This post contains five different scenarios a company might face when it comes to managing technology. In each scenario, we compare the one-man-shop’s reaction to the full-service technology firm’s.
Scenario 1: Break-fix vs. Proactive
An accounting firm’s staff is using old workstations that need to be replaced.
One-Man Shop: Steve, the managing partner for the firm, calls the same computer guy who ordered their existing workstations years ago. He hasn’t heard much from him since then. The computer guy sends over a quote for the new equipment and orders the new workstations. A few days later, he comes in to install them. For a few weeks, everything is working perfectly, but then Steve notices a dramatic increase in the number of viruses the staffers are getting. Steve calls the computer repair guy, who had not installed or recommended antivirus software or a firewall. The computer guy is up to his ears in work with other clients and won’t have time to address the issue for another week. Steve didn’t invest in a support contract with a technology consultant, because he wanted to save the firm money. However, the viruses infecting their workstations are costing the firm thousands of dollars in billable time every day.
Technology Consultant: Steve calls a technology consultant who sends an engineer and an account manager over to conduct a thorough assessment of their network. Afterwards, they make recommendations for equipment replacements, and also identify areas where Steve’s firm is at risk. Not only that, they work with Steve’s firm to find ways for his staff to work more efficiently. For example, they helped the firm move all of their paper files to a digital, searchable database that staffers can connect to from anywhere. The technology consultant identifies business problems and tries to solve them over time, rather than offering quick fixes to computer glitches at a bargain rate. What initially seemed like a large investment pays off in a few months, and it reflects on Steve’s P & L statement. His staff is billing an average of 30% more hours since partnering with the consultant.
Scenario 2: Transparency
Claudia is an associate at a 30-person law firm specializing in personal injury. The firm’s website is outdated, and she’s been charged with the task of getting a new website built.
One-Man-Shop: Claudia calls a local web designer to build the new website. He sends her a mockup and quotes a few hundred dollars for the new site. It’s up in no time, and Claudia barely had to lift a finger. However, one day she conducts a test search in Google to see if her firm comes up for personal injury lawyers in her small town. Her website is nowhere to be seen on the first page results, so she calls the web designer to ask if he can help. He tells Claudia that her website isn’t search engine optimized. She didn’t request SEO, so he didn’t provide it. He offers new pricing to optimize the site, but Claudia decides to partner with another SEO service. When Claudia tries to hire another consultant to help with the issue, the web designer is reluctant to give up information or control of the site to an outsider.
Technology Consultant: Claudia calls a technology consultant with an in-house web design and development team. They ask her about more than just color scheme and design, and try to nail down why the firm needs a new website and what they want to accomplish with it. The team involves Claudia in every step of the process, from the initial mockups to training, so that she can update and edit the website herself. At the end of the project, the firm has a beautiful new website that is optimized for search engines and mobile devices. When Claudia doesn’t have time to make changes herself, someone from the web team can do it for her, in a matter of minutes.
Scenario 3: Vendor Selection
Linda is the CFO of a property management company that needs to move all of their backups offsite. This data includes sensitive information about their tenants and employees.
One-Man-Shop: Linda calls her computer repair guy to come in and make recommendations for an offsite backup service. He finds a relatively cheap, easy-to-install solution and sets it up in the main office. A few months later, Linda is reading financial news and discovers that her offsite backup vendor is embroiled in legal controversy and has been accused of fraud. Linda is concerned that her data is not in good hands, and she asks her computer repair guy to replace the system with another solution, which doubles her company’s installation costs.
Technology Consultant: Linda calls on a technology consultant who carefully evaluates the backups that are currently in place. They recommend a secure offsite solution and install it. Behind the scenes, the consultant carefully analyzed several vendor options before making a selection. They chose the vendor that not only had the best service offerings and highest reviews, but one that was well-established, with strong financial backing and a promising future. The new backup system works very well, giving Linda peace of mind knowing her company’s sensitive information is out of harm’s way.
Scenario 4: Expertise
Fred’s company is hiring five new employees, who need email addresses, computers and smartphones setup.
One-Man-Shop: Fred’s computer repair guy can order the new computers, but he doesn’t have the expertise (or the desire) to help with the email accounts and the smartphones. Fred has to call two separate vendors to get the email accounts and smartphones set up. When a new employee stops receiving email on his smartphone, he has no idea who to call, so he asks Fred for help. Fred doesn’t know whether to call the cellular provider or the email hosting provider. He spends half the day on the phone trying to resolve the issue with both vendors.
Technology Consultant: Fred hires a technology consultant to handle the setup of the phones, email and computer equipment. The consultant’s engineers install everything and set it up to work together seamlessly. When the new employee’s email stops working, he calls the consultant and submits a support ticket. The problem is fixed within a couple of short hours, and all it took was one phone call. Fred was never interrupted.
