Category: advice

Saving your technology relationship

Like it or not, your businesses is married to technology and often that marriage is not a happy one. Tech support is like a counsellor to your IT relationship; a good one will save you a lot of drama, stress and tears.

Like it or not, your businesses is married to technology and often that marriage is not a happy one. Tech support is like a counsellor to your IT relationship; a good one will save you a lot of drama, stress and tears.

When a friend asked about changing IT support for her organisation last week I had to give the question some thought as switching service companies isn’t something you do rashly.

The first problem she presented was price. She was worried the quotes she’d received and the hourly rates were more than her own charge out rate.

On that front the advice is simple – get over it. Your doctor and plumber charge more than most peoples’ hourly rates and a good tech will save you a fortune in therapist and data recovery charges. So we’ll leave price to last and look at the other factors;

Confidence

Do their staff inspire confidence? The truth is support is as about trust mort than it is about competence. You have to trust the tech with your valuable data and systems.

The first step in establishing confidence is how they answer the phone. Are they polite, informed and prompt to return calls?

If they don’t care about you when you make a sales enquiry, you can be pretty sure they aren’t going to be helpful when you have a computer disaster.

So if you don’t like their phone manner, look elsewhere.

Presentation

They say looks don’t count for much. They are wrong when it comes to support.

Tidy, well dressed techs and a well presented web site indicate a business that takes itself seriously and is more likely to treat your needs as important.

Curiosity

Every business is unique in its own way and a good support company will ask lots of questions when arriving at a new site. Confidence inspiring questions include your business objectives, how you use technology and where it is currently frustrating you.

Questioning along those lines indicate people who want to know where technology fits in your business and how you can get the best return on your investment. Techs that ask those questions are worth a lot to you.

A good tech isn’t a “yes” man or woman. If your brother in law who knows something about computers has suggested something truly stupid then a trustworthy advisor will point you in the right direction rather than just agree with you. So take polite disagreement as a very good sign.

Training

It never ceases to amaze me how the tech support industry doesn’t train people. The vast majority of techs don’t get formal training and most support companies, particularly at the SME level, give their staff little preparation for new systems.

This means lower charges for you, but lousy service. Which is another reason why price should be the last of your concerns. Ask your prospective support provider what training they give their staff.

Outrageous claims

Be careful of silly claims. One of my favourites was a dodgy business a few years ago that claimed “all our technicians are qualified computer programmers” which is the same as an electrician advertising “all our staff are licensed forklift drivers”.

A similar thing applies to “no fix, no fee” claims. Avoid any company advertising they won’t charge you if they can’t figure out the problem as you’re paying a new operator to learn on your system.

Claiming to support big corporations is often the mark of a new, naïve business. Usually that indicates the owner once worked as a contractor for a company that setup that BigCorp’s desktops. Treat those claims with disdain unless it is a big support outfit with accordingly high charges.

24/7 service and two hour callouts are fair enough if you are prepared to pay for them. Be careful though when dealing with smaller support outfits as they can struggle to meet these promises.

Charging structure

Unethical support companies love the large billing unit. So avoid companies that charge in 30 or 60 minute blocks as these encourage techs to pad out basic jobs. A fair unit is ten or fifteen minute periods

The best plan for a business is a regular support contract which includes a basic level of services per month. These often include a base number of technician’s hours, either onsite or remotely. Review the hours regularly as you can overpay for time you don’t need.

Price

Finally we get to where most clients fall down. Good support companies that train, support and reward good staff have high overheads and the corner cutters will always be substantially cheaper.

You should be prepared for rates in excess of $150 an hour, with discounts for bulk purchase and fixed fee support contracts, the longer you are prepared to enter into a contract for the better the discount.

By all means shop around but don’t fixate on price, the company that charges $180 an hour to provide a qualified, experienced tech is far better value than outfit charging $60 an hour to provide a part time student working for beer money.

