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.

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?

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. 

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.

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.

How do you respond when someone tells you your offer is too good to be true? I find it extremely difficult to come up with a response that is acceptable to them. While I know that I wouldn't be making the offer if I couldn't deliver, the other person usually doesn't have enough experience with me to be able to have blind faith in my ability to perform. That leaves me wishing I had made a lesser offer to start with.

This is the situation we often find ourselves dealing with when we propose our Pertingo(r) Computer Support Service to organizations. Inevitably, we play the "Is this included?" game. Even our computer consulting peers make fun of the Pertingo(r) offering. They refer to Port-to-Port Consulting as the "All-You-Can-Eat guys. In a sense we are. We view the agreement between us and our Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers as an employment agreement. We compete more against the single inside guy than we do against the other central Indiana computer outsourcing companies. 

If you hired a guy, you'd expect him to work hard at whatever is required to keep your organization moving forward. We do the same. Sometimes, your inside guy would have to put in extra hours to handle a particularly difficult task. In general, you expect that to be a part of his normal compensation because there will also be times when he has little to do, or he needs to cut out early for a cross country meet or something.

In the final analysis, the Pertingo(r) offer isn't too good to be true. It's a fair deal for everyone. It seems better because it's compared to astronomical hourly rates charged by other IT consultants. We find that by doing more, we're able to avoid the things that consume huge amounts of time. At first, it seems counterintuitive, but think about how much easier it would have been to lose those first few extra pounds instead of waiting until you had dozens of pounds to lose.
 

In 2000, we decided it was time for Port-to-Port Consulting to grow. The economy at the time felt otherwise. As a result, we found ourselves in an unsustainable cash position. We were going broke. Many people start looking at all the things that are wrong when they find themselves in dire situations. I tend to look for the opportunity being presented. The opportunity in our upside down financial situation was to reinvent who we are. In fact, we went so far as to take the first step in reinventing what computer consulting in Indianapolis was.

While our expenses outpaced our revenue, we did have revenue. We evaluated where it was coming from and then sorted it into good and bad piles. We did the same for our clients, and our staff, and all of our regular monthly bills. When we had sorted everything, we looked at the things on the good list and asked, "Can we make a business out of this?" In my mind, I felt that if we could make a business out of the good parts of the one we had, then it was worth the struggle ahead of us to do it because we'd end up with a top notch Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing company. If we couldn't, then we should move quickly to shutting down the company because the only way it could survive was if we created work we did not love.

Happily, we built an IT consulting company that I love. Our Pertingo^® Computer Support Service allowed us to work more closely with the small businesses we help. Keeping the staff members who believed as we did and getting rid of those who didn't made our office a happier place. Eliminating the expenses that were acquired as a result of bad decisions made our books look better and our attitude get rosier.

If the economy hadn't intervened to create a recesion in the Computer Services industry, Port-to-Port would likely be a much larger company today. Damon Richards would likely be much less happy.

IT support services are still a rapidly changing area. We've been provided small business computer support to companies in central Indiana for a long time, and we keep wondering when the pace of change will slow. In actuality the pace is increasing. Indianapolis small businesses, like businesses elsewhere, are becoming more dependent on their computer systems while understanding less about how it works.

One of the things that has hindered the pace of change has been the inability of computer service providers to forget what has worked for them in the past. Humans are creatures of habit, and habits are easily formed and impossible to kill. The reason outsourced IT services are usually better than internal staffs is that the outsourced provider is forced to do new things because he's bringing on new business. The internal guys can freeze the system and provide all kinds of reasons why the small business owner should go along with keeping things as they are.

Our inability to forget has gotten even worse because we do some much electronically and we keep all of those bits and bytes forever. Why? Because we can. You know as well as I do that the majority of the email you have filed away (or "saved" in your Deleted Items) will never be seen again. It has absolutely no value to any living creature, but you keep it because it doesn't take up space in the closet or filing cabinet. Your server doesn't look any bigger with it than it did without it.

