I recently attended a conference of bankruptcy lawyers. It's one of those groups where business owners in non-competing geographies get together to share best practices in order to improve their businesses. I attended as the outsourced IT support provider to Indiana bankruptcy attorney Mark Zuckerberg. If any of the good ideas presented had to to with computer network services, my job was to make sure I understood it and how it might impact Mark's network support.

One of the attorneys ignited an interesting discussion about personal communications at work that made me realize that our Indianapolis small business IT outsourcing company spends a lot of time doing things that are intended to keep people from hurting themselves -- babysitting, in other words.

The conversation started with the need to block popular Internet sites like Facebook, Pandora, Amazon, and other social, entertainment, or shopping sites during work hours. It went on to include a debate about whether or not people should be allowed to use their cell phones at work and what can be done about it. I was surprised at how many had already implemented such rules in their workplaces. I guess I shouldn't have been. As more of us turn to the Internet for entertainment and socializing, it will become more difficult to separate our personal and business lives. In the end, nothing that your IT support services company can do will solve this issue.

We can add filtering and monitoring and alerting to the network, but clever people will figure out how to avoid or defeat these measures (I had teenage kids so I know what I'm talking about). In the end, as we agreed at the conference, staff has work to accomplish. As business owners, we may have to look more at quality and quantity of work than at how our people spend their time each day. Good people will do good work. Mine do.

I spent several hours on a plane today, which gave me a chance to catch up on some reading. One of the things I read was a NY Times article from December that claims that American data consumption has grown by 350 percent in the last three decades to a whopping 34 Gb per day. The rate continues to increase by 6 percent per year.

Now I don't know why they did a 30 year comparison, but I do know the amount of data we save is growing far faster. Perhaps it's because, like me, people are saving stuff they hope to get to during their next plane ride and the trips aren't coming often enough. All I know is that the size of the disk space we install in new servers for our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers gets larger and larger. Still we frequently have to contact our network support clients to let them know that they are nearing the end of their storage capacity and need to purge old information. 

Often, our IT support services clients will ask us to do this for them. By the time we call we've already done all that we can do without having some detailed knowledge of the value of their data. We invoke the "one man's junk is another man's treasure" excuse to avoid causing unhappy results.

If it's been a while since you cleaned up your files, take some time to do it now. There is stuff there that is taking up space that you will eventually have to replace. It's also getting backed up regularly, taking time and resources. And it might be causing some of that low level anxiety you feel when you set out to find a piece of information amid all that stuff.

A recent Scientific American article discusses the way in which we make snap judgments about people based on their warmth and competence. In it, the author describes how recent research is showing that people all over the world form their initial impression of you based on warmth and competence. Stereotypes feed these impressions, but they do not account for the whole first impression. The research also shows how a gain in one area leads to a loss in the other. For instance, people who are warm are assumed to be less competent than people who are cold. That must be why so many computer consultants treat their small business computer support customers so poorly. They must believe that appearing cold will also make them appear more competent.

Here at Port-to-Port Consulting, we're willing to take that chance. Our entire IT support services staff is committed to treating our network support customers kindly. We understand that most people are a little anxious or perturbed during most of their interactions with us. They either have a problem that is getting in the way of their work success, or they are trying to make a purchase decision based on limited understanding of the options. We strive first to put our computer network services customers at ease. I guess this research means we risk giving them a first impression of incompetence. So be it.

Our primary goal in providing Information Technology services in Indianapolis is to help our customers get better at what they do. We can't start helping if we aren't approachable.

I attended an event last evening at the home of local entrepreneur and philanthropist Scott Jones. The gathering was to introduce Lemonade Day to Indianapolis. My schedule required me to arrive late and leave early. I did get to see the entire presentation and am still wondering about my involvement in Lemonade Day. However, things went bad when I tried to leave. I was the first person to give my parking ticket to the valets. Several more people came out shortly after me and before long a steady trickle of people were departing.

