apr 2007

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

APRIL 2007 | Vol. 1 � Issue 9

PUBLISHED BYSMB Nation, Inc.

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Harry Brelsford, PublisherEditorial Staff

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Beatrice MulzerEDITOR Barbara Wallace & Gib Curry

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSRobin Robins, USAJeff Wuorio, USA

LAYOUT Al AlarakhiaCOVER ART DIRECTOR Michael Young

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSMark Mulvany, Ireland

Diego Salato, ItalyNick Pieters, Belgium

Leen Kleijwegt, NetherlandsAndy Wendel, GermanyDean Calvert, Australia

Steven Teiger, IsraelSuresh Ramani, IndiaAndrew Watson, UKStuart Raj, Indonesia

Mikael Nystroem, SwedenShelagh Harrop, South Africa

Dana Epp, CanadaKen Thoreson, USAAnne Stanton, USA

BUSINESS STAFFHarry Brelsford, CEO

Kevin Pearson, PresidentBeatrice Mulzer, Vice PresidentKristal Sagdahl, Office Manager

Lindsay Serbous, Database AnalystJennifer Hall, Event Coordinator

Jackie Oreiro, Distribution

SMB Nation, Inc.PO Box 10179

Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 USA

Telephone: 360-779-1140Fax: 360-779-1140

E-mail: [email protected]

© Copyright 2007 SMB Nation Inc.All Rights Reserved

Please contact us for reprints andreproduction of content.

ISSN 1933-8899

SMBPartnerCommunity

Who would have ever thought? Enterprise technology heading for theSMB (small- and medium business) space. No doubt about it, the SMB spaceis benefitting from software once deemed “technology too expensive” formany SMBs. We are glad to announce that it’s here to stay! Just immerseyourself in this month’s cover story on page 4 by fellow Small BusinessSpecialist Karl Palachuk and learn what he considers a “serious boost inrevenue,” and how to go about achieving it. More food for thought onenterprise technologies is brought to you by Mei Ying Lim, a SharePoint MVP(Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) from Singapore, who will introduceyou to the world of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) andenterprise content management on page 13. Don’t let the word “enterprise”throw you off. Take a serious look at MOSS 2007 and its new workflow engineand Office integration; this may just be the solution your client has beenlooking for.

Small Business Server MVP Jeff Middleton elaborates on whether adisaster is really a disaster or whether it’s just a crisis (which is just a “routineoperation falling over”) and then defines a catastrophe. Don’t worry, keepyour calm and read his article on page 8 and soak up some of the disasterrecovery philosophy from this Hurricane Katrina veteran.

With this issue of SMBPC, we are kicking off a new series dubbed “101”where we will outline a range of topics and best practices for starting andrunning a business. This month we picked “Accounting 101” (page 35) –and yes, we expect you to read it! Personally, I will try and skip and notread anything that has the word “accounting” in it – and that is exactly ourpoint! On a daily basis we all manage to avoid topics we don’t want to dealwith, so try and make this your monthly willpower exercise and read aboutsomething that may not be your favorite topic, but still is important to your business.

I know you will enjoy this month’s issue of SMBPC magazine, and if youhave article ideas or comments, we would love to hear them. Write us [email protected]

Donation of the Month

The staff at SMB Nation has many bicycle enthusiasts, but only one runner. Sowhen the local “Kids and K9 5K Run” in Melbourne, FL came around, SMB Nationwas happy to sponsor the event and volunteer much labor. (Anything but runningyourself!)

The event was a benefit for the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization and drewclose to 150 runners and children, and almost as many K9s! What made this eventtruly special were the trophies given away – they were all miniature fire hydrants!To sponsor Big Brothers Big Sisters go to www.bbbs.org.

EDITORIALBy Beatrice Mulzer, Executive Editor

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Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

SMB Partner Community - April 2007 www.smbnation.com Page 3

Don Piercy and event organizer Kevin Leiker handing atrophy to Maria Vasile who ran the 5K with her K9!

One of a kind trophies for the 2007 K9 Run,fire hydrants where you can keep your doggie treats in!

