A One-Eyed Man is King

This week I am focused like a laser beam on media tools.  I have publicly committed to get my home media system straightened out and I WILL persevere.  You can benefit from my arduous trek by checking out these great tools.

My Movies 3 – My search for Home Media Utopia has had me ranging far and wide through the morass of media players, collection managers, codecs and so on that exist out there.  It’s an alphabet soup of audio and video formats and very easy to get lost. My Movies is a great package that’s been around the block a bit and really cuts down on the confusion.  They recently released version 3 which is even simpler that it was before.  It will help you catalog your movies and music, will get cover art for CD’s and DVD’s and will even help you rip content to your hard drive.  All that plus it will help you get around some limitations of the XBOX 360 media center makes a pretty mean package.  It’s so good, I actually thought that I had struck gold on the first pass because this package fills so many of the requirements that I set out in that post.  (You can go read it if you want to…)

Virtual CloneDrive by SlySoft – I’ve been using this app for a long time.  Basically, it creates a “fake” CD/DVD device on your system that lets you read ISO files from your hard drive as if you had actually burned them.  It’s small, it’s fast, it’s free.  What more do you want?

Boxee – This SWEET app is best described as social media meets all of the glorious video content that the interwebs have to offer.  It’s a little different in purpose than My Movies, but there are some overlaps.  Boxee leads you through an account creation process, during which it will ask about your other social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook etc.  It then checks to see which of those people have Boxee accounts and then it lets you see what they’ve watched, rated and recommended both in their own library of content, but also from the vast quantity of video available out there.  It’s a slick, easy interface and runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows.  If I didn’t have an XBOX 360, I’d throw Boxee on a Linux home theater PC and go to town!

Boxee’s Online Video UI

This is completely off topic.  It has nothing to do with business, and less to do with technology than my frustrations with getting my own junk to work.

I have this pie in the sky ideas about what my home entertainment system should look like.  Allow me to break it down for you.

The “Must Have” List:

1. It must store the media (music and movies mainly, photos are really an after thought for me) on a centralized, always on system. (Currently a Windows Home Server in my garage)
2. I must be able to use the content from:  My Windows 7 Ultimate PC, my Vista Slate, My Wife’s Vista PC, My Daughter’s Windows 7 Home Premium PC or the Xbox 360 in the living room.
3. The movie content will be displayed GRAPHICALLY, like with cover art, so that my illiterate children (5 year old and soon the 1 year old) will be able to select movies without shouting across the house “WHAT DOES THIS SAY MAMA?”

The “Would Be Nice” List:

1. The ripping process should be relatively painless.
2. Movie descriptions, ratings and cast info.
3. If the disk space could be minimized, that would be great.

So these are the things that I am after.  I have implemented some pieces of this system without having defined the whole, which has left me with a fragmented and disappointing solution.  I assure you that I know better, and to prove it, I’m going to chronicle my journey to accomplish the above.  Fasten your seat belts.

There are lots of ways that you can pay for technology support.  One of the most common that I come across in small business is the “Break/Fix” model.  Something goes wrong, a printer dies, you can’t get to twitter, whatever, so you call your IT providers and they come and (hopefully) fix it.  They invoice you and then you pay them.  Simple, right?  Of course not!

I have to make a confession here.  I used that system to bill my clients for years.  I feel like I gave excellent support to those customers and that they got a ton of return on the investments that they made with me.  The problem, though, is that under this business model, I never even THOUGHT about many of the basic proactive things that can and should be done on any network.

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say that you called my younger (thinner) self and asked me to come and fix your printer.  I would show up promptly, ask about your spouse, kids, etc while fixing the printer.  I would ask around the office to see if anyone else had any issues, have you test the printer yourself to make sure it was fixed, and then bid you all a fond farewell.  There may have even been doughnuts delivered (I didn’t get this waistline by eating carrots.). 

You may be thinking, what’s wrong with that?  I would kill for the timely service with a smile you describe here. (Seriously, I am really good at my job.)  I have always worked to provide the best service possible to my customers, not only because I care about helping them be successful but also because it makes the best business sense.  It took me several years to realize the inherent dilemma with this model.  The problem is this:  there is a financial PUNISHMENT for the provider for doing the best job possible. 

