Real SMB IT, Your Web Site Story

With due apologies to Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein!

When designing (or doing a re-design) of your Web Site, What story are you trying to tell?

Now ask yourself; Is your Web Site telling that same story? Or is it telling something different?

Is the purpose of your web site to show off that you are the best multimedia developer in the world?

Or is it trying to provide information that presents your product or service in a way that encourages someone to contact you with a purchase order?

Because, as Marketing expert Seth Godin points out, that distinction is critical;

Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?

For everyone else, it’s no. The purpose of the site is to tell a story or to generate some sort of action. And if the user notices the site, not the story, you’ve lost

The SMB Takeaway

Like most methods of communication, your web site must support your story.  And just as yelling at somebody with a huge smile on your face would provide your listener with a disconnect from the verbal language and the body language.

It is the same with your web site. If you are presenting a serious message, and your web site is all dancing dots and flashy gizmo’s. You are leaving your customers with that same disconnect.

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Photo Credit Wikipedia

The Top Ten Passwords

From CIOZone

There’s just no other way to explain why 300,000 out of 32 million people would choose “123456″ as their password.

The other 9 most commonly used passwords are in that article.

By the way, being in the top 10  is not a good thing in this case.

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Photo Credit Richard Parmiter via flickr

Doing Vs. Enabling

In smaller businesses, too many IT professionals have a major problem.

And that problem?

That problem is a failure to see issues or problems through the eyes of the people that they are dealing with.

When using any technology based tool, people want to perform a function or task, they don’t need belittling baby sitters.

OK, so somebody lacks the knowledge to solve a problem?

An IT staffer or provider fixes it. IT then says; ‘let me know whenever you need that, we’ll do it.’

Well!

If we tie our kids shoe laces until they are 15, will they ever learn to tie their own?

Enabling, Not Doing

For SMB IT folks, trust me people are smart! They don’t need you to convert the occasional WordPerfect document to Microsoft Word format for them.

Just show them how.

As Vaughan Merlyn states in this post titled; Are You Falling Into The Customer Satisfaction Trap

In finding and fixing the problem, they made no attempt to help me become self-sufficient in fixing the problem in the future.  I knew this was likely to be a recurring problem (as it subsequently proved to be!) and did not relish the pain and wait times associated with reaching their customer support desk!

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Photo Credit malingering via flickr

We Can’t Always Give What They Want

OK, an obvious riff on the Rolling Stones We Can’t Always Get What We Want!

But here is a true story.

Lets wander back a few decades to when I was in the property management business.

First! We are going old school here, the Internet was still in prep school (the technorati talked SLIP, Telnet, Gopher), and the masses talked via BBS (Bulletin Board Systems – remember Mustang?) or CompuServe. E-mail? nope. Computing was an AS-400 and green screen terminals.

but I digress!

At one of our tenant companies, two individuals repeatedly complained to the commercial property supervisor that they were either too hot, or too cold in their work places.

Feeling that they were not getting an adequate response after several complaints, these two employees escalated the issue to their business Vice President, who then raised hell with our commercial property Vice President.

As crap usually flows down hill, the commercial property supervisor was hauled onto the carpet for a tongue lashing about not being responsive to the complaints.

During this event the commercial property supervisor demanded a meeting in the tenants offices with both the tenants VP, and our VP. After some argument – this was arranged.

So! its meeting day, the property supervisor takes both VP’s to one of the complaining individuals and asks about the temperature; Too cold was given as a complaint.

The trio then visit the second complainant who states; too hot!

Our property supervisor says; there you go, what the hell do you want me to do?

You see?

Those two individuals that were complaining?

They had their office desks fitted side by side!

In other words, there were sitting about 3 feet apart! So there was absolutely no hope that both could be satisfied.

And the lessons learned?

The first, and most obvious lesson; the commercial property supervisor would have bypassed all of this if he had simply picked up the phone and explained that there was nothing that he could do about the situation after he received the very first complaint.