Your SpaceHi Harry and Beatrice

I’m writing the 70-282 exam tomorrow, and have used your “redbook” for my preparation, as well as the downloaded PDF containing theupdates to the exam. I have a query regarding the system requirements forSBS that weren't mentioned in the update document. If you navigate tohttp://www.microsoft.com/Windowsserver2003/sbs/evaluation/sysreqs/default.mspx, the system requirements for R2 are way higher than theywere specified in the book for the original SBS releases - e.g. RAM is min.512 MB as opposed to 256 MB, and HDD space is 16 GB as opposed to 4GB and 5 GB for Std. and Premium respectively. The min. Proc. is also 750MHz as opposed to 300 MHz as mentioned in the red book.

Hi RaymondNo worries – R2 is not part of the exam as we know it. This exam will

focus much more on your general Windows networking knowledge (hencethe update PDF).

Relax and rely on your instincts, your gut feeling; and don’t think toomuch into the exam. Remember, Microsoft wants to know how you woulddo things the Microsoft way, so don’t compare exam questions with whatyou would do in real life. Just think “What would Microsoft do?”

Editor’s Note: Raymond did pass the exam the next day!

Hello Harry,I am trying to install SBS 2003 r2 on a Microsoft Virtual PC 2004

virtual machine. Everything is going great until I come to the LocalNetwork Adapter Configuration screen. The wizard won’t accept ranges of192.168.16.x or 192.168.0.x. What do I use for a default gateway address. I have one network adapter on the machine and I select to use the DHCPserver in SBS. What could be the problem?Sincerely,Raymond Lee Gregowicz

My guess is that your router is running a DHCP server using the192.168.16. range, and the SBS wizard is detecting that. So do thefollowing:

1. Turn off DHCP server in the router

2. Make note of the Router’s internal IP address. It might be192.168.16.1 (or .0)

3. Set the SBS vm to use a fixed IP of 192.168.16.24. Set SBS DCHP to serve up IP addresses in the range of

192.168.16.3 --.xx5. On the SBS server set the default gateway to the router’s internal

IP address - 192.168.16.1 (or .0)

By the way, Virtual PC 2007 has been released. I’ve had good luck with that.

Sam Washburn, Integra North

Beatrice,I was in your class last Thursday and Friday. As I told you on Friday

during one of the breaks, I had scheduled to take the 70-282 exam onMonday. I had work to do for a customer on Saturday, but intended tospend the rest of the weekend studying. (You had suggested trying topostpone the test, but they needed one business day notice, and I wasbeyond that by the time I got back to the office on Friday).

I spent all day Sunday and Monday morning reading your red book,starting with chapter 3. Unfortunately, I only got through chapter 8 beforethe exam (I am a terribly slow reader). But I passed the exam Mondayafternoon with a score just below 900.

When I got back to the office I sat down to read the first threechapters, where I found that you had written all the chapters I had read. It then occurred to me that, besides my years of installing SBS (sinceversion 4.5), you were my only outside source of study and training for theexam! So I thought I owed it to you to let you know that you can add onemore to your success column, and that I appreciated your efforts. I enjoyedthe book, learned a fair amount, and expect to finish the remainder of thebook shortly. I have two or three SBS servers going in over the next monthor so, and I am anxious to do that with your book in hand so I can try a fewof those things that I didn’t realize were there.

Thanks again for your help,David Seavy

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

www.smbnation.com SMB Partner Community - April 2007

COVER STORY

hat’s the most reliable technology you know of?With virtually 100% uptime, most people wouldagree that it’s POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service*.

When the computer goes down, what works? The phone. Andwhen the electricity’s out? The phone still works.

For 125 years, the telephone has been the mostconsistently reliable technology we have.

W Enter a challenger: Voice Over IP (VOIP) literally wants totake the place of your old, wired phone system.

SMB consultants tend to be early adopters. That means wehave faith in technology. But it doesn’t mean we trust everynew thing that comes along just because it’s new. Our brothersand sisters in the enterprise space have figured out how tohave success with VOIP. They’ve done it with T3’s andequipment that costs more than most of our clients spend ontechnology in a year.

We actually have a little tougher challenge on our handsas we explore the VOIP space. We need to provide areasonably priced solution. But since the technology we wishto replace is so reliable, our solution must be just as reliable.