Don’t be surprised or offended if the really good support companies tell you they can’t help. Many choose businesses they can help and decline those who they don’t believe are a right fit for their skills. If that happens, ask them if they know of someone who is a better fit for you.

The relationship between technology and business is often complex, but its not one most businesses can neglect. Make sure you’re investing the right people and expertise in your systems.

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Thoughts on Windows 7

With the release of Windows 7 Microsoft has formally buried Microsoft Vista. But should Windows users rush out for the new version.

“From today, when we say Windows we’re talking about Windows 7”, announced Jeff Putt, Windows Consumer Lead of Microsoft Australia last week. And with that, Microsoft formally buried Windows Vista at their Sydney Windows Seven launch.

We won’t miss Vista, it was slow, clunky and irritating to use. Like Microsoft’s previous OS disaster, Windows ME, it was a hybrid of new and old technologies that managed to satisfy few users.

Vista’s poor reputation effectively broke the upgrade cycle where businesses and consumers replace their computers roughly every five years. Rather than taking their chances with Vista, PC owners decided to stick with their ageing XP boxes.

So Windows 7 is being held out as the saviour of the computer industry as Microsoft’s customers are expected to rush into long overdue upgrades. Some commentators predict the new operating system will reinvigorate PC sales that have been battered worldwide by the Global Financial Crisis.

The reality is probably a bit more complex, there’s no doubt the combination of the global downturn and customers putting off computer purchases hurt the industry, but to expect a surge of sales may be optimistic.

Most computer users are a cynical bunch who have heard all the hype before and won’t be rushing out to buy anything just because some bloke on the web tells them it’s the greatest thing since Wordperfect 5.1. The days of crowds waiting to buy the latest operating system are long gone, at least in the PC world.

While it isn’t worthwhile queuing up on a cold morning for Windows 7, the new program is a vast improvement on Vista. In a hopelessly unscientific experiment, I installed a complimentary copy of Window 7 Ultimate supplied by Microsoft on my wife’s cranky, Vista supplied laptop.

The results were good. Boot up time was reduced by 34% to 55 seconds while Internet Explorer loaded twice as fast and Word 2003 documents opened a whopping 300% faster.

For the record, the machine isn’t exactly a powerhouse being an Acer Extensa 5220 Celeron 2GHz CPU with 512Mb of RAM ­– exactly the sort of machine that should never have been supplied with Windows Vista in the first place, which was part of Vista’s problems.

So my experience with Windows Seven has been so far favourable. If you have been through pain with Vista, it may be worth upgrading although you will probably find driver and software problems won’t be solved by the new program.

For XP systems it almost certainly isn’t worth the upgrade to Seven as the process requires a fresh install, substantially increasing the cost, time and risk involved in making the move.

Overall, XP machines are best replaced outright as many are well past their retirement date as owners have held off being forced into buying Vista machines.

If upgrading or buying Windows 7 systems is on the horizon then you should start preparing now. Get a few Windows Seven machines and test them in your office; monitor how they go with your critical line of business systems, check they connect properly to your network and start getting familiar with the quirks and differences in the new system.

While Windows 7 isn’t flawless, Microsoft have learned from the mistakes they made from Vista, it is faster and so far seems less irritating and more stable. If you are struggling with Vista, or your Windows XP systems are on their last legs, the upgrade will probably be worthwhile.

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It’s all about trust, baby

Imagine losing all your contacts, emails and calendars – you know have a meeting with an important client next week but you can’t remember which day and you can’t ask the customer because their contact details are gone.

Imagine losing all your contacts, emails and calendars – you know have a meeting with an important client next week but you can’t remember which day and you can’t ask the customer because their contact details are gone.

That’s been the fate of a million Sidekick mobile phone owners in the United States over the last two weeks when the servers storing the Sidekick data went down.

