We've been trying to add to our technical staff for several weeks now. The task of finding good, qualified people is daunting even with the growing unemployment. The problem is not so much that we can't find people who have the technical skills for computer network consulting. It's that they don't have the skills that are most important to successfully provide business computer support in the Indianapolis area.

Eric Lundquist made this point in a commentary in a recent issue of eWeek. He summarizes the list of skills identified by the Society for Information Management, a decades old organization for technical managers:

1. Ethics and morals 
2. Critical thinking
3. Collaboration
4. Problem solving
5. Oral communication
6. Written communication
7. Interpersonal skills
8. Creativity
9. Managing expectations
10. Decision making
11. Functional area knowledge
12. Project leadership
13. Database
14. System analysis

Most job candidates find it difficult to understand that technical skills don't even make it into the top ten. My list doesn't exactly match this one from SIM, but it's not far from it. Having people who can't string together a sentence on paper or look me in the eye when talking to me is useless in the computer outsourcing business. My customers expect to get more than technical knowledge from us. They want help with their business problems -- especially the computer network ones.

While we haven't officially closed the books on 2008, it's already clear that it will have been a good year for the Pertingo^® computer support business of Port-to-Port Consulting. I often have mixed feelings about our success during tough economic times. While other Indianapolis area businesses are trying to figure out how to cut back in order to survive, we're trying to hire talented and skilled people to join our IT support services team. Our difficulty in hiring is related to our success in tough times.

If you're a small business owner and you're looking at your staff to determine who has to get cut, it doesn't take long for your eyes to fall on the computer support guy. You know how everyone else on the staff makes money (or saves money) for your business, but you aren't quite sure what your computer guy does exactly. Part of this is because business computer support is not a core function of your organization. A bigger part is that your guy has probably grown lazy over the years and he really isn't doing much except keeping the rest of the staff in fear that he can make their lives at work miserable if they don't treat him nicely.

I know it's true because I've gotten so many phone calls from people who literally whisper in fear that their computer guy might overhear. They want to know if I believe they need to have a full time computer person in their company of 30 or 40 or even 50 people. I generally tell them that depends on how their organization operates: how critical their IT system is the them; and how well it's been designed and maintained. After a bit more discussion, they invite me in to see their system, usually at a time when they're sure their guy will be out of the office. I go, and most often, I find that they don't need a full time guy if they just invest a little in upgrading and re-configuring their system. They are relieved to hear it and set about the task of replacing their guy with Port-to-Port's Pertingo^® service.

Then the other shoe drops. The owner will come to me and say something like, "Joe has been with the company for a long time. Surely you can use a good man like him on your staff." I don't often enjoy this conversation because I have to tell them that if Joe were any good at his job, he would have quit it long ago to seek a real challenge in the industry. My guys do every day the kinds of things that Joe only does once every couple of years. He probably convinces you to hire an outside computer consulting company for that. If Joe was good, he would already have applied for work with us.

Most of my Indianapolis computer consulting prospects take this news in one of two ways. They either get really mad that Joe has been dead weight on their business for so long and can't wait to get rid of him, or they get mad at me for insinuating that Joe was somehow fooling them into believing that his work was more important than it really was. In one case I get a new client. In the other, I apologize and walk away.

The reality is that very few small businesses need to have a full time computer consultant unless their business is directly related to technology. Yes, all of our businesses rely heavily on technology. Having an on-staff Help Desk guy is a false sense of security. No one person can keep up with all of the things that need to be managed on a typical computer network. The time has come to consider how you spend those IT dollars. Computer outsourcing is the norm for larger businesses. It should be the norm for your business too.

Trust is a common theme that comes up when I write about the relationship between a computer network consulting company and its customers. I mention it often because it is the most important element in the success of that relationship. The same is true for other professional relationships we have like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and coaches. A recent malware attack led me to remind of this again.

