Massaker.Me

Social Media is supposed to have brought about this new era of transparency. But has it?

My business partner (Jeffrey) and I got into a disagreement regarding this the other day and I thought “Let’s see what the rest of our small world of FaceBook friends and blog readers think”.

Jeffrey, had found a forum post on a product review board on the Dell web site which slammed some new tiny computer that they had recently put out. He emailed me the link saying that transparency was not good in this case. Having read about Dell Hell in Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do?, I was inclined to immediately disagree because Mr. Jarvis made a very good argument to the contrary – that publicly calling Dell out had resulted in him getting what he wanted and that his small set of the articles spread very quickly over the web, becoming a PR nightmare for Dell. Dell finally reacted and learned their lesson and made many other customer service related corrections as a result of this.

However, I have given it some more thought and I have to say I’m not totally convinced that 100% transparency (much less 75% or even 50%) is good for every business, especially small business. Dell is a very large company, many people had never even heard of the Dell Hell incident – I had not until reading his book. Despite the bad PR, Dell remained relatively unblemished. I’m not sure that I could say the same if it were to happen to my small business. They could lose 10s of millions of dollars, perhaps 100s of millions, and remain relatively unscathed. For small businesses that operate in a smaller market those results might be catastrophic.

So ponder on this:

• Would you publish a publicly viewable forum where anyone could write what they wanted about your company and anyone could read what had been written?
  • How would you handle negative commentary?
• How would you react to web site that are erected for the sole purpose of discrediting your company by having users share their negative experiences (e.g. www.dellhell.net)
• Is the concept of transparency more relevant/practical/necessary for big businesses and government than small businesses?
• Does this even matter for service-based businesses?

By the way, what do you think about the transparent canoe? Cool huh?

I’m sure that you have heard many variations of the advice that serves as this blog entry’s title like”outsource your weakness”. What’s not always clear when you hear these phrases is the context. Sometimes it applies to a person, sometimes to a business, sometimes both. I think it’s about evolution – a series of steps that starts out with you personally:

Step 1: Outsource Personal Weakness

I learned early on in business that I did not need to handle book keeping, and, a littler later on, tactical marketing (web sites, direct mail, etc.).  Reconciling bank statements, taxes, etc. are best handled by someone else, I quickly deduced. My undergrad training was in Psychology. I never took a single business class, so this was a no brainer. What’s been harder to let go of is marketing. My background in psychology has served me in understanding the clent and how to market to them in terms of messaging, but other tactical elements such as graphic and web design, collateral design, are all done better by the artsy types who can give your business a more polished look.

As Carceron grew, I began to realize that I wasn’t even the best computer technician and worked quickly to divest myself from that role to allow other, more capable, people run the day to day support operations of the business.

My next area to personally outsource? …Sales.

As I have grown the business, it was hard to see how tactical of a role sales really was until I had done it for a while. Now I realize that it is simply a numbers game. It’s about generating more leads (marketing and prospecting) and attaining better conversion rates (sales and sales training). I firmly believe that I could teach just about any good sales person how to sell what we do because the principals of selling are the pretty the same in any business. My training would give him the information needed to apply those principals..

In summary, you can outsource some of your personal responsibilities to outside vendors or employees. Evolving business owners and overwhelmed management alike must outsource their personal weakness in this way to get precious time back and/or to increase the quality of the area to be outsourced. This was the case of Jay, an operations manager for one of our clients. Jay ran the day to day operations of his company’s 16+ locations in addition to supporting its near 100 end users, while Carceron simply supported his server farm. Eventually he “cried uncle” and let Carceron take over all of their IT operations which gave him back 15-20 hours per week that he was spending on just supporting end users.

Step 2: Outsource Business Processes & Functions

As your business grows, you eventually see other areas to outsource to save money and/or improve quality. Some things make more sense than others. As a rule of thumb, don’t outsource anything that interferes directly with your client relationships… hold that sacred.