It didn't strike me as strange when the first car to pull up was not mine. I started to be a bit concerned when the fifth one arrived and still I hadn't seen mine. It became ridiculous when I had been standing in the rain for 30 minutes without getting my car. The valets kept telling me they were getting my car, but it was obvious to everyone that they weren't. Finally, after 45 minutes and several polite requests for information, they told me that they couldn't get my car to start. You can't imagine how furious that made me.

The whole ordeal reminded me of one of the important tenets we hold here at Port-to-Port Consulting. We always tell our small business computer support customers the bad news as soon as we know it. They most likely are going to find out sooner or later, so why not tell them right away. Besides, they might be able to help. In the network support business, there are going to be problems. Companies that outsource their IT support services know that as well. They also know what is most critical and can help prioritize in a pinch.

I walked to my car in disgust, got in, turned the steering wheel a quarter turn, and started my car. I waited 45 minutes to find out that something was wrong that only took 10 seconds to correct. I hope these young men learned something from the experience. I'll get my own car next time.

In the grand scheme of things, the thing that we do at our Indianapolis small business computer support company is to help our customers do whatever they do a little bit better. Often, particularly with new network support customers, that amounts to nothing more than keeping their computer network running without crashes. After we've worked with them for a while, that becomes less exciting to them because they become accustomed to the idea that their business computer system should work without unplanned down time. That's when we have to start working to earn our keep.

Sometimes we do obvious things like informing our computer consulting customers about the status of their IT system. We keep them up to date on the age and status of their equipment and help plan replacements, refreshments, and upgrades as they go about budgeting. At other times, we move a bit out of the normal things considered outsourced computer support to areas like online marketing and social media. Every now and then we really step outside the normal envelope and do research that only touches computer support because it's done online. A recent example was a question posed to me by a customer who received several gift cards from friends and vendors at Christmas. He knew he would never visit many of these stores and wanted to know if there were options other than "re-gifting" these cards.

We took the challenge and, believe it or not, there is another option. We found a website, giftcardrescue.com, that allows you to trade in your gift cards for cash or other cards. Sure, my customer could have spent a few minutes online himself and perhaps found this site. I could have told him that I didn't know of anything other than re-gifting and moved on to my next task. But the reality of our outsourced computer service is that we do what our customers need us to do so that they can be more productive. Besides, now that I've found this option, I can share it with the rest of my Indianapolis computer consulting customers and perhaps help them with a small problem as well.

I met with a prospective new small business computer network support customer this morning. As we talked about the IT services we provide thru our Pertingo^® Computer Support Service, the application of Dragon Dictate came up. I had to admit that this was an area of Information Technology that had not progressed as quickly as I had expected it to do. I was predicting in the early 1990s that we'd all be talking to our computers like the folks on the Starship Enterprise by the mid-90s. I was wrong by more than a decade so far. While the current version of Dragon Dictate and many of its competitors will do a pretty decent job of allowing you to dictate documents, none of them are particularly good at allowing you to control your PC using your voice.

Imagine my surprise when I get back to the office and discover that researchers at the University of North Florida have moved from voice recognition to thought recognition. That's right. They've connected two epilepsy patients to a computer via electrocorticography (ECoG). The process requires drilling a hole in your skull so it probably won't catch on too quickly. However, the results were nearly 100 percent accurate.

As exciting as this research may be for some, it still doesn't solve the real problem with voice recognition. The English language (and any other popular human language) is too complicated for a computer to learn. It can recognize the words, but it cannot discern meaning from them. That's why dictation is fairly simple and highly accurate but understanding is about zero. Talking to your computer is still a good decade or more away. But I'll keep hoping.

I recently read a blog post titled Excuses are Not a Customer Service Policy. In it, the author describes a bad breakfast experience with friends. The post wasn't as interesting as its title, but it made me think about the way in which most computer network services companies behave toward their customers. It's amazing how most people think that a customer who has been mistreated in some way wants to hear excuses for the abuse. In most instances, the customer wants an apology first and a resolution second. If these two are adequate to save the relationship, then she might want to hear the excuse.

