Not too long ago, as a panelist on the Mercer Chamber “Cloud Computing” Business Technology Forum, I was asked by an audience member what one thing could small businesses do – with respect to computer technology – that would result in the single, most dramatic improvement to their company’s bottom line. Certainly, a thought-provoking question that immediately led me to answer, wrongly, that a typical small business could dramatically improve its communications effectiveness by simply getting their e-mail inboxes connected to a hosted Exchange server. While, on the surface, this response could prove out to be accurate in certain situations, a more fundamental opportunity was lost, and I continue to rue the disservice my lack of insight showed to our audience members.
Every small business owner faces a multitude of entrepreneurial challenges in the course of their daily work: sales, marketing, delivery of goods or services, insurance, payroll, taxes, etc. And business owners are typically smart people, that like to feel in control of their destiny, and they could be anywhere on the map in terms of their knowledge and comfort-level in driving decisions related to their business computing environment. They could be former CIO’s as likely as they could be accountants, chefs, designers, or engineers.
Thus, any question where a business owner is grappling in what may (or may not) be unfamiliar “business computing technology” territory requires a consultative approach to uncover the multiple layers of the specific needs of the individual’s business environment. So, it being the first week of January, I’m making a new year’s resolution to – first and foremost – understand any potential business prospect’s needs before recommending any particular course of action.
My new pat answer to any such “silver-bullet” question will be along the lines of: “let’s take a look at what you have now, and what your needs are.” That being said, there are a few things that I can review in 5-10 minutes, here, that I hope might start your wheels turning along the lines of, “Oh, I didn’t know that kind of thing was available for small businesses, I thought that was only available for bigger-budget, corporate computing environments.” I’ll offer now one business tool and six separate low-priced / high-impact computer technology capabilities that – given the appropriate situation – could offer small businesses dramatically improved employee productivity and greatly reduced risk of data loss.
So, I mentioned in the opening my new year’s resolution to not jumping in with both feet to offer solutions without first understanding the needs of the small business. Honoring this commitment, I’d like to suggest to those with questions about business / computing technology to not go it alone. Reach out SyncraTec or to other fellow chamber member businesses that would be happy to sit down with you, and review your current situation. Your typical computer consultant, myself included, may have been born with an engineering mentality where we’re ready to start solving problems right away. The technology assessment process puts the brakes on solving the problem until we understand exactly which problem, or problems, are having the greatest adverse effect on your business.
Our business technology assessment will address the following topics:
· Business Demographics
o How long have you been in business?
o Organizational structure?
o How many locations?
o How many employees?
o Annual sales?
· Current Information Technology Landscape
o Existing computer network?
o How is the computer network used with respect to the business processes in your company?
· Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis
o Where would you like to see your business in three to five years?
o What obstacles have to be overcome to achieve those goals?
· Primary Pain Points
o What are the three largest pain points in your business?
o What frustrates you the most regarding technology?
o What technology features or functions get you excited?
· Regulatory Compliance
o What regulatory or compliance issues do you face regarding your industry?
Again, this is just a sample of the questions we’ll ask to get the conversation started.
The review will typically last approximately two hours, and should be just enough to get an idea of what if any technology areas are primary concerns, to the point of limiting productivity, holding back growth, or representing unnecessary risk. Often times, we visibly see signs of relief when business owners can share their pains, hear about potential solutions, and begin to envision a technology environment that will provide peace of mind. Such confidence will come about when you have systems that you know are efficient, organized, accessible, secure, and reliable. You’ll hopefully find the productivity boost that will help you get over the next hurdle; experience less frustration from trying to keep your software up-to-date, secure, and synchronized; and enjoy a better quality-of-life that comes about when you’re spending much less time on your computers and more time doing what you’re passionate about.
At some point today, though, you’ll likely want to know what products and services you can get that will offer you that elusive peace of mind. I’ll take the case of a small business with anywhere from two to ten employees; keeping in mind that these solutions could easily scale to companies with ten to fifty users. Let’s say the business has a central location, with several employees working in the office, (and possibly subcontractors) working remotely (from home, say), roving geographically, or all of the above. What are the possibilities, you ask, of a small business this size of getting what I like to call “enterprise class information technology?” Actually, I think you will be very surprised, especially when you combine: “enterprise class information technology” with a “small-business budget.” So, I’m going to tell you what kind of essential functionality is available for small businesses, and how to go about getting it.