Here are some common areas of the business to outsource and why you should:

• Book Keeping: Save time, Accuracy, Cheaper than a full time employee (depends on the size of business and transaction volume)
• Payroll: Accuracy, IRS Compliance
• Human Resources: Compliance, Compliance, Compliance
• Marketing & PR: Social Media needs daily attention, a firm can do it cheaper than a full time employee
• Shipping / Delivery: What would it cost you to maintain a fleet of vehicle and drivers vs the cost of using a local courier or FedEx?
• Managed Services Provider (MSP): MSPs don’t get sick or take vacations, MSPs don’t need to be equiped or need benefits, MSPs cost about 1/2 the salary of a full time IT employee, click here to see a lot more reasons

Much of outsourcing is accomplished through the use of information technology which is an enabler towards issues like compliance, business process etc. Make sure that you understand the impacts on your IT infrastructure of anything that you plan to outsource before doing so.

You’ll also want to make sure that you have a good working relationship with all of your outsource vendors, constantly communicating your expectations.

Here are some other resources on outsourcing, well worth the read:

• 8 Reason Why Outsourcing Fails
• What causes outsourcing failures?

Off-shoring

When many people hear the word outsourcing, visions of call centers in a far away country pop up. Bare in mind that you can outsource without off-shoring. Put differently, off-shoring is 1 technique of outsourcing. When and why should you use this technique? In many cases it almost always comes back to saving money. Labor pools in other countries are generally cheaper and vast. It can also come about due to of lack people in country that have the necessary skills to carry out specialized kinds of work. This has been Microsoft’s argument for years – that University’s simply aren’t spitting out enough application developers (Watch the Bill Gates Testimonial to the Senate regarding this).  However, there are some trade offs:

• Language barrier: Many people get frustrated with call center operators where English is a second language. Also things can get lost in translation – this happens often for company’s that outsource software development abroad where misunderstandings about the scope of work often arise.
• External Politics: In the current state of this economy, where unemployment is so high, you risk a PR backlash by sending work overseas
• Internal Politics: Offshoring can have a direct impact on moral due to an “am I next?” mindset

Personally, I have not seen the need to offshore, however, I think it may become inevitable in order to compete unless legislation is passed to limit it somehow. As I am not an economist, I can’t say either way if that would be a bad thing or not. If we are of the mindset that we are now a global market place, would increased (presumably more restrictive) legislation help or hinder us? I simply don’t know…

• Why Offshore Outsourcing Projects Fail

Strategic Alliances, often little more than a business buzz phrase, can have a very real impact on your bottom line if executed correctly. Some of the benefits of Strategic Alliances include:

• The ability to compete against stronger competitors through the creation of synergistic partnerships
• Development and exploitation niche markets faster
• Increased activity throughout the entire sales pipeline – all the way from lead generation to closed business.

So what is a Strategic Alliance and how do you form one that works and lasts? I’m about to tell you:

First, let’s look at some definitions for “strategic”:

• Pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of strategy
• Important in or essential to strategy
• Of an action, as a military operation or move in a game, forming an integral part of the stratagem

Next, let’s look at some definitions for “alliance”:

• the state of being allied or confederated
• a connection based on kinship or marriage or common interest; “the shifting alliances within a large family”; “their friendship constitutes a powerful bond between them”
• an organization of people (or countries) involved in a pact or treaty
• a formal agreement establishing an association or alliance between nations or other groups to achieve a particular aim
• confederation: the act of forming an alliance or confederation

Finally, the definition for a Strategic Alliances, (as defined by Wikipedia)

A Strategic Alliance is a formal relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need.

I like this definition due to its emphasis on formality and “agreed upon goals”. One thing that I think is missing from this definition is that the relationship should also be mutually beneficial – as this is key to making the Strategic Alliance last.

Some Strategic Alliances Basics

The are many kinds of strategic alliances. Most center on revenue creation. Examples include:

• Reseller / Affiliate Model: You become a reseller of a certain product or service in exchange for sales and marketing support of said product or service.
• Outsource Relationship: Over time you come to realize that certain parts of your business are better handled by another entity outside your business because it is more profitable, efficient, etc.
• Business Development: Referral Partnership, Co-Marketing, etc.

It is the last type of Strategic Alliance, business development,  that I would like to spend some time on. This can be one of the easiest to form and at the same time the most powerful. Who should you strategicly partner with? The obvious answer is professions that you naturally get referrals from already. For example, I own an IT company, so I receive a great deal of referrals from an ISP broker and telecom hardware vendor that I have allied with. Another great example of a good strategic alliance would be composed of a CPA, financial planner & estate planning attorney.