At Port-to-Port Consulting, we recognize this and we try very hard not to make excuses for the mistakes that occur in the process of providing computer support to our Indianapolis area customers. We know that things will often go wrong in IT support services. That's the reason we have a Help Desk in the first place. However, one of our main tenets is to avoid escalating the problem by tossing out lame excuses, or worse, telling our customers what they did wrong. Sometimes the problem is created by a customer who improperly uses his computer, but it doesn't get fixed by us throwing that in his face. So we don't.

Good Information Technology consulting requires a solid working relationship. My network technicians often find themselves taking the blame for something that may not have been our fault. Finding fault doesn't fix problems. The faster we can get past that point, the sooner we can start helping our customers move forward again. Besides, if they hired us to manage their computer network services and they aren't working properly for any reason, isn't that ultimately our fault?

One of the computer network service technicians here at Port-to-Port Consulting just returned from a training class in Tampa, Florida. One of his complaints about spending time in Tampa was that it seemed to him that everything closed around 5:00 PM each day. I explained to him that the majority of people living in Tampa are old (Data bears me out on this one.) and tend to get inside early for the evening. Businesses start closing early because the bulk of their customers go home early.

It struck me that this is an important element in becoming a successful business computer support company. There are things about your target market that are specific to them and quite different from other categories of businesses. This is why we focus ALL of our efforts on Indianapolis small businesses. The difference between the needs of a 30 person law firm and the legal department at Wellpoint is stark. It's nearly impossible to handle the information technology needs of a 40 person real estate company while also worrying about the needs of the City of Carmel.

I'm often asked why we don't go after the network support business of some of our community's larger companies. My answer always revolves around this idea. If I serve large and small customers, whenever there is a conflict between them, the little guy is almost bound to lose. Besides, working with Indianapolis area small businesses allows us to see the impact we have as we help their businesses grow.

My son came home last Friday for Christmas break. He had just been home a couple of weeks earlier for Thanksgiving. I was apprehensive that his return would be stressful on our household. He hadn't lived with us during the summer so the longest he'd been with us in over a year was the four days at Thanksgiving. So far, my concerns have been greatly overblown. He has pitched in and helped out without complaint or even prompting in some cases. He's a different person than he was a year ago.

I find the same to be true with many of my former Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers. At the time that we parted ways, each of us had good reason to end the business relationship. In the cases where they've been willing to try again and we've been willing to try again, we've established a stronger and better relationship than we'd had before. Some of it is because they experienced a different kind of IT support services with the provider who replaced us. Some of it is because they, and we, have grown in the time we spent apart. Most of it is because we recognized that even though we'd had some difficult times, we were good for each other and usually good to each other.

I'm launching a campaign next year to reach out to many of those former computer network services customers and invite them to try the relationship again. I know we've changed and I imagine they have too. Our history together should help to make us better for each other.

Twitter. Surely by now you've heard of it even if you're not sure what it is. Don't feel bad about it. "What is Twitter?" was one of the most asked questions at Ask.com in the past year. It seems as if you'd better find an answer soon though. While I've been a Twitter user for more than a year now, I still search for a good reason to tell my Indianapolis computer consulting customers that they should use it.

According to a recent survey conducted by cScape, almost 44 percent of companies plan to increase their spending on Twitter activities in 2010. It seems they believe this is the best online medium for engaging customers. I say "they" because I'm still a skeptic about the successful use of Twitter. While estimates of the number of users range as high as 80 million, more than half of all users never come back after the first 30 days -- many never return after initially creating their account. In addition, the company doesn't yet know how it will generate revenue from its user base. If someone doesn't figure out a killer business use for Twitter soon, the whole thing may come tumbling down.

Nonetheless, I keep up with my account and tweet every couple of days to my 60 or so followers. Some of my computer network services customers have created accounts, but they keep asking me what they should do with them. And I just can't give them a good answer. So, if nearly half of all businesses invest in Twitter activities in 2010, the other half may have an advantage in marketing. 

According to new media marketing firm Penn Olson, these are the top 10 questions posed to Ask.com in 2009:

1. How much should I weigh?
2. How do I get out of debt fast?
3. How do I get pregnant?
4. What is Miley Cyrus’ phone number?
5. What is Twitter?
6. What is the meaning of life?
7. When will the world end?
8. How long does marijuana stay in your system?
9. What are symptoms of Swine Flu?
10. What time is it?

