“A technical fix for a social problem” is a phrase that gets bandied about in security and usability circles over and over again.. but what does it mean for your business?

Often, technical people are inclined to try and solve problems with technology that really aren’t solvable that way.

Let’s say that you decide that you don’t want your staff using Facebook from the office. The technical ‘fix’ for that is to block facebook.com at your web proxy or internet router. While that will probably block most people from getting access to Facebook from the office, it won’t stop those truly motivated to get access to Facebook. There are ‘proxy’ sites that allow access to blocked website, and a number of them have popped up dedicated to getting people access to Facebook. In fact, searching “Facebook proxy” on google returns 214,000 results. If your staff are even vaguely technical (and, in this day and age, who isn’t?), then they’ll most likely be able to find other ways to work around any technical fix you can put in place.

Staff spending work time on personal tasks or websites is a ‘social problem’ for your organisation. Someone who’s inclined towards spending paid time on things that you’re not prepared to pay for is the problem – Facebook is just one manifestation of that. If you start blocking websites, where do you stop? If you block Facebook, do you also block Twitter? What about site’s of a similar nature that you’ve probably never heard of – Orkut, FriendFeed, Jaiku, etc. What about the new ones cropping up every week that even I’ve never heard of?

If blocking sites you don’t want your staff to access becomes your policy, then you’ve just started playing a whack-a-mole game of trying to block every site you don’t want them to go to – and that’s probably a huge list, and not really sustainable.

The social fix is to give your staff reasonable limits, explain why the limits are in place, then police the limits. Your technical people should, I hope, be able to give you a summary of how often Facebook is accessed, and by whom – often, a quiet word in the right ear is better than trying to block it entirely. Then, you’re putting in a social fix that’s backed up by technology.

Most businesses have a website. Yours, I hope, is one of them.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but most business websites are… well, let’s be polite about it and just say “not so good”.

(If I wasn’t being polite, the word “dire” would be in there somewhere. But let’s stick with being polite).

Often, they were designed at least three years ago, and haven’t really been updated since. Most likely, the content was written by a marketing company, or (even worse) the office junior. They’re designed to be everything to everybody, with the result that they’re bland, inoffensive and boring – nothing to anybody.

In the last few years the internet has changed – I think, for the better.

Personal is the new Business.

Consumers these days expect the brands they deal with to have a personality – if there’s a real person with whom they can identify, then that’s even better.

Your website doesn’t tell me anything about you, the person behind the business.

If I’m having a suit made, I want to know about the people who’ll be making it. If I’m booking a haircut, I want to be able to see my hairdresser and maybe even view some of his best work. If I’m booking my car in for a service, I want to know that my mechanic tinkers with cars on his weekends, that he loves what he does.

Your story has meaning, for many businesses it’s part of why people come back to you. Why not share something of yourself?

In most cases, your website will be the first part of your business that anyone ever sees. If it’s not good enough, it’ll also be the last.

Here are a few things you may like to consider, if you want to bring your company’s website into the modern age.

1. Weblogging: What I’m doing right here. Sharing information. Proving (I hope) some of the value Pragmetric adds to our customers, by giving away information I think is valuable.
2. Video Blogging: If writing isn’t one of your strengths, imagine a series of 5 minute videos, once a week. Bonus points if you have someone (maybe the office junior?) transcribe your video into a textual post.
3. A real “About” page: Many websites have an “About” page. Most of the time, it’s pretty dull. Make it real, tell some stories, expose what excites you about your business.
4. Tell some stories: Something that makes you real, talks about what you do, what makes you proud, what your customers get out of dealing with you.
5. A photo of you: Nothing makes a site as personal as a photo or two of the people in the company. That’s us, at the top of this page (yes, really! Those aren’t professional models!). Matt and I both hate having our photo taken – but it’s worth it.
6. Give your customers a voice: If you have a weblog, enable comments. let your customers speak! Engage with them. Encourage them to talk to you. Give them a variety of ways to do so.
7. Forgive your own imperfections: While this is probably good advice overall, it’s particularly important if you’re updating your website content frequently. While you should pay attention to details, if you get a little something wrong once in a while, it’s no biggie. Accept from the start that not everything will be perfect. You’re human, and it doesn’t hurt to show that.

You need to give your customers a reason to come back to you. People who aren’t your customers yet need a reason to try you out.

This could be it.

Here are a few things I’ve heard on the phone lately.

“The System’s down, I can’t take your payment”.