It is important to formalize this relationship as much as possible to get the maximum results. Formalization should create a culture of accountability in the alliance which is critical to the success of it. Here are some ideas.

• Meet at least once a month and share sales pipe line reports
  • What deals are you working on now?
  • What deals have you recently closed?
  • Discuss referrals that have been passed around the alliance. (status, quality, etc.)
  • Create a list of specific prospects that you would like to get into and go over the list with your alliance. Use Linkedin and other business social media sites to make connections.
  • Are you have trouble closing any deals? If so, how can the alliance help?
    • Powerful Example: If the prospect does not have the budget for your project or service, is their anyone in the alliance that can create the savings through their product or services that essentially creates the funds for your project? I use my telecom broker in this regard. He can come in and save them hundreds to thousands a month, the savings from which cover most or all of the cost of my proposal.
  • Side Note: If, when I say “sales pipe line report”, your eyes glaze over, then you probably need a customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as ACT!, or Microsoft CRM. I recommend Alanna Galiano or Emerging Technologies to get your up to speed.A good CRM is essential to making this strategy work.
    
• Develop a joint Needs Assessment
  • If you already have a Needs Assessment, this is easy, just ask each member of your alliance for the top 3 questions that you should ask when conducting a Needs Assessment on your prospect that might generate a referral for them. For example: I always ask a few questions about their phone system to see if there is a possible referral opportunity to the telecom hardware company in my alliance.
• Joint Marketing
  
  • Create a “Partners” page on your web site and add logos with link backs to each of your partner’s web sites. Make sure they do the same.
  • Co-sponsor an event together, such as a conference or tradeshow. Obviously the event should contain target prospects that you are all are going after.
  • Find other ways to cross market:
    • Drop a brochure or coupon from an alliance member into your invoice mailings.

More Advanced Strategic Alliances

Want to take this concept to the next level?

Form an alliance around a business process or event. One idea that came from my friend, Bob Hill of Hill Corporate Partners, centers around office moves. Think about it. When someone want’s to move their office, they need the following:

• A commercial tenant rep, like Bob Hill, to find the new space
• An office furniture company to furnish the new office
• A moving company to move the stuff in the old office to the new one
• An IT company, like Carceron, to restore the computer network
• A telecom broker, like Elite Telecom Services, to get the telephone lines and Internet service going
• A telecom hardware company to setup the phone system for the new location
• A printer to handle change out of all collateral such as business, cards, brochures, letterhead, etc.
• And probably a CPA

You could market the alliance with an informational web site that is search engine optimized (maybe everyone chips in for some pay per click advertisement as well). Make sure that there is good quality content on the site. In the case of the office move, perhaps some check lists, Dos & Don’ts, etc.

Getting Started

If you don’t know all of the people that you need to form your alliances, I suggest joining a BNI or Corporate Connections referral marketing program. Corporate Connections chapters, like Synergy, are developing a strong, structured program for strategic alliance creation and development. Another venue might be Vistage. I am a director for Corporate Connections in the Atlanta market, so please feel free to contact me directly with any questions about that program.

What are some other ideas for an Advanced Strategic Alliance?

While I have written this in 1st person, I hope that I do not come across as being “bitchy”. This is a list of personal pet peaves that I suspect others share with me, coupled with common business sense.

