Implementing New Technology: 3 Tips for the Non-Technical Small Business
By Steve Schlosser, BSB/PM, PMP, Project Manager Managed Solution
Recently I had the opportunity to work with a small business client seeking a technical solution to an overwhelming amount of email and storage issues. Managed Solution created a solution, implemented the change, and overall the project was a success. Yet, I still couldn't shake the feeling that the client was left feeling stranded, even after we conducted over six hours of administration and user support training. So as a small business owner, one must ask themselves “What can I do to mitigate post-change stress”? Luckily, there are several solutions!
Set Your Expectations
As a small business owner, finances and budgetary constraints are a daily thought. It is excruciatingly important when partnering with a solutions associate to understand what is provided in the project for support time. Many times we at Managed Solution end up partnering with our clients with service agreements to provide them 24-hour support – which is by far most cost effective – but it is important to understand what is, and what is not included in the solution contract. Project Managers like myself want to act in the business’s best interest and control the project to stay within the budgetary constraints, and if the business owner does not adequately demonstrate their desire for extended support after the project completes, we cannot budget for that accordingly in the initial solution offering.
Consider a Dual-Agreement
As a small business, opportunity cost is always a consideration – that is cost of an untaken opportunity. Evaluate your business’s needs when seeking a technical solution. Often when a business has grown large enough to require a technical change to increase efficiency, it is time to also continue a long-term change. With a simple inquiry of a dual-agreement (a service agreement combined with a project contract), the door leading to discounts and bundle rates swings wide open and leaves room for negotiation. The best part? You end up with a brand new solution working at highest efficiency and on-call support forever on out with any issues that arise; which ends up increasing productivity and not wasting valuable man-hours and increased stressed levels of non-technical employees trying to solve problems.
Communicate your Constraints
Often times as Project Managers, once handed a new client project we immediately begin planning and identifying resources for the endeavor. One of the biggest hurdles we run into is a lack of communication of client constraints. Businesses often have crucial operating activities that cannot be interrupted during specific time frames as well as other constraints. From a planning aspect, this is easy to mitigate. With a little bit of foresight from the client side, a project manager can simply schedule the use of time around this; as long as its communicated up front!
In conclusion, communicate the expectations and constraints to your solution consultant and consider a long-term strategy in congruence with a new IT solution. It will forever simplify your life, reduce stress levels, and surely will satisfy the overall goal of assisting your business in growing, expanding, and succeeding.
About the author:
Steve Schlosser is a PMP Certified Project Manager and Veteran with a background working in the information technology field for the U.S. Navy as well as with L-3 Communications. As a project manager for Managed Solution, Steve oversees System Integration and Solution projects to assist large and small businesses with the ever expanding challenge of staying ahead of technology to enable an effective working environment. His diverse background, excellent communications skills, and problem solving abilities enable him to perform his functions to the greatest extent; always leaving satisfied clientele.
The Managed Solution team enjoyed attending the Small Business Awards Mixer hosted by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce on September 9, 2015. The event honored Chamber member small and micro businesses who have applied for one of their coveted awards.
Congratulations to all the Award Winners!
Microsoft Makes Small Businesses ‘Data Smart’ With Power BI
By David Smith, General Manager of Worldwide SMB as written on Microsoft for Work.
Despite being the buzzword de jour for large enterprises, the concept of “Big Data” is still in its infancy with small businesses. This is because the process of capturing, storing, extracting and analyzing large quantities of data always required far too much in the way of IT resources and technical expertise for the average SMB. But just because SMBs don’t want to maintain servers, hire data scientists and pay for expensive analytics suites doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from business insights hiding in their own data.
Today Microsoft is releasing a new business analytics service designed to help the non-data-scientists among us uncover those insights and make more informed decisions about their business. It’s called Power BI, and it gives people working for companies small and large a straightforward way to analyze and visualize their information.
Power BI Brings It All Together
At its core, Power BI is a centralized hub that allows users to easily pull in, visualize and interpret the vast amount of data that their business generates on a daily basis. SMBs use a wide range of tools and services to run the different aspects of their business. By generating unified charts, graphs, maps and statistics, Power BI allows users to spot trends that would be difficult or impossible to identify by looking at an unorganized assortment of different spreadsheets and dashboards.
The greatest analytics tool on the planet is worthless if it doesn’t provide a simple and reliable way to connect with the information that matters to your small business, which is why we created content packs for Power BI. Content packs provide a way to automatically bring together data from different sources so the full picture can be analyzed in one place. And these connections extend beyond services like Excel or Dynamics CRM, so even if an SMB uses Google Analytics to track website traffic, MailChimp for email marketing campaigns and QuickBooks Online for accounting and payroll they can grab and analyze all of that data instantly (you can find the expanding list of content packs here).
We also know that small businesses aren’t always run from behind a desk. With Power BI apps for Windows, iOS and Android, users can view personalized dashboards and reports anywhere, interacting with their data in a touch-optimized experience.
Power of Data for Small Business
Say you’re the owner of a small online retail shop and you want to run a flash sale on a certain product to a specific set of customers. To do this effectively you need to have access to data that depicts your customer set to gather demographic information, online traffic that shows your most active customers, likely times to buy and historical sales data that shows you what worked well and what didn’t with the last flash sale you ran. Imagine if rather than searching each data set in its respective location and digging through everything manually, you could view all the information in one simple dashboard that illustrates trends and easy-to-spot insights, enabling fast and informed decisions about when to run the sale and who to market it to.
Best of all, you don’t need to learn a whole new set of skills to use Power BI. Power BI uses natural language query technology, which allows you to ask a question like “show me sales data from January to July.” In other words, you don’t need to be a data scientist to get at the information you need.