Many SMB Consultants have avoided the telephonybusiness. Only a handful has really embraced it as part of theirregular practice. While the technology isn’t particularlydifficult, it’s very different from what we do every day.

Getting into telephony has also meant getting into theactual wiring business, which most of us have also avoided.Telephone systems tend to be non-Windows. And then youhave to learn the rules of wiring. Many states require examsand certifications for low voltage wiring. Again, it’s notdifficult: it’s just a different kind of business.

But VOIP presents us with an opportunity to explore thisbusiness. One of the great weaknesses of the telephonenetwork is that it was not designed for data. Data networks,however, are quite capable of being adapted for voice traffic.

If you’re considering jumping into the VOIP business,here’s an important point to consider - this is a technology thatallows you to jump in at any level you wish.

For example:• You can resell existing services, some of whom take

payment directly from the end user and pay you acommission. With this option, you don’t need to invest ininventory of any kind. One such company is SxS, Inc.,providers of the PacketS hosted IP PBX system.

• You can deploy open source solutions such as Asterisk.These allow you to sell the hardware and provideongoing support. In addition to their own Yahoo Group,there are several SMB partners using, selling, andsupporting this solution.

by Karl W. Palachuk

Voice Over IP in the SMB Space

Our cover models forthis month’s issue areMarc Harrison, Presidentof Silicon-East located inManalapan, New Jersey

and technician Shaun Lillianthal in front of an 3ComNBX VoIP system. Silicon-East’s motto is: “IncrediblyCompetent Network Engineering & Support”

Here is Marc’s take on getting into the VoIPbusiness: “We have been a 3Com Voice Partner fornearly four years. We chose 3Com because their NBXproduct is targeted squarely at small and mediumbusinesses, has a nice Windows “Desktop CallAssistant”and frankly, they made an effort to recruit usand get us trained. The barriers to entry werereasonable, and we were in business with them withinjust a couple of months.”

“NBX has added greatly to our bottom line becausethe market is not yet commoditized, meaning marginsare good. VoIP has become something that SMB ownershave heard of, think they want, but really know nothingabout. Being aligned with an industry leader like 3Commakes it easy to close the deal.We have sold systems from fivephones up to several hundred.The system scales really well,and we’re able to deployphones remotely as well.Pricing is so competitive thatwe can routinely beatPanasonic, and wiring andinstallation are much simpler.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


• You may partner with a provider who bundles VOIPsystems based on a Windows or Linux platform. In thiscase, you have the opportunity to sell hardware and OS-related software as well as ongoing support and the VOIPsolution itself. Of course that also means that you get thecalls when anything goes wrong. Here, consider Vonexus,based entirely on top of Windows architecture.

• You can resell “hardware” based solutions such as theVOIP equipment from Vodavi, Cisco, Avaya, Nortel,and others.

• If you’re ready to jump into the higher-end functionalityof Exchange 2007, you’ll find that its unified messagingrelies on IP-based PBXs. Because this is so new,Microsoft has lots of information on how to get started,approved equipment, and deployment guides. If youneed another Microsoft competency, this is clearlysomething to consider.

• And, finally, you might just want to find the rightpartner. Many of us don’t sell financial packages orCRM, but we partner with Microsoft Dynamics andMicrosoft CRM partners. As some partners becomeVOIP, convergence, and unified messaging specialists,you might consider building a partnership to providethose services to your clients.

Consider how well these options fit in with your existingtechnology offerings. Some SMB consultants have greatsuccess selling labor only. They charge clients to help orderthe right equipment from various suppliers and make theirmoney on the consulting labor. Other consultants eitherbuild their own systems or resell pre-configured boxes fromHP, Dell, or others.

As with most technologies, it is a good idea to use a VOIPsystem yourself before trying to sell it to a client. After all, you’llwant some firsthand experience with the challenges - as well asthe cool features - of the system you’re selling.

If you’ve been selling telephone systems for some time,then you’ve probably already requested information fromvendors you’re now dealing with. If you haven’t sold systemsbefore, you’ll find that there’s a whole network of equipmentand service brokers eager for your business.