1. Don’t hand me your business card unless I ask you for it. I promise to do the same. I meet a lot of people and if you’re someone that I don’t think I can help, or you can’t help me, or you can’t help someone I know, then what’s the point? We should be honest with one another. If you do force me to take a card, you’re getting added to my email marketing list and getting spammed – fair warning.
2. Don’t issue cheesy status updates to any of the various social media outlets (FaceBook, Linkedin, etc.). Make sure what you post is interesting enough to read. A good rule of thumb is the “So what” contest – if another person posted what you were going to post, would you say “So What?”. If so, it’s probably not a good post. I know the idea behind status updates and micro-blogging is to talk about what you’re doing right now – what they forget to add was “What are you doing right now, that is interesting to the people you are connected to?” Otherwise, I’m clicking the “hide” button. If my posts bore you, feel free to “Hide” me by all means. Here are some examples:
   • Good
     • I am at the Networking in ATL event at Sutra Lounge with Brandon Miltsch, owner of FireWolf (tells you where I am and who I am with, both of which might be of interest)
   • Bad
     • I’m going to ________   [mom's, bed, the toilet]
3. Don’t call me and try to sell me something the day after we have met. If I took the time to get to know you, I will have told you on the spot that we need to set a follow up appt to discuss your services or product. If I didn’t, and you want my business, then help me pay for what you want to sell me via a referral. This goes a long way. I promise to do the same (and already do).
4. Don’t send me invitations to cheesy FaceBook applications like “Snowball Fight” or Kidnap. These are annoying time wasters. ’nuff said.
5. Don’t hand me a brochure or any other kind of sales collateral at a networking function. Your business card will suffice. I assume that you have a web site if I need more information. If you don’t, I have a referral for you.
6. Don’t ask me to become a fan of or join a group related to something that is obviously not interesting or of benefit to me (e.g. cosmetics)
7. Don’t assume that I remember you if we’ve only met one time. Reintroduce yourself to me every time until we have had a 1:1 meeting, beers together or whatever. I promise to do the same. Again, I meet a lot of people (as you should be) and it is impossible to remember everyone after just one meeting in passing. (Exception: if you are someone important to the networking function I am at, i.e. chapter or associations president, etc.  – leadership has its perks)
8. Don’t connect to me on Linkedin with a free-mail email address as your primary contact email address. Freemail accounts are, for example: @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @bellsouth.net, etc. (Exception: this only applies if you are a business owner. I understand the case for sales people to maintain control of their profiles with their personal email address? Also, this it is ok if you’re between jobs or retired)

As we start a new year and a new decade, we will once again set goals & create resolutions. What is so special about this time of year that we feel the need to do this? I have a few ideas:

1. A year is a significant amount of time for to allow for the completion of many long term goals.
2. The holidays allow us to renew ourselves with some relaxation and time with family & friends.
3. The holidays are a slow down period for many businesses which allows many of us to “catch our breathe” and re-group.

It’s this slowing down that is of greatest interest to me. What this tells me is that if we are given enough time to slow down and think in a relaxed state we’re pretty good at knowing where we need to go. So why do so many (including me) that set goals and create resolutions fail to reach them? It most cases it simply comes down to execution – doing what needs to be done. But human beings are complex animals, and while we are very good at giving advice and holding others accountable, it is much harder to hold ourselves accountable for the necessary execution required to complete our goals. This is why people hire personal trainers and business coaches -  not to help them with execution, but to hold them accountable for the execution. After all, your personal trainer won’t do the lifting or heavy breathing for you (wouldn’t that be nice?).

So how will you hold yourself accountable this year? I can tell what I have done and what I am going to try.

First, set your personal goals and business goals, making sure that they are very clear to you and to anyone else that they affect (employees, family, etc.). One of the biggest tips on increasing accountability is to set yourself a deadline. When you have a deadline, you should feel some kind of pressure to complete the goal. See my article “Leadership & Goal Setting for 2010″ for more on this.

Business Goals:

Be as transparent to your staff as possible and hold monthly meetings that focus only on the goals that you have set. I believe strongly in leadership by example, so I can’t very well show up to a meeting where I have not made any progress on my goals and they have. That is my accountability system for my business. Another excellent way to add accountability in business is to have a client advisory council. Then you are getting accountability from 2 different directions.

That being said, it is a goal of mine to hire or engage a mentor/coach as there are certain things that I like to bounce of other experienced business owners that may not always be appropriate to share with employees or a client advisory council. It’s taken me a while to come around to the concept of purchasing “accountability” through coaching – but I am getting there. That being said, I currently have several friends that are also business owners that serve this purpose.

Personal Goals:

This one is tougher. It’s been my experience that friends and family do not always make good accountability partners unless you’re both working on the same goal – and even then, one may have stronger discipline than the other making it a bit one-sided. Why do I emphasize the importance of the same goal? Because many friends may not care that much about your personal goal, are poor role models relative to the goal, and/or they “love you just the way you are”.

What’s the answer?

The easy way out is to hire a life coach, but who has the budget for that?

My answer…

Using friends with the same goal is a good start and better than nothing I guess. However, for me, if I can get a group going or join a group related to the goal that I want to accomplish, it makes it a lot easier. The same principles that motivate me to meet the goals of my business (fear of disappointing my employees) drive me to not disappoint the group and my new friends. Obviously this works best if you immediately get to work befriending people in the group which creates the necessary ties to make them care about you. It may sound a bit shallow – but if you think about, many of your friendships had to start on a common bond of “something”.

Review Your Goals Regularly:

Whether you have personal or business goals, review your goals regularly. Monthly is probably a good frequency. If you’re behind on your achieving your goals, devise a game plan to catch up. Deliberately set aside time to catch up – a day on the weekend or a couple of nights – whatever it takes. Also, make sure that your goals are in some kind of digital, easy to access format. I recommend using one of the tools below.

Tools:

There are some great tools that can provide varying levels of accountability depending on how much you are willing to share with your friends, coach etc.

LifeTick: This is a simple to use goal tracking web site. Pay $20 for the 1 year subscription and start tracking all of your personal goals. The site enfores SMART goal format and will email you impending and past due goal deadlines. It also has some mild reporting capabilities and a journal entry feature.

Screenshot of the LifeTick.com Interface

NSight EPS: This is like LifeTick on steroids. Still in beta, NSight runs about $300 per year but has a very cool interface and much more depth of content than LifeTick. It has locations for personal SWOT analysis, personal and company vision and mission statements, and a slew of other features. This service also has a coaching module and is great for group coaching (think Vistage).

Screenshot of NSight

How do you plan to hold yourself accountable?

Leadership

Most people that know me know that I am very goal oriented and focused on results. I was not always like this. I had always considered myself a good leader perhaps due to my empathy, perhaps due to my time in the Army… who knows? But actually using this natural leadership to any great effect has been my challenge ever since starting a business 8 years ago.

What I came to discover is that I simply had charisma – I could get people to like and respect me, but that was only half the battle (more like 25% of the battle). It’s what you do when you have this respect that matters. This what I have come to learn as true leadership: deserving the respect of those around you enough to have their confidence to lead them in a particular direction – preferably a productive one – and then actually doing it. The other lesson that I learned early on in business is that people want to be led… expect to be led, and are uncomfortable when there is not a strong leader at the helm.

Armed with this knowledge, I finally began to understand what all of the hoopla was about concerning vision, mission statements and core values. I had been through several exercises on how to develop a vision and a mission statement, but they always seemed more like “wishful thinking”. It wasn’t until I understood the bigger picture, derived from countless books, seminars and a little bit of coaching, that it all made sense regarding how to use these tools.

Vision: An ever-changing horizon affected by changes in economy, your industry personnel, etc., I prefer Kimberly Douglas’ interpretation of vision as not heading towards a single mountain to conquer, but having several mountains in the distance, and you choose which mountain as you get closer it. Kind of like a plan A, B, or C. To much changes too fast in today’s world to have a rigid vision. You need to be open and develop strong skills of adaption. The only exception to this that I can think of is if you have a patent on something so new and innovative that no one else has it.

Mission: Ours is simple “You should be able to expect us to do anything for you that an in house IT technician or CTO would do“. That’s it. It’s easy to remember and speaks to the customer service levels that I demand from my staff. It also saves a lot of time on questions like “Should we do this? Because it’s not specified in the contract“. Most times I just refer them back to the mission statement and ask them to update me as to what they decided later (mostly for my own curiosity and coaching purposes). By the way, if you’re mission statement is more than 1-2 sentences and/or is hard to memorize, it’s too long. Simplify, simplify, simplify. (Thank you, Dr. Bob for this useful bit of advice)

Core Values: Most people think this is what you and/ or the company hold’s valuable, and to some extent it can be. However, what core values really do is apply guide rails to a decision making process. Care values are an invaluable tool for a leader looking to delegate because core values provide a decision framework for your staff to work by. Every time there is a crisis, adhering to the core values that you established should handle 90% of the hard decisions subordinates need to make before ever getting to you. When subordinates make mistakes, you can always counsel them on how what they did conflicted with the company’s core values. When you write out your core values, make sure to also write an interpretation for each.  For example:

Professionalism

Carceron professionals conduct themselves in a business-like manner at all times. They dress sharp and are well groomed and aspire to higher and broader levels of technical expertise and make good ethical decisions.

Of course all of these things can and should change as the business changes, but not so often that people become confused. If you make a change to any of the above, then you should explain why to all of your employees.

Goal Setting

Once all this is in place, you have the foundation for goal setting. Indeed, it is hard to imagine setting goals without a vision, or a mission in place (what would you base your goals on?). When you’re setting company goals for the year, it is very important to involve your staff – your managers at a minimum. This is your front line and they have important information that you will need. Ideally you should spend some time brainstorming off site some where. Get a professional facilitator if it is within your budget  (I recommend Kimberly Douglas of FireFly Faciliation) otherwise have a agenda that runs something like this:

1. Ask for ideas for goals in next year. Try to do so by department – do this even if you don’t have any departments. You don’t need an HR department to set goals of establishing a 401k program or improving benefits
   • Encourage creativity and “out of the box” thinking”
   • Accept all ideas (you’re just brain storming in this phase)
   • No open criticism of ideas should be allowed… yet
2. Discuss and prioritize the goals that you have come up with, remove any that are superfluous or redundant. You may also find that some goals are subordinate to other goals or are tasks to be completed in support of the larger goal.
3. Write all of the goals in a SMART format, which stands for:
   • Specific - Make the goal as specific as possible by making sure it meets the next 4 criteria as well as any other specific criteria you feel is pertinent
   • Measurable - Define the goal line for success. Describe what success looks, smells, tastes and sounds like. Bad Goal: Make more money this year. Good Goal: Make $3,000,000 this year
   • Achievable - Is the goal actually achievable given your current resources (employees, cash, etc.). 200% growth is probably not achievable.
   • Relevant – Is the goal relevant to the vision, mission or core values? If not, then why are you doing it?
     
   • Timely – What is the timeline to complete the goal? Many people work better under a deadline, otherwise, things are too easy to blow off.
4. Now write all of the tasks needed to complete each goal. Make sure to drill down deep here and be as specific as possible. It’s best to have the person that came up with the goal also come up with the necessary tasks needed to complete that goal in most cases. For example, let’s say you that you had a goal of “Upgrade Computer Network by End of 2010″ some of the tasks for that goal might be:
   • Gather computer and network inventory
   • Assess which machines need replacement first
   • Get quotes from 3 different IT solutions providers
   • Create refresh plan with solution provider (don’t be afraid to involve vendors with your goals)
5. Have all goals and tasks in a centrally accessible location such as on a spreadsheet on a server, on your company SharePoint site or using a goal planning web site like LifeTick (this is what my company does).
6. Conduct monthly meetings that focus on goal progress. If you don’t think you’re going to make a goal within a certain time frame, then discuss what you need to do to make that happen (e.g. every one works late one night or on a weekend) or discuss pushing the goal up a quarter (don’t get in the habit of this however).
7. Repeat this process in October or November of each year.

A great resource that I would recommend to you if you plan to run your own agenda without an outside facilitator is a book called The FireFly Effect by Kimberly Douglas.

Best of luck in 2010!

In this tough economic climate, we’re all trying to figure out what our next moves should be. For those in a position to buy, the time has never been better. If you have tabled any capital expense projects due to the economy, you’ll want to move forward on them in Q4. Here’s why:

Section 179: The Hummer Deduction

Often called the “SUV Exemption” or “Hummer deduction”, this little chuck of tax code allows business owners to write off 100% of most equipment expenses in the first year it is purchased. While you can buy a new gass-guzzling vehicle with it, there are obviously more practical uses like new office furniture or upgrading computer systems.

Visit http://www.section179.org/ to learn more and also seek the advice of your accountant.

Aggressive Q4 Deals

Above and beyond tax incentives, you can always find some pretty good deals in Q4 and this year is no execption. We’re already seeing hardware vendors slash prices. Microsoft has joined the party with a wide variety of discounts and subsidy programs that are intended to make you take action.

• Microsoft Incentives.com
  • This site always has great deals on Microsoft Licensing. For example, you can get 20% off Office Professional Plus licenses and 15% off Windows 7 Upgrade Licenses
• Microsoft Big Easy Offer
  • Get Microsoft to subsidize implementation costs for Microsoft software licenses purchased. In a nut shell: they cut a check to your technology partner to subsidize your labor cost and your technology partner gives you a discounted labor invoice (minus the subsidy). You can even combine this offer with the 20% off Office Prof. Plus discount mentioned above.

There is some common business wisdom running around that says “Focus on doing what your business does best and outsource the rest”. I could not agree more. When it comes to information technology, this philosophy can be quite hard to comply with because everyone has some level of expertise with IT in today’s world. However, being able to fix a simple printer issue for an employee is a far cry from un-corrupting an Exchange email server database. And yet, it can be the “simple printer repair”-type issues that can eat up so much of your time without you even realizing it, to say nothing of the more complex errors sprinkled throughout this continuum of “Do It Yourself” to “Oh My God, HELP ME, the server is on FIRE!”.

If you are a professional services firm, your product is time. It is “inventory” that once it passes is gone forever (much like an unused hotel room). As such, for employees whom are billable, they need to devote as much of the workday as possible to billable activities. None of this should be very surprising, but if you observe many professional services firms you’ll see these billable employees doing everything from accounting to human resources to IT. If you work in a professional services firm, I encourage you to keep a very detailed log of every minute of your work day to see for yourself. Odds are you are getting caught up in all kinds of stuff that is better handled by someone else… who isn’t billable.

For accounting: get a book keeper or outsourced CFO. For human resources: try a full service PEO firm such as HR Outsourcing. For information technology management: enter into an agreement with a managed IT services provider. Here is why:

1. MSPs Are More Cost Effective: You can outsource the entire support of your network for a flat fee, including: monitoring, unlimited helpdesk hours, anti-virus software, anti-spam service, email archival and more, for only a few dollars per user per day (or less than 10% of one billable hour per day – assumes a network of 100 or less workstations)
2. MSPs Make You More Productive: A managed IT services firm will generally charge a flat fee for services rendered. This means that your firm will be more productive because it is in the managed IT service provider’s best interest to keep the network fully operational (each trouble ticket or monitoring failure eats into their profit margin).
3. MSPs Provide More Value: MSPs frequently bundle many other services into their managed services offering such as monitoring, anti-virus software, anti-spam service, email archival, and off site backup.
4. MSPs Are Better Than an In-House IT Manager: Managed IT service providers cost about ½ – 1/3 the cost of a full time employee. Unlike employees, managed IT service providers don’t get sick, don’t take vacations, come with their own insurance if they screw up, come with their own suite of software and services (e.g. anti-virus, monitoring, etc.) and don’t need to be equipped with laptops, mobile phones, etc. Besides, why would you put something as crucial as your business network in the hands of one man? A managed services provider will also have more skills sets and experience at their disposal.
5. MSPs Are Better Than a One Man Band: As with the In-House IT Manager, “Why would you put something as crucial as your business network in the hands of one man”? There are many talented one-man IT companies. But… What if something happens to him? What if he gets mad at you?  He can’t very well monitor your network if he is helping another client. What if you have a network emergency and he is with another client and can’t come to you right away? A managed services provider will also have more skills sets and experience at their disposal.

In summary, outsourcing management of you IT and other areas of your business can create massive leverage and allow your firm to bill more time. Now who does not want that?

One of the frustrating parts of being in the IT business is quoting computers. I can’t tell you how many clients, prospects and colleagues I run across that complain about how much higher our prices are for computers relative to just going down to Best Buy or Office Depot and buying them off the shelf. It occurred to me to write an article to explain why this is the case as I suspect other computer resellers out there run into the same dilema. It’s not that our cost more, (in most cases we can be cheaper than a retailer), It’s that many people fail to remember all of the other factors that go into making a computer usable for production.

So, here goes:

When you buy that sub-$300 computer from your favorite store it generally comes with a Home Edition of whatever the current operating system is. The problem with this is that Home Edition Windows operating systems cannot connect to Windows domain servers (this is by design). You must have a business edition operating system to accomplish this, in the case of Vista those editions are Business, Enterprise or Ultimate (Enterprise is for larger companies under a Open Value license plan). So if you buy a PC with Home edition, you have to spend $100-$200 on purchasing the upgrade edition to take it from Home to a Business class edition operating system. You can probably do this yourself, but you might have an IT technician do it, which means an additional $100-$300 in labor.

