Year: 2010

What use is technology?

One of the big things that businesses carry on about today is how quickly they can deliver. One of of the big things that courier companies carry on about is the fact that you can use a web site to track deliveries. Let me demonstrate how all of that is absolute bollocks when it comes to improving customer service.

 

I ordered something from a web site on the weekend and received an email on Sunday night saying that it would be shipped by courier. Now one would expect that something sent my overnight courier would in fact be overnight eh? Making  a big issue of online tracking of deliveries here’s the sequence of events according to the web site:

 

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Ok, so Monday night the package is in Melbourne. No problems, I’d therefore expect to see it Tuesday right?

 

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So this look promising doesn’t it? But hang on what’s this Undelivered (Nil attempt) stuff? I haven’t seen any delivery today, there’s no card to say someone called. What the hell?

 

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Here we are on Wednesday morning. It now appears that the delivery is actually going to happen doesn’t it given the stats reads On for Delivery (in Full)?

 

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Wednesday night rolls around and still no sign of the package. The web site again shows Undelivered (Nil Attempt – whatever that means) and the package is back in the depot!

 

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Now we’re at Thursday morning and joy of joy it has been sorted for delivery! Wasn’t that supposed to be done back on Tuesday night?

 

Bottom line, I’m still sitting here with no package, chewing up my valuable time because I have to sign for the stupid thing. In the meantime the packages that were sent to me via normal snail mail arrives Tuesday morning.

 

My point here is not to sound off (but I can do that also) but how did the track and track stuff on the web site help me to understand at all what the hell was happening with my package? In reality it caused me more frustration because it seemed to indicate that it was going to be delivered. In the end, if technology doesn’t help why use it?

Australian SharePoint Conference – Day 2

The day started with a session on using Visio 2010 to create SharePoint workflows. Very interesting I must say and something that I’m going to have to spend some time investigating more. However, the highlight of the day was probably the next presentation from Neil Hadlee of Dark Blue Duck on the integration of scanning technologies and SharePoint. As Neil says, paper is still here to say but you can certainly make it easier to manage with some of the technology he demonstrated.

Finally it was time for my presentation and it was disappointing to see a low turn out. Admittedly, I didn’t really expect many people to attend given the session was based around small business and SharePoint Foundation server (not the full SharePoint Server). However, I certainly hope that those who attended got value from the session. I’ve posted the slides of the presentation up at:

http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/running-sharepoint-on-small-business-server-pros-and-cons-100-level

where you can view and download them.

All in all I enjoyed the conference. I would have liked to have seen some stuff for SMB but I certainly understand why I didn’t. Hopefully as SharePoint and Office 2010 penetration increases and features like Office Web Apps and Office co-authoring increase there will be a bigger uptake at that end of the market. Hopefully there might be enough demand next year for me to offer a similar session. Fingers crossed.

Australian SharePoint Conference – Day 1

Well, I got myself along to the Hilton Hotel in the heart of Sydney to partake in the Australian SharePoint Conference. After the keynote the conference was divided into four tracks – Business, Tech 1, Tech 2 and Voice of the Customer. I attended at least one session from each but would have to highlight “Why you need to be more social” by Daniel McPherson.

It reinforced once again the importance of social networking and how many of these ideas have found their way into SharePoint 2010 Server (not SharePoint Foundation 2010 Server unfortunately). Daniel demonstrated a number of ways that you could modify SharePoint 2010 to include popular features from high profile networks such as www.foursquare.com. I am really disappointed that many of the inbuilt social features of SharePoint didn’t make it into SharePoint Foundation 2010 but I’m sure with a little thought something can be integrated.

So tomorrow I’m back again for the final Day on which I’m giving my Windows SharePoint and SBS presentation (just after lunch in Ballroom B if you are interested). I haven’t seen many SMB guys around but that is kinda of expected so I wonder how few people will turn up to a session on SMB? I will be very interested too see. I believe that much of the information I have to share has relevance across all SharePoint platforms, alas others may not see it that way.

I’ll post up the slide deck on http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia some time after the event so anyone can get access to it if they want. Stay tuned for another update tomorrow.

Growth vs efficiency

It seems to me that one of the biggest fallacies of modern business is the idea that you ‘have to grow’. Especially in the small business end of the spectrum, why is it that I always hear how critical (and yet difficult) it is to grow? Apparently growth magically solves everything! The bigger your business the more money you’ll make, the less time individually you’ll have to work and everything will just coast along once you get to a critical mass.

 

So the question then becomes what is that critical mass? At what point will you know that you’ve reached ‘easy street’? I’m sorry to say that in my experience not only is this a moving target but the chances of success actually decrease the bigger that your business becomes. Why? Because unless you have refined your systems beforehand you are simply building any growth on the weak structure you’ve had as a small operator. This is a recipe for disaster.

 

It would seem to me that a far more intelligent pursuit would be striving to become more efficient. In essence producing at least the same amount of output with less amount of input. When you are not able to become more efficient then, and only then, should you consider growth as an option. The problem is how many businesses do you know that are constantly looking at ways to improve their efficiency? Not many I’ll bet.

 

The smaller you are the leaner you need to be simply because you don’t have the resources. You should spend your time firstly determining what you do well. Then you should determine what you don’t do well and either outsource it or stop doing it. Sometimes it is hard to stop doing something you shouldn’t because you truly enjoy it, however if you are running a business and not a hobby then the choice is straight forward.

 

Formula 1 cars don’t achieve the speed and performance they do by adding more, they become more and more efficient. The teams invest vast amounts of time and energy looking to squeeze the tiniest improvement in performance but it is exactly this that makes the difference between outright first and the first of the losers (i.e. second). Formula 1 is a business and those who don’t perform end up on the scrap heap.