I submit that without a pricing model that aligns the customer’s and the provider’s FINANCIAL interests, true partnership can’t happen.  A model that makes it just as important to me, the provider, as it is to you, the business that there be as few interruptions to business as possible.  I submit that a fixed rate model forces the provider to be more efficient (and organized!) and allows the business to have predictable costs.

Clearly, some IT support companies are not going to be willing to do business this way.  We can’t make enough to stay in business this way, they will cry.  I’m here to tell you that if you are managing the relationship with your customers properly and are truly looking out for their best interest, they will be willing – dare I say, even happy -  to pay what you need to keep you around.

Once upon a time, before I was the free-wheeling business technology crusader that I am now, I worked for a small business with about a 40 user network.  The dictator owner of that company was a real character.  A somewhat odious character.  Anyway, I remember something he told me once that has always stuck with me.  It’s a very simple formula of what all businesses have to do to be successful. 

1. Get the work.
2. Do the work.
3. Collect for the work.

Obviously, if the business fails in any of these areas, the business will fail entirely. For some reason the crude simplicity made an impact on me and I think of it often as I talk to businesses about their technology needs.  To follow this theme, I’ve chose three great free tools to accomplish these basic functions of a business. 

ZohoCRM – This is but one of the tools in the Zoho lineup, all of which seem pretty solid.  I especially like the free version of this CRM products as it allows 3 users and has a ton of great features.  In addition to the “CRM basics” like account, contact and lead tracking, you get cool things like case management and nifty dashboards like this:

It’s very easy to sign up, less than a minute I’d say, and is fairly self-explanatory.  If you’ve used other CRM tools in the past, you should have no problems at all.  If you want some more features like sales forecasting and built-in email marketing, you can upgrade at any time to the Pro version for 12/month per user.  You can also downgrade at any time, which I thought was interesting.

EasyProjects.net – This is a pretty nice package for managing projects, consulting time, and activities.  It takes a bit longer to get started than ZohoCRM, but it wasn’t too bad.  It has a very cool Interactive Gantt Chart done in Silverlight that I liked a lot, as well as reports, dashboards and pretty nice search.  The free version only comes with a single user license, but you can have an unlimited number of customers login and collaborate with you on your projects.  There are a couple of times when I thought the site itself was a little clumsy, but there are a ton of great features.  When you’re ready for more users, you can get 5 for $75/month.

Office Accounting Express 2009 – I never set out to pimp Microsoft products with this blog and frankly, I am shocked at how many of their free products are good enough for me to recommend.  (I know that people will call me a fan boy regardless.  ::sigh::)  This is a solid product though.  Obviously they have stolen heavily from Quickbooks to make the familiar interface, but you can customize most of the screens, which I think is handy.

You can’t manage inventory with this version, but you can do all sorts of other neat stuff like take PayPal payments directly within the software.  Also, you can set up a quick and easy E-Commerce site from the “Online Sales” menu.  You can even set this up to have multiple users accessing your company info.  You can’t beat the price for all of this accounting goodness!

Ah, Microsoft.  We’ve had some good times.  We’ve had some bad times.  It’s really hard for the average person to understand how you can go from a solid, stable operating system like Windows XP to a bloated, irritating thing like Vista.  You and I both know that it’s not the first time, but let’s not talk about Windows ME.  Let’s focus on the future.  The launch is tomorrow, so let’s talk about Windows 7.

I’ve been using Windows 7 for quite a few months now on my HP tablet and overall I have been very impressed. I ran Vista on the tablet previously and there were definitely times when it seemed sluggish.  (It’s not like a slow machine, it has 8 GB of RAM and an SSD hard drive.) As soon as I installed 7, I saw an IMMEDIATE increase in performance.  I also liked the new taskbar and the little gimmicky window tricks, I love that you can configure the Nag Quotient of UAC, and I think the tablet-specific features are absolutely outstanding.

Initial Setup – At the risk of gushing, I think the install of Windows 7 is hands-down the cleanest and simplest process of any version of Windows.  Ever.  It’s pretty fast, it asks minimal questions along the way, and it’s quite intelligent at figuring out drivers and such.

Drivers – Drivers were the great stumbling block of Vista’s launch.  I remember months after the launch of Vista tearing my hair out by the roots in frustration because I couldn’t find HP scanner drivers for our CEO’s PC.  We’re talking HP here, not some small time vendor that operates out of their garage.  Contrasted with that experience, I had the fingerprint software for my tablet install automatically through Windows update and just start working without me even noticing.  That’s like the holy grail of driver support.