Forgetting what worked in the past is key to our ability to move forward to new stuff. Learning how to be active forgetters is becoming a new management skill.

About a year ago, my business partner joined an industry peer group: HTG. Both of us had been members of the Young Entrepreneur's Organization. His group disolved and mine defected. He decided to join HTG to get a different peer experience. In YEO, the commonality is business size and geography. Everyone is local but works in a non-competing industry. In HTG, everyone is geographically separated but works in the Computer Network Consulting industry.

Last week was the fourth quarterly meeting of Rob's group, and he wanted me to attend with him. I had a blast! I'm a fairly gregarious person. I like meeting new people and I believe everyone has something to teach me. It's that curiousity about people that makes my job of supporting the Information Technology of many Indianapolis small businesses appealing to me. I get to learn how businesses in different industries operate. But I digress. At the HTG meeting, the owners of 12 IT support services companies spent two days talking to each other about their businesses.

Two things struck me. We are on a par with the companies that are most professional in our industry, and none of us has found the silver bullet or secret sauce that will allow us to revolutionize small business computer outsourcing. Both were reassuring revelations. I appreciate the challenge of running my little Indianapolis Information Technology company. If there were a cookbook, I'd want to treat it like all the other instruction manuals I get.

Our computers, like our cars homes and bodies, need to be taken care of.  They need regular attention.  It's all too often that we get a call from someone in a panic because something has "crashed".  Luckily Indianapolis small business computer support is alive and well in the form of Pertingo Computer Support Services. 

Pertingo Computer Support Service offers the all-around care for the hardware and software that keeps your business running.  It not only includes IT Support Services but Business Planning, Project Management, Help Desk and Remote Support, Vendor Support, Disaster Recovery, Training and Disposition. 

Our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers benefit from a single source for all of their IT aches and pains.  Just one call is all it takes. 

Let Port-to-Port Consulting be your source for computer consulting services.  Check us out at www.pertingo.com or www.port-to-port.com. 

Ok, so in my last post, I brought up the question of why is it so hard to maintain an accurate IT inventory in the outsourced world.  This time, I'll try to provide some information on ways to at least get close, while exploring some of the problems that still remain.

As I've worked in the world of Indianapolis small business computer support, I've learned that simply relying on a physical inventory is not good enough, but it is a place to start, and a necessary evil.  The problems arise from forgetful (or lazy) technicians doing the inventory.  Often times, it's just not as important as another task on their schedule.  Another issue is that some companies purchase computers without your prior-knowledge and then ask you to get it setup immediately.  Often times this means setting the computer up remotely which hinders your ability to do a full inventory of the computer (make, model, serial numbers, etc).

Ok, so if you can't really rely on a physical inventory, then that means we need a software inventory right?  Yes, and no.  There are several types of inventory software that each behave in a different manor.  No matter the type, the general benefit is that once you have a client installed on each computer, it is contantly talking back to a server.  This means your database at least has an accurate machine count.  Issues still arise from having to install a client on each computer, and this doesn't necessarily provide you with make, model, and serial numbers.  These types of software are generally better for getting an accurate count on the number of computers, not necessarily a full inventory.

So, what's the best solution?  I haven't had the pleasure of trying everything that's out there, but, in my experience as an in small business computer support, I believe it to be a combination of software and physical inventory.  You need to do the physical inventory to get serial numbers and such as well as taking the opportunity to install your inventory software client.  As a part of this, I would also recommend looking into preventing computers you haven't accounted for from logging on to your network.  This prevents the user from purchasing a computer and not telling you until something breaks.

I hope this helps get you pointed in the right direction in your own IT support services.  I have intentionally not included a list of recommended softwares as I haven't had a chance to test them all.  However, if you are looking to use a free solution, I have tested (and liked) Spiceworks.  I even got good support from their forums.

