BellNet.ca Does Not Care About You, Their Customer

One of Canada’s largest telco companies and ISP’s is our old Ma Bell, Bell Canada.

If you use Bell as your ISP, the default domain created for e-mail is email_address@bellnet.ca

In fact many smaller businesses simply have their e-mail address as; MyBusinesessName@BellNet.ca

(I don’t recommend doing that – but that is a different story)

E-Mail Failure For Non-Techies!

If you send me an e-mail, there are dozens of areas that can cause problems and that would cause your e-mail to fail.The issues can begin at your personal computer, through problems with your ISP, (Internet Service Provider) to problems with the routing from your ISP to my ISP, and down to problems at my email server.

So failure of e-mail can generate a few things that technologists need to check out!

The Story

Quite simply, a micro business that we deal with was not able to e-mail us. Every e-mail they tried to send just disappeared into the wild Internet. And as I mentioned above, this micro business has a simple e-mail address of Business_Name@BellNet.ca

As our technology support provider – I had to figure out; why was this e-mail failing?

My first step to was test and to check a few things at my end – all looked normal.

The next step?

As I mentioned above -there are a lot of places where e-mail can break.

So my next logical question was this;

Is this problem limited to this one email address? Or is the problem more general with all BellNet.ca addresses?

I did not have this answer, so I called BellNet support and asked them to send me an e-mail!

The logic is easy – if some Tech_Support_Name@BellNet.ca can successfully send me an e-mail, I know the problem is not in the deep technical server to server stuff,  the problem our business friend was having would be specific to some configuration problem at their end.

BellNet Support Would Not Send An E-Mail!

Seriously!

Twenty five minutes on the phone – trying to help one of their customers – and they would not send me one lousy e-mail???

They said it was because I am not a BellNet customer.

I asked if they cared that one of their customers could not send an e-mail – they told me no.

The 5 seconds it would take to send me a test e-mail, vs forcing that non-technical customer to contact them to go through the arcane DNS & MX testing required is absolutely a customer service failure.

Rant is now over.

B2B And Technology Literacy

A great article discussing Technology Literacy and Change at IT In Canada

Sure, maybe your business is geared only towards the digerati, think friendfeed and foursquare.

But if your business is like mine, you are not just dealing with technology literacy at an advanced level. In fact, depending on your product or service you could be dealing with technology literacy levels that go from excellent, to slim, to none.

Over a decade ago, Forrester Research coined the term technographics to describe this concept.

On the technology side, when I hear technology staff make comments such as; Change the page file size, bounce it, the prob should go away

I want to strangle somebody.

And not the poor individual at the receiving end of that gobbledygook

But it is not just a tech issue, it is a business issue

If I had a dollar (or Euro, Pound, Yen, Peso, RMB etc) for each time that I have seen well meaning marketing information slapped on a Web Page that sounds just like that same gibberish, well, I could probably retire.

And multiply that by a thousand if you are in a service business that deals with technology in any way, shape or form

If the content you are publishing requires your readers to keep a thesaurus and dictionary near by, plus require they have a degree in engineering – then yer doin’ it wrong.

“Change management…. Those two words make about as much sense together as ‘holy war,’ ‘non-working mother,’ ‘mandatory option,’ and ‘political principles.’”  Jim Clemmer, author, “Growing @ the Speed of Change”

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

ITIL,SaaS, And Blood Red

Confession, When I read the post I reference below, the title reminded me of a tune by a fave band of mine, the BoDeans, So I stole the title for this post from a song of theirs titled; Black, White and Blood Red.

Anyway, I have written before that ITIL is a framework of best practices, it is not a follow the dots prescription that every business can use to do things the same way.

As a rough analogy, a recipe presents you with each ingredient, their order of mixing and a required temperature that will provide a consistent result for everybody that uses it. Whereas the ITIL processes present a recommended end state, with some guidance on methods that can help achieve it, but like a football game, the individual plays can be different for each business.

In this post titled SaaS and ITSM – a Marriage Made in Acronym Heaven? Stephen Mann takes a fairly deep look at some research on the delivery of IT Service Management (ITSM) via Software as a Service (SaaS) rather than on premise tool sets.

Note that if you are just getting your feet wet improving ITSM, Mr. Mann’s post is pretty high level. However he presents one good lesson I never thought of, that lesson is that since every business may have a different ITIL path that they are following, care has to be taken when choosing tool sets that the tool can fit your internal processes. As Mr. Mann states;

In Butler Group’s opinion, a SaaS solution must be architected such that the customer is able to self-customise its ‘application instance’ (to reflect in-house processes)

This is a good thing to watch for as beginning a journey towards improving ITSM is hard enough working on improving your own processes, without adding the complexity of being forced into someone elses process models.