Interface/User Experience – I think the interface is much the same as Vista, although the small improvements are quite useful.  The taskbar allows you to pin icons there and if the app supports it, will give you common task lists specific to that program.  For example here is my context menu for Google Chrome:

You can see that the most visited sites are listed along with other things I might want to do with that application.  It took me a little bit to get in the habit of using this, but I find that it really speeds things up for me.  I use multiple monitors on my desktop, so the key combination of Windows Key + right or left arrow, which moves the active window to the next monitor is one of my favorites.

Best Little Known Feature – This one is for the user support side of my personality.  Windows 7 has built in a little application called Problem Steps Recorder.  If you go to Start > Run and type psr, then hit enter you will see a simple window that looks like:

This is geared towards an end-user that might be having problems with something.  The user clicks on “Start Record” and then does whatever they are having issues with.  They then click “Stop Record” and then they will be asked where to save a ZIP file which contains Screen Shots, program and system information recounting what they did along with any comments that the user might have entered.  All wrapped up in a neat package and ready for your user to email to you for help.  It’s the next best thing to remote control!

Conclusion – This is a worthy successor to Windows XP.  I’m recommending to our clients who are thinking about making a change that they give this serious consideration.  Trust me, switching will feel like trading in your 10 year old Ford Explorer for that brand-new 370Z convertible you’ve been eyeballing. Well done, Windows 7 team!

Last week I focused on free tools for business.  This week I decided to get in touch with my inner geek.  These are a few of the tools that I install immediately after I format any of my machines. 

1. SharedView from Microsoft – I don’t know about you all out there, but I end up doing a LOT of remote phone support for family, friends, and even friends of friends.  I don’t mind helping out when I can, but I absolutely HATE trying to solve a problem while the person on the other end attempts to describe what is happening on their end.  One answer that has worked out pretty well is this tool from Microsoft.  It obviously shares DNA with Live Meeting, but is a whole lot simpler.  Just install it on your end and their end, then send them an invite from the app.  They click on it and voila!  No more “Can you see the Start Button at the bottom left.  No?  Seriously?  Ok, describe what you see to me…”  

   

2. Notepad++ from SourceForge – This app is like the swiss army knife of text editors.  Not only will it do syntax highlighting for just about every kind of code known to man, it does macros, has a set of text manipulation functions, and a full array of plugins.  Seriously, if you do any css, html, javascript file work, you should check this out.

   

3. Fences from Stardock – My desktop used to be cluttered to the point of unusability.  Then along came a little app that lets me box in my icons and such into little named areas of my desktop.  This thing is awesome.  It lets you back up your groupings, adjusts automatically when you change resolutions and lets you hide or show your icons by double clicking the desktop. 

   

Today was one of those days that make me wonder why I work in this industry.  Seriously, when crap breaks people get pissed at you.  When things are working, they want to know why the system isn’t faster.  It’s like being a plumber or something.

Yesterday was “Patch Tuesday”, so called because that’s the day the Microsoft releases updates for its products.  I am sure that they try as hard as they can to make sure there are no problems with the updates that go out.  Every once in a while, though, something goes wrong.  Today was one of those times.

We use Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for internal IM, web conferencing and remote desktop support.  We rolled it out only a few weeks ago, but our employees loved it and have come to rely on it a great deal.  So as soon as update KB974571 installed on my server, all of a sudden I started getting errors in the Event Log that looked like:

Event source: OCS Server
Event id: 12290
Event text: The evaluation period for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has expired. Please upgrade from the evaluation version to the full released version of the product.

That plus no one could log in because the Front-End service kept dying after trying to start it.  At the time though, I had no idea what was causing it.  I KNEW I hadn’t installed an Eval copy of the software, so I had no clue as to what was going on.  I only figured out that the patch was the culprit AFTER I spent most of the day doing a rain dance to try and fix the thing for my users.

Of course, a dear co-worker of mine pointed out:  Twitter knew about it last night.  I hate computers.

How do you know if your IT provider is doing a good job?  How do they stack up against someone else you might partner with?  Here are some ways you can figure it out. 

**Check back in with me and I’ll post a spreadsheet with all of this nicely laid out for you.

(BTW:  If you’re an IT provider, you may be tempted to just move on.  Clearly there is a TON of material on YouTube that needs your attention.  Perhaps, though you might want to run through these test and ask yourself, “How do I rate?  What level of service am I providing?”  Just a thought…)

The Metrics

I’m a big believer in gathering data and measuring performance.  Here’s a list of important things to be measuring if you’re using outsourced IT.  (Honestly, these are some of the same things I measure for our internal IT staff also…)

• Response time – How long from the time of notification of a problem until it BEGINS to be addressed? 
• Resolution time – How long from the time of notification until the problem is resolved?
• Incidents per Month – How many times did you have to call?
• Unresolved Issues – How many things are left outstanding at a time?
• Incident Cost – How much did you pay each time?
• Issue Recurrence – How many times did the SAME issue come up?

Think about how your guys stack up.  Do they give you any kind of usage data about how your partnership is going?  Could you easily get the averages for the above?  If not, why not?

The Relationship

This is the more touchy-feely part of things.  It looks to find out how you overall feel about working with your technology partners.  There are some critical indications here that may even outweigh the metrics we discussed earlier.

On a scale of 1 to 5 rate the following of your IT provider (1 being strongly disagree 5 being strongly agree):

1.  They are there when I need them.

2.  They follow through on their commitments.

3.  I always know where we are in the process.

4.  If I had to change providers tomorrow, it would be fairly painless.

5.  I am comfortable with our disaster recovery and security plans.

6.  Our disaster recovery plan has been successfully tested.

7.  They listen to and understand our business and our problems.

8.  They proactively seek out technology to help us achieve the company’s goals.

9.  They go the extra mile.

10. Their services have improved over the time we have used them.

Total up all of the scores, then multiply by 2.  If they rate lower than a high 70, what are you doing with them?  It’s time to make like Tina and drop your Ike like yesterday’s newspaper.  Seriously, if you can’t rate them higher than a C, what are they really bringing to your partnership.  How successful can your business be with C technology support? 

I love free software.  It’s like Christmas morning every time someone tells me about a cool new web application or utility.  I adore the “best free apps” issues of PC Mag or Maximum PC.  There is a tremendous amount of value out there just waiting to be discovered.  In honor of this, I declare Free Tools Friday to be a permanent fixture here.  Enjoy!

General/Business Tools:

1. Quickbooks Online Basic from Intuit – Intuit?!  GIVE SOMETHING FOR FREE?  You must be mad!!  But it’s true.  See for yourself.  Go ahead take a look. (Right-click the link and click “Open in New Tab” – unless you’re using Internet Explorer 5 or something.  You’re not are you?  Using IE5, I mean…ok, take a deep breath, we’ll get through this together.  Go to www.getfirefox.com right now and click the giant green download button.  No, I MEAN RIGHT NOW!  GO!  Oh.  Sorry.  No, I wasn’t yelling.  I just got a little excited.  Ahem…)  Seriously, they are delivering some incredibly good software for free.  The free version is limited to managing 20 customers, which is really the only downside.  You can upgrade seamlessly to the other versions for a monthly fee, which have more features.  The thing I like best is that you don’t have to worry about installation or backups.  Sweet.
2. AntiVir Personal from Avira – I have a confession to make.  I HATE antivirus software.  All of them.  I’m quite prejudiced that way.  I begrudge their use of my system resources that could otherwise be devoted to getting my trashy TV fix from Hulu or even good old-fashioned zombie killing in Left4Dead.  I hate that they try to think for me and block access to this file or move that file to quarantine.  Wow.  That was very therapeutic.  ANYWAY, if you must run antivirus software (don’t listen to me, you really must), then this is about the best free package I’ve seen.  It uses very little of your system’s capability and provides excellent protection.
3. Office Live Small Business from Microsoft – You may think that Microsoft giving away office tools for free is even crazier that Quickbooks being free.  That’s what happens when you get the lead-pipe cruelty reputation of an evil empire.  In reality, they have a TON of apps (some good ones even) that you can download and run for free. This product is their version of Google Apps without the in-browser word processor, spreadsheet etc.  However, Google Apps will run you $50/user per year, so it’s a bit of a trade off.  I think Office Live is noteworthy because it (obviously) plays nice with the Microsoft Office suite: Word, Excel, Outlook.   Getting things set up is fairly simple and should be very familiar to Microsoft users. 

If you have any favorite free apps, I’d love to hear about them!