I often meet with prospective Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers who have internal IT staff. Usually it's just one person and that person came to the organization to do a different job and then morphed into the IT support person by virtue of their interest in computers. By the time I meet them, considerable time has passed since this arrangement got formalized and the business owner is wondering whether or not his internal person knows as much as everyone once believed. In truth, the wondering stopped a long time ago, probably when the owner heard a peer talking about a computer network capability that she uses routinely. The owner inquires about the mountains of time and money it must have taken to get that capability only to be told by nearly everyone else that the capability is commonplace in today's computer services.

When the owner got back to the office and asked his tech support person about it, he again hears how he's better off forgetting about that capability because it will take lots of time and money to implement it and then it won't work like he expects. That's when I get a call to discuss matters. Sure enough, the conversation gets around to that specific capability and, after I assure the owner that it is very possible, he screams, "I knew it!"

The next part of the conversation is difficult. I have to gently remind this prospective IT support services customer that he created the situation he's in by giving his network to a person who is unqualified to perform the job. I try to sugarcoat it with a monologue on the rapid rate at which technology changes and the great difficulty any one person must have trying to keep up with new features. And that's true. Not one of my computer systems consultants will pretend to know everything necessary to keep any but the smallest of computer networks running at peak efficiency. We rely on one another to make sure that happens. What the inside network support person has done is to limit the changes in the network so that he can continue to use the knowledge he gained in putting the network together for as long as possible.

That approach stiffles creativity. It throws water on any new idea for moving the business forward thru technology. It's a cost that doesn't get weighed when small business owners consider their computer network services options. You see, while most of my customers are in a relatively steady state with respect to their network, many of them are going thru a significant change. Because of this, it is rare that any one of our customers has to suffer thru being the first to have a particular new technical capability installed in their office. Where the inside guy gets only one chance to get it right, and fears the pressure involved, our network technicians get to do it all the time, and look forward to finding ways to do it better the next time.

Its funny how random events change the way you view things.  My sister got married this weekend and at the reception, the specialty tap for one of our kegs broke.  I eneded up having to leave the reception and drive 45 minutes each way to get a new one.  It wasn't exactly how I envisioned spending my time, but it was necessary so that everyone else would have a better experience.  On my way back to the reception I got to thinking, how often do we really go out of our way to help others?

In our Indianapolis Small Business Computer Support Business we are often called upon to assist others.  Whether its driving out to a client's office to drop off a laptop that we purchased for them, picking up a cable from a supplier so a technican can stay in the office and reboot a server, or even picking up lunch for someone who is busy answering phones on the help desk, we all try to help each other serve our clients better.   None of these tasks fall under my job description, but sometimes they are necessary to make sure our clients get the best service.

Its something that we should all strive to do better at each and everyday.  I know that I am as guilty as others about getting too caught up in my own day to day tasks.  While signing up new clients is my job, I also can't that it is everyone's job here to assist our current clients.  At Port-to-Port Consulting, we endvor everday to help each other however we can, because that ultimately means we are providing the best IT Support Services to our clients.

A recent article in Wired Magazine describes a Shinto shrine in Tokyo where you can take your electronic gadgets to have them blessed. Apparently Shinto believers think that everything in the world has a spiritual essence and can therefore be blessed. My first thought was of the blessed golf club in the movie Dogma. As I continued to read the story, I could imagine that many of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers would not be surprised at all to hear of me having one of my gadgets blessed. For the record, I'm not that much in love with my stuff. In fact, I don't usually keep a gadget long enough to fall in love with it. Two recent exceptions are my iPhone (second one after the first took a plunge in a hot tub) and my Kindle 2. Everything else is close to disposable because newer and better things come out each year.

Getting to play with new devices is one of the joys of working in a IT support services company. Most of our customers resist changes to their computer network until they really have to. However, across our customer base, there is always someone who has to be making a change. The result is that the Port-to-Port computer consultants get to constantly work with new stuff -- an opportunity that doesn't often present itself to an internal IT support person. Getting to try out the new stuff allows us to make better recommendations to our IT services customers when they are ready to change some aspect of their computer network.

As far as having my things blessed, the Wired author claims to have kept his blessed cell phone much longer than any previous one. Perhaps there is something to this Shinto belief after all?