then they are doing their jobs.

The impact of this view is that even when their clients are satisfied, they are only satisfied compared to other experiences. They are not truly satisfied. Their expectations have been set so low that they appear satisfied when the equipment is working. At least then, they don't get distracted from doing their jobs, by having to work around malfunctioning equipment.

This issue shows up with the frustration that most people express with computers. My career has progressed through various phases from working with mainframes to working with desktops. Back in the early mainframe days, we were that mysterious group in the back room. Nobody knew what we did. My family still doesn't understand. At that time, computers were too complex for the average person to understand, but they didn't have to deal with them day-to-day. The technical staff did that, and we were happy doing that. I have grown more and more frustrated myself with dealing with computers, because it takes far too much of my time to deal with these nagging little problems that should be so easy to deal with.

Most software today is still written for software people: people who memorize every aspect of a software program and see it as a challenge to become an expert at all of its intricacies. Most of us don't look at it this way. We are just trying to get a job done, and resent having to become an expert to get what we want. That's why most people that I talk to are frustrated with computers. The software helps us to get our jobs done, if we can ever get past that terrible interface. Windows is much better than DOS, but still leaves a lot to be desired.

The issue of technical support also causes us frustrations. From a normal user point of view, we don't want to learn how the new technology works; we just want to have an easier time getting our job done. Then the computer technician comes in, does a great technical job at installing equipment, and leaves proud of his accomplishments. We are left to deal with the aftermath. Nobody told us what they did. Nobody told us that our work would have to change because the software wouldn't work the same. Nobody told us what to do with the excess equipment.

We start with a "user" who is frustrated with the old equipment, is stressed with the volume of work in their jobs, is buying new equipment to get out of the hole, and gets a whole new set of problems, more frustration. No wonder they hang onto anybody who can help them. When is the IT industry going to wake up and recognize that computers are supposed to help us do the job, not frustrate us in trying to do it. Why should business people spent their time trying to plan technology changes so that their business will not be disrupted? Why can't IT people recognize that many businesses are stressed trying to get their jobs done, and provide solutions, true solutions to these problems.

Change is hard. We all get comfortable with the old ways. Computers are always going to change things and increase our stress levels, because it introduces change. IT support organizations, both internal and external, need to recognize the impact that they are having, and start introducing changes in a manner that reduces stress.

Start by learning more about the client and their needs. Help them prepare for the changes and don't ask them technical questions. Turn those questions into business questions that they can make reasonable business decisions on. The IT organizations that succeed in doing that will be the ones that succeed in the future, not those that are excellent technicians.