On The C-I-No

Posted by on February 22, 2012 No comments

I received a surprise this morning, my made for radio face was prominently displayed on George Watt’s Pragmatic Cloud blog in this post titled; IT: Where Great Ideas Go to Die

And for the record, yes there was a lot of twitter traffic that afternoon regarding IT resistance to change, and how the consumerization of technology is forcing change on corporate IT Departments.

Again for the record, the tweet that George prominently displayed on his blog was a true gripe I made. And yes, I twisted the title of CIO (Chief Information Officer) into the term C-I-No.

If you are a business of any significant size, you may have experienced this;

You: “Can we ….” 

IT Team: “No…”  (now you get the idea of C-I-No)

The Tale Behind the Tweet

We needed to get a large amount of multi-media content to a senior business manager at a large customer of ours, and we needed to get it to him quickly. The problem was that this content was quite large in size. (these materials can be many hundreds of Megabytes – as much data as can be found on a standard CD-ROM)

With that much data, sending it by e-mail would not work.

We deal every day with large amounts of this type of content, so we have a server dedicated to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) exactly for this purpose – namely getting a CD or DVD sized amount of data moved to customers and suppliers.

Except this business manager had not been graced by his IT iron fisted overlords with permission to use FTP over the Internet (they blocked it)

So now this manager is on the phone, and four of our staff are clustered around my desk debating how do we get him his data?

OK, next idea, I have a personal account on Dropbox which is a ‘cloud’ based file storage provider. I upload his data to Dropbox, and share the data to that specific manager. Failed again – the C-I-No blocks Dropbox as well.

Alarm bells for deadlines are ringing, the number of people around my desk has doubled, and I am on the phone with a senior manager that needs his bloody data trying to find a way to get him the content he needs. We were stymied at every step.

IT Leadership has the very real responsibility to ensure that the hackers, viruses and other nasties that exist on the Internet don’t run rampant within your company. However IT Leadership that make it impossible for business staff to perform their jobs – they will fail.

When it comes to risk?

I coached that manager on how to download the content on his home computer and a USB memory stick.

Which would be more risk than allowing him to get his data from our FTP server.

It is not an easy balancing act, worrying about security, and worrying about people unable to do their jobs, but it is a balancing act that must be done.

 

Real SMB IT: Consulting And Outsourcing

Posted by on February 13, 2012 No comments

Consulting Vs. Outsourcing

Vendor marketing literature can blur the lines between them, however a technology consulting contract is not the same thing as an outsourcing contract. As a manager in the small to medium business, you should be aware of the differences.

Why?  While they may appear similar, the end result will be much different, what you are getting for your money, the contract deliverables and results are quite different.

Consulting

Consultants offer point expertise in a particular field. In other words, you are paying for their knowledge. We can see that expertise in what we call management consulting, where that knowledge is strategic advice in reviewing processes, frameworks, or skills. And we can also see it in operational implementation skills, where expertise in a particular technology or tool is engaged for a task because we don’t have that skill set.

When hiring a consultancy, the key point is that there are clearly defined results and time frames. In general consultancy engagements are short term, and at the end of a particular engagement, you have received new knowledge, or a new capability. I want to clarify what I mean by short term, you may engage a consultancy for strategic advice, and spend many years engaging them to review your progress, however each review is its own short term deliverable.

Outsourcing

When you negotiate an agreement to replace a staffing function, that is outsourcing. For example, you may contract with an organization for your PC Support. The difference is that this agreement is not going to be providing you new skills or new capabilities, you are simply hiring their staff to replace or augment your own. This type of contract needs different wording, because what you are receiving for your money are particular service level metrics.

With these key differences in what you are receiving for your money, it is important that the wording in your contract be aligned with the expected benefit you will be receiving. That being a new capability or new knowledge from a consultancy, or particular staffing services and metrics from an outsource agreement.

The SMB Takeaway

You hire a consultant to improve or fix, not to maintain a process or function.

Can you receive both outsourcing and consultancy services from one organization? Most certainly, as one example, you outsource your PC Support, and have the vendor provide consulting services on ways to improve that PC Support process.

It is still to your benefit to ensure that those contractual obligations clearly delineate the differences.

 

It’s Not An IT Project

Posted by on February 7, 2012 No comments

It is critical that we focus on our customers.

I don’t think many of us would raise our hands and argue argue that point.

In our service economy, customer retention and loyalty have become key measures of profitability.

As a growing business, you have worked to define clearly who your customer is, you have developed a particular set of activities that serve your customers, and work hard to measure and monitor the health of those customer relationships. Lets not omit that you have linked this effort to the economic well being of the business and its employees.

As your business has grown, you realize that all of these measurements and activities can no longer live in one person’s memory and Rolodex. You realize that the current ad-hoc approach needs to improve to ensure that you are capturing the required data that allow you to respond to customer or market demands.

Then, as marketing expert Ian Lurie states, it’s computery screeny stuff, make it an IT Project to implement a customer relationship system.

And as soon as you say ‘IT Project’, you are creating a problem. Your strategy, your vision, and all of the activities that serve your customers are key, and they go far beyond your technology team. A weak technology team will leave you in a mess. A strong one will do everything possible to document each step and requirement, then translating that into a tool.

A tool that IT thinks will be perfect for you. But IT won’t be using it will they? IT will not be spending their days using that tool that is so key to that strategy, that vision.

A regional Sales Director of an international services firm once told me that the tool they used was fine for many aspects of their sales cycle, but frustrating in others. As an example, the tool would enforce a minimum level of margin. On its own, you could state that avoiding selling below desired margin is a benefit, however imagine a penny-ante initiative that could unlock a huge new customer? Certainly you would want some controls in place, but a lower margin – perhaps even a loss leader that opens that door?

The SMB Takeaway

Sure, it is computery screeny stuff, but it is not IT stuff. Your technology team can enable your vision, can enable your goals. They can provide tools that capture the data that allows you to retain and serve your customers.

But it is a business project. It is business stakeholders that will successfully (or unsuccessfully) be using that tool. Not IT.

So it needs to be business managers, not IT Managers that make the key decisions

YOUR Skills And Technology

Posted by on January 25, 2012 No comments

This post was inspired by something a little different. Simply enough I received a vendor sales pitch for advanced business process tools and consultants for a particular software environment I have used before, and it sent me down a slightly winding path through memory lane. So it is off of my regular topic -

What are “High Tech” careers?

We all hear about current unemployment numbers, some job gains here, more losses over there, it is not a kind environment right now. Being in the technology field, the technology related press repeats this up and down news with IT related job gains over here, losses in this field, etc etc -

What bugs me about these ‘technology’ numbers is that that they really only consider hardware designers with Engineering degrees and Software programmers with Computer Science degrees. Just reading these things makes me shudder because these designations probably turn many people off about thinking “technology” in any shape or form. They associate ‘tech’ with geeks or movie video game type hackers.

To me that is a mistake, the skills that you as an individual possess, can be wonderful if you have the basic computer skills to leverage them in new ways, in ways that simply use a computer as a tool.

What do I mean by that?

I met a young woman years ago whose education was in theater arts, hardly technology right? Sure – not classified as a technology career, but on her own, she learned how to use a computer to model stage sets to the smallest inch, this allowed the theater companies director to determine that Act 2, Scene 3 needed more room on stage right, long before a carpenter was paid to hammer a nail, or before calling the carpenter to rip out what had already been built. (this was a community volunteer theater, not an On or Off Broadway big budget type of theater)

Several years ago we implemented a document management system that was critical to the maintenance and growth of our ISO 9000 certification. (if you are not familiar with ISO audits, they are not very forgiving of errors or omissions) Our most important consultant on this project? An individual with a post graduate degree in Library Science. Library Science you ask? This brilliant woman also knew the software tool we were implementing, but think about it; They weren’t hard cover or paperbacks, but there were over 10 Thousand documents in that tool that needed taxonomies and metadata that would allow them to be found and used. (without a Dewey Decimal System!)