According to Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, hackers figured out how to take advantage of the URL redirector function of some popular web sites including Microsoft.com and IRS.gov to send people to malicious sites. These people were looking for downloads to help them protect their systems from just such malicious activity. Port-to-Port Consulting's Pertingo(r) computer consulting clients can avoid these kinds of problems by trusting that we, their IT support services company, have taken care to protect their systems. They also know that because of the fixed fee relationship between us, a mistake in this area will cost us time and money to repair.

When people don't trust that their computer outsourcing company has their best interest at heart, they start searching for good advice from other sources. That search often leads, on the Internet, to bad results. It's like when your kids listen to their misbehaving friends instead of the good advice you give them.

So if you find yourself chasing online solutions to threats and problems instead of seeking your business computer support provider, you should perhaps seek a new provider. Find one you can trust and your life will be better.

User generated content is the key defining element of the Web 2.0 movement. Social networking is close behind. This makes sites that allow people to rate the quality of various items or providers seem the logical best step for a killer new web site. If you're thinking you have a great idea for a site where people can rate things, that ship has already sailed.

The problem it has created for my Indianapolis computer consulting clients is that the Internet is now filled with sites that contain information about them. Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. Most of it is inaccurate. Why should you care? Most of these rating sites will appear above your company web site when someone does a search on keywords of interest to you. So most people have a greater chance of finding your listing than finding your site. Take Port-to-Port Consulting as an example. If you search for Computer Outsourcing in Indianapolis on Google, the first hit is a site called GetFave. The first mention of Port-to-Port is this blog (4th place isn't bad). Luckily for us, we're the only listing in GetFave and the information is accurate. Why? Because I edited our entry on GetFave when I saw how well it was doing in searches for Computer Network Consulting and other terms.

Do you have someone who monitors these things for your small business? We've created a new practice area for just that purpose. We call it Online Presence Management. It goes way beyond search engine optimization and website maintenance. It involves finding, correcting, or creating your online image to be what you need it to be to succeed. 

Cloud computing is one of the hot topics in computer network consulting these days. Many of our Indianapolis computer consulting customers have asked us to explain what it's all about. In a sense, cloud computing is just another form of client/server computing. The difference is that the server is not in your office. It's somewhere out there in the Internet cloud.

Business computing constantly seeks to find the delicate balance between freedom for the staff and control for the management. On top of that, most internal IT support departments start to think it's all about them after a while. This conflict creates a pendulum effect that swings from centralized computing like the mainframe and dumb terminals of old, and individualized computing like the free standing desktop PCs of the late 80s. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Cloud computing is the latest incarnation of the mainframe approach to computing. Most of the processing happens on the server and all of the data is kept there.

Most business computer support companies are steering their clients away from cloud computing with scare tactics about the data security risk and availability problems. The reality is that cloud computing has the possibility of taking money out of their pockets because there will be less equipment installed in the clients office to fix and maintain. As soon as they find a way to bill for it, they'll start talking about how great cloud computing can be for their clients.

Port-to-Port Consulting is already talking about how great it is because our Pertingo(r) service focuses our energy more tightly on our customer's success. We believe there are some great advantages to cloud computing for many small businesses, including our own. Ask your computer consulting provider about cloud computing. His answer may say a lot about where his focus lies.

I didn't retrieve yesterday's mail from the box until this morning. I was appalled to find THREE letters from personal injury attorneys wanting to make sure that I'm aware of my rights in this accident that "was serious enough to make the public record." I thought about the business computer support providers who use scare tactics to generate new business by feeding their prospects a bunch of stuff that is obvious to anyone in the computer network consulting business but seems incredibly important to someone outside. Like the fact that my accident made the public record. Well, of course it did. Thanks to my Indianapolis computer consulting clients in the legal industry, I know that every police report is a part of the public record. It's not as impressive if you know that.

