Tech Standards? Or The Wild, Wild, West Of IT?

Gary Hamel writing on the Wall Street Journal blog blasts corporate IT departments for enforcing technology standards with a post titled; Why Don’t IT Departments Give Employees More Freedom? The premise is that if the best tool for the job is something that an employee provides themselves, or downloads from the Internet, so what? In Mr. Hamel’s words;

How is it that employees can be trusted to take care of important customers, safeguard expensive equipment and stay within their budgets, but can’t be trusted to use the Web at work, choose their own IT tools, or download programs onto the workplace PCs? Do IT staffers really believe that conscientious, committed employees turn into crazed, malicious hackers when you give them a bit of freedom over their IT environment?

Sounds Great In Theory -But Tell Me, Who Pays?

When it comes to business computers, the actual total cost of ownership of an IT asset can be as high as five times the purchase price, no not one time – annually! And a significant portion of that cost is supporting that IT Asset. Support is defined as direct, an example being technical services staff paying a visit to fix something, as well as indirect support. This latter support is when you spend your time helping a neighbor (or they help you) trying to figure out why that mail merge is not working properly.

Now, in my smaller business, we are pretty relaxed about people utilizing their own tools of choice as stated by Mr. Hamel. But in the past three or four months – that choice has cost me over 10 grand to do it. (more on that later)

Who Fixes What? (Or When I Just Go Home!)

Just in the past few weeks, I recall reading  about a larger organization (if I find it again I will update with a link) that has allowed its employees to provide their own computers or laptops. With the caveat that corporate support would not be able to help them if they chose the non-standard devices. In other words – you are responsible for getting it fixed if it breaks.

OK, So what happens when it does break?

In larger organizations, if a notebook or PC software or hardware dies, it will be either re-imaged with clean versions of the software, or new PC dropped into place with the corporate tools pre-loaded. Job done. In fact this type of computer support can often be done remotely.

So if I chose to forgo the corporate supplied PC, and provide my own Mac, and it dies. Lets see, I unplug it and trek off to my repair outlet of choice. They tell me it will be back to me by Wednesday.

OK. Do I sit twiddling my thumbs until Wednesday?

Maybe call my my clients and say; “Hey – can’t help ya until next week, will call you back then!”

Somehow I don’t see that going over well with your clients. So the question is;

If staff supplies their own IT assets, and they are responsible for repairing them, what productivity loss do you face when they don’t have their machine until next Wednesday?

Next: How About The Cost of Security?

Leaving hardware failure out of the picture, lets assume we allow everybody to install their software of choice on business computers. Read the following quote from an Information Week article by Avi Baumstein after  audits found peer to peer file sharing software on PC’s;

The results were shocking and scary–loads of confidential business documents and enough personal information to ruin any number of lives and create PR nightmares for quite a few companies. Among the business documents were spreadsheets, billing data, health records, RFPs, internal audits, product specs, and meeting notes

As smaller businesses, we are not immune to this either!

In this previous post, I wrote about a small business owner that was fired by three network support vendors.

And why did three IT Services companies fire this customer?

After every abusive , screaming support call, the service providers found the affected PC to be riddled with viruses and spy ware from the kids playing on business PC’s. His attitude was that he should never have problems in spite of his own irresponsibility.

My Personal Experience

At the beginning of this post I mentioned above the 10 grand dollar value.

As an organization, we are pretty liberal on what people do with their PC’s. And of a staff of about 20, three of them use that advantage more than others.

And yes. I have to rebuild or fix those three users computers every couple of months. In fact I just finished fixing one again that took a few days to repair. But lets leave out those softer productivity and labour costs for a minute. After all, maybe you don’t consider these type of things as costs. (but you should!)

How about hard dollar accounts payable costs? Does that strike a nerve?

One of these three individuals configured a three way data synchronization with our email server, his iPhone, and his Google calendar.

Immediately after he did this, I started getting errors on our e-mail server, all coming from his account!

Even after removing the e-mail server part of this synchronization, the errors rapidly escalated in severity and number.

Articles and support notes suggested completely deleting this individuals email account, taking the server off-line and running certain database repair & diagnostic tools.

To avoid bringing critical e-mail to a halt during business hours, I planned that work for late on the next Sunday.