Lastly, I know so many people with educations in Graphic Arts or Graphic Design – Traditionally those skills would be found mostly in photographic layouts or other design – today? We hire these geniuses to use their skills with software tools that create the imagery and video we create on a daily basis – again, not considered in ‘technology career’ statistics.

The Takeaway

Regardless of your education or skills, if you are comfortable around a computer keyboard – someone, somewhere, can use those skills – they may just not know it yet.

So I urge you not to think ‘technology’ is Engineering and Computer Science degrees alone.

Best Wishes in your career

Elliot

Mobile Web Vs. App for the SMB

Posted by on January 23, 2012 No comments

Mobile devices. From tablets like Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, to Smart Phones. (not to mention what other devices may show up tomorrow) There is no debate about this part; these devices have changed how we consume, view, and manage information.

For those of us in business, we need to be reviewing our internal processes to see where these mobile devices could possibly improve user or customer experiences, improve sales processes, or possibly reduce data entry in field service or inspection roles.

In this post titled; The iPad And The SME I wrote that in my opinion, the power of these devices is the ability to go beyond static online web pages, the power to be able to leverage the touch screen motions to move, size, flip, and change the orientation of images, tap fields to open or to modify – all through the application (or app) that can provide true benefits to our businesses. To quote myself on that post;

….Also imagine inspection or field service roles where checklists of tasks have to be performed. Do it on paper and perform data entry into a computer? or open the App and Tap, Tap that each has been checked?

Writing in a post titled; Why apps are not the future, Dave Winer disagrees with me.

 The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web.

To be fair, Mr. Winer is speaking as a consumer obtaining content from media and news outlets. However to me, linking or not, the static web does not have the power that I see providing the largest benefit in many internal business processes.

As an example, if you manufacture high end furniture, you already know that a retail outlet will be able to carry just one of your fancy sofa’s, they will also have a huge binder of material swatches to demonstrate to potential customers what that sofa would like in different colors or fabrics.

To me, a static web page showing the same swatches is useless – but how about a tablet app that shows that sofa staged in every fabric and pattern – full sized glorious images – expand, flip, rotate…

The SMB Takeaway

These new mobile devices are more than just a technology – they are a paradigm shift that we are only beginning to understand. Considering mobile devices as simply another ‘mini-computer’ to view web pages is to miss this shift.

 

Where I Agree to Disagree on Cloud Computing & The SME

Posted by on January 17, 2012 1 comment

An article by Todd R. Weiss written on an HP site titled; Small Business Cloud Challenge: Getting the IT Talent You Need

To quote the opening line;

With a typically tiny IT staff, it’s often tough for small businesses to find the time and resources to develop and begin a real cloud computing strategy

The article continues on describing the challenges facing SME’s in attracting ‘cloud engineer’ talent. (what is a cloud engineer anyway?)

Yes, I believe that the information in that article is wrong, and I have that belief for the reason I wrote here. To summarize that post, if you are a smaller business with limited or no technology staff, you take a huge capex and opex hit buying some kind of enterprise software tool – or you spend a monthly Opex expense and rent it online from the likes of Salesforce.com or Netsuite that can grow with you as you need it.

For larger SME’s, your IT teams already have the virtualization and development skills, the learning curve to move that effort to the ‘cloud’ is definitely not beyond the skills of your team.

As this article by Brian Hopkins at Forrester Research states;

Many SMBs I talk to are adopting a cloud-first policy and eschewing investment in big enterprise systems,

And don’t take my word for it, the December 5th edition of eWeek** has an article by Chris Preimesberger that states;

.. the menu and drag-and-drop user interfaces have become so familiar and easy to use that coding and scripting applications and cloud service have basically become a thing of the past.

For small to medium enterprises, the only question I have; Why would you not look at this cloud computing?