The two things that many computer outsourcing "experts" are touting these days are security and Online Presence Management. Security is always a good way to scare up some business. Small business owners are overly concerned with the security of their networks as I've written about in a previous post. Combine that with a few stories about the total ruin of a similar business, and you've got a ripe mark.  Even better though is the  promise to raise more money for the struggling business owner. We all know it takes more than a good website or accounts on some social networking sites, but we don't really know how much more. Or how to do it.

The truth is that in both of these areas, the fix is not a one-time deal. Any expert who comes in and promises to make your network completely secure by conducting an audit and selling you additional hardware and software to fix what he finds is providing security at a single point in time. You will not be secure the next day when there are new threat vectors that he didn't take into account. The same is true on the Internet marketing side. Lots of people can present you with a screen image that shows you on page one of a Google search for a particular search phrase of interest to you. They don't tell you that you won't be there by the time your prospect conducts the same search.

The only way your small business can take successful advantage of outsourced business computer support is to have a long term relationship with your provider. That's why we abandoned all forms of network support except our Pertingo^® Computer Suport Services.

I was in a car accident on Tuesday. I was just driving along when suddenly I heard a loud noise. It took a moment for me to realize the noise was the sound of another vehicle slamming into my car. I made the connection when I became aware that my car was spinning in the street. No one was hurt but my car was severely damaged. The other driver had run a red light.

No one who witnessed the accident stopped to offer assistance or to provide their version of what happened. I was apprehensive that the other driver would claim that I ran the light and, with no other witnesses, we'd have a long drawn out dispute. He admitted fault and we're well on the way to resolution.

The incident made me think about the many occasions we have in the course of our computer network consulting business to bend the truth, exagerate, or flat out lie to our customers. We usually know more than they do on the topic. It's the reason they use us for their computer outsourcing. We've learned over the years that those are character making opportunities. We tell our customers the straight truth, whether it's good for us or not. A good example comes from a recent email I got from one of our not-for-profit customers for whom we provide IT support services. He had asked me what it would cost for us to build a new website for him. He didn't know that I was in the middle of a decision about bringing on a full time web developer, but I knew that his project would provide the startup work to make the decision. I also knew that a local school was looking for a not-for-profit organization that needed a new website to use as a class project. I directed him to the school.

Michael wrote me back saying how much he appreciated that I would "take money out of my pocket" to help him. That's the value of honesty in computer outsourcing. Michael knows that he can trust my recommendations because they are made with his interests in mind, even when they don't align with my short term interests.

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld earned the Foot in Mouth Award for answering a press conference question with his famous, “as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.” As confusing as that sounds, it is the treacherous unknown unknowns that make the job of computer network consulting in Indianapolis exciting. I’m often told by prospects that they have everything they need from their small business computer consultant only to discover a few questions later that they are only happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.

Another computer outsourcing provider passed on a story about a business computer support customer he had a few years ago. She was visiting the office and noticed that every printer had a bottle of white out next to it. The customer explained that their word processor automatically printed the page number on the first page of each document. They used the white-out to cover it, then copied the first page before sending the document. When the consultant showed them quickly how to change the setting, they exclaimed that the solution would save them several minutes per document, not to mention paper and white-out. They hadn’t asked before because they thought the cost to have it changed would be burdensome.

How many White-Out Cures are there in your office just waiting for a good computer help desk tech to get rid of them for you? The reason that we charge a fixed fee rather than an hourly rate is so you can ask those questions without regard to the burden they might be.

I attended the Dealmaker Media Under the Radar conference yesterday. This is a speed dating style conference where companies that are doing new things in Information Technology get six minutes to pitch their company before a room full of potential investors and business partners. Chip Heath, co-author of "Made to Stick," did a brief presentation on the secret to pitching in a short time. It's amazing how much one can present in only a minute. Unfortunately, one cannot pitch everything in one minute. Heath's advice: Pitch the single most important thing and leave the audience with questions that will lead to future conversations.