Unfortunately – my e-mail server did not last until the next Sunday.

That Friday morning was nothing but a complete nightmare of error messages and failures that completely crashed the server. The crash completely corrupted all message stores, the file system, the works. At one point we could not even get that e-mail server to actually run the operating system.

After a few hours of work, I contacted one of my preferred vendors who specialize in this type of disaster recovery. It still took myself and two of their experts 3 days to get a complete rebuild of that server, a restore of all that data from backup tapes, and then use the database tools to clean up the corruption.

Three days and a 10 grand service bill

The SMB Takeaway

It is easy to say; let everybody use what they want.

But you better be willing to pay for the excess costs! Because somebody has to pay them.

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Photo Credit peppergrass via flickr

The Definition Of Insanity

Can be defined as doing the same thing, the same way every time, and expecting the results to change. (try W. Edwards Demings’ red bead experiment!)

Building a process oriented business is not a set it and forget it operation. It is defining and monitoring the desired outcomes. And identifying that if a desired outcome does not happen, that you have an opportunity for improvement.

In other words, if the desired outcome fails, what can we do to reduce the risk that it will fail next time?

In talking about process, you need to look specifically at what breaks. You need to look at the why, and the how of what went wrong. Is it a people problem? A process problem? or a system problem?

(within the context of ITIL I give some samples starting in this post titled; ITIL And The SMB Part 3; Incident Management)

Although please note that you do not need to go the ITIL route to become more process oriented.

It can be easy to overlook;

When something fails, there is an associated cost. That cost could be rework, lost time, maybe even lost business. Costs can be soft as well, for example, reduced customer satisfaction.

As an example of improving process efficiency, the large package delivery companies load their trucks in a first-in, last-out manner based on the drivers delivery route. This simple step reduces the amount of time finding the correct packages for offload at each stop, and reduces the risk of missing something. And of course missing packages can negatively affect customer satisfaction.

The More Things Stay The Same

When you start building a process oriented business (not just as an IT function) there are two critical pieces to start with;

1) Define the optimum outcomes. A process is nothing without a business outcome. This defined business outcome is also the measure that you can use to improve and monitor your processes.

2) Continually monitor and improve your processes. There are always opportunities for improvement. There is an old saying in music, that the spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves.

The SMB Takeaway

Like the spaces between the notes, process optimization often comes hidden in the areas as work migrates from one individual or group to another.

Improving them, or identifying why something did not work, you need to understand – you need to look at the what the why and the how of what you are trying to perform.

Was it a person error? a process error? a system error?

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Real SMB IT: Repetitive Problems

(Let me guess – You have that complaint as well?)

What are repetitive problems? And what is so bad about them?

Repetitive problems are IT service issues that either do repeat on a regular basis (eg. Jane Can’t print) or seem to occur on a regular basis (eg. The Internet is dead).

In both cases these issues will both suck the life out of your staff, and leave a lasting perception that IT staff or suppliers are never meeting expectations in the quality of IT service and support delivery.

The Quick And The Dead

Sure you want IT related issues and problems resolved rapidly. But it is important to understand that rapidly must be balanced by permanently.

You do not want IT staff or suppliers fixing the same problem again and again. Avoidance of these repetitive problems comes down to investigating and communicating the root cause of that IT service or asset failure. Identifying and communicating this root cause permits a reasonable discussion and decision on mitigating that possible repeat of that failure.

In some cases, it may not possible or desirable to permanently kill all repetitive issues. As an example, perhaps your current budgetary considerations make replacing that defective printer a low priority. But at least having that decision agreed upon and documented can remove that vague perception that your IT staff or supplier is not delivering adequate service.

The SMB Takeaway

I have talked with many SME business owners and managers over the years, and a common theme in complaints about their IT service staff or outsourced service providers is when failures occur in the same IT service or asset consistently and repeatedly. So the discussion must be held on that root cause, that why?

These type of Repetitive problems must be avoided and killed where ever, and when ever possible.

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Photo Credit donnjmck via flickr

Real SMB IT: Consulting Services And Scope

Lets try this little story on for size!

You want to hire a plumber to replace your kitchen sink. So out you go and you get a couple of quotations, here they are;

Vendor number one’s quote states; Replace sink

Vendor number two’s quote states; Replace sink, Re-install existing faucet hardware, modify plumbing to fit new sink

Now which of those above quotations make you feel most comfortable that all contingencies are met?

Which one makes you comfortable that there will not be surprises on the scope of work or billing?

Maybe Number Two??

Unless you have a long history of service and trust with the vendor of quote number one, you can understand that that quotation number two covers the bases in a lot more detail.

Now, How About IT?

For smaller businesses it can be fairly common to use outside contractors and suppliers to perform installation or maintenance of your IT assets. Maybe you don’t have full time IT staff, or perhaps you just have a small IT staff that needs outside help in performing a larger task.

But like the example above, don’t forget that there can be a problem here!

It is a natural, but often invisible problem that exists because your contractor, supplier or VAR (Value Added Reseller) and yourself can be looking at the same event or work, but through different lenses.

Freebies vs. Being Nickled & Dimed

For yourself as a manager in the small business space, you are thinking;  “Well since they are here installing that server anyway, I am sure that they can take a few minutes and do this upgrade to our MS Office applications while they are here….”

But for the Management of that vendor or contractor, they need to have their staff into, and then out of your office in the time frame that they quoted you to install that server, and adding what could be an hour or more of time to upgrade those MS Office installations was not part of their plan.

This type of disconnect can lead to frustration and distrust on both sides.

Your supplier feels that you are trying to drive them out of business supporting you with freebies, while you think that they are being unreasonable and doing a nickle and dime routine because you think that the little thing should only take a couple of minutes.

Get Rid of the Disconnect With Proper Scope

To remove this disconnect when sourcing IT contract work, ensure that your vendor and yourself have an itemized list, or breakdown  of each and every task that are to be performed for any particular contract. This will be the scope of your contract engagement.

This point is also the time to discuss those little extra’s.

You think that a few minutes will upgrade your MS Office applications, and they can respond that with 17 workstations at 10 minutes per workstation (assuming nothing goes wrong!) you are looking at almost another three hours of labor.

The SMB Takeaway

When dealing with IT service providers of any kind, ensure that you have an itemized list of the work that is being contracted for. And ensure that it is broken down to as granular a level as is possible.

It takes a bit more time up front, but it is time well spent.

Because both parties can develop the trust that what was contracted for is reasonable, and mutually beneficial.

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Photo Credit using neighbo.com via flickr

Real SMB IT: Work With Suppliers

I can guarantee that if you look hard enough, you can always save a dollar or two buying IT related services or supplies at a different spot each and every time.

But before you do that, ask yourself; are you are building a supplier relationship that is a win-win situation?

A win-win situation is collaborative, it is trusting, it is knowledge.

Anything else will most likely be just adversarial. And when the chips are down, adversarial won’t help you too much.

Try to cultivate a couple of suppliers. And work to maintain them as you would a large vendor or customer.

One good reason for doing this? – If you have particular industry specialty requirements, if they have that expertise, they can be a valuable source of advice.

And second, if you are treating your suppliers in a win-win manner, when there is a problem, you are more likely to get the ‘A’ team to help you.

Case In Point

I had a complete system failure of a critical piece of IT infrastructure. With nothing more than a phone call, replacement gear and service techs were on site replacing the dead pieces in just a couple of hours.

If I had spent the last five years beating them up on nickle and dime differences from Joe’s PC Supply, would there be that same relationship?

I doubt it.

I am not advocating following military spending habits and dropping 5 Thousand dollars on a hammer!

But bouncing around your suppliers trying to get each one to drop a dollar to meet the competition until there is only one left standing does not do a hell of a lot for you in the longer term.

So cultivate them, treat them with respect. Like any relationship, debate costs, even constructively argue!

Because at some time when the chips are down, collaborative beats adversarial

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Photo Credit Aidan Jones via flickr

Utility Computing: And What’s In A Word?

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I believe that computing will become more utility oriented. That there will be less reliance on what we currently look at as internal technology infrastructure.

My belief in this came about in the mid 80’s when I read that every automobile manufactured in North America had more computing power built into it than the NASA moon shots.

If you have read Nicholas Carr’s IT Doesn’t Matter you will notice one key difference, I never saw it as the world of software that we currently have, the way I saw it back then was along the lines of intelligent hardware devices. Similar to the “smart” thermostats in most new homes.

