Brandon Darling

While trying to explain the role of IT consultants to a client, I came up with this analogy:

The relationship of business and Information Technology is like an orchestra: there are three major components: players, instruments, and sheet music.

The players (or musicians) represent the employees of a company (users).  The instruments represent hardware (computers, printers, fax machines).  The sheet music represents software (Word, Excel, Quickbooks).

Put a bunch of musicians in a room with instruments and sheet music and you might get something that sounds okay - you may also get something horrid.  Or you may wind up with something inspired but disorganized, like jazz.

The word orchestra is defined as “a group of players that accompanies action.”  If you want your employees to be able to use technology to take *action* then you need the final, and required, component of an orchestra - the conductor.

A conductor is an interesting person.  While the real performance is going on, that is, while the orchestra is performing for an audience, he is simply flaying his arms like a madman.

In some sense, a consultant does the same thing.  While the business is humming along getting things done, it appears to any casual observer that the consultant is doing little or nothing.

If you watch an orchestra, or any performance, what you *don’t* see is all the “behind the scenes” work - rehearsals, research, practice, and study.

The consultant spends countless unseen hours training, refining, practicing, solving problems, and truly *learning* their craft.  A consultant can come into your business and reduce your problem to a paragraph or a sentence - maybe a single word.

You - as a business owner - think that your business is more complicated.  You think you’re unlike anyone else, and that unless someone has spent the blood, sweat, and tears that you have building your business, no one can understand you.

Get over yourself.

You’re too close to your own business to know what’s good for you.  Someone can summarize your problems, process, or your years of experience in a flash.  Your business is not unique.

Getting back to the orchestra - if you want your business to run well, if you want freedom from problems and “poor performance,” you need a good conductor.

While you might think that your business/technology consultant is wildly flayling his arms like a conductor, realize that he has spent thousands of hours rehearsing and studying.  He’s trying to get your people, your hardware, and your software to make music for your business.  And he can do it better than you can.

As a business owner/manager, your are a spectator of the great orchestra of business.  You pay the bucks to support the orchestra, and you reap the pleasures of hearing great music.  You do not, however, possess the skills of the conductor.  To you, he gets in the way of the music (only visually) but without the conductor you would have no music - only chaos.

www.opendns.com

If you’re looking for a dead-simple, free content filtering solution, Open DNS is for you.  Go there and sign up for a free account.

Open DNS works be replacing (or augmenting) your DNS servers.  For individual workstations, you simply point your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

If you have a router or multiple computers on your network, login to your router and set the DNS servers for the local LAN to the IP addresses listed above.

If you have Active Directory or a network domain - DO NOT replace DNS entries on your workstations or servers!!!

I say this again: Active Directory domains REQUIRE that all servers and workstations use the Internal DNS provided by Active Directory.

To use OpenDNS with Active Directory, go in to the DNS administration settings on your Domain Controllers, and setup forwards to the OpenDNS servers: 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220.

On the OpenDNS website, you can filter groups of content: violence, sex, social networking, job sites, etc.  Once this is setup, you’ll have a nice dashboard to monitor your DNS usage and you won’t have to deal with trash on your network.  You can also block known phishing sites with a single click!

If you use OpenDNS, drop a line on the blog here.  I would like to gather feedback from other users.

Check out www.serverfiles.com - a good list of software that we IT pros need to survive!  Updated regularly, too!

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies will blindly trust most computer vendors.

Big computer service companies are big.  By definition, they are averse to change, they are slow to adapt, and they are generally driven by politics and bureaucracy. They will not provide most businesses with highly flexible, insightful, and dynamic value.  In other words, they help maintain the status quo.

Big computer service companies have departments: sales, service, and accounting.  Management sits on top.  Call sales anything you want: customer relations, client advocacy, account management.  It’s all sales.  Sales people at computer companies know little or nothing about technology.  Most of them were selling insurance about six months ago and will be selling cars or going back to school in another six months.

Sales people have one job - to sell things.  They are adept at manipulation.  They will take an interest in you and your company.  They will pander to your fears and your demands and they will dutifully regurgitate everything you say, to both make you feel important and make you think that what they’re proposing is really your idea.

And you - YOU Mr./Ms. manager - fall for it every time.

Every. Single. Time.

Once you bite that hook, the sales person disappears. Sure you have their direct line and their email.  You have problems you say? “I’ll route you right over to support,” they say.  They don’t understand what they sold you, let alone how it works and even less, how to fix it.

All that stuff is not their job.  Their job is to sell you things.  If you need help, that’s when you get to experience the other department at most computer service companies: support.

Now here’s pain and torture if I ever saw it.  This is a room full of guys in their late twenties to mid thirties.  They’re moderately educated but socially, they’re adolescents - or maybe prepubescent teenagers.  They probably have major problems with authority and they certainly despise you and your company.  After all, THEY compiled their own kernel for their home LINUX machine and anyone who can’t do that shouldn’t be using a computer…

These folks are the same batch of numbskulls that you’ll have the joy of hiring if you think hiring in-house IT staff is in your future.  Good luck with that.

So, you have a slick-sales-droid pumping your company full of technology you don’t need (or isn’t adequate) for which you have the pleasure of paying a 40% margin so Scott-the-service-tech can come onsite and be condescending to you while he frowns and gripes at your newly purchased equipment at the rate of $200 per hour - including the time it took Scott to reach your office (and his stop-off to Fantasy Games & Hobby along the way).

Once you decide you’re not paying because the problem reoccurred just as Scotty was walking out the door, you get to deal with the former bail bondsman that is the accounting department.  Here’s a guy that will use the words “legal action” in his second sentence.  He, too, doesn’t understand a thing about technology, your company, or your problem.  He too has one job: get your money.

Been down this road to hell?  Of course you have.  You thought that your choice to go with Professional Networking and Technology Solutions Professionals was a good one.  They showed you lots of pie charts and bar graphs in the presentation.  The brought lots of paper.  They brought eight people in for that $20,000 proposal.  They wore nice suits.  And that account manager, boy was she ever sexy!  This HAS to be legit.

Here’s how your $20,000 breaks down:

$1,000 - actual cost of labor/taxes/insurance
$2,000 - software
$4,000 - parts/equipment
$8,000 - commissions

the remaining $5,000 is the “agency overhead,” or profit.  Management runs a tidy operation at about 25% gross margin.  That’s a good take.

You on the other hand got $7,000 worth of value.  That’s paying a 185% premium to work with that technology company.

Again, you might like your technology company.  They make you feel good.  How’s that 185% premium feel, though?

And remember - they are *trained* to make you feel good.  Remember, you are in business.  You work relationships.  You make your customers feel good.  And you get sold by technology people all the time.

Just because you *think* you’re getting good service and have the right technology, configured the right way, working the right way for you - doesn’t mean you actually are.

The fix?  Get a technology company - not a sales company.

We don’t want to be your friends - just your experts.

www.orbistechnology.com

Google provides great email service via gmail. However, they also provide a whole bevy of services for small and large businesses, alike. Check out Google Apps:

Google Apps provides email, shared calendaring, shared contacts, and an online document workspace where you can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations - all compatible with Microsoft Office. The best part is that all of this is available with a web browser - no client software is necessary.

For larger enterprises, Google Apps provides email filtering, spam blocking, and archive retention for compliance purposes at very reasonable rates.

I’ve read my share of business and management books.  I’ve also sat across the table with hundreds of business owners.  The books provide great theory, the experience talking with business owners, great insight.

Business owners have this thought that, somehow they will become successful, and then they will do great things.

My clients consistently balk at our proposals to use technology tools to increase profits.  We can do that by lowering costs, creating more sales, or by making more efficient processes.

The response is always, “Oh we’ll worry about that later, right now we just need to focus on making money.”

Hmm.  Cart before the horse, I see.

My answer is this: your business will only be successful when you are doing successful things.

Being organized, diligent, and informed come first - they are not a byproduct of being successful.  Success is rewarded to those willing to pay their dues and be organized and informed, so they can be diligent in their pursuit of success.

Look at any organization that’s truly profitable and growing.  They have invested in the tools and training that their people need.  They are not necessarily on the forefront of technology, but their people have the tools which exist today in order to be more effective, more often.

Wildly successful companies are also that way because they realize their greatest asset is information - and they give as many people as much information as they can and allow those people to share information.  Organically, teams of people grow and begin to manipulate and create a new paradigm from that information.  Something now exists where nothing existed before.

So, hate technology all you want.  Realize that’s wasted energy and that you need to get the tools required to be successful.  Technology = tools and you’d best get them, and learn to use them, in a hurry.  Your competition likely already has them.

The Midwest lags the development of new business and technologies on the coasts by at least three years - sometimes as many as 10.  As such, there are many long-established Midwest companies that are big, complacent, and slow to act.

The upside to all this is that the Midwest is prime territory for new entrepreneurs.  But not in the high tech arenas: the Midwest won’t support the high tech infrastructure or culture that the coasts nurture.

No, in the Midwest the opportunity is this: find any successful company in any industry, clone their business model, and make fewer mistakes than they do.

Business doesn’t require creativity, genius, or a lot of money.  All you have to do is find what someone else is doing well, and do that very same thing - just without all their mistakes.

Taking away mistakes is easy.  Use technologies to automate redundant processes, keep the number of workers low from the beginning, create a culture where successful people make more money and those who don’t move up are simply fired.

Long-established manufacturing, banking, financial, insurance, and service companies are in for a big surprise.  You’ll be taken over by your competition who has half the work force and performs twice as well.  The reason?  They’re not better than you, smarter than you, or even more creative.

They simply make fewer mistakes than you do.

I was in a client’s office last week.  This gentleman has been a local community pillar, and has served as president of a large, local bank for decades.

On his desk sits a computer.  The screen, full of yellow and pink post-it notes.

When I asked him why he doesn’t use his computer, he responded “Oh, I don’t trust computers.”

He said it with pride - as if it made him more successful and more focused as a leader to be without a computer.  After all, Warren Buffet doesn’t use a computer.  Therefore, if I don’t use my computer, I am Warren Buffet.

Puke.

The big problem with this situation is this: as a bank president, his ENTIRE BUSINESS has depended on computer technology since the late 1970’s.  His bank, today, provides online banking, online bill pay, and his bank has a website full of online information about different financial products.

His confession of mistrust of technology should make me question the trustworthiness of his entire institution.  Ask THAT question and you’ll see a deer in headlights.

Somewhere, among the old, crusty, stuffy businessmen, being anti-technology is a sign of strength.  By sheer will, these men think they ensconce themselves in a world set apart; they drive their expensive (or modest) cars and dictate letters over their cell phones as if the rest of the world is too distracted to achieve their level of success.

Fundamentally, a distrust of the computer on your desk is fear of your own ignorance.  Our entire modern lives are completely dependent on the successful operation of hundreds of thousands of computers: from what’s on our desk, to what’s in our car, to what’s in our doctor’s office, to how we communicate via land line, cell phone, or even what we watch on TV.

Even that newspaper you read every morning would not be there - and be “trustworthy” - without computers.

Old dogs didn’t grow up with technology.  Admitting ignorance and asking for help, is, apparently, the worlds most shameful crime, punishable by exile from the elite group of techno-phobes that still think they matter.

The fact is this: success comes from adaptation and learning. Status Quo mediocrity gets you tired, poor, and old.

If you can’t learn something new, it’s a sign you no longer have the patience or the will power to be truly effective.  You’ve plateaued.  You’ve reached your summit.  Now get the hell out of the way!

Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Cisco are running circles around your business.  They not only understand technology, but they understand how to apply technology.  Now, you’ll never understand technology completely - but that’s not the point.  Puffing up your ego by stating that you don’t “trust” an inanimate object and in doing so are wiser for it, reveals to us “young bucks” that you’re in the headlights and ready to be run over.

I’ve worked on over a thousand individual IT projects.  Some have been small, others have involved international VPN systems with QOS for VoIP, and the relocation of an entire production datacenter with over 100 servers.

In all these projects, the smaller ones are more prone to failure and delays.  One would think that smaller, less complicated projects would be easier.  Here’s a brief analysis of why that’s not the case.  If you’re a business owner, read this very carefully.

Projects that have a total budget of under $10,000 I classify as “microprojects.”  At most, there should only be TWO people on these projects.  Of those two people, one has to be the decision maker - and the decision maker is the person who can spend money.  Any more people and these projects will cost more in wasted meetings and miscommuncation than they will ever bring in value to the company.  If you can’t afford to spend $10,000 with no more than a one-hour planning meeting then you need to focus on making more money.

Projects that spend more than $10,000 but less than $100,000 are small projects.  They typically involve less than six systems and are easily completed in under one week’s time.  These projects comprise the bulk of IT consulting work and they’re the MOST prone to failure.

Projects of this magnitude generally involve management and have more than one stakeholder - it is generally an entire department or possibly two departments.  The project involves phases, a multi-week project schedule, and generally is undertaken to realize some concrete gain, or return on investment.

Despite these critical factors, rarely is the requisite planning done in order to ensure success.  From a technical stand point, projects of this magnitude can be engineered in under a month - usually in one week.  The failure is almost always on the part of management to engage the pre-planning process.

To management, $10,000 on a line-item represents their quarterly bonus.  Subsequently, management engages “micro” projects in an attempt to make themselves usefull(less) by shaving that magic $100 from some significant (but misunderstood) line-item.

However, a $100,000 project is usually what small businesses spend on such trivial things as petty cash, professional service fees, or energy and transportation costs.  To management, $100,000 for a project is something they see every day.  As such, they don’t think about that project as much, and mentally disengage from the pre-planning process.

Having done this, management won’t respond thoughtfully to questions like “How long can these services be down?”, “Which departments or ongoing client projects require these services during the proposed transition?”, “If we have to modify the schedule, what are the high priority services and how do you define high priority?”

Management is *always* going to be taken by surprise on small IT projects - not because they’re complex, but because management won’t make decisions about the project because the cost seems small in the grand scheme of the business.  However, management will take a very, VERY keen interest when the accounting server goes down during the weekend upgrade and it won’t come back up - or when half the sales people stand to lose their last 3 years of email history.

At that point, management can do little or nothing.  So the point here?  Get involved on the front-end, during pre-planning.  Yes, plough through the technobabble.  LISTEN to your people.  LISTEN to your consultants.  Spit back what they say as you heard it until you get what they’re saying.

If you, as a business manager, won’t be engaged during pre-planning, then you forfeit your right to stand over the shoulders of your IT people shouting “JUST GET IT FIXED!”

I’ll cut right to the chase: there is an open source (FREE!) utility for remotely administering workstations.  From the company website:

SofTulz.net is excited to present Purgos Version 2.6, the latest Open Source solution for desktop management. Purgos gives its users complete administrative control over large numbers of computers from a single, easy to use console. Utilizing WMI for computer administration, it has the ability to instantly manage hundreds of NT workstations (Windows 2K3, 2K, XP) and server class operating systems, virtually eliminating the amount of IT work needed to meet the high demands of a thriving business.

Purgos offers a complete solution by providing the ability to:

distribute a clean operating system to any number of computers keep all computers up-to-date with security patches and virus updates instantly install and manage software applications to any number of computers collect and manipulate real time hardware, software, and system information track the inventory of computers within a network and provide an ownership mechanism schedule or instantly run detailed reports on a wide range of computer information and configurations remotely control a computer as if physically in front of the computer execute commands, processes, and batch files on any number of computers manage a network of computers both locally or from remote locations

Read more about this product here, or just get it here.

If you use this utility, please DONATE!!!  Even $20 will help the cause for this great utility!!!