**The print edition of the periodical, I attempted to find the digital edition on their website, but searching by issue date and author name failed to locate it

Consumerization of IT

Posted by on January 12, 2012 No comments

An article by Stephanie Overby in CIO Magazine, subtitled; employee provisioning of laptops and PDA’s is the next logical step in the consumerization of IT

“numerous unsanctioned employee owned notebooks and desktop PC’s are accessing network resources”

The article?

It was in the print edition on September 15 2008.

The only thing missing is the iPad and other tablet style devices, and Smart Phones. We haven’t used the term ‘PDA’ in years!House Cleaning

Yes, I was doing some housecleaning.

And also yes, my wife calls me a pack rat.

I Don’t Have Time For ‘Process’

Posted by on December 29, 2011 No comments

Not enough hours in the day.

Hours spent identifying that invoice, more time spent tracking down why that important piece was missing from that proposal, then some more time trying to find out why that critical task slipped through the cracks.

All the hours spent on this niggling ‘busy work’ while trying to squeeze in the ‘real” job.

This is the daily experience of a Vice President in a smaller organization that I was speaking to.

Does it sound familiar to you? (I’m sure it does for many) We use many jargon terms for it, putting out fires, scrambling, keeping our head above water, perhaps you use a different one.

That same Vice President claimed it was too busy to even think of improving internal business processes.

My reply was that it was too busy not to consider improving internal processes! Efficient use of poorly spent time is pointless. Focus first on ‘effective’.*

Invest some time in improving business processes because that ‘putting out the fires’ busy-work will pretty much disappear. That saves you time over the longer term.

Formally creating processes for how repetitive work is performed is simply documenting how that work or task is executed, what role performs each step, and what role is responsible and accountable for input or output.

Because when everybody knows that workflow, knows who is responsible for what and when - you only need to actively manage any exceptions. Everything else pretty much automatically takes care of itself. And there will be exceptions, some will be individual mistakes that can then be corrected, some will opportunities to learn and improve the process, and occasionally there will be a new exception – right out of left field – but as you progress, there will be fewer and fewer exceptions chewing up your time.

The SMB Takeaway

As a manager in the SMB space, I guarantee that if your time, day in and day out, is being chewed up and lost scrambling to fix the same problems – the problem is you.

The examples I mentioned in the first paragraph?

Hours tracking down why and for what you are receiving that invoice? How about a simple purchase authorization and requisition process. When the invoices arrive, accounts payable already has all needed information.

The missing piece on that proposal? how about simple templates, checklists and subject matter expert reviews of key portions?

We have another jargon term to bring up – you know that situation when work just gets done as everyone knows the why, the how and the who of tasks? we call it a well oiled machine……

* Quoting @MarkOOakes on Twitter

A Small Business And Sharepoint

Posted by on December 22, 2011 2 comments

I had a hallway conversation with the owner of a small business that provides outsourced IT support and technical services for other small businesses.

As old techies are wont to do, we were swapping war stories (in other words, technical issues we had fought and beaten in the past!) when he mentioned a problem that he was having at one of his small business clients. For this particular client he had installed a Microsoft Small Business Server product to give his client basic email, file storage, and printer services.

Now this Microsoft small business product also contained a basic version of a collaboration tool called Microsoft Sharepoint Team Services. First, I must say that this next part is incredibly unusual, but his client had found this Sharepoint collaboration software by themselves and were actually using it.

I made that incredibly unusual comment as some tongue in cheek humor! And that is because many companies explicitly invest money and time into these types of collaboration products and then attempt to drag their staff kicking and screaming into using them. And here was a small business that found it by accident and just dove in – head first.

My friend described how his client was using this Sharepoint collaboration tool for various types of documents and had placed huge amounts of data into the software. And this is where his problem was found, his client was experiencing software crashes, corrupted documents and various other problems. I had previously mentioned that I had implemented a 10 thousand document ISO 9000 PMF repository using that same Sharepoint collaboration tool, so he asked if I had any idea on the issue.

I had the privilege to tell him that I had a really good guess.