The VOIP market space is still in its infancy despite the factthat there are some very mature products and providers. That’sgood for you because almost everyone has educationalmaterials and reseller discounts that make it easy to get started.

When you look into some VOIP options, you will findadditional opportunities as well. Many of the brokers who resell VOIP solutions are eager to sign you up to sell long distance, data services, cell phones, and cellular data packages.

Again, you should consider how deeply you want to jumpinto these services. It’s very tempting to be able to sell yourclients a new T-1, a VOIP system, a bunch of cell phones, anda handful of EVDO data cards. But how well does that fit with

what you’re doing now and where you want to go?In the bigger picture, VOIP may be your entree into the

broader “mobility” market.Ten years ago, every phone guy we talked to wanted to

partner with us because they could see how data and voicewere going to merge. Some wanted to compete in thismarket, but discovered that computers are more complicatedthan they looked.

Ten years ago the telephone business was abuzz withopportunity because they could see and touch the equipmentthat made data and voice convergence possible. The bigvendors were telling the little installers that the future wastheirs - this was their opportunity to sell telephones, dataservices, and even computers and networks.

The vision of convergence was essentially correct. But not

ObjectWorld and the “Trusted Advisor” Capitalizing on the esteemed status ascribed by the

customer to its beloved Small Business Specialists,ObjectWorld is introducing the world of SMB telephonyto the traditional SMB network consultants (that’s you,our readers) in order to expand their services and takebetter care of the customer.“We want the IT consultant toadd voice!” stated Steve Grassi of ObjectWorld, which isbased on Ottawa Ontario (Canada).“The channel partnercan easily work with our UC Server because it’s a softswitch.You don’t need to master the world of telephony.We’re convinced we’ll bring a huge additional revenuestream to the SMB consultant!”

Two other features really stood out regardingObjectWorld’s UC Server SIF-based telephony solution.First is the incredible integration with Active Directory.You manage many of the telephony functions right fromthe Active Directory Users and Computers MMC.Second was the attractive pricing. ObjectWorld is takingfull advantage of the “shift in the technology supplycurve” that has lower costs for everyone. The userlicensing conversation with ObjectWorld starts at $200per user but be advised YMMV (your mileage may vary)depending on your situation.

“To be honest, our challenge is educating the ITmarket to take advantage of telephony – everything ismoving toward telephony.” Concluded Grassi.You can learn more about ObjectWorld’s UC Server andits Connect and ConnectPlus partner programs atwww.objectworld.com.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

very many companies have successfully exploited theopportunities from the voice side. And now that vision andpromise belong to those of us on the data side. If we learnthese technologies, we can be the ones to sell all those servicesto our clients.

Imagine ten or twenty percent of your clients buyingtelephones, DSL, and smart phones from you. That’s a seriousboost in revenue, and well within your grasp. Movingforward, SMB consultants will be bundling all of this togetherwith the new Small Business Server. As we’ve seen in almostevery other technology, the release of Exchange 2007 willeventually lead to new programs and services geared directlytoward the SMB market.

CompetitionAs you make your plans to enter the VOIP marketplace,

you need to consider one more aspect of the business - whenyou take on these products and services, you’ll also take onnew competitors. You’re going to go up against the phonecompany, the wireless companies, and all those companiesthat sell and service phone systems.

But mostly you’ll be competing against the status quo.When Microsoft introduced Server 2003, they did some

research to find out which servers were competing with theirnew product. They discovered that their biggest competition

was Windows NT 4.0. NT4 was so solid and reliable that mostusers had never upgraded to Windows 2000 Server.

You think that’s a tough sell? You’re considering taking ona 125-year-old technology that everyone knows "just works"and replacing it with cool, new, unknown systems. Thatconsideration shouldn’t necessarily slow you down. But it’sprudent to go in with your eyes open.

Ten years from now, virtually all telephone traffic will beVOIP. So your clients, and everyone they do business with, aregoing to go through the process of trying, learning, and usingVOIP. They’re going to do that whether it’s with yourcompany or someone else. That doesn’t mean you have to getinto the VOIP business, but you do need to start building aplan for how you’ll place your business in a world whereeveryone uses VOIP.