Scenario 5: Knowledge Base
A manufacturing firm uses a specialized software program to manage inventory. One day, Pamela tries to enter new inventory, but a glitch in the program prevents her from doing so. She can’t move on to her next task until she enters this inventory.
One-Man-Shop (Internal IT): The firm has an internal IT staffer, but he’s really more of a hardware expert than a software expert. He spends almost an entire day trying to figure out the problem until he finally makes a breakthrough. All this time, Pamela’s work has come to a complete stop while the staffer is working on her problem.
Technology Consultant: Pamela submits a support ticket via email to the firm’s technology consultant. A dispatcher assigns the ticket to the engineer responsible for the account. The engineer is also more of a hardware expert than a software expert, but he works with several software engineers who help him resolve the issue within an hour. Pamela finishes entering inventory before lunch.
Takeaway
In most cases, the one-man-shop’s best selling point is that his services are cheaper. With the reliance businesses place on technology these days, do you really want to place some of your most valuable business assets in the hands of a provider because he’s the cheapest? Put your business in trusted hands with a reliable, proactive technology consulting firm.
A few weeks ago, we received a question from one of our Tech Tips readers: I need an app that allows me to work on both Word and Excel documents through Dropbox. Is there an app that you would recommend?
In our previous post, we recommended QuickOffice, but now there’s something better available. It’s even free!
CloudOn allows you to open your Dropbox files in Microsoft Office on your iPad. The difference between CloudOn and QuickOffice is that CloudOn opens your file in MS Office, rather than less feature-rich programs. When you use CloudOn, you can open files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint and enjoy all of the same features you have in the desktop version of those programs. For example, QuickOffice doesn’t have advanced features like Pivot Tables in Excel, or Tracking Changes in Word. However, if you can’t use Dropbox, or prefer to use another program like Google Docs or Evernote, QuickOffice is your best bet.
If you have an iPad, I strongly encourage you to download this app. You’ve got nothing to lose since it’s free!
Coming Up: Business Gone Mobile Lunch & Learn in Albany
Ryan Williams and Nexxtep are partnering with AlbanyCEO to host a lunch & learn at the Albany Hilton Garden Inn on Thursday, March 8th. The topic will be “Business Gone Mobile,” and Ryan will discuss tips, tools and apps that you can use to get the most out of your smartphones, iPads and other mobile devices.
Register online (free & includes lunch, but you must pre-register) at albanymobile.eventbrite.com.
Did you ever want to send a text message to a large group of people, without having to select contacts from your address book? With SendHub, you can! Sign up for an account at SendHub.com (it’s free to sign up and you can send up to 1,000 texts to 3 groups with up to 50 members). Your customers/clients/friends can then subscribe by texting a keyword (that you choose) to your account’s phone number.
Here are six examples of how you might use SendHub:
Professional:
1. An accountant can text clients to remind them about important tax deadlines.
2. A non-profit organization can notify donors about upcoming fundraisers.
3. A business owner or office administrator can text his staff about company announcements and upcoming meetings.
Personal:
1. A coach can notify players’ parents about upcoming practices and games.
2. A civic organization’s or church committee’s members can join one SendHub group and stay in touch via text message.
3. If you’re planning a party or event, invitees can RSVP by texting to your SendHub number. You’ll have everyone’s name and RSVP in one location, without having to write anything down.
These are just a few examples. There are thousands of ways you could use SendHub in your professional or personal life. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!
One of our tech tips readers asks:
“Can you change the color of the cursor in Windows without downloading some suspicious software to handle it?”
The answer: Absolutely!
Windows has an option in the Accessibility menu that allows you to change the color of your cursor. For Windows XP users, follow these instructions from eHow. For Windows 7 and Vista users, follow these instructions:
Author: Paul Nichols, CPA
Paul is the President and co-founder of Nexxtep Technology Services.
Customers have more control, choice, and information than ever. The companies most connected to their customers will win. Period.
Sage CRM sets itself apart as a fully integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. We all want to be as productive as possible to get the most out of our efforts. So despite what you may be using today, linking complementary systems such as your ERP and CRM solutions together creates new ways of prioritizing and escalating the items that matter most. Save time and earn a better return on your investments in sales, marketing, and customer service activities that most CRM systems can’t do alone.
Join us on February 8, 2012, at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m ET, for a 60-minute webcast and learn:
Whether you are currently using Sage CRM user or not, this webcast will teach you how you could save your organizations thousands of hours and dollars in the future. Don’t delay and sign up today!