UPDATE: Christopher Dancy pointed to a much more in depth look at SaaS & ITIL here; http://www.servicesphere.com/blog/2009/6/4/saas-30-and-itsm-match-made-in-heaven.html

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

How Complex Systems Fail

Rob England pointed out this phenomenal 1998 paper by R.I. Cook at the Cognitive Technology Laboratory with the same title as this post.

I have written before that IT systems are inherently complex.

And this complexity?

Well as Dr. Cook states;

This is where system performance tends to deteriorate, becomes difficult to predict, or cannot readily be recovered

The paper referenced above is not about IT – it is written about any complex system (ie power generation)

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Remember When We Just Bought PC Monitors?

Our business has a software development team that also works with graphics, and various other multi-media.

As their computers were getting old, we have plans to acquire newer workstation hardware that is a better fit for the graphical work that they do.

Of course – that forced me to look at the lowly computer monitor too.

Ahh the good old days!

When choosing among monitors was hard! – 14 inch? 15 inch? and later on, Wow! 17 inch monsters! Which do I choose??

How easy it was! – But now?

We have Acronym nightmares of TN, MVA, PVA & IPS

yee gads! then;

DVI, DVI-I, DVI-D , HDM –

Matte vs glossy – contrast 1000:1? or 50000:1?

The list seems to go on…..

Ahhh the old days!

Photo Credit Rubén Marcos via flickr

Your Business Blog: 24X7 Marketing

Denise Wakeman at Build A Better Blog

* 71% have greater visibility in their industry
* 63% said clients have purchased products and services
* 56% say their company is now regarded as a thought leader
* 40% asked to speak at conferences

‘Nuff said

The SMB Takeaway

Go read that link!

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Real SMB IT: Under Construction Is Not Acceptable

A post on the Orangecoat blog titled; “COMING SOON”, THE NEW “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” reminded me of a serious pet peeve of mine.

Yes that.

When those images and words are sitting on your Web Site home page for years – you have a problem.

There may be a myriad of reasons that you have it there, ranging anywhere from laziness, stubbornness, denial, incompetence or forgetfulness. None of which are good.

True Story

The Orangecoat post reminded me of a business that I had seen with an Under Construction label on their Web Site over 18 months ago. So I did the logical thing, and decided that I wanted to see if the Web Site had actually been promoted to a real, working, 24 x 7 marketing Web Site, or if it was still Under Construction.

I have to side track for a minute!

Now this business has a fairly long name, and their Web Site domain is one of those where they took the first letter of each word to make up the name. Sure that can be a good solution if you are a household name like International Business Machines (IBM)

But for most of us – we aren’t going to be able remember where your Web Site is when it is a pretty random string of letters. We are probably going to have to search for it using a Search Engine.

Well, since I could not remember that businesses Web Address I used Google to search for it – And,,, Ummm – I could not find it.

Since I also used a city name to narrow the search results, what I did find was a local business directory that mentioned that business & had a link to their Web Site.

But, back to my story

I am sure you are getting the idea -when a direct search for your company name does not show up when I search for you???

And yes – 18 Months later the Web Site is still Under Construction!

That is a pure business failure.

Should Under Construction, or Coming Soon ever be used?

Very very rarely.

Sure – one example could be a new Web Site or Web Page for a new product or service that you are keeping hidden until the end of the month when the marketing push hits. But you have a very finite date on that.

The SMB Takeaway

There is no excuse for having Under Construction for 18 plus months on your Web Site.

In this digital day and age, your Web Site is a critical communication tool. Build it.

Maybe you won’t be happy with your  initial, Day 1 content. But do it. Iterate and improve as you have the time and money.

But don’t just leave it Under  Construction – or Coming Soon

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

There Is An Antonym For Respect

I want to call out an excellent post by Mike Myatt at N2Growth titled; CEOs; Feared or Respected?

Mr. Myatt sums up that topic brilliantly;

Fear based motivations don’t instill loyalty, create trust, build morale, inspire creativity, attract talent, or drive innovation.

In this post I want to take a look at just one of those words: Respect

As a ‘C’ level executive, Mr. Myatt’s post is targeted at chief executive officers, but the lesson on fear vs. respect contained within the content of that post is important for any leader.

As a Team Leader, Supervisor, Manager, right  through to the executive manager, we need to create a culture that has mutual respect. And in that concept of respect,  I believe this addition to Mr. Myatts’s topic will also apply to leaders of all levels.

Respect is a soft word. If we look at a definition, it can simply be: re·spect, High or special regard. Respect can be hard to measure objectively, and it often falls into the know it when you see it category.