In thinking about that advice, I considered what is the single most important thing that a good business computer support company should do for its customers. My conclusion surprised me. Your computer network consulting company should make you more money by increasing your revenue. I can list a dozen things that your IT support service provider should do, but the single defining element is that we, like all of your other employees, should work to make your business more profitable. If we aren't doing that, then we aren't working hard enough.

Given that as the main objective changes the way that my Indianapolis computer consulting company views its relationship with customers. Clearly keeping the computer network running is important, but it doesn't begin to impact profitability. The place where we add value is by taking our knowledge of technology and combining it with your understanding of your business and finding the sweet spot where they fit together. That's why we're always asking questions that don't seem to directly apply to the activities of your computer system. We're looking for those places of most potential. Share your goals and objectives with us so we can do our part to make you more successful.

Computer network services are among the most rapidly changing elements of global business. Yet it is amazing how few really big new ideas come to the industry each year. Sure, processors get faster and memory gets cheaper, but that just means that we have bigger computers waiting for us to figure out what we’re going to type next. Instead of working on the next big thing, most companies in the Information Technology sector watch to see what people are clamoring to have, then try to build an offering that is marginally better than the market leader. Good recent examples are the many new touch screen phones that have appeared since the introduction of the Apple iPhone or the explosion of social networking sites after the sale of MySpace and valuation of Facebook.

Linus Pauling said, “Te best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.” Today’s corporate leaders fail to follow anything like this advice. Their motto seems more along the lines of, “Make something that looks like what everyone is buying so we can get a share of this hot market too.” The reason I bought an iPhone was because Apple had broken the mold of what a smart phone was supposed to look like. I hoped that its success would lead to a complete re-thinking of what people want in a phone. Instead it led to a plethora of me-too imitations. And how many online social networks can one man belong to? I’ve been invited to join at least one new one each week for the past several months. I’ve even been offered a couple of opportunities to create my own for my Indianapolis computer consulting customers. Fear not, there will be no Pertingo social network on my watch.

So, here are some ideas I’d like to suggest for the ready to take a risk company that wants to impact business computer support:

• Brainstorm new ways to interface with the computer. Scrap the keyboard/mouse paradigm altogether and start from scratch.


• Develop a new authentication method that doesn’t depend on our ability to create cryptic passwords that we can’t remember and have to change so frequently that it wouldn’t matter if we could remember.


• Come up with a better way to keep viruses and other malware from wrecking the good mood of office workers.


• Create a standard that allows email authentication so we can stop losing good mail and receiving bogus offers to enhance our lives or bodies.

I can take any group of people and brainstorm an enormous list of ideas under any of these topics. Surely those with specific expertise in these areas can do something better than they’ve done thus far.

As a species, we don’t care much for change. Even in an ever-changing industry like computer network consulting, I’m often amazed at how resistant to change my peers are. It even sneaks into the thinking of our company from time to time. I overheard a couple of my staff members in a discussion recently. One said to the other, “If you don’t like change, you picked the wrong place to work.”

 

I found that to be refreshing. One of the most important ways in which we add value to our Indianapolis computer services customers is to stay aware of changes that might impact their businesses. Most of the changes that occur in computer outsourcing won’t be important to any individual business, but every change makes a difference to some business. We are responsible for bringing those pertinent changes to the attention of our computer network consulting clients so they can decide how to respond to the change. A significant side effect of this is that our organization is constantly in a state of flux. As Stephen Haeckel said, “Innovation is disruptive and a natural enemy of efficiency, stability, and predictability.” Port-to-Port Consulting is an interesting place to work.

 

In another conversation on which I eavesdropped, I heard this statement: “We have to get it together before the next guy gets here.” I laughed out loud in response. The truth is, we have it together. It doesn’t often look like it because we’re constantly changing, which means it doesn’t stay together very long before something changes. This constant churn is most obvious at the interface between our Help Desk and our computer outsourcing customers. As we make changes to keep up with technology and best practices, our customers are sometimes confronted with a different way of doing things. We work to make a smooth transition if we can. We redirect the bulk of the change to us internally. Still, we know that the best fit customers for Port-to-Port are the ones who can adjust to change.