Online video is a very hot topic in marketing this year. Why? Because it’s effective. Video is an easy, inexpensive way to show off your business, help your customers, and set you apart from your competitors. Online video will become a dominant marketing tool this year, and I strongly believe that any business can use video as a part of their marketing mix. In this post, I’m going to cover 5 ideas for video topics, 3 questions you should ask yourself before making your next video, and 3 tools you can use to get started.
If your smartphone was lost or stolen today, do you know how you would find it? If your answer is no, please keep reading.
As mobility increases, people are carrying around more and more important business information on their phones, laptops and tablets. If your phone is lost or stolen, that information could end up in the hands of the wrong people. Protect your information and your business by taking a few preventative measures:
1. Install and setup a tracking app on your phone.
If you’re an iPhone/iPad user, setup Find my iPhone using the easy instructions from Apple (make sure you have updated your phone or iPad to the 5.0 or higher OS). After setting up the app, you can log in to iCloud.com using your iTunes username and password. Then, you can track the location of your phone, play a sound and message, or wipe the device.
If you’re an Android user, check out this post which has several options for phone-tracking apps. We recommend an app like iHound which can also wipe your phone in the event it’s lost or stolen.
2. Use a passcode to lock your phone.
Setup a passcode for your phone to prevent someone from accessing your information before you realize your device has gone missing.
iPhone/iPad Users: Go to Settings, then General, then tap on Passcode lock. Tap “Turn Passcode On.” and enter your chosen passcode. Stay away from easy guesses like “1234″ or “5555.”
Android Users: You have the option to set a password, draw a pattern, or set a PIN number for your phone. Watch this instructional video to learn how.
3. Ask employees to follow steps 1 and 2.
If you supply employees with their smartphones or they use their own phones for business use, make sure they follow these instructions as well.
Photo source: twek.wordpress.com
This week, we received a question from one of our readers. Jessica in Virginia asks:
My office uses Microsoft office on Windows, and I have a desktop there. I need to purchase a new computer for home. I occasionally need to take Word and/or Excel files home to work on them. I would like to move to Apple at home, and I understand Microsoft Office for Mac is available. I haven’t been able to get a straight, thorough answer about whether files on Windows Office and Mac Office are directly compatible such that I can save a file at work and then open, edit and save the same file on an Apple.
Also, my boss said he heard that operating Office on the Mac opens you up to the Windows-related security issues that people use Macs to avoid. If you could address that point as well, it would be great.
Answer:
First, I’ll address the issue of compatibility. If you download Office on your Mac, you should be able to open documents from your work PC without any problems. This compatibility is verified on both Apple’s website and Microsoft’s.
Other Options:
If your employer permits, use Dropbox to easily access your files from work and home.
As for the security concerns with MS Office on Mac, Jessica’s boss is probably talking about macro viruses. A macro is a “series of commands and functions that are stored in a Microsoft Visual Basic module and can be run whenever you need to perform the task. For example, if you often enter long text strings in cells, you can create a macro to format those cells so that the text wraps.”You can tell if a file has macros by its extensions (for example, instead of a .docx file, it would be a .docm file). Hackers use macros to write viruses that can attack your computer and erase all the files. These viruses are embedded in an MS Office file and can be transferred when you open the file on your Mac. If you never use files with macros, then seeing the .docm file extension is a red flag that the file could be infected—don’t open it on your Mac until you verify that the file is supposed to have macros.
A security lapse like this is unlikely, and virtually impossible if you’re just working with your own files from your work PC. Also, Microsoft recently released a security update for MS Office for Mac to prevent security issues like this from happening at all. You would have to open an infected file on your Mac to be vulnerable at all, and as long as you have a good antivirus program in place on your work PC and Mac, files like this will be blocked completely.
Readers: do you have experience coordinating documents and spreadsheets on both PCs and Macs? If so, which programs do you use and how well do they work? Let us know in the comments.
Remote access tools allow you to connect to your PC or Mac from another computer or mobile device. You can access all of your files, programs and see your desktop as it appears on your actual PC.
We’ve written about remote access tools like GoToMyPC and LogMeIn before, but none have been offered for free on iPad and iPhone until now. LogMeIn now offers its iOS app for free in the app store. If you already have an account with LogMeIn, you can download the app here.
If you aren’t already using LogMeIn, you can get started in just a few short steps. Setting up an account is free and easy.
1. Go to LogMeIn.com and register for a free account.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to setup your computer for remote access.
3. Download the LogMeIn app on your iPhone or iPad. (There’s an Android version as well, but it costs $29.99)
4. Open the app, and login using your LogMeIn username and password.
5. Click on the mouse pointer icon next to your listed computer:
What’s on the horizon in 2012? I sat down with Richard Baker (Account Manager) and Ryan Williams (Partner & CTO) to get their predictions for the coming year.
Richard’s Predictions:
