Posted: August 27th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, IT Support, small business | No Comments »
Today is shaping up to be a good end to a good week, not great but then not bad
either. It has been a week of working with clients and working on my own business, which has been nice for a change. This afternoon find me setting up virtualization for a client, not just for the sake of it either. When I first started working with this client both of their servers were almost 5 years old, which as we all know starts to become 'shaky ground'. The first plan was to replace these and after almost a year we had the budget and both servers had new hardware ordered.
When they arrived the first to be commissioned was the file & print server as this was a straight forward migration to Windows 2008 from Windows 2003. This went fairly smooth, and apart from printers, it didn't really cause us any hassle. The other server run's the clients line of business (LOB) application which was not compatible with Windows 2008, but as the client planned to upgrade we went ahead and ordered the new server anyway. Various meetings took place with the LOB support company and the client did not progress this despite making it clear that we *really* needed to do this as by now the hardware it was on was almost 7 years old. Before we completed this the business was sold, and while our services have been retained, this LOB application is still on the old server.
Now it was time to push, so I explained that we had to move this project forward and given that the LOB upgrade was not on the short term plan the best route was to virtualize the current server onto the new one using Hyper-V so that it is then on new hardware.
So this is where I find myself now and we are moving along great. The whole process has been made simple with the use of Paragon Drive Backup Server Edition, which the client already had, as it has a P2V Copy tool. Without this it would not have been so straight forward. So I will continue to 'sup' tea and eat my biscuits while we continue.
- Rob
Posted: August 24th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, small business | 2 Comments »
Over this last week I have been speaking a lot with a good friend of mine. He is currently setting up the UK office for a German company who provide encryption solutions for businesses. Now, he has come from an 'employed' background which means that there has always been a 'man' for every job that needs to be done in the business. There's a marketing team full of creative luvvies just waiting to come up with some great one-liners and hair brain adverts just like the Cadbury's one's. There has been a group of techies huddled up in a dark corner just waiting for a new problem so they can get their 'geek on'. Then there's the small group of people in the accounts office that love 'figures' in the way that only an accountant can and chase payments like a dog chases a bone. Of course there has been the MD sitting in his large office, lording it up over the business making sure that everyone is working hard. Somewhere in the midst of all this typical business has sat my friend, performing his duties with all the diligence of a man that has true passion for his job and the people he serves.
Now, due to a twist of fate, he has found himself in the role that many small business owners find themselves. Where this army of people that do every part of the business only exists within your mind, in what can only be likened to "Dissociative identity disorder". It got me thinking about how each day small business owners go to work and assume more roles in one day than most actors undertake in a lifetime and still they continue to project an image of sanity, integrity and professionalism within that. Then as the business starts to grow they start to pass some of those personalities on to the subordinate that are brought on-board, again in the hope that they can off-load another one soon. So the enterprising people of the world continue.
Now I am sure that all of this probably sounds quite depressing but it shouldn't. It is a stark image of how amazing small business owners and entrepreneurs are and continue to be as each day passes. For this I salute all Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs out there and long may enterprise continue.
For my part, I will continue to help my friend through his period of having a split-personality and pass on the lessons I have learned, especially the one's I learnt that hard way!
If you have any great stories about life as a Small Business Owner or Entrepreneur then please leave them in the comments below.
- Rob
Posted: June 4th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, life | 5 Comments »
Whenever I write anything on this blog I try to write as both the teacher and the pupil, why? The fact is that we are all both teachers and pupils deep down and this is a fundamental feature of humans. We have a deep need to learn things and a natural sense of curiosity. While I like to think that I know a bit about things and I am willing to share it with anyone who is interested that fact remains the I also have a lot to learn still.
There are two things that I really have struggled with over the last year or so and that is Time Management and Procrastination. I have tried all kinds of prescribed methods to help get past this hurdles but sadly to no avail. I have tried reading Getting Things Done by David Allen but I found that to seem very elaborate for me to start in with. That is not to say that it is a fantastic system, which I know it is as good friends have implemented it and it works great for them, but I am just not ready for it. I have also downloaded the AudioBook The Now Habit, which is a great system for overcoming Procrastination and gave me a great insight into the roots of it. Again though it wasn't working for me. To say I was despairing of all of it would be an understatement.
Then I was talking with a friend the other week and he was telling me that he had set himself a target to get any work that he gets in turned around within 24hrs. I thought it was a little brave but then whatever works. As I thought about it more over the next week it just kept ringing in my head and in the end I figured I may as well give it a go. The thing that I liked was that it met what I was trying to achieve with such simplicity that I feel it could get me back on track again.
Does it work? So far yes. Thats not to say that it will continue to work but right now it is and I hear myself saying things like "I'll sort that later" and then think again "why put off what I can do now" and I just get it done.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best one's, I love the way that GTD works but at this point in time I just need something simple to get the ball rolling. I'll keep you posted on how it works out.
- Rob
Posted: May 16th, 2010 | Author: robfranklin | Filed under: Business, IT Support, small business | No Comments »
I consider myself to be very lucky as I love what I do. Sometimes it gets a little frustrating when everything happens at once and there is just not enough bodies to throw at the problems but on the whole I *really* love what I do and the people that I work with. What I don't love is when we fail to deliver and let someone down, this happened on Friday.
What happened is that on Friday a client called in to the office and logged a call just after 9.30am to say that their network was down and they needed a call back urgently. I was on holiday at the time but I did see the message come in. As there are systems in place to deal with these things I resisted the urge to jump on the problem and call the client. However I couldn't resist the urge to log on to the clients server and check things over, I did and all was well again. So I left it to the guys to deal with the 'personal' side of the support call.
Then just after 12 noon another message was passed through to say that the client had called in again and was extremely upset that, while the problem was resolved, he had not received a call back from anyone to assist with the issue and wanted to discuss the support service as soon as I was back in the office next week. This is the type of call that every service provider, IT or otherwise, dreads getting from any of their clients. After checking in to the issue we found that the call had gone into an 'unassigned queue' in the ticketing system and had just been missed. The system which I created had failed which resulted in this situation and the bottom line is..'We screwed up'.
Now, despite the fact that the client had asked for a call next week when I was back at the office I called him immediately. The first thing that he said was 'you're on holiday right?' to which I answered 'yes', he responded by saying 'well you shouldn't be talking to me if you're on holiday'. I went on to tell him that I should be talking to him as this situation is not only important to me but I take them very seriously. The first thing I did was apologise for letting him and his business down, we had not delivered when he needed us most. I went on to explain to the client what had happened which resulted in the lack of call back from our office. I then explained what had been put in place to prevent this from happening again. The call ended with the client while unhappy about the situation in the first place, he also appreciated the fact that I had admitted that we had made a mistake and that processes had been put in place to prevent this in future.
In any customer service situation where they client has a genuine complaint that is quite obviously 'your' fault (you or your business) the single worst thing that you can do is to say that it is not your fault, 'pass the buck' or in some way not accept responsibility. In this situation I told the client that it was totally my fault and explained what had been done to prevent this in future. Now I was on holiday at the time so 'technically' it wasn't my fault but the fact is that when you are in a position of authority/responsibility you must accept responsibility for the actions of those that you entrust to undertake work for you or on you behalf, this may be a member of your team or a contractor; regardless they are still your responsibility. This simple act of acceptance of responsibility instantly creates 2 feelings within a person. The first is relief; the reason for this is whenever we complain we instantly get ready for a fight, no-one wants to have a fight but we get ready. The fact that he didn't have a fight on his hands was an immediate relief and took the 'wind out of his sails'. The second was that the partnership was right; this probably seems like an odd one but when you work with any service provider you want to feel its a partnership and feel comfortable that when you ask them to do something it will get done without badgering them. Likewise when they screw up and you are forced to complain then you also need to feel reassured that it will be dealt with efficiently and to your satisfaction saving you the frustration of keep having to shout. By dealing with this complaint in this way the whole situation what completely defused and we were able to discuss the problems rationally and allow the client to explain to me where we had let him down. That way I was able to make sure that we will deliver next time and more importantly make sure he is not put in that position again. A very good friend of mine once told me "You're only as good as your last job", never a truer word has been spoken.
This is something that I feel passionately about as on a personal level I have a lot of dealings with the NHS for our child and the people we deal with do not follow any of the standard guidelines above on dealing with complaints. This creates a great deal of frustrations when dealing with them so I would never want to put any one of my clients in this situation.
I understand that accepting complete responsibility in the first instance may not always be the right thing, if for example it may lead to legal proceedings. As a general rule I believe this is the right way to deal with clients as this is how I would like to be dealt with.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter and how you deal with failure. I do not believe that my way is right but I know what works well for me.
- Rob
Posted: February 28th, 2010 | Author: robfranklin | Filed under: Business, IT Community, small business | 7 Comments »
The title of this post comes from a line in a classic film, in my opinion, which is
The Crow. During the film Skank is asked by Top Dollar 'Don't you feel that?'; he response by saying 'I feel like a little worm on a big f*****' hook.', classic line. So what is the relevance? Let me explain.
For those that rotate in the same IT circles as I do then you will have seen much of the buzz at the minute surrounding the
CompTIA Reseller Forum this week and the
TCA Conference. Both of these events were fantastic but I will not go into how the day panned out as other have done this already, you can read about it
here or
here. One of the points that was raised in the resellers forum was the relationship with vendors or distributors and the IT Resellers. The fact is that many of the traditional distributors don't give a lot of attention to small IT resellers, the kind of people that were at the Resellers Forum, as they are moving lots of boxes to the big retailers such as Ebuyer, Dabs etc. The reality is that much of the time it is cheaper for the reseller to buy from the likes of EBuyer and Dabs as they are generally cheaper than buying through the normal distribution channel. The problem for the reseller is the consumer, the very people they are selling to can buy from these guys as well.
One of the suggestions from a friend and fellow member,
Richard Tubb from
Netlink IT, was to engage with the vendors and distributors on a personal level by asking them 'How can I help you'. Now this philosophy, in this context, is quite unusual. Don't get me wrong the concept is not alien to me, as a BNI member I am a big believer of 'Givers Gain' which basically says if I help you then someday you will help me too. However, I have never thought of it in this context and it started me thinking about things. After thinking about this a little I realised that this was something that I was already engaged in with a distributor of mine,
Security IP. Some of my fellow
AMITPRO members will already know
Security IP but they are small distributor by comparison to others out there but that does not make them weaker but stronger in my opinion. My account manager there is James Cole who I have known for more years than I care to recall as I knew him at the last company he worked for. We have always had a candid relationship as I explained from the outset that I would likely never bring him any *big* orders but I would do all I could to get him in front of other people like me to that they can get more business, and I did this because I wanted to not because there was anything in it for me. What has happened is that when there are any new products coming out then he calls me and we get to be one of the first to try it, more importantly our feedback is heard and, where appropriate, acted upon. I also get help with marketing
Now as a small IT reseller would I get that type of support from a larger distributer? Almost certainly not, so why would a smaller distributer want to engage me in such a way? Well that I can only speculate from my point of view but firstly we have a relationship; what I call a personal-business relationship where by the personal boundaries blur slightly around that edge of the business relationship. Secondly, from the outset we have both made a concerted effort to help one another to develop our businesses by helping the other. Not in a conscious or premeditated way, if either of who has not been able to reciprocate it would not have made any difference, the relationship was there anyway.
So what is the point of the post? The point is that we live in a time when everything has been commoditised and we go after the cheapest price, much of this has been created by the box shifters like EBuyer, Dabs even Asda and Tesco. In spite of this there are still suppliers, distributors and vendors out there that want to make those personal connections and work with small IT resellers who don't think that they are 'big' enough to be noticed. So speak up because you may just be surprised.
- Rob
Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, IT Community, small business | Tags: Business, CompTIA, IT Community, TCA | 2 Comments »
Are you getting what the IT community is about yet? A while back I wrote a post about the power of the IT community and what it can deliver to you, it seems so strange looking back that there was a time when I didn't 'get it'.
Right now I am sat in a TravelLodge in Leicester as I am attending the CompTIA resellers forum at 7.30am at the Holiday Express followed by the TCA Conference at 10.45am at the Walkers Stadium. Yesterday evening all of the people attending the Resellers Forum were out for a dinner kindly laid on by Kaseya, and yes it was a room full of geeks but it was a great night out and fantastic opportunity for me to get together again with Chris Timm, Richard Tubb, Andy Parkes, William Linard, Adam Harris and many others some of whom I had not see for some time. These guys are some of the best in our industry and I proud to say my friends. On the face of it some of these guys run IT companies that are doing what I do so why on earth would I want to be socialising with them much less sharing the way we work? Quite simply because through sharing, you get the reassurance that 'that awkward customer' is not just unique to you and that others face the same challenges that you do. Also by working together we can all help to raise the standard in the industry and that is what the Resellers Forum is all about. If you run an IT business and are interested in getting involved in the Resellers Forum then you should contact William Linard for more information.
Posted: December 28th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal, Personal Develoment, Uncategorized, life | 2 Comments »
I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and Santa brought you lots of lovely things, this post was originally due to be put up last week but unfortunately the time just didn't appear !
I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn't start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn't get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work. Once at work things didn't get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking. He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, "sounds like you've had some fun today". At this he replied "ain't that the truth, still, s**t happens!". This got me thinking.
How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we'll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a 'glass half empty kinda guy'. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don't want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).
So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.
With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:
"
First off in the morning his car wouldn't start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started" - What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for
anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it 'jump started' which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.
"....he then couldn't get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work." - So he couldn't get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.
"Once at work things didn't get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking." - Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.
So next time you're having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It's all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.
I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!
- Rob
Posted: November 16th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal, life | No Comments »
I wrote last week about the importance of checklists for all aspects of your business. Expanding on that I learned a valuable lesson at the weekend in the most unlikely of places, in a hospital. Our youngest son has had some medical challenges which started before he was born, he was given a 1 in 10 chance of survival when it was first diagnosed. However, he didn't let it hold him back and battled on growing stronger each day. By the time he was finally discharged from hospital he had been an inpatient for almost 3 years, but he is unique. This means that he has to be managed much differently to any children with 'similar' ailments so much so that his consultant has made oxygenation plans, care plans, flow charts for his care etc. Last night we had to take Danny in to children's A+E as he had a bad chest infection. When we got there we explained the situation to the nurse and then again to the doctor. I explained that his oxygenation plan states that unless he is in 3lts of oxygen he should not be admitted. We also explained that there are certain procedures as to how Daniel is dealt with in most situations and he should consult the PICU unit to get more information.
To cut a long storey short the two key things happened that sealed our fate to 6.5hrs in A+E and a lot of stress and arguments. The first thing was that the doctor did not contact the people we had clearly told him to speak with to get more information. Instead he just rang the on-call person which mean that the wrong information again was fed back. The second was that the carefully written procedures for handling Daniel and the care & oxygenation plans were not made accessible to all people that may be in contact with him. This mean that he was given all of the wrong treatment.
So what has this to do with my IT life? Simple. The first lesson is when you are dealing with a client, new or existing, the most important thing to do is LISTEN. Let them talk, make notes and ask questions. This simple step alone can save you hours in wasted time and if the client is on a flat-fee contract this means money saved. Second lesson is as you begin to create business processes, checklist and procedures to run your business smoother make sure that everyone that needs to know they are there..know. After all you could have the best product/service on the planet but shouting about it in the middle of a dessert is not gonna do a great deal of good is it.
So to summarise; Stop, Listen then Talk....in that order then you can't go far wrong.
Any thoughts? I'd love to hear them.
- Rob
Posted: November 13th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, small business | No Comments »
When I first started in I.T I was young and able to absorb everything I read and memorised it all. Then as the years passed by I learned more about processes for performing regular tasks in my work and they became my own. So much so that they were engrained within who I was and I never needed to look this type of information up.
However, as I have gotten more involved in the business of running a business and not just owning a job it has become much more difficult to remember this so fluently as I used to. This gave rise to processes. Many people have come across Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which are common practice in large organisations but not so in small businesses, why? The reason is quite simple; In order for a large business to run fluently and in the way the creator designed it there must be an SOP as he/she will not be there to train every role in the business.
I am currently in the process of creating a whole raft of checklists for tasks which are undertaken at a clients site along with business processes for things that must be completed within our own business. So what needs to be documented? Anything and everything.....this sounds like a mammoth task but it isn't. The reality is that you need to document anything which needs to be done but should not require you to perform it yourself. For example my topic this weekend is 'SBS2oo3 to SBS 2008 migration checklist'. This is simply a checklist to tech's to following when they are performing this type of migration. It is not a full migration manual for SBS but it is a 'crib sheet' to help job the memory of a training technician so that something important is not forgotten.
Does your business need checklists and procedures? Maybe. Would it benefit? Definitely.
- Rob
Posted: June 3rd, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Business, IT Support, small business | 2 Comments »
I went out today to visit a client who was having problems with ESET Anti Virus. It transpired that despite paying for the software from their previous supplier and it being licensed until September 09 it was having a problem with the username & password for downloading updates. They did not have a copy of the username and password details nor were they able to contact their old IT supplier as they did not seem to be in contact any longer. The simplest way forward was to contact ESET directly to try to obtain the details. After a brief conversation with the main switchboard I was told that they would get someone to call us back from tech support as soon as they were available, yeah heard that before! However I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call back from their tech support team asking how they could help. I explained the situation and gave the username that we had from the software, I was asked to hold. The next thing person to come on the phone asked if I had a "query regarding why the account was suspended". I replied that I was just trying to find out what the password was as to was not downloading updates anymore. I was then told that the reason it had been suspended was because the previous IT supplier had not paid them for the software. I was asked if I was calling from the "end user" to which I replied "yes". Now at this point the client had paid the supplier for the software, however the supplier had not paid ESET so by rights the dispute was between client and supplier; ESET was under no obligation to correct this situation. What they actually did was nothing short of exceptional. The man on the phone said "ok, I will re-activate the license to the end of it's period in September. The only thing I ask is that when it is due you renew the product with us". This surpassed anything that I was expecting from this situation, the fact was as I said ESET did not have to put this right but the did.
At the end of this, for the cost of a license, they have a very satisfied client who will tell a good few people how well ESET looked after them. It was once said that sometimes you have to give something away free in order to get more business, this is a classic example of how to look after you client even if it may cost you a little; in the long run it will be worth.