 

Ask yourself whether you are a Formula 1 car or simply a lorry trundling along with stuff overflowing the sides. Efficiency is all about doing more with less which is difficult in a consumer world where the emphasis is always to ‘buy more stuff’. That however is the reason why not everyone goes Formula 1 racing, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.

 

So set aside some time to do some planning on how to become more efficient. Work out where you are spending your time. Look at ways to automate and outsource. Efficiency requires constant work and fine tuning but in the end is far cheaper, faster and easier to implement than any growth strategy. Just because people ‘say’ you need to grow doesn’t necessarily make it the correct strategy. Being efficient will always yield results where growth may not. To a business person the choice between the two seems obvious to me.

Are you addicted?

A recent article in the New York Times made me wonder whether in fact it is possible to be addicted to technology. The article is well worth the read and it harps back to what I have said many times about how multitasking is a myth. Is the real issue here that people have become ‘addicted’ to technology?

Addiction actually turns out to be something rather hard to define specifically. Everybody ‘knows’ what addiction is but few can actually satisfactorily define. I like this definition from Robert West (Theory of Addiction) –

‘syndrome at the centre of which is impaired control over behaviours, and this loss of control is leading to significant harm’

Unfortunately this definition also requires us to define what may constitute ‘harm’. For this case let’s consider that we have no more precious resource than time, for once it passes it is gone forever. Thus, let us consider harm as being anything that reduces the time we have.

Let me now ask you, when was the last time you totally unplugged from technology? When did you simply turn everything off for a day or two? Most people probably shudder at the mere thought but doesn’t being unable to do so indicate a loss of control? Doesn’t it indicate an impaired control over your behaviour? In short, doesn’t that indicate addiction?

Sure, there are plenty of great things that technology provides however as I have said before, your greatest strength can also be your greatest weakness. The secret is control which when it comes to technology we seem to have less and less of. The distraction virus is a growing problem facing individuals unable to control their dependence on technology. You know these people, there the ‘gunnas’ (i.e. going to do this, going to do that) or those who are always ‘so busy’ when in reality they are living in denial because it is all just an excuse.

This lack of control is causing us to focus on the wrong priorities, it is making us overlook the important, resulting in wasted time. Thus it is causing us harm. Therefore many are addicted but sadly many probably do not even realize it.

At the end of the day it is all about results. Most people don’t care how you get the result they simply care that you get the result. Technology can certainly be used to get results faster and more efficiently but likewise it can also lead us down the path of distraction and even perhaps to addiction. As the article in the New York Times talks about, an obsession with gadgets and technology could be altering your behaviour and if you can no longer control that behaviour then it sounds to me like you may be addicted. If you don’t believe me see how long you can go without checking email.

Microsoft SMB Team down under

Thanks to a boat load of hard work from some SBS-MVP’s here in Australia the Microsoft SMB team is heading to our shores to speak with partners. An added bonus is will also be the attendance of Jeff Middleton of ‘swing’ and Sbsmigration.com fame.

 

All the details about the events, including registration can be found here. If you not only want to hear about the future of the SBS progress but also provide feedback directly to the team that makes SBS then I’d recommend you come along. I will also be a great opportunity to meet with your fellow SBS’ers.

Office Web Apps video

I’ve just uploaded a quick video that give you a brief overview of Office Web Apps running on SharePoint 2010.

Brief introduction to Microsoft Office Web Apps – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XA7bqdTxGo

 

The video demonstrates how a Word document can be viewed and edited in a browser as well as opened in the full version of Word. Short and simply but at least you get the idea.

 

I’ll have a few more videos about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 stuff coming soon, so stay tuned.

Backup or be devastated

Here’s a copy of an article I wrote that appears in an e-zine from MyMate (on page 13) which can be found at:

 

http://www.wanttobebigger.com/MyMate-e-zine-June-2010.html

 

In the world of technology your last line of defence is the humble back
up, yet many businesses, especially small ones, remain extremely
caviller about this critical function of a business.

Nearly every business these days depends on IT. So what happens
when IT isn’t available? You have probably experienced a mild disaster
such as the internet being unavailable or a hard disk failing. The
question is, how long did that issue interrupt your business and how
much money did it cost you?

Now imagine a much bigger disaster, say your office being burnt down
or flooded. How long would it take you to get up and running again?
Most small businesses have never invested the time to consider their
disaster recovery planning – and they should – because without it there
is good chance they’ll go out of business after even a minor problem.

Let’s examine one simple aspect of disaster planning, backups. Most
businesses would probably say that they do backups, the problem is that
is only half of the solution. When was the last time that you actually
tested that your backups worked? You certainly don’t want to find out
that your backups don’t work after a disaster. So it is important that you
regularly test that you can restore from your backups. You should also
plan on doing a complete restore of all your data somewhere every 6-12
months to make sure you can get it all back.

Next consider how you would cope in a real disaster like a fire. What
plans do you have in place to keep your business operational? How long
will it take you to get up and going? How are you going to cope having to
get new IT resources like workstations, servers and printers? It really is
much better to plan for these eventualities ahead of time rather than
trying to have to manage them on top of everything else in the event of a
disaster.

Hopefully you will never have to implement your IT disaster plan but it is
important that you not only have one but that you practice its
implementation. This means that at least once a year you should
simulate an IT disaster and see how well your plan works and what may
need adjusting.

Too many businesses see their IT as simply an overhead. They fail to
realise that it is one of the most vulnerable parts of your business –
without which, you may be unable to operate.

If you value your data then you should value your backup and disaster
recovery plan, as they are going to save you. It is no good trying to
develop these in the middle of a disaster. They need to be planned,
implemented and tested beforehand, because as they say failing
to plan only means you’re planning to fail.