Got GoldMine? Bad Old News, Good News and the “Catches” —- Part 2

Back on November 7, I announced that “Until December 18th 2009, GoldMine Standard  Edition users can upgrade to GoldMine Premium Edition at $355 per seat.  Additional seats for the same price are available if the additional seats are included on the same order.”

Obviously, December 18 is gone.

If you place your order after December 18 but by January 29th 2010 you can upgrade from GoldMine Standard Edition to GoldMine Premium Edition for $405. That’s still a savings over the standard price for GoldMine Premium Edition.

The Catches remain the same:  You must order a minumum of five (5) GMPE licenses with maintenance required on all seats. Orders—which go through a GoldMine partner such as Pequod Systems—must be received by the FrontRange GoldMine partner in time to reach FrontRange by the deadline.

We have a few client tasks to complete over the holiday but are looking forward to spending time with family and friends.  I’m taking some time out to catch up and rest up to be ready for 2010.  Be warm, be safe and remember not to put your cell phone in one hand and your steering wheel in the other as you’re tooling down an InterState at 60 MPH.

Happy Holidays, all!

Twitter

FaceBook

LinkedIn

Managed IT Services in Plain English: Are you Kidding Me?

Our last blog talked about hardware, and most specifically, hard drives.  Sometimes some really strange, improbable and not quite verifiable stories come to light after a full inventory of computer hardware is made. Consider the case of BROKDLEG.

My office workstation is a modest Hewlett-Packard box with nothing unusual about it…or so I thought until recently.

First, some background. As a contractor on a number of large Federal and commercial projects, I develped a healthy respect for consistent conventions for naming all manner of objects on a network.  Furthermore, you don’t name a product or a version with a name that is disrespectful or spiteful—unless, of course, you want to have your career suddenly cut short.  So imagine my surprise to discover that the model name my workstation was sporting suggested a broken leg! Was there a setting somewhere that could be changed? How did my computer get a model name like that in the first place? There were a number of articles on the Internet that included the model name BROKDLEG. But not one that questioned the model name.  It seemed a very odd model name for HP, for which a far more typical name is Z400.

So we called HP and heard an amazing story that left me scratching my head. It seems that back when HP was merging with Compaq, a disgruntled technician named a number of workstations of a particular model as BROKDLEG. And no, it could not be changed. Whether that technician was already slated for an exit is an open question. We were simply told that the technician was fired when that particular stunt was discovered.

So now the inventory of our network includes an entry for an HP workstation with the model as shown here.

Twitter
FaceBook
LinkedIn

Managed IT Services in Plain English: II

A while back, I promised that the next blog would talk about inventory of computer hardware, the use of hardware vendor-supplied information about your hardware and what this information can do for you. Today hardware inventory is gathered automatically and remotely with a small piece of well-configured software that simply reads what the hardware is.

In addition to its usefulness for insurance purposes, a complete automated inventory of computer hardware does many things for business.  It’s a great place to begin assessing overall network efficiency and capacity for software upgrades.

Consider the executive faced with a choice of upgrading an old but mission-critical application no longer supported by a manufacturer. (Yes, it does happen!) That’s when  an inventory showing where hard drives with a required amount of space for that mission-critical software can make the difference between an upgrade on pre-existing hardware or purchase of an entire new server.   For the technical support team that assembled this information, providing that information can either be slow, painful and expensive or it can be immediate, easy and offer great return on customer investment.

In the example below,  we see a server that still has 81% of its capacity on a particular drive available to be used for an application. Further information collected by that same, small and remote piece of software about  that server can determine that server’s suitability for upgrade of a mission-critical piece of sofware.

Managed IT Services. Not sexy, but definitely a service with great return on investment.

Got GoldMine? Bad Old News, Good News and the “Catches”

If you are still using GoldMine Standard Edition, this blog definitely is for you.

Front Range, the manufacturer of all  GoldMine in its various versions, stopped distributing GoldMine Standard Edition some years back.  Users of GoldMine Standard Edition cannot receive technical support for that version directly from FrontRange.

It’s not the GoldMine you started out with on your laptop years ago.  The only officially-supported GoldMine now lives on a corporate server.  Sorry, a local workstation does not count as a GoldMine server.

That’s the bad old—very old—news.

Now the good news—and the catches.

Until December 18th 2009, GoldMine Standard  Edition users can upgrade to GoldMine Premium Edition at $355 per seat.  Additional seats for the same price are available if the additional seats are included on the same order.

If you place your order after December 18 but by January 29th 2010 you can upgrade from GoldMine Standard Edition to GoldMine Premium Edition for $405.

Longtime loyalists from Standard Edition days, GoldMine Premium Edition has a very different “look and feel” from what you are accustomed to working with.  And there are many more new features.  I recommend going to the test drive to check it out.  The Pequod Systems order desk is at 301.445-6206.

The Catches: You must order a minumum of five (5) GMPE licenses with maintenance required on all seats. Orders—which go through a GoldMine partner such as Pequod Systems—must be received by the FrontRange GoldMine partner in time to reach FrontRange by the deadline.