“The System keeps your phone number in two places, and it wasn’t updated in both.”

“The System won’t let me do that.”

It’s not good enough.

It’s an excuse, and a fairly weak one at that.

If “The System” won’t let your staff help your customers, then “The System” is broken. If it gets in the way of your staff doing their jobs, then it’s broken. If it doesn’t do the obviously right thing automatically, then it’s broken.

If it’s broken, then it needs fixing. Plain and simple.

Matt and I attended the Melbourne CIO Summit last week (thanks CIO Magazine!) and one of the subjects that came up a couple of times, was the “Bring Your Own Computer” model.

To be honest, it made us go “huh?” (or words to that effect).

So, we did some research. Here’s what we (now) know.

BYOC is a model most commonly targeted at the Gen Y personality type – and one of their attributes is a mingling of work and personal lives, where the lines between the two ‘modes’ are blurred. Another is that they (we?) tend to care more about their technological tools.

The BYOC model is based upon the employee having their own personal computer, which is used for work purposes as well as for their own personal stuff. Initially, my Security Manager side had fairly major conniptions at the idea of letting everyone’s personal, probably virus/spyware infected computer onto my precious and pure network – even more-so, at the idea that they might be able to load my corporate data onto their laptop with all the security risks that that implies.

Obviously, I’m not the only person who would cringe at the idea of that level of security exposure – so that’s not the way it works.

BYOC is based on some form of desktop virtualisation – where the computer’s local Operating System is only used as a platform to provide rudimentary networking (to connect to the server where the virtual desktops are held), and as means of launching the virtualised desktop environment. This means that security and control is actually more centralised than it is under the normal model, ultimately making it easier for your IT support people to manage the desktops.

Citrix started a pilot program of 200 users in 2008 which gave users $2,100 stipend towards buying a laptop and a three-year service plan. The users could choose any type of computer from wide screen to light weight or even a custom ultra fast speed demon. Citrix stated that they were spending $2,500 to $2,600 per laptop to buy and manage it.

There were some restrictions. Citrix required that employees use either Windows or Mac operating systems, have antivirus software and buy a three-year, full-service warranty so that tech support from the manufacturer can be on hand within 24 hours and supply a loaner if needed.

[source: Confessions of an IT Manager - Bring Your Own PC]

But what are the benefits?

The main one comes from giving your staff the choice about something they care about. Gen Y personality types tend to be passionate (if not fanatical) about the technology they use – Some might prefer very very fast machines, while others would rather have a light, ultra-portable machine and a large external monitor in the office. Some prefer Apple computers, while others would rather run the latest version of Windows from Microsoft. The key thing is that they care, and by providing something they care about, you induce an element of employer satisfaction that wouldn’t normally exist, which will help with retaining the oft-regarded as un-loyal Gen Y types.

Secondly (as I mentioned above), this model actually serves to enhance security. Virtualised desktops are inherently more secure than locally installed software, enable much easier centralised management, and allow for very locked down and restricted application sets, which are much easier to support and upgrade without requiring user interaction.

On the downside, your security and acceptable usage policies would need to be reviewed in-depth, and there are probably tax implications (particularly Fringe Benefit Tax). There are a lot of factors to consider before you make this change to your organisation. Setting this service up would have a cost associated with it. But, if your organisation has a lot of employees that could be even partially classified as Gen Y (even if it’s as a personality type, rather than an age-based demographic) then it’s something that should be on your radar to consider in the next few years.

We deal with a lot of IT vendors, on behalf of our mutual clients. As a result, we’ve gained a fairly good feel for what they wish you knew, or knew how to do. The things that would make you a good IT customer, making dealing with you (more of) a pleasure. The things you can do to help them help you when you need it.

Most external IT companies are reluctant to try and educate their clients in how to be good IT clients – and, to be fair, most IT customers seem actively dis-interested in learning. But there are a few things they wish you knew, or knew to do, that would make you a much easier customer to help.

Of course, if you have internal IT folk, then they probably wish the same things as well.

1. Report accurate symptoms, not guessed diagnoses. Don’t ring your helpdesk and say “The network’s down” or “the server’s crashed”. You’re probably wrong – it isn’t and it hasn’t. Instead, report your symptom: “I was trying to save a word document into a file share and I got a message that said ‘permission denied’”. The less digging they have to do into what the *actual* problem is, the quicker it can be solved – and that’s in everyone’s best interests.

2. Even if you don’t understand them, error messages mean something. “I got an error” is one of the most annoying things you can hear on the other end of the phone. The actual error message is a message about the error. You may not understand it, and that’s fine. But trust that your IT support folks do, and make their job a little easier. In in doubt, write it down – it’ll take you 30 seconds, and it means they can solve your problem just that much faster.

3. Try and use the right terminology. “I what’sit on the thingy and it went all “ARGH” and now I can’t fandangle the widget. Can you help?” I know IT can be confusing, with all the words used in uncommon ways, and the three letter acronyms (TLAs) – but the same thing applies to every specialist field. Try and learn a few of the simpler terms, it will make your error reports a lot more understandable – and what can be understood faster, can be fixed faster.

4. If they’re invisible, they’re still working. Systems administration is one of those thankless tasks, rather like being an office cleaner. You don’t notice the cleaners when they do their job perfectly and unobtrusively – it’s only when they mess up, or you have to ask for something unusual that they get noticed. The ‘care and feeding’ of servers (aka Systems Administration) is similar – most of the work should happen invisibly to the end users, but the servers keep running and doing their jobs. Unfortunately, computers haven’t yet advanced to the point where that’s 100% automated – so when your systems people are busy, and you don’t know what they’re working on? That’s probably it.

5. Help them understand your business goals. While they’ll never know your business like you do, the more they know, the more they can help. If they know what’s important to you, they can try to make sure that it’s prioritised appropriately.

6. Prioritise Clearly. If there are two things that need dealing with, indicate which is a higher priority for the business. For example, if the email server and the VPN are having problems at the same time, and it’s within business hours, normally, the email problem would be the highest priority. If the folks in charge of the fixing don’t know that the CEO is trying to copy the presentation she’s delivering in 2 hours in singapore over the VPN, then they can’t know to fix that first. Tell them.

I don’t know about anyone else, but daylight savings changes always seem to creep up on me, seemingly attempting to take me by surprise.

While our IT infrastructure here at Pragmetric is a lot simpler than that which I’ve managed in the past, I still managed to have one little surprise catch me out this year.

It turns out that there’s a known bug with the latest version of the iPhone operating system that causes any alarms that are set in the in-built clock application to go off an hour earlier than they’re set for. In my case, that meant that my alarm went off at 4am, instead of 5.

As a result, yesterday was a long day.

What I normally do is review the infrastructure I’m responsible for, and make sure that there are no known Daylight Savings related bugs for it. Then, some time on Sunday, before Monday morning business starts I make sure someone has verified the change on all systems, to be sure that everything that’s in some way time dependant has updated appropriately. On Monday morning, because I’m a big fan of the ‘belt and braces’ approach, I generally arrange for someone to be on-site early and double checking that everything’s fine, and they’re also on-hand to fix anything that isn’t. If on-site isn’t an option, then having someone available remotely to deal with any problems that might crop up is a solid idea.

What did your IT people do to make sure you were ready for this latest Daylight Savings change?

Did YOU have any problems?

Many people don’t understand how internet addresses (which are more correctly called URLs, or Uniform Resource Locators) work.

While it’s common practise (for historical reasons, which I won’t go into here) for a website address to start with “www”, they don’t have to. It’s simply a convention. They could start with anything at all, or even just have the domain name itself (without the www. in front).

You’ll notice here, that if you type in the address “www.pragmetric.com”, you turn up at our site. After the first time you click on a link, it magically changes so it starts with “http://pragmetric.com/”, removing the www. in the front. (ignore the http:// bit, that’s just your browser making sure it’s talking to the right process on the server where the website is hosted) Of course, we’re doing the right thing – both addresses work – with the www in front and without.

(we also have pragmetric.com.au and www.pragmetric.com.au as well – but that’s something different, which we’re not going into in this post).

What’s amazing, is how many sites don’t allow for this. It just doesn’t work. If you browse to http://bobsmiththebuilder.com.au, and the website is only set up for http://www.bobsmiththebuilder.com.au, then it just won’t work – you’ll get an ugly error message.

It should work. It’s trivial (should take less than 5 minutes) to set up, and doesn’t cost any money. The people who implemented your website should have included it by default. The fact that they didn’t tends to make me question their very competence.

Every person who tries to go to your web site to find something out about you, and meets a barrier of some sort, is a customer you’re one step closer to losing. Some people will give up after the first barrier. Others will struggle on a bit more, and might eventually get in touch.