I know that personally I have worked with individuals that I was not overly fond of on a personal level, yet had the utmost respect for their input, knowledge, and / or skills.

And on the flip side, wonderful people individually, whom I held very little respect for on those same characteristics.

Respect, And Disrespect

Pop culture and our kids have made the ‘Dis’ famous. Let us call that disrespect the very obvious and visible assault on ourselves as individuals through insults or actions.

But lets look at the more insidious disrespect that can affect our business.

When There Is Nothing Left

When you as a leader have consistently demonstrated through your words, (or lack of) and your actions (again, or lack of) that you cannot be trusted or relied upon for any form of guidance, coaching or direction. What do you have left?

All you have left is a group of people warming their chairs with no motivation, loyalty or desire. They have zero respect for their leadership, as that leadership has shown zero respect for them.

While a leader who uses fear to rule (figuratively) beats these traits out of their employees, lack of trust and respect in you as a leader will suck those traits out like a vampire. There just won’t be large explosive fireworks as it happens.

In line with Mr. Myatts 5 items to identify if you rule by fear, here are 4 items to identify if you are sucking the life out of your organization by creating an environment where you cannot be respected in your leadership role.

1) A Dysfunctional Team: Passive aggressive behaviors, back stabbing office politics and petty quarrels are the norm. Your lack of demonstrating and benchmarking standards of behavior, plus your dithering or outright ignoring the issues required to deal with these behavioral issues shows your team that you really could not care less.

2) Your Team Shuts Up: Water cooler chat is only about the weather. Your team knows that mentioning anything about that issue or project is waste of time. Your vague platitudes or promises are never acted upon or delivered. If that issue is fixed, or that project is successful, it will be in spite of you, not because of you.

3) Lack of Commitment: Projects or deliverables are either late, or non existent. Your team already knows it will blow over, they know that you will either arbitrarily change the date next week, or that you will just forget about it entirely.

4) Lack of Interaction: (one of Mr. Myatt’s titles too) Vague mumbles of OK, fine, and Sure greet every directive. because every meeting, document, or report is going to be fluff, the bare minimum; because your teams know that no matter what they do, or how much effort they take, you won’t read or view the result anyway.  It will just disappear. You won’t provide feedback, you won’t clarify better outcomes or resources.

The Leadership Takeaway

Mutual respect builds bridges. And it starts with you.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

I’ve Had My Knuckles Rapped Before

And I probably will again.

You see, I have a bias towards action. When I see waste, or areas where processes can be streamlined or improved. I tend to mention it.

So yes, I have been told to slow down. I have been told that people don’t want to change.

But I will still bring up those issues. (maybe I need a sales coach!) because I would rather get my knuckles rapped for trying to do too much, than trying to do too little.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Larger Business CIO’s Can Fail The Basics Too

I guess it is nice to know that many of the issues that I write about for SMB’s, can take place in larger businesses too!

But on the flip side – I must confess that it is a bit disappointing as well.

Arun Manansingh on his A CIO’s Voice blog recounts an issue with the chief information officer (CIO) at a larger organization that exemplifies many of the IT concepts I discuss here for smaller businesses.

… During the process it was discovered that several systems would crash twice a day everyday and this has been occurring for several years. It happened with such regularity that staff just lived with it and accepted it…..The CIO had no desire to change this process. “This is how I have always done it and this is how we will continue to do it!””

So yes; That CIO needed to be replaced.

I know that to line of business and executive management, IT can seem like a black box that you pour money in, while hoping something of value drips out the other side.

But It Doesn’t have to be that way!

And no, I do not mean that as a business executive you need to become a computer genius.

Just this past November, a Canadian business periodical targeting growing businesses published a column of mine on just this issue. It covers many of the basic steps that I have written about.

I fully admit that your IT Leadership should be starting the business discussions with you.

However, if they are not, and you just let that sit there and let it fester, you are abdicating, not delegating your IT management.

The goal of business isn’t to generate activity; it’s to produce business results, and yes – action must be taken (sooner rather than later) if those results are not being provided.

Who Should Ask These Questions?

I’m glad you asked!

The individual asking these questions must be senior enough within your business to be responsible for, and accountable for that responsibility.

In other words, it cannot be a junior controller who cannot ask the hard questions. Who cannot demand responses in reasonable time frames about reasonable activities.

The SMB Takeaway

This is not an overnight question or answer. It the day to day blocking and tackling you need to determine that you are receiving the value you need from your IT spending.

And I can gaurantee that if these questions start to be asked, that you begin finding that you have better visibility into your IT.

And yes, sometimes it may mean replacing underperforming IT Leadership

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!