If you have a small business that has its sights set on growing; then, at some point, I’m almost always going to mention the possibility of installing an on-premise server at the company’s home office. A server benefits a growing small business in many ways. First-and-foremost, a server is a reliable data storage platform for all of the documents you need on an everyday basis. The server can have redundant hard drives and redundant power supplies. A server can allow for the creation of a network or computer domain wherein access to data is controlled based on the user’s access privileges. A server allows for sharing of resources such as the hard drives on the server computer itself, printers, scanners, faxes, and internet connections. One very powerful thing to know about servers is that they enable you to store all of your data in a shared, centralized location; which can easily be backed up.
Also, when you’re working in a networked computing environment, you can have all of your documents saved to the server whenever you’re online, so if your PC crashes, you don’t lose any data. Programs can typically be re-installed, but you don’t want to lose data. If your computer does crash, imagine the convenience of firing up any other computer on your network, logging in as yourself, and having the system recognize you, your “desktop,” your documents, and your “Inbox” (your e-mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks). Servers also provide for more efficient access to the Internet with a shared connection, and integration with your hardware firewall, which separates the outside Internet world and from your internal domain, the security of your data.
Servers are available now-a-days that can accommodate up to 15 users, which can easily be setup in a small office environment in just a couple of hours. The price of such a server may surprise you. A machine capable of handling a small office computing environment could run just over a thousand dollars; with a powerful processor, plenty of RAM, and redundant hard drives. This machine would enable remote access for employees that needed to get to files on the server, it can run multi-user applications software, and perform as a rock solid file and print server. The thing to note about this entry-level server, and the reason the price is so low, is that all the software licensing is included.
In order to configure the server for remote access, we recommend two (as opposed to one) NIC cards (Network Interface Cards) be purchased with the server, and you must obtain a static IP address from your internet service provider (e.g., Verizon, Comcast, or other), and then setup a “DNS record” that lets the Internet find your server without you having to remember the IP address. The good news is that an information worker can then connect to the network via the established VPN connection, and work from home with access to all of their network resources, as if they’re physically in the office.
The server, itself, can have its data backed up, over the Internet to an off-site location with a trusted provider. The way this might work is that a local copy of all the data on your server is backed up onto a storage device that is dedicated to the purpose of off-site backup, and then moved off-site. Again, the storage unit could be located in the business owner’s home, or the location of a trusted service provider. The data de-duplication technology on these dedicated backup devices, now-a-days, is so powerful, that actual incremental file backups can be done periodically, over-the-Internet, with minimal bandwidth. Individual files can be restored instantly, as required; or whole systems can be restored in the case of a disaster by bringing the remote backup storage device back on-site. Such off-site backup services can not only be cost-justified based on the risk of losing everything in a disaster, but could also be considered a time-savings because they’re much more convenient and reliable than the old tape drive systems.
With a basic server operating system providing for the necessities, and remote access and backups addressed, you can begin to get creative. First, I want to follow up on something I already mentioned. If you have a networked environment with an e-mail server, you can log on to any machine, and your “Inbox” will follow you around. Basically, your email, contacts, and calendar are on the server, and wherever you log on, you’ll get access to all of your data, including indications on the latest e-mails that you’re already read, etc. A common problem with small businesses is that they use POP3 e-mail, which is basically Web-based e-mail provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP’s); large and small. So, you have your e-mail account that you access via the Web, and you download some of the e-mail to your work computer, and some of the e-mail to your home computer. Now, your e-mail is basically fragmented. The same could happen with your Contacts and your Calendar items. And, here, I want to be clear that the $1,000-server I specified earlier does not include the kind of e-mail server that will solve this problem. There is however another answer for small businesses, though, that will allow you to have all the convenience of enterprise-class e-mail, for a low monthly per user fee. Such a solution will allow you to have synchronized data access to e-mail, contacts, and calendar items; no matter which device you access it from, including mobile devices. The service will also provide you with domain-name e-mail, if you don’t already have that, and will enable you to easily transition from a Yahoo, Comcast, or Verizon e-mail account to your new e-mail account by reliably forwarding all e-mails sent to your old e-mail account to your new e-mail account.