Next: Almost everyone use Microsoft Office. These sub-$300 never come with Office (perhaps a 60 day trial, but that’s it). Office Basic (Word, Excel, & Outlook) will tack on an additional $100+ and the Small Business Edition (what most people use because it also has PowerPoint & Publisher) will tack on another $300. (Sadly, many businesses skirt this by installing the same Office licenses on every PC, which is obviously illegal).

Finally: A new monitor. this component is obviously optional if you are replacing an existing PC and simply want to use the existing monitor, but if you want a new system, the starting price is $150+.

Let’s summarize least and worst case scenarios:

Least Case: For example, replacing an old computer at your business

• Upgrade to Vista Home Premium to Vista Business +$100 (do installation yourself)
• Buy Office Basic $100
• No monitor, (you have a spare)
• Total: +$200

Worst Case: For example, adding a brand new computer that needs a full Office suite

• Upgrade to Vista Business +100
• Buy and install Office Small Business Ed. +$300
• Monitor +$150 (17′ LCD)
• Labor to install Vista Upgrade and Office software: +300
• TOTAL: +$550 w/o labor; +$850 w/labor

So a new PC, if purchased correctly, really costs more like $500 – $1000.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself. This is a Dell Inspiron that I created this morning. The Inspiron is their consumer class, absolute cheapest model (both in cost and quality).

In today’s wired, always-on world, poorly configured computers and the Internet can be a significant source of distraction to employees, to say nothing of it being a source of liability to businesses for a number of reasons.

Put Them On Notice

Every business needs to incorporate an acceptable end-user policy agreement into their employee handbooks. This policy should cover issues such as:

• Web Sites Allowed & Not Allowed to Be Visited While at Work
• Email Privacy & Acceptable Use
• Use of removable media such as flash drives and blank CDs & DVDs

You can download a sample template by clicking here: Carceron End User IT Policy Agreement

Watch Where They Go

Most firewalls, such as SonicWalls, have the ability to filter web content to the business network, thereby limiting which web sites users are allowed to visit. In the case of the SonicWall, the basic package comes with URL blocking (block specific web sites that you manually enter into the device) and keyword blocking (block web sites with specific keywords, such as “Viagara”). You’ll want to be careful with keyword blocking, especially in the medical profession, as certain sites that would be appropriate might be inadvertently blocked – for example, if you blocked the word “breast” you would also block all breast cancer awareness sites.

The more advanced version of SonicWall’s content filtering services operates much like anti-virus software. SonicWall provides the Advanced Content Filtering for an annual fee and for that fee they maintain a database of tens of thousands of suspect web sites that you can block by genre (e.g. hate groups, violence, nudity, sex, etc.). The annual fee ensures that you continue to get updates to this database, similar to an anti-virus software subscription.

Watch What They Do

For the extremely cautious or paranoid business owner, there is software that can be installed on computers to record “video” of all of the user’s actions. SpectorSoft is one such application. This will let you see everything that the user is doing on his or her PC during the day. Programs like SpectorSoft can email these videos on a daily basis or when a certain event transpires (logging onto FaceBook).

You’ll want to be more careful with this software in terms of privacy law. Consult with an attorney before implementing.

Customizing the Desktop for Maximum Productivity

An often under-utilized feature of the Windows Server operating system is Group Policy. This nifty feature allows network administrators to lock down desktops for the whole domain or only certain subgroups. Here are a few examples of the many things that you can do with Group Policy:

• Force “My Documents” Default Save Location
• Force standardized desktop wall paper (e.g. company logo)
• Remove Windows default games such as Solitaire
• Remove the “Run” options (especially good for security)
• Restrict color printer use
• Restrict use of macros on Office applications
• Deny access to the Control Panel or certain elements within the Control Panel, such as Network Settings
• Enforce password complexity (passwords must be x-number of digits long, etc.)
• Enforce password history (users cannot re-use the same password withing so many days of each other)

As an extreme example, one time we configured a client’s desktops to only run three line of business programs and nothing else. They had no Start button, no My Computer, no access to Control Panel or Network Settings, could not browse their drives… nothing. Needless to say, productivity soared!