The big question for most SMB consultants is, "Where do Istart?" Probably the best place is your local SBS User Group. Ifyou’re not a member of one, go to SBSGroups.com and find onenear you. If there isn’t one, you’ll find information there ongetting one started. Local consultants who have already hadexperience with VOIP will give you information about yourmarket that you won’t be able to get anywhere else.

Also check out the online groups, including theSmallBizlT and SMBManagedServices Yahoo! Groups. Somepaid membership organizations also have private forums,

including Mobilize SMB and The ASCII Group.As with any other technology, each person’s

experience is different. Remember to payattention to how well your businesses align.Just as you want to choose solutions that fit wellwith the way you currently do business, youwant to take advice from consultants whosemethod of operation is similar to your own.

Don’t worry if you haven’t gotten started yetwith VOIP. There will be plenty of newopportunity in the months and years ahead.New products for the SMB niche are beingintroduced every day. Explore VOIP and seewhat it can do for your business. �

* POTS isn’t really POTS any more. It has beenPSTN - Public Switched Telephone Network - fordecades.

Karl W. Palachuk is the owner of KPEnterprises, anSMB consulting firm in Sacramento, California. Heis also the author of several technology books,including Service Agreements for SMBConsultants. His current project is a book onpersonal and professional growth, entitled RelaxFocus Succeed. It is due to be released in May. Formore information, see GreatLittleBook.com or e-mail [email protected].

Page 6 www.smbnation.com SMB Partner Community - April 2007

AVAYASmall and Medium Business Solutions Group At-a-Glance

Avaya has over 1.2 million communications servers withapproximately 20 million endpoints and 1.5 million messaging ports.Avaya offers an array of solutions designed to help small and mid-sizedbusinesses.

The Avaya Small and Medium Business Solutions (SMBS) group isfocused exclusively on the small- and medium-market.

Learn more To learn more about Avaya SMB solutions, visit www.avaya.com/smb.

To locate an Avaya Authorized BusinessPartner, go to avaya.com, thenFind a BusinessPartner under Connect with Avaya.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


At last month’s Small Business Summit, Microsoftannounced Response Point, a VOIP solution developed from theground up specifically for Small Businesses. We talked to JeffSmith, the Senior Product Manager for Response Point. Here’swhat we learned.

Response Point is just finishing an eight month Beta 1 andwill go into Beta 2 this month.

Response Point is not a traditional Microsoft product. It isnot a server or desktop operating system, and it does not run ona server or desktop. Response Point is distributed as part of ahardware-specific package. Right now there are three vendorsmaking equipment for use with Response Point: D-Link, Quanta,and Uniden.

What does it mean that the phone system is designedspecifically for small business? More importantly, how can SMBconsultants make money deploying Response Point systems?Smith responded that, “Microsoft designed the system so it’seasy to learn to deploy.”

Typically, he explained, phone systems are designed for ahigher-end market. And, typically, the installer can expect to gothrough a four-day training for any given product. ResponsePoint, by comparison, is designed to be easy and pain-free. Ittakes less time to learn and less time to deploy.

In fact, “easy” was Smith’s adjective of choice regardingResponse Point.

But what about the do-it-yourselfer we seem to run into sooften in the SMB space? Can’t small business owners learn toconfigure Response Point themselves? “Of course there will bepeople who want to deploy it themselves,” said Smith. “But Iwould point out that there’s a difference between getting it goingand taking full advantage of the system.”

Once the owner gets Response Point up, Smith explained, he’llwant to do more. For these DIY business owners, SMB consultantswill add value as they help businesses to roll out the full feature set.In some ways, there are parallels in the “all-in-one” market.Business owners buy a machine that (in theory) copies, folds,duplexes, staples, scans, and faxes. But they use it as a printer untilan SMB consultant comes along and shows them how to use allthose features.

Speaking of the feature set, here’s some of the cool stuffyou’ll find in Response Point:

• Configuration wizards (of course)• Voice commands, including voice commands to the auto

attendant• Built-in voicemail• Voicemail forwarding to e-mail

• Backup and restore functions• Integration with Microsoft Outlook contacts

Smith would not disclose price points, but promised thatResponse Point would be very competitively priced. He wasclear on feature sets, however. There will only be one feature set.So, there will be no additional charge for the auto attendant,routing groups, incoming call notification, etc.