This is one of those little things that’s so easy to fix – one of those little value adds that having technical expertise on your business’s side provides. Sure it’s not a CIO’s job to fix these things – but it’s part of your business that your CIO (on-call or not) would take ownership of, and make sure it’s working right.

Most people base their IT decisions on something – it’s not just random choice.

If they don’t work in the IT field, they often base their decisions on information that’s lacking in some way – bad information. In fact, that’s also true of many people who do work in IT, but that’s a subject for another post.

Sometimes, the information used is out of date – it was true, once upon a time.

Sometimes, the information is taken from the wrong context – it’s kinda true, but not relevant in this case.

Other times, the information is just plain wrong – they were told something that was never true or (being polite here) was highly subjective.

One client we were looking at working with had a wildly strong bias against HP printers. Absolutely refused to even consider them for their office. They were all “crap” and did horrible things to computers.

When we dug a little deeper into the background behind this bias, it turned out that he was writing off the whole range of HP printers on the basis of his wife’s experience with the cheapest, bottom of the line HP printer. The experience was 5 years ago. Also, her experience was to do with getting the printer working on OS X (the Apple Mac operating system) which was barely supported by any printer manufacturer at that point.

Considering that, for their offices, we were looking at a mid-range multi-function laser printer (ie, an entirely different range of printers), some time about now (that is to say, 5 years after his experiences), and on a Windows based network, his bias was more than a little bit unreasonable. More than that, it was potentially damaging to the company – by limiting the options based on bad information, there’s less choice. Eliminating an option for bad reasons just doesn’t make sense.

Why did you make the decisions you’ve made? Are your irrational biases showing?

What happens when the power goes out?

Well, the first sign is normally that the lights go off, but we’re IT folks, so that’s not the main thing we worry about.

First, do we have a UPS (that’s an Uninterruptible Power Supply) on our servers? Is it working correctly? When did we last test it? Do we know how long we’ve got before it runs out of battery? How long will it take me to shut down the servers that are plugged into it?

If we have a generator, the UPS only has to last long enough for that to kick in. Assuming it does. When was that last tested? Are you sure it’s going to kick in automatically?

If you don’t have a generator, I hope you have your stop watch running from the time the power went out, and you know how long it takes to get all the servers shut down. If it takes you 10 minutes to get all the servers shut down, and your UPS gives you 15 minutes of run-time, then 5 minutes after the power goes, you better start shutting everything down.

If you don’t get there in time, the servers may just power off without you – short of a lightning strike, probably the worst thing that could happen. If you’re lucky, they’ll come back online cleanly, but do you really want to rely on luck?

So. What do YOU think about when the power goes out? Do you have a plan? Or is it all down to luck?

In most enterprises, IT is regarded as a pure cost centre. And while that’s true, as most organisations use it, it doesn’t have to be the whole story.

If you’re doing things right, IT is being intelligently leveraged to help your business do what it does, better, smarter, and more efficiently… ultimately, at a lower cost.

Let’s say you have to send out a lot of data to your clients, or maybe they have to send it to you. Something like an accountant’s office, transferring accounting system data files, or a design house, sending large graphical documents around the place. You’ve ‘always’ done it by putting the files onto a CD or DVD, and calling for a courier. At the other end, your clients do the same thing. Turn around for an update is about a day… if everything goes right.

That’s the old school way – while it’s slow, it works, and will keep working reasonably indefinitely – but you have consumables cost, a bunch of staff time, courier charges, significant hassle in tracking movements and shipping and making sure that data is destroyed securely after it’s been used (you do dispose of your client’s data securely, right?)

There are a few ways you could modernise this process – you could have a drop-box like service on your website, where your clients can log in and upload files, and you get notified that they’re there. Similarly, you can upload files for your clients to download. Or, you could use an on-line service like basecamp from 37 signals, which provides a similar (albeit somewhat more advanced, and with more features) service.

Exactly what you change to isn’t the point of this post – the point is that there’s a process where you can leverage technology to make it easier and more efficient. While doing so may take a little effort or expenditure to start with, if you get your process right, you’ll recoup the costs in fairly short order, then reap the benefits from then on in.

IT doesn’t have to be just a cost centre. It should be regarded as an opportunity centre, and there are costs associated with taking up the opportunities. You should be looking for ways to leverage technology to make your business better, not just keeping things running as they always have.

Of course, if IT isn’t your area of expertise, these opportunities can be hard to identify.

That’s why Pragmetric exists.