Cloud Considerations

For SMB’s thinking of dipping their toes into the waters of SaaS (Software As A Service) Karl Palachuk has some great due diligence questions to think about on his Small Biz Thoughts blog.

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Some Reference Links For Today

From Hoovers Business Insight; The job title your customers REALLY want you to have

Right in with my previous post on; What Do You Do?

From Information Architected;  Strategy – Down from the Clouds

Execution is what counts – the rest is theory

From CIOZone;  SMBs Like the Internet

The percentage of SMBs that use the Internet to track sources of new business leads is now at 30 percent, up from 22 percent last year.

(Although I don’t think 30% is anything to write home about)

The Merchant Stand Blog; Top 10 reasons why you want your boss to read your blog

A rather humorous look!

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Perceptions of IT (It can take two!)

I know, I know! Too often there is a poor perception of the IT function, staff, or service providers in our SME businesses.

And as Michael Hugos at CIO.com points out, the IT staff often contribute to this negative perception!

While there are a dozen ways that your IT staff or provider can shoot themselves in the foot this way, often this perception of IT can be created and re-enforced through jargon laced techno-babble, poor communication and circular logic on the complexity that makes up IT.

Mr. Hugos brings up two great questions for IT leaders;

How can we in IT more actively include people in discussions about possible solutions? How can we more actively include them in implementing these solutions?

But It Can Take Two!

IT must clean up its own image, and must be seen as contributing to solutions, not as being a roadblock to them. I agree with that 100%.

However, I also think that in many cases managers and executives in the small to medium business can also be unintentionally contributing to this negative perception about their IT function.

How?

Simple; they do this by keeping IT as invisible as servants in a medieval castle.

Keeping your IT staff invisible, and locked outside the doors of any communication and conversation about goals and strategy truly leaves your IT team in the dark about methods of collaboration that can contribute to working solutions.

A second issue for many senior managers at SME’s is that too often we can fail to take the trouble to even help ourselves when it comes to technology. This leaves open risks, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the pros and cons of what technology can, (or cannot) do for our business.

Self Inflicted Wounds

In a conversation a few months ago, the owner of a small business that provides technical and IT support for other small businesses told me that he had just fired a customer, and that he was the third IT provider to fire this customer!

Apparently this customer consistently and repeatedly called with angry, accusatory complaints about difficulties on their business network and business computers.

Yet for the vendors, the problem was always the same.

In spite of repeated warnings, and having the newest anti-virus and firewall software installed on their network PC’s, this SMB owner never let them operate properly, secondly he would bring his kids into the office on weekends and let them use other PC’s in the office to play with.

And play they did.

After every abusive , screaming support call, the service provider found the affected PC to be riddled with viruses and spy ware from the kids playing on business PC’s.

This business owner then would be yelling at his service providers. His attitude was that he should never have problems in spite of his own irresponsibility.

The SMB Takeaway

As Michael Hugos states, yes IT must help themselves be seen as a source of answers, not a source of frustration.

But at the same time, you cannot leave your IT team or provider stuck behind the 8 ball either.

Stuck Behind the 8 Ball?

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Photo Credit: 60 in 3 via flickr

What Do You Do?

Rick Segal;

I ask everybody in the company “What do you do” and am always surprised how the company’s success trajectory can usually be linked to to the granularity of  the answer(s).

The above article is about technology based companies, but there is tremendous value there for all SME businesses.

In summary, if you ask someone in your business; What do you do?

The answer will usually be a functional answer such as I’m in accounting, or I’m in shipping.

Rick states that when you can ask that question, and the answer is how that position is benefiting your customer and your business, not just functional, Then you know you have yourself a high performance organization.

I think most of us can learn from that.

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Social Media (Leave Out The Rose Colored Glasses)

Personally I believe that the broad term Social Media (too broad a term in my opinion) can assist SMB’s in communicating, providing service, or marketing to our customers.

But!

Like any initiative, you need to understand what you are trying to achieve. You need to understand your customers, your market, and most important, how they look for service or sales information.

In fact I have seen many small businesses that would truly benefit from social media, but that will be another post.

Below are a couple of great articles on the pitfalls of thinking social media without the planning;

Frank Reed on the Marketing Pilgrim blog; Social Media Is Important to Everyone – Not!

And Gene Marks over at Business Week; Beware Social Media Marketing Myths

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IT Failing 1 in 4 Small Businesses

SMB IT Fail!

Nathan Eddy at eWeek wrote; IT Failing 1 in 4 Small Businesses, Says Effectiveness Index Survey

Initial results from a new online survey designed to measure IT effectiveness at small businesses shows almost one in four respondents score a “D” or “F” grade

The article, plus the referenced survey takes a look at the effectiveness of IT within the small to medium business space. Needless to say, in many cases, the results were not good.

We need to do better.

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Photo Credit fireflythegreat via flickr

Sorry, That Was My Fault

That can be so hard to say.

Fingers point, blame shifted where ever possible.

Mistakes should be a learning opportunity.

Practice saying it, practice accepting it – you’ll be better off

Sorry!

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Photo Credit spud murphy via flickr

Saying It Clearly

An excellent post on the SMB IT Pros blog, titled; Say It First Say It Clearly

An excellent post, and something that I try to live by. Although I am 100% convinced that I am not 100% successful.