Some features, such as the ability to voice-dial your Outlookcontacts, will require that you install the Outlook integrationcomponent on your PC, but there is no additional charge to do so.And when it’s time to expand, you’ll have to buy additionalphones, of course, but there’s no charge to hook them to yourexisting Response Point system.

We probed a bit more on who Microsoft views as the end-user for Response Point. Smith said that Response Point isdesigned for anyone with one to fifty phones. The real draw, hesays, will be features. “Even if a company only has two lines anda cell phone, Response Point gives them access to a variety offeatures that have normally been associated with much largerorganizations.”

The fit for the SMB Consultant is also good. The ResponsePoint system supports traditional phone lines, VOIP, or both. Theuser experience is almost identical. To use a traditional land line,you’ll dial 9. To use VOIP, you’ll dial 8.

Because of this flexibility, Response Point systems are greatfor companies who want to buy a phone system, but are reluctantto do so now. After all, we’re in a transitional period. Do yourclients go with traditional phone lines, knowing that they willneed to be replaced with VOIP? Or do they go with the newertechnology, which might make them nervous? With ResponsePoint, your clients can invest today, knowing that they won’tneed to buy another phone system down the road.

Smith likens the PBX systems in most small businesses tomainframe computers, “They’re expensive, complicated,inflexible, and require specific knowledge.” That’s why they’redifficult to deploy and complicated to maintain. Response Point,he says, is just the opposite. It’s like a PC - inexpensive,uncomplicated, flexible, and it requires no specific knowledge.

While Smith describes Response Point at “remarkably” easyto manage and easy to use, he also promises that there will beplenty of online and classroom training for the product. �

Microsoft Targets VOIPfor Small Business

Avaya, in partnership withMicrosoft Financing isoffering a limited timepromotion to help you close

more technology deals now. This is available for all MicrosoftFinanced deals that include the Avaya IP office solution.https://www.microsoftfinancing.com/Promos.aspx

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

The Normal View of

by Jeff Middleton

s IT professionals, it is our goal to make disasterrecovery transparent. We start by making our ownlives easier. We prioritize the System State

backups, the replaying of logs and transaction activities,and a lot of other details aimed at the “normal rules” ofdaily operations. Naturally, you protect data. (You areprotecting the data, right?) These are valuable forrecovery from minor crisis, but they only scratch thesurface as guidelines for a catastrophe.

I’m amazed at the number of people I talk to whobelieve that two or three backups a week protects data.Not on my watch it doesn’t! I like to have at least ten-deep backups of data because I expect bad things tohappen without warning. Furthermore I like to havemore than one set of data in offsite backup, even if it’s atthe owner’s house. I think of disasters as normalbusiness, not special occasions. You don’t get to chooseyour disaster battles, only your defenses.

Crisis, Disaster or Catastrophe?Let’s pick some terms for discussion to distinguish

between a crisis, a disaster and a catastrophe. • Crisis is what happens when routine operations fall

over and you need extra effort to regain “normal.”More importantly, crisis happens more often whenyou don’t have a crisis plan established that definesthe path out, and instead make it up as you goalong.

• Disaster is a localized loss of operations. Havingyour server fail is a disaster, as is the collapse ofyour hard drive storage systems. A security breachor virus that makes all your records suspect is adisaster. A key point here is that all aspects of thebusiness could work if the technology system that

A

is down could be brought back online. Disaster iswhen you have people waiting on technology.

• Catastrophe is a word I reserve for unilateral lossto a business. The building burning down qualifiesas a catastrophe. If a company loses the ability toeven go to work and have a pulse, this is acatastrophe. You can have a catastrophe without atotal disaster of the infrastructure. If a business hasmore than one location, they provide backups orredundant domain controllers and workstations indifferent offices. Losing an entire facility is acatastrophe because you lose the assets. Perhapseven some of the staff can no longer contribute.Yes, there could be implications for the IT supportto address, but you may have to wait in line for thebusiness catastrophe to be addressed before thecomputers and technology can even beimplemented. If there’s no office, you may nothave a place yet to recover to.