P.S. Not sure which version of GoldMine you are using right now? Launch GoldMine and look at the splash screen. It’s written right there.  If you are already in GoldMine, click on HELP. Then click on ABOUT.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook

“If It Ain’t Broke, don’t Fix It.” Here’s a BETTER idea for Business IT

Unless yours is a one or two person business and you conduct most—if not all—business on a personally-owned laptop and/or your cell phone, managed IT services should be a standard part of your present and future business plans. Why? What’s wrong with “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

On average, companies lose thousands of dollars a year to network downtime—in the incremental minutes and hours of lost productivity and lost opportunities as people wait for problems to be resolved. Furthermore, on average, 70% of IT management budgets are spent on systems maintenance, leaving only 30% to invest in new technologies

Consider  IT support that significantly reduces your downtime by identifying and solving issues before you and your staff have identifiable problems—and solving the problems took minutes instead of hours to resolve the remaining issues that were not anticipated.

Now consider  shifting funding from administrative tasks to more strategic infrastructure investments that would keep your network more secure and save money in the long run.

Managed IT services generally include

• Remote support for rapid problem resolution
• Detailed site inventories of hardware and software
• 24 x 7 x 365 proactive network and security monitoring
• Scheduled maintenance and upgrades in consultation with the customer

Those who offer these services successfully generally

• hold  standard industry certifications
• are experienced partners of major,  leading hardware and/or software solutions
• are experienced partners of major hardware and software vendors
• regularly receive product updates and notices about special offers from those vendors

Transparency Tip #2 Hardware today comes with internal code that identifies its manufacturer, its version number, and its serial number. Reading that information and knowing how long that hardware has been in service and paying attention to special offers not advertised to end users can give the managed services provider some insights as to cost-savings for upgrades.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook

Pequod Systems in FaceBook

Managed IT Services in Plain English

One of our Pequod Systems core values is to speak the language of business. No geek speak here. Since an offer of managed IT Services will soon be one of our offerings,  it’s time to talk about what “managed IT services” means in plain business English.

What I have said before is worth repeating: IT managed services allows a non-IT business with serious investments in computer technology to get on with its own efforts without worrying about backups or cash flow unpredictability due to a sudden hardware breakdown or unplanned, software incompatibility as a result of an inappropriate upgrade.

While some people have no interest in knowing how the technology behind managed services works, we believe that offering some simple, easy-to-understand basics is an important factor in developing successful working relationships. Transparency works for us.

The next blog will talk in detail about inventory of computer hardware, the use of hardware vendor-supplied information about your hardware and what this information can do for you. You will read about how a system can read your hardware serial numbers and what good that does for you. After that, look for some detail about printers and, possibly, other devices on your network. Next will be a blog about software. After that, some notes about customer meetings on the subject of preventive maintenance based not on our recommendations, but on manufacturer recommendations.

Transparency Tip #1 We work with your favorite IT support person to make that support person even more efficient and effective than you might have experienced before.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook

Your CRM: Return on Investment at the Speed of Trust

The more I read Stephen M.R. Covey’s The Speed of Trust, the more I am convinced that a major contributor to failure of Customer Relationship Management implementations is a lack of trust within the company that invested in the CRM.

When Pequod first entered the CRM business, one of the major anxieties we frequently heard was “You mean that anyone in this company could read my eMail?  Do they have to?” The look on the speaker’s face was usually one of anxiety and fear.

eMail is  territory that many employees  still regard as personal, despite the fact that it is sent using corporate computers and corporate software.  Courts rulings in favor of the employer rather than the employee have the effect of creating anxiety, fear and serious corporate headaches among all of us who may have sent eMail  while using corporate resources.  I recently heard of an eMail policy that actually includes chastising any innocent recipient of eMail deemed inappropriate for the workplace. What happens?  Even more anxiety and fear. Not exactly an environment for trust.

All of this fear and anxiety can lead naturally to messaging outside the CRM.  Texting, Tweeting and messaging in other social networks may help one employee build one social relationships with one potential customer while creating the illusion that one’s employer cannot see those messages. However, even if these messages seem to the employee to be totally harmless, using alternative message channels contributes nothing to help others in the same company to learn appropriate, business-building strategies from each other.

In some cases, alternative messaging reflects a desire for acceptance among friends and potential customers who mostly use these messages as chat—not necessarily the messaging that would help others in the same corporate setting. In others, it’s a sometimes futile attempt to avoid being monitored by one’s boss—or one’s employees. And in still others, it’s an effort to avoid a law suit, such as that brought by an employee’s union against an employer that enforced its policy about the use of eMail inconsistently, as in Guard Publishing Co. v. National Labor Relations Board.

In any case, failure to incorporate appropriate business-related messaging as part of a CRM effort reduces the effectiveness and return on investment made in the CRM. So what is an employer to do?

Develop a company-wide culture of genuine trust in sending, receiving and recording business-related messaging in your CRM. That will help companies recapture return on investment in CRM at the speed of trust.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook

The Social Networking Experts’ Marketing

There is something truly strange in the land of Social Networking. Have you noticed the rapidly-increasing numbers of social networking experts who want to tell you all about how to make best use of social networking in your business? How to make social networking profitable? Their numbers seem to increase as our economy struggles to get back on its feet.