Most of those questions indicate something bad about the confidence many of us place in the power of the Internet. The list did make me think about the kinds of questions that get asked at our computer help desk. Rather than list the top 10, I'm offering up the 10 I hope we never hear again:
 

1. I didn't do what you told me, but can you fix it now that it's broken?
2. If I didn't put in my backup tape, can you still restore my files?
3. Can I keep using my computer after the power goes out?
4. Should I have called you before I clicked OK on that popup?
5. The salesman said it would be easy. Why can't you make it work?
6. I just sent out an email to a couple thousand people and now I'm getting bouncebacks. Can you look at it?
7. So I wasn’t supposed to open that Hallmark e-card?
8. What do you mean I’m not supposed to work out of my deleted items folder?
9. Is this trojan message good or bad?
10. I didn't do anything. Why isn't it working?

Our Indianapolis IT outsourcing company fields dozens of calls every day at the Help Desk. We know that each caller us a customer with an issue that is unique to them, and we do all we can to help them. There are times when we wish we could have gotten to them sooner, but we understand that they use our IT services because this stuff is a bit foreign to them. If all of these questions stopped being asked, we'd have another 10 that we wish we didn't hear. Our favorite thing to hear is, "Thank you for fixing my problem."

 

My Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers still make fun of me for my prediction in the mid-nineties that we were only a couple of years from being able to talk to our computers just like Spock and Kirk did on Star Trek. At the time there were several major companies investing big dollars in voice recogmition. It seemed like a safe prediction. So you can imagine that those same computer outsourcing customers take my predecitions with a grain of salt. Heck, so do I, most of the time. Nonetheless, I've been right more often than that talking computer proclamation would indicate.

The latest advice I gave to my computer services customers was to get involved in social media in 2009. I told them it was transforming from a fringe thing into a mainstream tool for business as well as personal activities online. As the year comes to an end, the statistics are proving me correct. Let's just look at Facebook:

• 350 million users worldwide with 35 years and older representing the fastest growing group
• 10 million people daily becoming fans of one of the 1.6 million fan pages daily
• 6 billion minutes spent there each day - twice as much as Google and 55 minutes per person
• 55 million updates, 14 million videos, 2.5 billion photos added daily
• 45 million active groups with the average user belonging to 12

Sure, it's possible to waste a lot of time in the social media space, but it's time to invest a little in figuring out what it's all about. Remember wishing you'd started doing email sooner? Our communications world is changing again, and it's going to have as big an impact as email eventually.

There are a few days left in 2009. Sign up somewhere and start learning about these new communication tools.

Becky Hardwick was telling us about her four year old daughter's ability to add small numbers. The interesting thing was that her daughter couldn't add two numbers, like 2 plus 3, but she could quickly calculate the answer to, "If I have 2 apples and you have 3 apples, how many apples to we have?"

This points out an interesting thing that our brains tend to do. We compartmentalize our knowledge like Becky's daughter. You've probably seen it. A person can remember all of the stats for a major league pitcher's entire career but he can't remember a phone number long enough to cross the room. This phenomenon must have something to do with the way we're wired together. It becomes a problem when working on the networks of our Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers. That's why we use a collaborative approach to designing and managing our provision of computer network services.

Many of my computer outsourcing peers tend to assign a single network technician to each of their customers, ostensibly for consistency and uniformity. In reality, they are guaranteeing these knowledge compartmentalization problems will sneak into every computer network they support. My IT consulting company makes sure that everybody gets to see and experience all of the computer networks we support. You never know when someone needs to count apples instead of numbers.

I just read that a new iPhone has been detected in the wild. A public Internet provider in San Francisco found a device in its access logs that identified itself as "iPhone 3.1". That's a version above the 3GS, which identifies itself as "iPhone 2.1" or the "iPhone 1.2" that is the 3G. Combine that with the recent release of new Android phones from Motorola and HTC and it creates a conundrum for this Indianapolis small business computer consultant. One of the most difficult questions for us to answer for our computer outsourcing customers is, "Which smartphone should I buy?"