Primarily, I come at the world from a technology mindset.  Generally that is the hammer and I go about my life looking for nails to bash in.  I am quite a Neanderthal in that respect.  A chubby, hairless one…

Over the course of my career, through a painful evolutionary process, I have come to realize that many times, technology is not the answer.  Sometimes the answer is in the people- sharper focus, better training, clearer priorities, for example. Sometimes the answer is in the process- improved efficiency, reduced waste, defined needs.  Slowly I have become more of a “thinking man” in this respect.

So, as a man who professes to think, what does it mean to actually serve the customer?  Turns out, it has almost nothing to do with technology at all.  The way I see it almost all interactions should be variations on the following five stages:

1. Listen

2. Plan

3. Execute

4. Test

5. Communicate

I can hear some of my geeky brethren now:  “WHAT?!  There’s nothing about servers or MSPs or Twitter even listed in that!  How could it possibly be right.”  Allow me to break it down.

1. Listen

A much used quote is relevant here.

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

If you don’t know what problem you’re solving, it doesn’t really mater what you do next.  The only way you can find that out is…say it with me now…to LISTEN!

The customer doesn’t want to have to talk to their computer guy.  They can’t do their job and they have a boss to answer to, so they suck it up and make the call.  The LEAST you could do is actually listen to what they have to say.  I mean REALLY LISTEN.  I don’t just mean wait until they stop talking so that you can impart your great knowledge and wisdom to them.  They won’t use all the right words, of course, they may even say silly things like “the internet is down”.  (Really? The whole internet is down?  It’s the end of civilization as we know it!!)  The point is you must hear the customer first so that you will at a minimum know what they perceive the problem is.

2. Plan

This step can be as simple as hearing the problem, recognizing it and then fixing it.  Or it might be as complex as a multi-page write-up complete with diagrams and blueprints.  Whatever level is warranted, remember to keep the customer in the loop as to what your thoughts are and what your strategy will be to resolve the issue. 

The other critical piece of this stage is to fix in your mind what the perceived problem was (see above) and plan to address it with the same seriousness and attention to detail that you gave to the actual problem.  If you do not properly handle their concerns (right or wrong), even if you beat up their actual problem and take its lunch money, they will be left with the feeling that you didn’t do a good enough job.

3. Execute

This is where the rubber meets the road.  This is where you show your true mettle.  You can perform to your highest standards, paying attention to the smallest detail, following the plan and documenting what you do.  Or you can phone it in.  Ignore the details, leave the cables looking like a plate of spaghetti gone horribly wrong when you’re done.  Forget about the listening and planning you did in the first steps and let yourself get distracted by something that you weren’t even asked to look at.  Let the next guy document the thing.

What happens at this point is the price of admission, the minimum.  If you can’t get this step right, you shouldn’t even be playing the game.

4. Test

How do you know that step 4 is done and that you should wrap it up with step 5?  You test the original problem.  You see how this all comes together?  If you didn’t identify the problem right at the beginning or didn’t solve the right problem when you were executing, how can the customer EVER be satisfied?  Simple, they can’t.

You test the problem when you think it’s fixed, then have them test it and see if they agree.  If not, you have more work to do.  Why don’t they think it’s fixed?  Is there a perception problem?  This issue must be settled before moving on, or your customer will feel rushed and that you had “better things to do”.

5. Communicate

What more could there possibly be?  Aren’t we done yet?  Can’t we go hit the Denny’s for a Grand Slam?  Clearly not.  You must communicate several things to the customer.  Depending on the situation they could include:

• Everything that you actually did
• Anything they might expect to see or happen as a result of what you did
• A detailed rundown of any further steps or actions that may need to happen
• When those furthers steps will take place
• Any helpful tips on preventing the issue in the future

If the customer is left wondering about any of these things, you’ve lost an opportunity to set yourself apart.

I’ve clothed all of this in techie garb (free vendor t-shirts and old jeans), but I think the general outline of it holds true for most customer service interchanges.  Think of a great experience you’ve had with some company.  (It took a few minutes didn’t it?)  Now run down the steps and see what they did or didn’t do.  Pretty close, eh?

Now think of a really bad experience.  (Yeah, you had one right off, I know…)  Which of the steps did they neglect?  Maybe they ignored your real problem and just tried to fit you into one of their existing “support channels”.  Maybe they did something for you, but didn’t explain and then just went away, leaving unsure as to what to expect next.

I think these things are widely applicable in almost any setting.  I’d love to hear what you think…