But more importantly, we need to understand that we cannot satisfy everybody, every time. We can solicit input, we can try for consensus. But sometimes we need to agree to disagree.

We need to make the decision and move to the next step. We need to appreciate their input, but state that the decision is no longer on the table for discussion.

Photo Credit by jmc_sjsu via flickr

EQ: The New Tech Competency

I got started in the technology business over 15 years ago. And way back then it was all too common for IT staff to talk about Stupid L-User (simply pronounce as loser) stories or even play Dump the Chump games.

My response was always the same;  If everyone was as technically literate as we were, we would be out of work.

Period!

And you can quote me on this; IT staffers that still look at people (and their own tech careers) in this way will be joining the dinosaurs. There was zero excuse for that behavior 15 years ago, and less than zero now.  I should probably change that statement: not will be joining the dinosaurs, to have joined the dinosaurs.

First: Et Tu EQ?

Back in 1994, I would not have had a clue what EQ (or EI) was, but as good ‘ole Wikipedia tells us, EQ is;

ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions  of one’s self, of others, and of groups

In English, this means understanding the why, rather then just the what. It means being able to understand and communicate with people, not hardware or software code. It means understanding the motivations and reasons for behavior. (I know, that squishy human stuff right?)

As Jim Anderson states, that includes;

* Proactive behavior
* Team management
* Leadership
* Teamwork
* Communication skills

Or as simply as it can be put, as Mike Schaffner writes, we need empathy.

Two big driving forces

First, organizations are flatter, you don’t need three managerial levels of business analysts and IT management structures when the developer working on the project team is down the hall. Yes, Dilbert  aside, we see more and more organizations pushing decisions and actions down to lower levels.  That means as technologists, there is no longer a buffer that is translating geek into the English language. It is up to us to do that.

And second, As technology has evolved, it has become simultaneously more complex,  yet more abstracted. (you don’t need to be an electrician to plug that new plasma screen and Blu-ray player right?) With modern technologies, from old school packaged applications and appliances to Software as a service (SaaS), we have seen the rise of increasing levels of abstraction of the hard core “tech” stuff. This abstraction layer removes the need for geeks in lab coats to custom write code that took hours (or weeks) for one small thing. Now we just plug it in. In the time it takes you to sign up for a salesforce.com account, the white coat lab guys of 15 years ago could not have written the title on the requirements documentation.

To turn an old adage on its head; The old IT was always good at buying drills.

The new IT has to know that you are simply looking for a hole.

The new IT is part data steward, part process manager, and part consultant.

And the new IT is all teamwork, leadership and communication

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Photo Credit Columbia Computer Center

SMB Software Development And Quality

An excellent piece by Matthew Blass on his Removing Complexity blog

If quality is low, then work usually breaks and has to be reworked adding cost at a future date. The earlier you fix a problem, the less it’ll cost to fix, so high quality to start is a way of reducing future expenses.

The SMB Takeaway

In many  SME sized business, you may have one or two software developers working on your ERP system, with  some part time working on the Web Site thrown in for good measure.

And it is a pretty good bet these developers are reporting to your senior finance or operations managers.

Make sure those managers understand that as in any type of manufacturing scenario, preventing a problem is the least expensive, identifying and fixing it early is the next, having to recall or rework a finished product is the most expensive.

Do it right the first time!

‘Nuff Said

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Photo Credit miskan via flickr

Just Get The Job Done

Sure, some of us love fancy iPhones, or anything that is in the latest and greatest category.

And the term toys when it comes to technical staff is used as a synonym for geek. (way to often)

But are these toys necessary to get the job done?

Or are they really just ‘toys’?

The SMB Takeaway

Maybe these latest & greatest products will provide a benefit to your business. But that is a business decision based on your requirements and goals.

Toys for the sake of having toys is not an investment, it is just an expense.