If you don’t have a catastrophe plan, you need to.Find a way to avoid losing everything in the company,

Crisis


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

because you will be asked to solve the problem if thatever happens. I would love to have a 90-day-old copy ofall my customers’ data in a vault somewhere, even if theydidn’t know I had it. That would just give me more peaceof mind.

You need more than the back of a napkin to getstarted on saving a company from catastrophe. If youexplore the most basic elements of survival, you will bein the position to make value judgments on morecomplicated details further down the line.

Preparations Can Calm a Crisis

After Hurricane Katrina, I got a lot of questions like,“How do you prepare for disaster recovery? What didyou do before Katrina?” I’ve written and spoken aboutthis topic a lot in the past two years. The best informationto start with is the relevant chapter in the Advanced SBSBest Practices book. I’ve lived through the aftermath ofHurricane Katrina wiping out my home town of NewOrleans and the effect it had on my local customers. I’vealso dealt with risk management for more mundaneconditions, for my customers and for my own business.The crisis revealed a critically constrained resource - timeand my ability to deliver it to every customer at once.

My routine experiences helping customers over theyears are probably not unique, but my extraordinaryKatrina experiences are more improbable. Yet Katrinareinforced a basic point in my philosophy. Crisis anddisasters are really not as complicated to work through asyou may think. I try to view the entire spectrum of crisismanagement and disaster recovery as a routine andplanned project. Think of the husband preparing in thefinal weeks before his wife is due for childbirth, as theplan to “get to the hospital” is refined. Prepare the bag tobe taken. Make sure the car is fueled. Have a neighborwith a key to the house to feed the pet. Make a telephonecall list. This isn’t really complicated stuff.

You might be attracted to the idea that you can plana crisis and smooth the wrinkles out of a disaster. This iswhat I do every day. I help my SBSmigration.comcustomers learn how to plan server recovery, forecastrisky conditions and control the project pace. In somecircles, this is called Crisis Management. To me, this isjust a way to approach normal events that too manypeople declare to be a crisis. You can have a businessdown condition that is an “urgency,” but not anemergency or a crisis. Planning procedures and outcomesmake it feel less like a crisis and more like a predictabletimeline. You see success unfold as your crisis planproceeds in an orderly progression.

Time for the Last BucketToo much of the work done during a “crisis” falls into

a last bucket with the statement, “Try not to panic, dowhat ever is necessary, we’ll sort out the expenses later.”That’s not the basis of a great plan. Don’t get me wrong,if you run out of options, throwing money at a crisis tosnuff it out may seem to make sense in the crisis - butlater? Have you ever called Microsoft Customer Supportabout a server down condition and not had them ask inthe first 10 minutes, “Do you have a good backup of yoursystem and data?” Now you may also need a rain dance,not just a predictable resolution. Without the backup, youare starting on your last option.

No doubt, there will always be situations where theworst case scenario greets the last available recoveryoption, and things get a bit dicey immediately. But that’sa terrible place to be. Sometimes it’s not budget that willbe the final problem, but time. You get a buffer oncatastrophe by not assuming you will have a facility orexisting assets. You get a buffer on disaster by havingmany options for recovery that are not codependent onsomething like “same hardware restore” or “my IT guynever goes on vacation.” The buffer on crisis comes fromhaving a roadmap, a familiar set of procedures to recoverand reanimate dead things, and a calm and confident setof skills. This game is won by skills instead of neat tools,excess assets and luck.

The most valuable element in crisis management anddisaster recovery is time. Figure out your time budget sothat you don’t waste it. Planning and preparing yourresources in advance “adds time” to your resource pool.If you don’t adequately plan you later discover, “I couldhave prepared for this and saved two hours.” Forsomeone like me who sees optimization of crisismanagement as their true calling, this sort of voice in my


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

ear is really annoying. For folks who react rather thanplan, this ringing in your ear can be quite unnerving.Once you are midstream in a crisis you are well on yourway to losing confidence in your ability to complete thejob successfully. When I provide support to migrationand disaster recovery customers, part of my job to helpthose who start to panic to get out of that mode. Thenumber one thing tell them is, “The timeline for yourrecovery is already decided, stop fighting the timeline inyour head.” I know your customer wants this done faster,but only you have the skills and assets you startedwith.Arguing with yourself about how this could havebeen done better is a distraction. If the business is goingto be down for a day and we have no option, then let thatstress go. You can make up time with skill, or with timeyou can get past a deficit in skill. If you have neitherexcess time nor excess skill, you are heading for a crisiswith no great options. You might be starting off with onlyone bucket…or worse.

