Recertify

So Microsoft has made some changes to the Small Business Specialist requirements, including the need to recertify. Here’s the details from https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/40021563

Small Business Specialist partners must employ or contract with at least one person by location who has passed one of the five technical exams in the following list.

70-653: TS: Windows Small Business Server 2008, Configuring

70-654: TS: Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Configuring

70-631: TS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Configuring

70-236 TS: Exchange Server 2007, Configuring

70-655 TS: Windows Vista and Server operating systems, Pre-Installing for OEMs

Note: If you passed either Exam 70-282: Designing, Deploying, and Managing a Network Solution for Small- and Medium-Sized Business or Exam 74-134: Preinstalling Microsoft Products and Technologies to receive your Small Business Specialist designation, your exam credentials must be updated by October 31, 2010.

If you are already a Small Business Specialist then you have plenty of time to recertify but if I were you I go out and do it as soon as you can. Why? because it will provide a definite point of differentiation for your business. And when you have recertified in SBS 2008 make sure that emphasize that fact in all your marketing. Make sure they understand that you have taken the trouble to recertify and that they should have confidence in the fact that you are keeping up to date.

If it were me

The government here in Australia has recently announced:

“Small business gets a $2.7 billion package of tax breaks that includes an extra $600 tax deduction for any small business that buys and installs a $2000 computer before the end of June.” – SMH

Now if I was in the business of selling computers I would look at combining this with some internal offering. Thus, I would say something like “Did you realize that the government now provides an extra deduction for computer purchases before June? Did you also realize that we’ll also give you a free printer as well?”. Or even perhaps something along the lines of “The government if offering a $600 saving on computers to help the country avoid recession. We’ll give you a free copy of Office as our part in helping to boost the economy”.

I use these as examples, obviously you’ll have to work out the numbers for yourself but I think there is opportunity to piggy back off what the government is attempting to do with your own offering. It should appeal to customers in two ways. Most importantly, it should represent some saving or benefit to them. Secondly, it should show that you are trying to do your bit for the local economy as well. Thus, customers should buy from you and support your business.

Hopefully this illustrates that developing marketing concepts for your business isn’t that difficult no matter what the economic conditions. All it takes is a little creativity and the ability to look at the situation from the customers point of view. In this case the key is tying an offer to something the mainstream media is focused on and then going that little bit further so you stand out. You have to offer something extra to get people to buy from YOU and not the competition!

Participation

I look at politicians all over the World as they struggle to use the ‘R’ word (which is recession). Everyone else knows we are in a recession and maybe even headed for the ‘D’ word (which is depression). Another group of people that I’ve watching with interest are those who claim, they ‘are not participating in the recession’.

I think that is a very noble sentiment but it isn’t realistic. Why? Well if everyone else around you, your customers, peers, suppliers and so on are in the middle of a recession how can you choose not to participate? Unfortunately, in this day and age everything is so intertwined that we depend on those around us heavily. When they sneeze we catch cold.

A wise person once said that a smart person can’t control their situation only their reaction to it. Face it, we are in a recession. Face it, we are going to see reduced cashflow. Face it, times are going to be tough. Don’t try and fight something that you can’t change, look at your reaction to the situation facing you.

What steps have you taken to solidify your business? What actions have you taken to reassure your customers that you’ll continue to be there to help? What actions are you taking to grow your business? Hang on there. Did I say GROW?

Well, yes in fact I did. Again, the key again is how you react to the situation. What we are going through now will not last for ever. However, we may never see opportunities like these again. Consider the opportunities to purchase assets at historically low levels. Look at the opportunity to repay debt at the lowest interest rates seen. Look at the opportunity presented to you because your competitors are wobbling or falling.

Participation in the recession is mandatory. Once you understand and accept that you then need to consider how to use the recession to your advantage. I never said that it would be as easy as it was in the good times but there is still opportunity there for those who are prepared.

Tell me, where do you stand? Do you have your eyes closed hoping all this mess will disappear? Or do you have your eyes wide open, searching for every opportunity? The choice is yours. The grounds rules have changed. Participate or die.

Do email less

I thought that I’d let everyone know that I’ve registered the domain www.doemailless.com as a method of focusing attention on our productivity improvement training. The domain points to our normal email productivity page that includes the free document The problems with emails document as well as links to our Overcoming email frustrations books for Outlook 2003 and 2007. Finally, you’ll also find a brochure on our productivity seminars.

Our productivity seminars can be customized to suit any business environment and include your own internal policies and procedures. However, the main message still remains that most businesses are losing at least 1 hour per day, per employee to inefficient email use. When you start adding up the cost to business we believe our seminars more than pay for themselves.

Email is not the only part of the smarter productivity services we can offer. We can show you how to streamline your existing business practices, integrate low cost technologies such as OneNote and SharePoint to really save money and get things done. We even offer higher level training and mentoring to ensure that the critical components of your business are working most effectively.

For more information about our services simply contact me via director@ciaops.com.

Money for nothing

In these times of economic ‘non-spending’ many resellers are glad they have implemented managed services. This basically means they charge clients a monthly fee that covers some form of service. The idea is that over the longer period the amount charged is less than the cost so a tidy profit is made. However, in uncertain economic times like these managed services provides much needed regular cashflow for IT resellers because clients are no longer making large infrastructure purchases or calling up to have things repaired. In most cases they are going longer before making a call that costs them money.