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Photo Credit PSantaRosa via flickr

Real SMB IT: Collaboration And Tech Services

Let me tell you about a problem that most smaller businesses have!

You pay boat loads of money, either on retainer, or time & materials services for IT support – But, well, you wonder – what are you getting for all of that money?

Have you ever fit that description?

For small businesses that said yes to the above, I bet I can guess how your IT support processes currently operate too!

If a problem occurs, someone telephones or e-mails Your IT support supplier. Simply enough, that supplier tells you that they will fix it. I would also bet that if your supplier needs to physically visit your facility -they probably get hit with comments such as; “while you are here, Bill over here has not been able to print all week!”

Sound familiar?

And know with a huge inductive leap of logic, I can also guess that if you asked yourself (or your staff) about their perception of your IT support vendor, the perception will be at least neutral, and possibly even quite negative.

And perception is key!

Your IT support provider may be doing a great job – but if you cannot see it, if it is not regularly communicated, that negative perception will not go away.

In your business, who owns that IT relationship?

Right now? If you are like most smaller businesses, probably no one owns that relationship. And when I state owning that relationship, I don’t mean who is assigned to sending the e-mail or making the phone call when something needs to be fixed.

Owning that relationship means that along with sending that e-mail, that follow up information is updated and documented.

Owning that relationship means being able to see that you called for IT support 5 times last week, and that all 5 issues were either taken care of quickly and effectively, or maybe they were not. (but then you will know!)

And How?

It can be as easy as an Excel spreadsheet.

The negative part about documents such as a spreadsheet is that emailing that document around can grow to be a nightmare. And the goal is visibility!

There are also simple, hosted tools that for a couple of hundred dollars per year will provide on-line dashboards of your tech services.

The SMB Takeaway

There is that tired old adage; Is everybody on the same page?

We can truly say that it has never been easier to keep everybody on that same page when true collaboration and communication exists with your technology services supplier.

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Photo Credit Ennor via flickr

Real SMB IT: Don’t Use Windows Autoupdate For Servers

If you run a Microsoft Windows Computer you are already familiar with the autoupdate feature that automatically installs the latest security patches and software updates.

I call it unfortunate, but if you use Windows servers, that auto update feature will do the same thing to your servers.

It sounds like a time saver right? All updates and security patches installed on your servers automatically with no human intervention required?

But here is the problem!

I am sure that you have noticed that  for some of these automatic  update patches or upgrades,  that your computer tells you that it needs to reboot to finish that installation? – and that sometimes it just starts shutting down without warning?

Do you really need that to happen to your servers?

There you are typing an email and your MS Exchange Server decides it is time to reboot…..

Another issue with this automatic rebooting when it occurs on your servers, is that if several servers start to reboot at close to the same time, there can be errors or service failures depending on which servers start rebooting and in which order. For example, a Microsoft SQL Server with a Domain Services account would fail to start properly if the Domain Controller servers are still rebooting.

And the second problem I have with the auto update feature on a server;  The Microsoft automatic update software has no idea what you are using each server for. So it installs all updates and all patches regardless of whether or not you need it.

Do you want that server rebooting for a patch to the Media Player application? – When no one will ever use it on that server and it is blocked behind firewalls? Of course, if a server is publicly accessible, needless risks like Media Player should be removed anyway.

The SMB Takeaway

When it comes to servers, review all the patches and updates that Microsoft publishes every month.  They are published on Microsoft Technet, and you can even subscribe to security alerts via e-mail.

If the update applies to your environment, it may be critical to install it, but schedule it on your time. Schedule it after hours so servers don’t start rebooting during business hours.

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IT & Social Marketing

Interesting article at ITWorld Canada: IT shops to become social marketing gurus in 2010

I found it amusing, since I guess I have been preaching that for a while.

If this is your first foray here, I have been doing a little of that myself!  introduced in this post; IT In Marketing?

I guess I am not alone ….

UPDATE: Ron Shevlin as another great look at this; The Fourth Skill