In the Middle Age Vikings lived and literally died by the sea. After death, wealthier Vikings were placed in ships filled with food, jewels, weapons, food and even sometimes servants or animals for their comfort in the afterlife. The boats were interred in the ground, set alight or sent out to sea. This seems to be the way many small business owners make their computer network decisions. They believe that they should have the latest and greatest so they can impress others with their state-of-the-art technology. I frequently meet with business owners in the Indianapolis area who have rooms full of computer equipment. They brag about the manufacturers of the equipment the way teenagers talk about their clothes designers.

The goal of any business computer purchase decision should be to help the business generate more revenue or realize more profit. Anything else means you’re stockpiling your ship for your afterlife journey to Valhalla. My computer network consulting customers are always telling me that I’m the most “no saying” sales guy they’ve ever met. I point out that I’m not saying no to the purchase. I’m just pressing them to understand their true motivation in making the purchase.

Now I’m no Luddite. I love to have neat baubles to play with. But I don’t pretend when I buy a Samsung micro-PC that it’s going to make money for my company. I buy it because I want to play with it. Sometimes that playing leads to some useful business benefits that I can share with my customers. The PDA was a great example. The first Palm Pilot I purchased was the fifth device I had owned. I saw a real benefit even though the products coming to market weren’t quite there. Smartphones are another, more recent example.

This is one of the intangible benefits that a good computer outsourcing company provides. You have enough to keep up with changes in your specific industry. Let us keep up with the changes in ours that will affect yours. Stock your ship with more impressive things than failed technology.

 

Dan and Chip Heath write in the October issue of Fast Company magazine that companies employ the equivalent of the population of Kansas to field our complaint calls but about a canoe full to hear our compliments. They go on to lament about how difficult companies make it for us to say thank you. I believe they’ve confused cause and effect. If there were more of us trying to say thanks, more people would be employed to take those calls. Saying thank you has become an indication of weakness in our society. Having someone thank you is akin to them calling you a wuss. More often than not when you say thank you to someone, the response is “thank you.” What happened to “You’re welcome”?
 
In my computer network consulting business, I love to hear from customers who are happy. I always share their thanks with my staff. Although we get far more complaints than compliments, we put just as much effort into acknowledging those who send their thanks as we do improving upon the weaknesses described by those who complain. Our computer help desk staff spends every day fielding problems from people who are mad. They usually are mad at the situation, but it’s hard to maintain that rational view when you’re the person getting yelled at.

Here’s my suggestion to test the cause and effect of call center staffing: For each complaint that you lodge in the future, put just as much effort into a thank you. Let’s see if we can’t change the workforce in Kansas.

One of the hot new topics in computer network consulting is virtualization. This is the process of running multiple “instances” of a computer on a single piece of hardware. It’s a step toward taking advantage of the unused power of our computers, particularly servers. The reality is that most computer spend most of their time waiting for something to do. If we use that time to run another function, we can avoid buying more hardware that will also spend its time waiting for something to do. Why not just run the additional applications and services on the current server? Well, you know how some programs don’t like to run together on a machine? You can avoid that problem if they run in separate machine instances.

This is a bigger benefit for larger organizations that have rooms full of servers. By virtualizing the servers, more can be done on the same hardware. The hardware reduction leads to real savings in power, air conditioning, and floor space. In a small business, this is less of an advantage since they generally run a single server.

Once server virtualization became hot, it was only a matter of time until someone thought about using it for desktop applications as well. This is the next step toward centralized computing again. Terminal services and remote control have been gaining in popularity as a way to connect from external locations. Virtualization is another option for making that happen.

For the small businesses for whom we provide computer support, we’ve found that the savings from moving to virtualization is small compared to the inconvenience it provides for the staff. With the exception of remote access, it makes more sense to use your computer as a computer and avoid the added complexity of virtualization. Of course, this is subject to change as the features improve.