How Small Businesses Can Use Power BI
We’re often expounding the virtues of the cloud for small businesses because it provides the benefits of large-scale IT without the cost and complexity. Power BI is a fantastic example of exactly how the cloud is leveling the technology playing field for businesses of all sizes. A few years ago this type of solution would have been out of reach for just about every SMB. Now it can be set up in minutes with no up-front costs, making data analytics viable for even a single-person business. In fact, much of the functionality is available for free, without trial period restrictions.
Removing the price and technical hurdles means that many more small businesses will be able to capitalize on the value of analytics as a competitive tool and point of differentiation. Putting your data to use can give you a leg up on your competition. You’ll have real-time insights that allow you to adjust and adapt your business plan, so you can stay focused on what’s really driving results for your company. Basing your decisions on data not only helps you act strategically but allows you to be more in touch with your customer needs.
As an SMB, you have a lot on your plate already and exerting unnecessary time mining through endless data across multiple platforms doesn’t need to be one of them. Power BI makes your life easier and allows you to become more nimble and efficient, ultimately driving more results for your business.
Microsoft and Its Technology Partners Help Smaller Companies Take Advantage of Cloud and Mobile Technologies
By: David Smith, General Manager of Worldwide SMB
Let’s talk about a catch-22 that many business owners find themselves in – and it doesn’t matter the size of the company or the type of business they own. They recognize the value of adopting technology to better run their business, but they have a hard time determining the exact technology solutions that meet the needs of their unique companies and staff.
In fact, according to a recent survey by CompTIA, 47 percent of small businesses are only moderately close or not at all close to where they want to be in terms of utilizing technology to improve their business.
Two areas of technology that commonly vex small and medium-sized business (SMB) leaders these days are cloud and mobile. They know they want to take advantage, and many have started to leverage these technologies, but with so many options, which one is the best for your business?
At Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Orlando this week, more than 11,000 of our best and brightest technology partners converged to figure out how to help businesses solve their technology and business challenges. And among lots of exciting news and discussion, two announcements in particular promise to have an impact on small businesses looking to gain an edge.
Cloud Solutions That Meet the Unique Needs of Your Company
The first announcement involves Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) program. In addition to Office 365, Windows Intune and Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), CSP partners can now offer SMB customers Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. So not only do SMBs have access to more cloud-based tools, but they can have them all bundled in one simple bill from a single vendor, who becomes their hands-on partner in cloud computing.
The benefit of working with a cloud solution partner — like Eastridge or Palmetto Technology Group, for example — is that they can help you choose and onboard the tools you need to achieve a variety of business goals, from better collaboration to better customer management. And with a partner managing these tools, business leaders can focus on other tasks, like acquiring new customers and growing your business.
In a recent survey of SMBs conducted by Deloitte, heavy cloud users saw 26 percent faster growth and 21 percent higher profit than companies that don’t utilize the cloud.
Finding a partner to help you answer the “how” part of the cloud is really important. Because the answer to the “why” question is clear: In a recent survey of SMBs conducted by Deloitte, heavy cloud users saw 26 percent faster growth and 21 percent higher profit than companies that don’t utilize the cloud. And two-thirds of all SMBs surveyed believe that the cloud allows them to beat their competitors.
More Mobile
Mobility is another area of vast potential for SMBs. According to IDC, SMBs that experience revenue growth are 54 percent more likely than average to have made supporting mobile workers a priority. Mobile devices and mobile management services like Intune untether people from their desks, freeing them to work on the go — whether that’s in route to a customer meeting, during a daily commute or even just from the balcony or a different room in the office.
Take Dan Prud’homme of Carolina Realty Group as an example. Through Windows devices and cloud services like Office 365, his office is nearly paperless, and he’s powering a truly mobile workforce that connects more quickly and reliably both in the office and out in the field. He also uses Skype to showcase and sell homes to potential buyers who can’t see a property in-person – all via his phone or tablet.
Other companies are using Microsoft Surface tablets to arm employees with more information, better resources and mobile points-of-sale on the show floor. Alex Shvartzman, owner of Brooklyn-based Kings Games, has noticed this having a positive impact on sales. Since his employees can call up product reviews, research information on specific games and ring up sales all using one device, a customer asking a question quickly and easily turns into a customer making a purchase.
According to IDC, SMBs that experience revenue growth are 54 percent more likely than average to have made supporting mobile workers a priority.
Which brings us to the second big announcement coming out of WPC this week: Microsoft is increasing the number of partners that can sell Surface globally. And the big advantage for SMBs is that partners can provide Surface tablets with the exact apps and functionality their customers need. So rather than trying to build a smooth-running mobile point-of-sale system piece by piece, you can work with one technology partner who handles the device as well as the apps and integration. And that technology provider will also offer service and support for all of your Surface devices.
Final Thoughts
This week’s announcements give SMBs of all stripes, from a small retailer with five employees to a pharmaceutical research company with 50 employees, even greater access to game-changing technology and best practices. Being considered a “small” business is no longer a disadvantage. Smaller companies are having big impact nowadays and Microsoft and our technology partners are here to help.
The cloud isn’t some nebulous construct that floats above us in the sky and magically stores and disseminates information. It’s actually a mind-boggling number of hard drives collected in datacenters located all over the world, connected by miles and miles of cable, so we can store enormous amounts of information and communicate almost instantaneously across the globe. You and everyone who uses the Internet to send an email, update a social media site, or host a sound file uses these datacenters. How much do you know about them?
Heroes. Champions. The oft-unseen glue that keeps our companies running. Meet the IT professional.
The IT pro: master of the technology universe
Source: http://blogs.microsoft.com/work/2015/05/22/the-it-pro-master-of-the-technology-universe/