The Sidekick is an unusual mobile phone that saves all its data “on the cloud”, a big group of servers run by the device’s designer, Danger, who were bought out by Microsoft in early 2008. Unlike other phones and PDAs, the Sidekick doesn’t synch with your own computer and stored data may get wiped if it can’t find the cloud servers.

This is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when the Sidekick cloud stopped. Owners of the Sidekick, a phone that’s never been sold in Australia, have been through a harrowing fortnight hoping their data will be recovered which Microsoft now believe can be done.

Sidekick’s outage is a major embarrassment for Microsoft who are pitching their Azure cloud product as alternative to other cloud services provided by competitors like Amazon and Google and the failure certainly deserves to be one of the technology disasters of the decade.

The question now is how badly this outage will affect cloud and software as a service providers. These service rely on customers trusting data and critical business applications to a third party and the Sidekick saga doesn’t inspire confidence.

It would be a shame if this is the case, as cloud services offer a lot of advantages to smaller businesses. In many ways they offer the same advantages big business have had through outsourcing services at a fraction of the price and complexity.

We need to remember that all technology breaks. People press the wrong buttons, unexpected software bugs appear and sometimes things just break or go wrong. Every business needs a contingency plan if things stop working.

While a data backup regime is a critical part of a contingency plan, you still need to consider other aspects such what happens if the power grid fails and leaves your without electricity for three days, if bushfires and floods stop workers getting to the office, or what will happen if you forget to pay your phone bill and suddenly you have no Internet access for a week.

Technology is complex and we have trust a lot of things are reliable and sometimes some of our partners aren’t as trustworthy as we’d like.

So have fall back systems just in case your trust in technology, partners and vendors is misplaced and test them regularly.

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Protecting yourself from the Conficker worm

Nearly a year after it was identified, the Conficker computer worm continues to plague Windows users, infecting systems controlling everything from fighter planes to bus lane fines. We look at how to protect your computers from this threat.

Nearly a year after it was identified, the Conficker computer worm continues to plague Windows users, infecting systems controlling everything from fighter planes to bus lane fines.

The problem has become so great, a consortium of vendors have set up the Conficker Working Group to deal with the malware’s spread, and Microsoft are offering a $250,000 reward for the identity of the writer.

It’s not a problem that should be understated – the worm’s main use appears to be as a controller of botnets, networks of remote controlled computers used to launch attacks on other systems or to hide the tracks of scammers and password thieves.

Update your systems

Given the risks and embarrassment of being infected, avoiding this worm and others like it should be a priority for your business. First of all your Windows computers should have the latest updates as Conficker relies on some old security bugs that Microsoft patched last October.

Run an anti-virus

Naturally, you should be running an up to date anti-virus. Most widely used AV programs will do the job, including Open Source detectors like Clam AV and freeware programs.

Note though that the licences for freeware programs like AVG and Avast! are specifically for home use only. If you are running those on your office system, respect the developer’s right to make a living and buy a commercial licence, they are actually cheaper and more reliable than many of the better known brand names.

Restrict your users

Finally, make sure your users log on in Limited User mode. The reason why Windows computers are more prone to viruses than their Mac and Linux cousins is because most users run their Microsoft systems as the powerful Administrator mode which is the equivalent of leaving your car doors unlocked all night.

I’ve some instructions on setting up Limited User Profiles for Windows XP systems on the PC Rescue website. If you have an office with a Windows 2003 or 2008 server, your IT department or consultant will be able to do this through the network, which is a lot more secure way of doing things.

Be warned that some programs won’t work unless they run in Administrator mode. If you find this is a problem then you should consider replacing that software as the vendor has shown they are either incompetent or are prepared to put their customers at risk to save a few dollars.

Either way, you don’t need suppliers that have no respect for their customers.

Your computers are too important to your business and shouldn’t be exposed to these sorts of embarrassing and expensive risks. Get your IT people to make sure the office systems are locked down properly.

