Nurturing your workforce pays

Sometimes a report only confirms what you already know. I think this is the case for a recent report from the Cranfield School of Management with Learn Direct.

They conclude that almost 80% of organisations believe there is a greater benefit in developing employees over external recruitment. We think this is even more important for us smaller organisations, we have to recruit carefully and develop our staff.

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I have seen clear evidence of this in one of the organisations we work with. The business moved forward significantly after a change in approach to nurture their staff and develop the business with them. This is the thinking that sits behind Hassle Free Training; improving people's IT skills gives them tools to both help the business and develop themselves.

System monitoring - are you checking the oil?

Your IT system needs to run reliably all day and every day. This is particularly the case for your infrastructure, email communications, file storage and important business applications; any deterioration or failure can have a significant impact on people both inside and outside of the business.

An engine needs the temperature, fuel, oil and water levels to be checked to ensure reliability. An IT system is no different, services, memory, disk space and the network need to be monitored; any changes outside of the expected operations envelope need to be addressed to maintain reliability and efficiency. Systems often present some form of warning before they fail, but you will only pick this up if your monitoring systems are in use and people know how to respond.

Monitoring is a "part time" activity with a high level of automation to give alerts. You do not even need to see the people who do this as practically everything can be done remotely, but you do need to know it is being done.

What is a virtual machine - what will change?

We started using virtual machines over 2 years ago and have just finished a project using the technology in a small business, but what is a virtual machine?

Until recently there was strong link between the hardware and the operating system in the world of PCs. In the early days you needed the power of a new computer to run the latest software. This is no longer the case; in fact even the most basic hardware has far more power than that needed to run many business applications, the computer is "idle" (doing nothing) most of the time.

The virtual machine breaks the link between the PC hardware and the operating system, allowing several PCs to run on one computer. One computer can look like and behave like many individual computers. Each individual PC is a "virtual" PC, it looks like a PC to the user but only exists inside the larger host computer as software program.

This has many implications for the future, but for now it means that we can make better and more efficient use of the computing power available. We can continue to use the PC and server platform which has been developed over almost three decades. We will have greater flexibility and be able to deploy new systems more easily with fewer hardware constraints, resulting in greater efficiency and lower costs.

All good teams should have a substitute server

A server is a key part of a small business, it can also be an Achilles heel. If the server stops the business stops, potentially causing significant disruption and loss of money.

After talking about it for some time we have put together a package to minimise the disruption and loss if a server stops. To achieve this we will undertake to have a substitute server available that we can use replace the failed server until it is fixed. The basis of this service is a real demonstration of the recovery process so that we can test it and be confident that the process will work when needed.

The process requires a daily server image that can be used on a substitute server. If the main server fails the business can continue to operate after only a short delay to bring on the substitute server.

While with good IT management the risk of a server failure is low it is still significant and we believe a substitute process should be an important part of your systems built in resilience. Further details and the case for this service can be found on this substitute server link.

A further challenge is to make the service available at a price people are prepared to pay. After all is said and done, while we will regularly demonstrate the process no one wants a server to stop.

As an alternative we can set up the process and equipment and the business takes on the responsibility for maintaining readiness. The advantage of this is single set up cost and no ongoing commitment to an external organisation.

Working in partnership, IT is very important to business

Sometimes as an IT services supplier you can feel like the enemy, people only see you as a cost and not as someone who wants to help and add value. We set up in business to bring the small business what the big business has. When I tell people this I nearly always add the rider "we did not realise that small businesses do not know what big business have, so it is very difficult to give (sell) people something they do not know they need." While I say this partly in jest, we did underestimate the gulf in approach between people in small business and those who work in larger corporate style businesses. They are very different environments, with different priorities and levels of money to spend, requiring different styles and approaches. Despite the differences, the need for IT is just as great in small business as in a big ones and our original aims are still relevant.

Hence, we were very pleased today when one of customers said he recognised that IT was very important to his business and the future. He wanted to raise the level of service and support to ensure the systems they had would work for them; in other words he was looking to change the type of relationship from just "supplier" to "partnership". This was music to our ears, the basis on which we want to work. All we have to do now is make it work, we want to establish a strong relationship where we can help to design, plan and maintain the IT systems to meet the business needs. Being valued for advice and design, not just fixing things that break.

Create a model - draw your business process

I have just been working with a colleague on a short project to pick up, record and monitor the status of people as they completed a stay in hospital, not quite as simple as it sounds. Several attempts had been made at putting a simple recording system in place without success. The real problem was that no one had analysed and drawn the process, once this was done we were able to determine what people wanted from the system and what had to go into the system.

We created a simple process model using a flow chart and constructed a simple database model to suit. We could then invest time in the programming secure in the knowledge we had the process right.

Previously I have used Visio to create diagrams, but on this occasion I used SmartDraw. Give it a go, I can recommend it because it is simple to use, creating the flow sheet does not get in the way of your thinking.

Office 2007 compatability

More people are now using Office 2007 and coming up with a number of issues. This TechRepublic link gives information on some of the common issues and provides links to the more pertinent issues you are likely to come across.

Are you getting enough quality information?

How do you measure your business performance. This is currently more important than ever and we have had a rise in requests for business information. In this difficult economic climate your customers and suppliers may be changing their behaviour and seriously affecting your business. There may be early indicators which might show there are opportunities which you can take advantage of, equally with the right information you can look forward and make decisions (however painful) now when you may have some options.

How do you measure your efficiency, can you redirect peoples efforts to better advantage if things are slow in some areas?

Now is the time to think hard on what information will help you and your business. A lot of things are being collected as you use your IT systems (not just in accounts). If you can gather and analyse this information will you be more in control?

Are you getting reports that are useful but are late, e.g. many businesses have management reports which are presented up to 2 weeks after the period end. Would up to date information be more useful, even if it is not wholly accurate?

If only I had this? Ask, the answer may be easier than you think.