Now managed service resellers might be sitting back thinking they are pretty in pink but I wouldn’t get too cocky yet. I foresee two issues that will even affect you. Firstly, as business tightens up clients are going to be looking at every outgoing and asking whether it is justified. If they are ‘paying’ for IT support and they don’t feel or see they are getting the value for that they’ll look at cancelling it or at the least bumping it down a level to save money. Secondly, it is all well and good to extract cashflow from existing managed services clients but I think most will struggle when attempting to sell that offer to prospects. So, as I see it, you will get cashflow from your existing managed services clients but that is going to be under pressure as the client’s cashflow comes under pressure.

Now there is a caveat here. If you are ‘sitting back’ and simply expecting your managed services cashflow to keep rolling in then don’t complain when it starts to wane. Now’s the time that you need to be telling all your customers and prospects exactly what the benefits they receive as part of their managed service ‘investment’. You need to illustrate how much benefit they do receive (real and imaginary) for their dollar. You need to worker harder to demonstrate that by going with managed services from you they are actually SAVING MONEY!

That’s the trick to maintaining, and maybe even improving your managed services income. You need to elucidate exactly what the benefits are FOR THE CUSTOMER. Even though you may not believe they are a benefit they still maybe to the customer so make sure you tell them.

A managed services approach in IT certainly provides resellers with a big advantage in times like these but don’t simply sit on you butt thinking that the cash is going to keep rolling it. If the customer doesn’t think (note – it’s from the customers perspective not yours) they receive value from what they pay, then they are certainly going to start questioning whether continuing to pay is such a good idea. Get off your butt and remove the doubt from their mind because all revenue these days requires work.

Big bad SharePoint

Interesting article about how people (especially IBM) are scrambling to bridge the SharePoint divide. In part, the article says:

“Big Blue is clearly worried about the broad proliferation of SharePoint sites. They are cropping up in companies and departments everywhere. With the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) so easy to turn on, and departments needing a simple to use, cheap place to store documents and collaborate on work, it’s no wonder they skip WebSphere to get their jobs done. So IBM, not wanting to get kicked completely to the curb needs an integration story for all these SharePoint data stores.”

In these poor economic times even large businesses can see that free Windows SharePoint Services can make them far more productive. The article also goes on to say:

“But it doesn’t look like IBM is the only big boy scared of the SharePoint craze. It seems the Open Source community may also be a little concerned about loosing market share to the mighty marketing machine that is Microsoft.”

So it would seem that SharePoint has them all running scared. Why? Because it is such a great tool. Because it is a platform on which on-going development is happening. As more and more people get on board with SharePoint the whole ecosystem around the product grows. Sure, Microsoft probably makes lots of money from SharePoint Office Server (MOSS) but Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is free. It is even an integrated part of SBS 2008. So why do so few small businesses use it?

I think simply because no one has ever shown them what SharePoint is. If there was ever an opportunity in this market, then here it is. SharePoint is a quick and easy way to provide real time saving solutions for clients. It is a great way to help save them money by doing things better.

So what’s the first step? If you aren’t familiar with SharePoint then start using it, see my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide as a way to get skilled up quickly, visit my SharePoint site http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au for free document downloads, go out and buy some books and read, but mainly start using it so you can sell it. Why? The opposition is running scared when it comes to SharePoint and that sounds pretty encouraging to me.

GTD with Twitter

Now I’m still not convinced about the business value of Twitter. It know it is big the US but not so much here in the land of Oz. Aside from my scepticism I’m keeping my toe in the Twitter water just to see what develops and to understand the technology better.

As you can see I don’t have a lot of followers or follow a lot of people. As I said I am still very sceptical of this a business tool for helping get things done (that’s what GTD is short for by the way). That was until I came across the following blog post How to get things done with Twitter.

Here you’ll find some great suggestions on how to use Twitter as a reminder service and to link it with your Google calendar amongst other things. Handy.

I’m still not convinced but via some of the suggestions in this post I am beginning to see that maybe used correctly there can be business benefits. However, it does rely on you building a fairly extensive network of contacts and then keeping up to date with them. Is that amount of work worth the potential payoff? I’m still deciding.

MSRT

When you do a Microsoft Update every month (I hope you do!) then you’ll find that one of the items listed is the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT for short) update. Now for months I’ve simply applied the update as a normal part of the process not even caring what it does.

So I did some research and found that Microsoft actually have a site dedicated to telling you what the MRST is all about. You’ll find it at:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

and as the site says

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks computers running Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 for infections by specific, prevalent malicious software—including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom—and helps remove any infection found. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed.

Now, it is updated monthly to include checking for all the newest nasties. I’m not quite sure how it exactly works but it sits in the background monitoring for rogue software. If it detects any you are informed at the next login. It is my understanding that the tool actually does a scan once a month when it is updated. More technical information on the tool can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=890830

You always gotta wonder what something like this is doing sight unseen in your machine. Is it running? Is it doing anything? Well, as it turns out you can run the tool from the command line. Simply press the Start button, select the Run command from the menu and type MRT and press enter. After a few welcome screens you are able to select from a number of scan options.

Select the scan desired and press Next.

When it’s all done you should hopefully see

Now the tool doesn’t replace anti virus/anti spyware software but it is worth ensuring that you update your system every month via Microsoft Update to ensure you get this handy free utility.