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How the net is changing business

We often talk about how the internet is changing marketing and distribution, but we often overlook just how fundamental the basic ways we do business are changing.

Internet tools like social networks and the web itself are forcing us to be more honest, open and ethical.

This occurred to me during the annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival a few weeks ago, where I was fortunate to go along and see how the advertising sector is dealing with challenges to their clients’ traditional marketing channels while a global financial downturn hits business.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put the worst case scenario of the world economy resetting to lower debt levels with marketing spend declining faster than GDP, as newspapers and magazines vanish at the same time consumers tighten belts.

Perhaps it was to be expected that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had the opposite view that Americans were too wedded to their credit cards to do anything else but spend.

The marketing bosses of Proctor & Gamble, Kraft and McDonalds had a very different outlook to either of the CEOs. They saw online advertising growing, while print and broadcast spending stays static – the most quoted statistic was the net occupies 20% of consumer’s time while only 7% of budgets are allocated to internet marketing.

A splash of cold water was from Kofi Annan and Bob Geldof who launched the “tck tck tck”, Time for Climate Justice campaign to get real results from the UN Copenhagen Convention in December. Their speeches were compelling and a reminder that some things are bigger than how much you spend online.

Back in the online world, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone gave an entertaining talk on how Twitter came about and some of the possibilities for making money from the service (charging for richer data) but the best social media talk was from Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn’s Managing Director for Europe.

Kevin’s key point is a business’s social media profile is just as much from what employees say on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, as it is of customer’s comments and the efforts of the marketing team.

This is spot on and shows just how broad the risks and opportunities are for managers and entrepreneurs.

Modern management has to be honest and consistent – the days of hollow mission statements and empty commitments to customer service and equal opportunity are over.

If you don’t hold by your principles then your customers, staff and suppliers will rat you out to the wider world. If you do hold by them you’ll gain respect and true followers.

The final thing from the Cannes Festival was just how innovative and creative the world advertising industry is. While the prize winners were impressive there were many clever entries that changed the way you’ll look at marketing.

Luckily, most of them are online at the Cannes Lions website, so have a look at the speakers and get some inspiration from the entrants. Don’t copy them though as you’ll probably be dobbed in on Twitter.

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The business of business

With the coming of the airlines and the US interstate highway system, American railway owners misunderstood they were in the transportation business, not the railway business.

Shortly after World War II, with the coming of the airlines and the US interstate highway system, American railway owners misunderstood they were in the transportation business, not the railway business.

As a consequence, they missed the opportunities to get into the new markets and most of them died.

This is true today as new technology and changed economic circumstances batter old, established industries.

Newspapers for example are not in the newspaper business, they are in the news business and fixating on paper as the medium to deliver that news leaves them struggling to adapt in a world where the main source of news is increasingly the Internet.

We see a similar thing with telephone companies wedded to their old copper networks or car manufacturers building fuel guzzling road yachts.

Recent comments by Rupert Murdoch about charging for content along with Associated Press’ attacks on Google show how the traditional channels are struggling.

This trend is bigger than news or media organisations, the developing communication channels using mediums  like Facebook and Twitter are going to challenge many organisations and change the way business is done.

Business is far more open and transparent, good and bad reviews of your organisation travels further and faster than before.

Your employees, contractors and customers are communicating in channels outside your control.

That’s just in the communication field. The changed economic environment means even more challenges to established businesses.

So the question is what exactly is your business? Which of your customers’ needs does your business fulfil?

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ABC Nightlife June 2009

The July Nightlife will be on Thursday July 9 with Tony Delroy and we’ll be looking at whether you should worry about the upcoming Windows 7

abcbanner_localThe July Nightlife will look at whether you should worry about the upcoming Windows 7 on Wednesday July 15.

We’ll be live across Australia on ABC Local Radio. Show starts at 10pm and we’ll be taking questions from around 10.30. Call in early.

Tune in through your local ABC station or stream online through the Nightlife website

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