The context of the above article is that it can be too easy to craft words into proposals that outline risks and issues within IT environments. But perhaps are not explicit enough of those risks.

Those wordy documents can sometimes muffle the tone of what IT is really trying to say; If we don’t fix this, it is going to crash and die.

There is a caveat though, these type of calls rely on some experience, because everything in IT will crash and die eventually, the when is the hard part.

The SMB Takeaway

Sure – you might get another year out of that dieing infrastructure. And if the risk of loss is less than the dollar value of the replacement, feel free to but your chips on the table.

But be warned, if the dice roll against you – it was your decision, because at the end of the day, it is your business you are gambling with.

Gambling with your IT infrastructure?

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Photo Credit V1LL14N via flickr

Where Is Your Planning Horizon? (Part 1)

What Is Your Planning Horizon?

I was going to do this in one post, simply because I envy Olivier Blanchards wordsmithing, but he puts told you so! to my post of; Talent vs Experince!

I surrender, so this will now be the first of two of them, part one the general idea, with part two being one specific example.

I have to be the first to say it, (OK I’m not the first!) it is probably an issue that you as the executive or general management of a small to medium business have complained about for years.

But have you found that too often IT staff in the SME space have somewhere between zero and short term only thinking in their planning horizon?

Simply put; if that short term only planning horizon cannot be improved, you cannot improve service and lower costs within your IT spending.

(And if you have been having doubts about your IT Leadership, just ask the question of what goals they have going on their planning horizon!)

Within the SMB space, IT staff or suppliers tend to simply plan that for that server upgrade, that new firewall, or that new software you want, and generally the planning is short term and simply trying and keep the status quo moving along.

In reality, there is no inherent problem with this short type planning horizon, – in fact someone has to be looking at it. But in your senior IT staff or IT leadership, you also have to be thinking in other time horizons.

So here is a quick look at some of the time horizons your I believe that your IT leadership should be looking at;

Short Term

As I stated above, you do need this short term planning horizon: It is the specific, immediate actions for particular results. These results can include anything from particular upgrades, resource hire (or exits!), and the myriad of IT Operations and Infrastructure planning required by your organization. Consider these the “Known-Knowns” events that will be happening in the short term to keep the status quo moving along.

Medium Term

Some expert will call me wrong in my wording here, but I consider the medium term planning horizon to be analogous to a chess game; starting the moves that allow me to get to my  long term horizon. Let me call this the “Known-Unknowns”.

I say this because you won’t (and can’t) know everything that is going to happen, We can’t be sure because there will be because something won’t work, something else may be too expensive, or the technology just changes.

So you have to be flexible and be ready to modify. We know there may be twists, turns, or dead ends, but we can visualize and plan for a framework that gets us to our vision made in the long term horizon.

Long Term

Be warned, the long term horizon will always be a moving target in IT! (see this oldie titled; learn to dance) But I consider this to be the end state of an improved service, a reduced cost, or a new proficiency.

My “knowns” does break down here because I don’t want to call it an unknown – unknown. That implies less vision than I believe is necessary, because you did know enough about the end result you were looking for. Even if you could not put it in a project plan.

Again, in Part 2, I will demonstrate this in a little more detail

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Photo Credit Not Quite a Photographr via flickr

Shoulder Surfing (Your Web Site)

Shoulder surfing is not a good thing when you are typing in passwords, or keying your PIN number into an automatic teller.

But here is a time when you should shoulder surf!

Your Web Site!

Maybe your Web Site has been around for a while, or perhaps you have just been working at rebuilding it, either way you are much too far on the inside. You know what to expect, and where to expect it.

So Enter In Ignorance

Have a spouse, a friend, or an acquaintance go through your site looking for particular information. Just watch how they navigate. (no prompting!)

Are they finding it easy to obtain that information?

Are they getting lost?

Maybe they are trying a search that is either not there, or not pulling up the expected information?

You are not alone!

Even large organizations have trouble with this. In spite of the amount of money they may spend on optimization and Web Site analytic software.

A Case In Point

This is  a large business, but the concept holds for business of all sizes.

My son bought a new iPod Touch, and while I also have an old  iPod, I just copy my own CD’s onto it, my car has an iPod interface, so I get hours of music and podcasts from the like of Michael Krigsman so I have never used the iTunes store.

My son wanted to purchase some music from the iStore (I guess the no random downloading lessons worked, the RIAA should be pleased!)

So I hit the iTunes Web Site looking for a method that I can either pre-pay, or use a payment service (ie PayPal) to set him up. I really was not keen on inputting my credit card into his account. (too easy for a kid to ‘forget’ that as easy as the download is, someone has to pay for it!)

Needless to say quite a bit of time and frustration later – I could not find that information one way or the other.

The SMB Takeaway

Too often our Web Site becomes as familiar and as invisible as our business cards. A fresh set of eyes that don’t have preconceived notions or expectations can reopen our own eyes.

So in the case of your Web Site, that is one time when you should be shoulder surfing. Looking at how others see your site.

Enter In Ignorance! Shoulder Surfing

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Photo Credit eskimo_jo via flickr