One of the things my Indianapolis computer services company tries to do with our small business customers is to help them maximize the benefits of having us provide their IT support services. We started out being called computer consultants, then we were called Information Technology consultants, then Network Services consultants. None of the old monickers goes away as new ones appear so now we're called all kinds of things. The one that didn't stick was the one I thought was most descriptive: Information Management consultants.
It makes me think of the old adage: "A man doesn't buy a shovel to get a tool. He buys a shovel to get hole." Likewise, you don't buy a computer to own a device. You buy a computer to manage your information.

In his book, On Dialogue, Robert Grudin divides information into two sections: forms of information that people consciously desire, and forms of information that are vital whether people desire them or not. We bring both to the attention of our computer network consulting customers.

Consciously Desired

• We want to know what will bring us advantage and, conversely, what holds danger for us;
• We want access to sources of pleasure and excitement;
• We want genuine, heart-to-heart communication, with confidentiality, and the ability to form networks with the likeminded or similarly distressed;
• We want to learn and to empower ourselves.

Undesired But Necessary

• We need to know when we are making mistakes or maintaining self-destructive attitudes or misguiding our young;
• We need to know about emergent forces in history that may necessitate our making some investment or sacrifice;
• We need to know about ourselves and the cultural and psychological forces that influence us;
• We need to review and sometimes to amend the very arts by which we analyze and communicate.

A story about United Airlines’ 2002 bankruptcy emerged on the Internet on September 8, 2008, looking like a new story. UAL’s stock dropped 76 percent that day before trading was temporarily halted. Three days later, the stock had climbed back to $10.50. This demonstrates the amazing power of the Internet on real things in the world, and the incredible amount of influence an Internet posting can have.

What happened was that a Google search bot found mention of the bankruptcy on a Florida Sun-Sentinel page that had a date of September 7, 2008. The story was listed in a summary called “Popular Stories: Business.” If you or I had come across that page, we would immediately have known that it referenced the 2002 bankruptcy, but Google’s bot isn’t as smart as you or me. It dutifully summarized the story with the date it found on the page. Next, the story ran on the Google News service, where it was picked up by Income Security Advisors and posted to the Bloomberg service. From there, more people searching for details made the story more popular, which moved it higher in search results which led to more people seeing it. And UAL lost 76 percent of its value.

Lots of little things went wrong to make this happen. Any one of them could have been prevented by having a human involved. Unfortunately, there is too much information that we deem important, but usually not critical, to be able to afford a human watch it. Processes get automated and computers sometimes make mistakes because they have no judgment. Similar errors happen every day in the routine monitoring of a small business’s computer system.

At our Indianapolis computer consulting company, we use automated tools to monitor many routine functions of our small business customers’ computer networks. We rely on these tools to be “smart” enough to alert us when we need to turn some human attention to something. It doesn’t always happen the way we plan, so sometimes we miss something. We can usually resolve the problem without causing a 76 percent loss in value. When one of our automated processes goes awry, we tighten up that process to avoid that happening again. We have plenty of new mistakes available to us. Why repeat an old one?

A recent article on small business computer security spending identified that most organizations are spending the money in the wrong places. Once your computer network services provider has  installed a good firewall and decent anti-virus software, you’ve done the spending required to keep the casual hacker (a disappearing breed) from getting into your network. As long as your network support team keeps them current and properly configured, you’ve covered the external security threat. Your concern should next turn to internal data security.

I mention that the casual hacker is a disappearing breed because hacking has become professionalized. Today’s hacker is likely a part of a sophisticated syndicate. Her goal is to get control of your computing resources. These groups use your disk space, your Internet bandwidth, and your processing power to conduct all manner of activities. They really aren’t interested in your data at all. The people who might be interested in your data are the people who know what data you have.