This type of Utility IT has often been compared to electricity – just plug it in, and pay by the sip. I have used that analogy myself.

But there is an excellent warning by Andrew McAfee, formerly at Harvard, now MIT. He argues that we should not try to simplify this concept down to the simplicity of an analogy like electricity.

His argument is that even in a more utility environment, IT is not as simple as 110 or 220 volts (North America) coming out of a socket. There is no decision to made there, no decisions or management is required around an electrical socket.

So using terms like electricity may overly simplify, or “dumb down” our thinking of IT.

And that is dangerous.

When was the last time you talked about electricity at a management meeting?

Exactly!

And even if get your IT through a wall jack (eg Salesforce.com)  There are still management decisions that must be made. We use technology to create or consume information. To do that there are work flows, business processes and certain business metrics and capabilities.

All of these will still demand management attention, demand decisions, and need to be top of mind for all businesses.

So, you can consider me a convert!

Will more and more of our IT resources continue to come from outside our walls? Yes,

But will you be able to plug in a cable and by magic have exactly the information, processes and work flows just appear? No!

It will still need management attention – lots of it.

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Are Your Invoices This Bad?

Spent most of the day going over a suppliers invoices.

Now they are for services, not products which can always be more complex.

But services that are absolutely wrong

Services that are mis-named

Services with no reference

I could go on.

The SMB Takeaway

Don’t make that mistake.

Being easy to do business with includes your invoice.

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Photo Credit TravelingMango via flickr

I Am Furious, Just Frigging Furious

I had a chat with one of our corporate field staff yesterday.

He had me absolutely furious. Literally.

And No – It wasn’t our staffer that had me furious

He has been having difficulty in dealing with a customer, because e-mail kept failing. It turns out that e-mail from our domain was being blocked – in fact e-mail from this customers biggest supplier was also being blocked.

3 months of unresponsive IT requests to get it resolved.

When the owner of this customer business finally forced the IT contractor to respond, the contractors words were;

I control the systems

bull shit

Let me tell you arse wipe – you don’t.

You control f*** all

You may maintain it – that is it. Period!

It is a business asset. And a business tool.

As such it is controlled by the business

PS: An I hope you read this because I told our field staffer to have that owner call me you arse wipe. 

The SMB Takeaway

You IT assets are yours. Not your IT staff or your suppliers – Yours and yours alone.

If you have a staffer or supplier like the above, kick their effing arse out the door.

PPS: My apologies for the language.

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Photo credit by anguila40 / Alejandro Groenewold via flickr

I’m Not Calling You Back

About a year ago a local vendor called me and asked to send me a catalogue of their services.

Foolishly – I said sure.

Since that day they have sent me at least 3 (sometimes more) SPAM E-Mails a day.

After Day 1 I just started sending them to the SPAM bin – so I only see them every month or so when I go to empty it.

Now I get a voice mail today asking me to call them back.

Sorry - 

Not gonna happen.

I do not do business with vendors that SPAM me, or anyone else.

 

SPAM

 

 

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Psst – Wanna Save Some Cash?

Seriously?

I did it! You can too!

OK, that sounds too much like one of those “Available only on TV” offers.

But reality is that in the Small Business space, technology spending is often an ad hoc an affair. I saved quite a bit of money just cleaning up the entire purchasing process of IT OPEX and CAPEX expenses.

1) If your chart of accounts does not already break out technology expenses, you should do it. At the very least an accurate addendum of fiscal costs should be kept.

2) Get rid of ad hoc purchases – ensure that written requests (electronic or paper does not matter) for all purchases exist and are signed or approved. Approval levels may be different depending on dollar value.

3) Ban credit card or retail account purchases. Utilize distributors and re-sellers.

These simple steps can save money in multiple ways. Direct costs are lower through the channels, plus accounts of Net 30 with a a few points is a lot less than credit card rates. And ensuring that proper sign off is made gets rid of the requests for some “cool” thing that is “only” 300 bucks.

Longer term, it provides visibility into which parts of the organization are generating the most IT spend requests, and helps identify services or components that can be reduced in price or utilized better, leading to lest wasted spending.

And finally, it provides excellent detail into operational expenses that can be tied into improving future budgets.

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