The ‘Express’ version versus the ‘Full’ version

For many years Microsoft Corporation has fairly successfully given some basic products away for free, but to get more advanced functionality commonly used in our businesses, you needed to pay for the full version of the software.

As an example, for years you were able to use a free copy of Microsoft Outlook Express  for your basicMicrosoft Office email needs, in fact it was installed by default on many computers when you purchased them. But for shared calendars and other more advanced functionality, you needed to pay for it and purchase a full copy Microsoft Outlook.

And Microsoft has done the same thing with this Sharepoint product. Sharepoint Team Services itself is a a freely available download for licensed Microsoft Servers, and when you install it? It  uses the Microsoft SQL Server Express database engine. Notice the word ’Express‘ again. It works, and is also freely available.

But similar to my Outlook example, these freely available Express versions of these tools have some limitations that do not exist in the full featured ‘pay for it’ versions of the same software. The full featured ‘pay for’ products are Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server, and the full Microsoft SQL Server product.

And my guess about his clients issues was based on these limitations. Because one of the limitations in the Express version is the physical amount of data that you can place in the SQL Server Express database. If you reread the above paragraphs, note that this small business owner said that his client had put ‘huge amounts of data in it’.

I suggested he take a look and see if they had put enough data into the software to be running up against the limit of what that Express version of the database software could handle.

As a note, a couple of weeks later he told me they had.

The SMB Takeaway

I give this small business credit for their head first dive into the software, although they should have told their IT Services provider, as he did not know they were using it – it was not being backed up! Think what they could have lost…….

However it brings up a lesson that in ITIL terms we call Capacity Management. (My first post on ITIL for small to medium business is here)

Capacity Management is defined as meeting current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. In English, it basically means purchasing IT assets based on your expected usage not just today, but next year. As a bad analogy - if you have decided that next year you and your spouse are going to have a baby, buying the two seat sports car right now would be poor future planning or poor Capacity Management.

My friends client found the software by accident, but this goes beyond the one software tool shown above, if you are looking at purchasing any type of IT software or hardware, consider where you will be next year, and the year after that. Buying a new server just big enough to hold all your office productivity documents and spreadsheets today, what about the new document or spreadsheet you create tomorrow?

 

Fixing this $%#!@&% mess

Posted by on December 19, 2011 Comments Off

Excellent, truly, truly, excellent post by Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing titled; The IT department isn’t killing you – you are

I urge you to read it, to encourage you, let me give you a teaser;

Dear CEO/VP of operations or whatever you are:

Information technology departments don’t kill businesses. CEO’s using IT departments kill businesses.

The post is downright hilarious – for all the truth it conveys. In fact, it is so true it is painful. As a technology manager, technologists do get sucked into these black holes.

If someone in marketing crashes the whole site by adding an extra “>” in the footer, what do you do? Uh-huh. You call IT. It’s all computery screeny stuff, so they must be to blame. And, when you point the finger at them, they say “OK, give us control over the web site, then.”

Mr. Lurie is referencing your marketing function, but the same happens in many business functions. Sales has no real idea who your largest customer is, but it is ‘computer screeny’ stuff, call it CRM and make it an IT Project.

Finance takes four months to close the books, but it is ‘computer screeny’ stuff, make it an IT Project.

Mr. Lurie also gives some ways out of that trap, I’m not going to repeat them here, read his post, I will state that his second option, along with its reference, is the one I choose.

Unless your business is a hot dog cart in Times Square, technology is woven through the very fabric of your business. Most, if not all, of your business processes will contain an element of technology in them. But just because there is one piece that is ‘computer screeny’ – does not mean that;

a) IT should be in charge

b) IT should be responsible for that ‘>’ in the footer that crashes the web site.

IT Leadership should, and must be joined at the hip with each piece of your organization, IT can provide tools that help standardize or automate, can provide tools that allow analysis. But at the end of the day, these are business tools – not technology tools.

Thank you Ian……

 

@Montberte: I don’t think there’s intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?

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