In the 2003 movie, “The Recruit,” new CIA agent Layla Moore sneaks data out of the agency on a USB drive hidden in the bottom of a travel mug. In 2003, these devices held about 256 Mb of data. Today you can buy one that holds 32 Gb. That’s 128 times as much – enough to put all of your customer database on it along with a few hundred mp3 files and photos. Additionally, computer vendors tend to add CD or DVD burners as a standard on new machines, making it possible to burn data directly to these devices as well. How often do you consider whether your people need these capabilities to perform their jobs?

My goal here isn’t to create panic or paranoia, but to say that spending on more stuff to prevent outsiders from stealing your data should take a back seat to protecting your data from the insiders who might be interested in stealing it.

The title of that old Teddy Pendergrass song is "When Somebody Loves You Back." That's the essence of a good computer consulting relationship. Love isn't often used in business relationships, but I think it should be. The difference is that these relationships must be 50/50 loves. It isn't enough that you appreciate the effort of your IT support services. They (we) have to appreciate the opportunity you give us to work with you and your staff toward achieving your goals...your dreams for your organization.

My Indianapolis computer consulting company recognizes the incredible trust our customers place in us when they let us manage their critical network support. We know that we have to return the trust and demonstrate our love for them if we hope to be successful in doing what we do. And we have bad days too. That’s why it needs to be a 50/50 love. On occasion you will be the fifth or fiftieth person to ask the same question of us. We have to care enough to realize that it’s the first time you’ve asked it that day.

All of us take tremendous pride in the successes of our customers, personally and professionally. We cheer when we hear that M.D. Wessler is one of the 15 best places to work. We celebrate when we hear that Rebecca Baer has been recognized as a distinguished Graduate of the Last Decade at Ball State. We love being a part of the incredibly diverse group of organizations who allow us to participate in their daily operations through their business computer support.
We do love our customers, and we believe that they love us too.

There are professions where creativity is not usually considered an asset. Accounting is one of the first to come to mind. I want an accountant who understands the intricacies of tax law. I want him to be versed in the debit and credit practices required to keep track of my meager fortune. I don’t particularly want him coming up with creative ways to keep my books. Creative accountants bring to mind companies like Enron.

What about IT support companies? Should you expect your computer outsourcing provider to be creative? Certainly your computer consulting services company should be more creative than your accountant. I argue that your business computer support company should be the most creative partners of your business with the possible exception of your marketing firm. While many small business owners want to believe they can buy computers from the pimple-faced kid at Best Buy and keep them for a decade without concern, you all know the reality is that technology changes more rapidly than congressmen. A creative computer network consulting company will be able to see how new technology can impact your business and make you more money. In the end, my Indianapolis computer consulting company is useless if we don’t have a positive impact on our customers’ revenue during the year. I’m not talking about cost savings. I mean real new money coming in the door. The best way to do that is for us to leverage new (and existing) technology in creative ways to benefit our clients’ operations.

How could you have known a decade ago how Electronic Mail (that’s how it was written then) was going to impact your business? How are you expected to know what impact blogging, social networking, smart phones, micro-PCs, Windows Vista, Google Chrome, WiMax, and all the other emerging technologies are going to change your business? Your creative computer tech support company should already have some ideas. I do!

1. You should consider hosted applications.
2. You should consider online backup.
3. More of your marketing budget should go toward online marketing.
4. Your hard drive has more impact on your computer’s speed than your processor.
5. Your video card has more impact on your computer’s speed than your processor.
6. Social Networking is going to be as important as email to your business at some point.
7. It is possible, but not yet practical, to operate your computer network without Microsoft products.
8. Your mobile phone should be considered a part of your computer network (and you should be paying for support).
9. Spam is going to continue to make email more difficult to count on until the industry takes the challenge seriously instead of looking it as an opportunity to make more money.
10. While it doesn’t seem like it, your computer network is getting more difficult to maintain because it is getting more complicated.