Now, back to the creative stuff. I’m a little ADD myself, and a news junkie too. And I used to spend a lot of time reading articles linked from my favorite Web site, Google News. Whenever I opened my internet browser, I’d open up Google News, and there would be dozens of fascinating article headlines tempting me to click and read more. These days, I find myself more productive; and I believe my clients find their employees to be more productive also, because now when they open their internet browsers, their home page is your company’s corporate intranet. Even if you’re a small company, if you have a low-cost server like the one we’ve discussed today, you can actually force all of your domain users to have their home pages be your corporate intranet. That means that before they read about the Eagles-Cowboys rematch, or any news – real or hyped-up gossip; they’re going to see their own overdue action items, your corporate pronouncements – in short – topics that should be grabbing their attention. I’m not advising that you block Internet access to any particular web sites, but it’s nice to know you could – with the power to control internet access, and hundreds of other behaviors of any users / computers on your computer network.
The “corporate intranet scenario” is always a good conversation starter, but – beyond that – the out-of-the-box functionality of the server software we’ve discussed today provides for new ways of bringing efficiencies to how you manage your business processes, communicate, collaborate, and share information. Consider the case of a customer proposal that’s being worked on by several team members in sales and marketing, with input from the design, engineering, or any other operational group. Does it make sense for that one document – the proposal – to be passed around to multiple users, at the same time, allowing different users to make edits to the same document? (Having fun yet, keeping track of the revisions?) Because that’s not feasible, one lucky person usually gets stuck incorporating all the edits. But what if a late change comes in, and your “editor” is not available? You’d want to know with confidence which is the latest version of the document, access it, and make the necessary changes.
Or, what if you find that you’ve taken a wrong tack, or just plain accidently deleted a whole section. You’d like to revert back to the previous version, or it might be two versions prior that represents the last decent copy. How would you like to be able to allow everyone who has input, to incorporate the edits they need to, but only one at a time, by having to check documents out to make changes, whereby nobody else will be able to make changes to the document until the live document is checked back in? As with any great platform (think i-Pod), developers can build a thousand (or a million) “apps” that can run on this platform, and they have. The platform is called SharePoint, it’s dedicated to business productivity, and you might be surprised to learn that if you already have a Windows Operating System, then you probably already have all the software licensing you need to get you started.
I’ve touched on six enterprise-class computer technology solutions for small businesses that can be purchased and deployed with minimal capital investment. But please don’t forget my new No. 1 rule for 2010: “diagnose before you prescribe.” And also, before I summarize the list, be aware that in certain cases, you can get access to these technologies on a trial basis, so you can try it before you buy it – always a good question to bring up to your computer technology partner. In any case, here’s your list of ingredients to get started with enterprise-class information technology on a small-business budget:
· Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation (2-10 users)
· or Windows Small Business Server 2008 R2 (5-50 users)
· Remote access via VPN requires the server (obviously), two NIC cards on the server, a fixed IP address (from your Internet Service Provider, may add a few $ to your monthly internet access bill), and an “A record” (a DNS record that your ISP can also setup for you for free)
· Remote off-site backup; available in the form of a purchased dedicated device, or monthly service.
· Automatic “backing up” or synchronization of all working documents from PC/laptop to server; requires only that the folder in question be configured with “My Documents Redirection” (a.k.a., Offline Files).
· Having e-mail inbox “follow you around” is available, standard, with Windows Small Business Server 2008 R2, or available on a per user, per month fee (30-day trial available) with Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation.
· Having all domain-connected computers connect to your “corporate intranet” when they log on is configured on the server; and the “corporate intranet” itself is collaboration / document management software that can be installed on the server out-of-the-box.
I strongly believe you’ll be able to leverage these technologies not only to give you peace-of-mind regarding critical system reliability and data protection, but also to gain the boost in productivity that can help take you and your business to the next level.
All this; and I haven’t even mentioned what Windows 7 can do for you yet!
Ian
Ian G. Smith
SyncraTec Solutions, LLC
Enterprise-class information technology
on a small-business budget
267-266-5596 (cell)
215-310-1750 (office)
www.syncratec.com
ismith@syncratec.com
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