The answer depends on so many things, not the least of which being personal preference. With each generation of phone, the ability to synchronize to email, calendar, and contacts gets easier (Blackberry is an exception, but it at least doesn't get harder). At that point, my network technicians are content with any choice. Not me. I want to put the closest thing to the perfect device that is available into my computer services customer's hands. I want to know when they'll use it, where they'll use it, how they'll use it, and how they intend to treat it. Will it be a prized possession kept safe from all dangers, or will it be treated no better than a 19 cent Write Brothers pen?

Understandably I obsess about this particular choice more than most IT services decisions. This is the area in which the geek in me expresses itself most. However, it is indicative of the way in which we go about recommending any element of our customers' computer network services. We want the best answer we can find, given the business constraints and availability.

I met with a couple of guys this morning who are about to launch a new business. My computer tech support business is going to help set them up. As we talked, I found it interesting that they didn't initially expect me to add to the conversation. They had a list of questions that they wanted answered by an IT consultant so they could make decisions about next steps. As I started asking clarifying questions of them they began to see the real value of a good computer outsourcing company.

The trick isn't in knowing how to set up a computer network. It's in knowing what the small business is going to do with the network. Most IT services providers forget this fact after they've been in business for a few years. It's forgetting this that puts so many of my Indianapolis IT outsourcing peers out of business. The number one job of an Information Technology provider is to make the small business owner's job easier to do.

At the end of the meeting this morning, these two guys shook my hand and turned their attention away from technology needs to the innumerable other things that have to be done in order to launch their new enterprise. I'm excited to be a part of it all.

I am convinced, and now tell my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that social media is making a permanent change to the way in which we collect and disseminate information. Blogs are a primary source of news for a growing percentage of the US population. Keeping in touch with an ever-increasing number of acquaintances - people you would like to keep in your life, but who would otherwise not warrant the effort - is made simple by social media. You can find endless lists of good reasons to dip your toes into the social media world so I'll summarize with this: You can't avoid it forever. You might as well get started. Here are some things to remember:

1. The marketers will follow you there and so will the spammers.

2. The hackers won't be far behind.

3. Social Media will become an important element in every organization's marketing.

4. It's not the end of the world as you know it.

5. Your privacy ends if you put it online.

6. Rules and protocols will develop.

7. Something else will come along to supplant it.

Go ahead. Give it a shot. If you're reading this, you've already started. An easy next step is to leave a comment.

When I was in the Air Force I would sometimes come home and, within a few minutes of being there, my wife would say to me, "You spent a lot of time with Colonel Jones today didn't you?" The first few times I would acknowledge that I had and wonder how she knew. I thought perhaps his cologne leached onto me and she could smell it. Eventually I had to ask. She said, "Whenever you spend time with Col Jones, you come home cussing like a drunken sailor."

She was right. Col Jones was a brilliant man, but he had a mouth like, well, a drunken sailor. It turns out that foul language is not only a way to express agony, but a way to alleviate it as well. Recent studies confirm that people who swear can withstand pain longer than those who don't. That explains why those of us in the computer outsourcing business tend to swear more often than most of our peers. Imagine if you had to spend the bulk of your day dealing with computer tech support from a guy named "Bob" in India? That's the life of a network technician.

Now we don't tend to curse and swear in the presence of our Indianapolis small business computer support customers. We wait until we get back in the safety of our office where the free flow of agony relieving language can be heard at a volume considerably above a whisper. We maintain enough decorum to avoid a comparison to Animal House, but we are accustomed to frequent short bursts of four letter words. Now we know it enhances our ability to withstand the hard parts of IT support services.