What’s really strange is not that these experts are suddenly coming out of the walls. Or even that a mathematical statistician friend at the U.S. Census Bureau attended a professional conference of the American Statistical Association where social networking was the focus of one of the meetings. (Evidently some rather interesting statistical conclusions are being drawn based in part on preferences one selects in FaceBook and other social networking sites. But I digress..)

What’s really strange is that these social networking experts are NOT using social networking to get my attention—and, they hope, my business. What ARE they using to get my attention? Would you believe plain old-fashioned eMail? Virtually every single piece of promotion I have received to attend this or that free  webinar has arrived in my spam-defended eMail stack. Talk about mixed messages.

So why aren’t these social networking experts using social networking to connect with me, instead of adding unto my already overflowing eMail stack? If I just spent a little more of my already overspent time in FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo or the other S/N applications, would I find myself befriending or being followed by someone who ultimately wants me to buy his or her paid seminars on social networking? Is there something about Return On Investment missing here? If I raise that issue, will I be shouted down by the Social Networkers because I am asking a suddenly social marketing incorrect question?

It beats me.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook

Serendipity: Toastmasters and Managed Services

Serendipity. Yes, this edition of the Pertinent Pequod Posts is the result of serendipity. First, it was a software engineer and fellow Toastmaster writing about the process of considering “not just the ideal or expected way to input and interface with the code but also look at how the code handles an error or an improper input so the program would not crash or cause problems.”* In other words, this software engineer PLANS AHEAD before simply wasting time writing code. It’s a best practice used not only by software engineers but also by systems integrators and successful professionals in many different fields.

Then a Pequod corporate opportunity came up to offer IT managed services to business customers. One we just could not refuse. More detail is forthcoming soon!

The basic delivery of IT managed services is fairly straightforward. It allows a non-IT business with serious investments in computer technology to get on with its own efforts without worrying about backups or cash flow unpredictability due to a sudden hardware breakdown or unplanned, software incompatibility as a result of an inappropriate upgrade. It includes an automated survey of computing assets and infrastructure, which will form a basis for planned updates. All the business has to pay attention to is an agreed-upon Service Level Agreement by your managed services provider. Staff in businesses with a Service Level Agreement for Managed Services are now completely engaged in doing and managing those tasks for which they were hired to do.

At the same time, a high quality provider of managed services makes a point of having status conversations with the customer on a regular basis. Hardware assets purchased five years ago may or may not be on their way to final failure. Hardware assets purchased five years ago may not provide the performance needed for today’s software applications. Regardless of the economy, no customer should discover these facts because a piece of hardware fails.

Similarly, no organization or company should proceed down a course without total front end analysis of what happens if Plan A (or perhaps no plan at all!) does not serve well, or starts to crash and ultimately fail. Large organization (think 225,000 members) or small business (think 50 employees), every enterprise will have greater opportunities to succeed when its focus is on its primary mission rather than on the details of the infrastructure that gets it there. Toastmasters International should have consulted with professional change management experts before it went down its current path. A businesses that thinks it cannot afford managed services really needs to reconsider its corporate mission and what infrastructure services it depends on to achieve that mission.

*Thanks, Will Hsiung, for your blog about Proposal A.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/SusanEllsworth
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanmarshellsworth
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Susan-Ellsworth/1388452899

You Just Can’t Fake It

With thanks to Bruce Temkin for The 6 Laws of Customer Experience: The Fundamental Truths that Define How Organizations Treat Customers , this essay looks at telling the truth to all your Toastmasters club members and prospective members all the time. In a word, it’s about transparency.

You can fool some people for some of the time, but most people can eventually tell what’s real and what’s not. Club members can sense if their happiness is not really a top priority with the executive team (Sergeant at Arms, Secretary, Treasurer, VP/Public Relations, VP/Membership, VP/Education, President. )

Second, no matter how much money, time and effort you spend on advertising, you can’t convince potential members that you provide better experiences for them than you do. They will discover exactly what your club is like on their first visit.

Here are some suggestions.

Don’t hide behind a 4th priority. While it’s possible to come up with a long list of priorities, there’s no way that many will get a great deal of attention. Anything below your 3rd priority is absolutely not a priority at all.  Make your club members’  experiences one of your top three priorities.

Sometimes it’s better not to start. If you’re not committed to excellence in member experience, then don’t start a major initiative; it’s a lot of hard work. And if member experience isn’t a top priority, then your club will likely fail. Frustrated club members will be increasingly reluctant to re-engage in membership retention and building in the future.

Advertise to reinforce, not to create positioning.  Since members ultimately know how you treat them, the best you can do with marketing is to reinforce the truth. If you want to change how you are perceived, then start by treating your members better. Then use advertising to reinforce the new way that they’re being treated. Talk about how individual members succeed and how they perceive those successes.

IF YOU ARE  NOT COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE IN MEMBER EXPERIENCE, YOU CAN ONLY FOOL YOURSELF.

Twitter

LinkedIn

FaceBook