While Apple has managed to maintain an image of being virus-impervious, most of us in the computer outsourcing business have always contended that the reason there weren't many native Mac viruses was because there just weren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for evil hackers to bother with it when there were far more Windows PCs out there to attack. In fact, as the Mac continues to becomes more popular on the Intel platform, I imagine computer help desks all over the country will start to see more infected ones. The popularity of the iPhone (30 million sold and counting) has already attracted some attention. A young man in Australia has written a worm that infects the iPhone while pretending to be a Rick Astley screen saver. I have to admit that I didn't know who Astley was, but this is sure to raise his popularity briefly.

One of the most frequent questions from my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers is, "What can I do to ensure that my network is safe from hackers?" I always answer the same way: "Disconnect your machines from the Internet."

That's the only way to be sure, and even then you may have a mole in your own organization who ferrets out data on a flash drive. (How about that, two rodents in the same sentence?) Data security is an important element of any good network design. We do all we can to keep our computer network services customers' data safe. The best analogy I can use is your home security. You lock the doors when you leave to keep bad people out. If you feel you're at a higher risk, you turn on an alarm as well. These measures will keep out most burglars or thieves. They'll just move on to the next house in search of one without an alarm or with an unlocked door. However, if the burglar is looking to get something from you in particular, your locks and alarms become a nuisance to him. He'll have to plan better and it will take longer, but if he's committed, he'll get around your reasonable precautions. The same holds true for your network. Practice safe computing and avoid upsetting anyone who might have crazy tech skills.

If those infected iPhone users had practiced safe computing, they wouldn't have jailbroken their phones, and the worm wouldn't have gotten in.

The new Droid smartphone has been on the market for more than a day and I still haven't been to the local Verizon store to play with one. It's rather unusual for me but my schedule was full yesterday and my wife owns my time today. I'll visit during the Colts game when other gadget geeks are working their man-sized remote controls. I'm really excited about the chance to use a phone that has learned from the iPhone success and works on a more reliable network.

Many of my Indianapolis small business computer support customers know that I'm the go-to guy for gadgets, particularly any portable devices. The upcoming holiday season may arrive too soon for the coolest of the rumored gadgets though. It's almost certain that Apple will not unveil their Tablet (iTablet) before the end of the year. If they miss the Christmas rush, it will probably be Jobs' afterthought during his MacWorld keynote in February. The Barnes and Noble Nook, which looked like it had features that would give the Kindle a run, is now bogged down in legal battles. It appears that B&N stole the device from another company. I'm sure there will be tons of new phones and mp3 players soon, but they bore us all any more. It's time for a device that defines a new category. It may just come from Microsoft.

That's right. While the "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" commercials battle for our desktop dollars, the real fight for our souls is going on in the next generation of portables. Even though Apple may not hit the streets with their Tablet, Microsoft will very likely make it to market this year with their new Courier -- I don't know what generic name to call it -- electronic journal. That's right, it's unique enough that it may create a new category.

Fear not, business computer support buyers, I'll be the first kid on the block with one of these new thingy's.

A recent eWeek article recalled the top five priorities of the IT industry. According to Doug Tracy, CIO of Dana Holdings, the top five are:

• Set a Vision
• Manage Vendors
• Improve Process
• Standardize Operations
• Test Open Source

I found this list interesting because it contains the elements of our Pertingo(r) Computer Support service that most of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers overlook when they are looking for a good computer consultant. We know that our customers use price and convenience as the primary factors in deciding on a computer support service. It isn't until they've had a provider who looks at things like these top five priorities for them that they come to realize the full impact of good IT support services.

• We work with each of our clients to develop a vision for their technology that fits the vision they have for their company as a whole.
• We have always described ourselves as the "one throat to choke" to our customers. We manage the activities of every other provider who touches their computer network.
• We take the time to learn how our customers do their jobs so we can make suggestions to improve the process.
• We strive to standardize, as much as possible, all of the elements of their network.
• We're always playing with something new to see if it has applicability in our customers' IT environments.

In short, we are always working on those top five priorities. Any good IT support services company should do the same. Many don't. Sure, we are also doing those routine things as efficiently as we can. But we don't add value if all we do is fix broken stuff and wait for you to tell us what new stuff you'd like to buy. Our job is to maximize the benefit you get from having bought all this stuff in the first place. That's good IT.