The Best Crisis Plan Started Rolling Before the Crisis

Here is anexample of the basic sortof preparation I’mtalking about. I talk oftenabout the idea ofpreparing a drive imageof a server in advance, orat least a secondary driveyou can boot from, thatallows you to inspect ad e a d / n o n - b o o t i n gserver quite easily.Imagine that you have anSBS server that goes into

a BSOD or hang before you can logon. Wouldn’t it begreat to have another hard drive you could boot thecomputer with to review the contents of the productionboot drive? If you build that in advance you have a reallyeasy way to examine or repair that server. (Yes, I know,Microsoft calls this a “cold image” and they want you tolicense it if you don’t have Software Assurance coverageon your server, but you could do this with a licensedcopy of XP if needed.)

This spare bootable drive isn’t the key to everyproblem. There are a lot of ways to look at a hard drivefrom another booting configuration. A lot of folks areusing BartPE, or maybe they have their own WinPE

disks. Choose one if you prefer this versus that, but thepoint is that if you get into a “server isn’t booting crisis,”the thing you need first is to be able to review the originaldrive or begin reconstructing it from a backup.

Take the time to consider the most common problemsyou will have in fixing a server that won’t boot. You canprepare exactly the tools you need and have them ready.For years I would charge a customer what was necessaryto prepare drive images for them. I also took advantageof the Microsoft OEM program to build my own serversand then prepare OEM System Builder compliant imagesof any server configuration so that I could immediatelystart rebuilding or reviewing a machine. That’s anexample of tuning my business model to my goals forservice and marketing. I built servers I can support andrepair. Building whitebox servers is less popular thesedays, but this is illustrates the concept of “planning for acrisis” with basic tools.

Organizing a Strategic Crisis PlanLet’s return to the original premise: You can prepare

an organized crisis or iron out wrinkles in a disaster. Howdo you organize a crisis?

I love the observation of “when a building catchesfire, everyone else runs out of the building while thefireman rushes in.” For a fireman, is a building on fire acrisis, or just a basic part of the job they train for? It isnormal for people who respond to crisis to be wellprepared to deal with limited resources, extremelycompressed time availability…and lots of training inadvance. It’s not possible to deal with crisis effectively ifyou don’t have a lot of standard solutions alreadyprepared, tested and confidently proven.

In the aftermath of Katrina, I faced conditions thatwere more frustrating because I had so many customersin crisis at one time, and I was in a personal crisis aswell because I too was affected by the evacuation. Butthe core issue here was that each of my customers wasacting upon a plan to recover their business (not justtheir server) that had been previously mapped out. Wehad talked about minimum requirements and we knewa lot of things that were likely to be a problem. Thethings we didn’t anticipate were huge, but mostly theywere blind spots you can’t anticipate. You respond towhat you can fix, work around or do better with aninspired idea.

For one customer, the decision to leave behind all hisservers created a rescue event. The servers werefunctional, but inaccessible. For a different customer, the


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

servers for his business had been hauled out of town inthe trunk of a car, but had to be reconstituted in a newoffice where neither he nor I were familiar with the town.Yet another customer moved his server to his homewhere we spent hours trying to get the Internetconnectivity to process e-mail and allow remote logons.Most of the work in all three cases was trivial by normalday standards, but horrifically frustrating based upon thecrisis. I regretted that I had not previously talked with mycustomer about “losing his office” and needing to set upshop in his house. Boy, that would have been an easything to look at later.

What I saw in the course of helping a dozencustomers through the Katrina crisis was that all of theissues were covered almost entirely in the standarddisaster management plan I had in mind, but we had notnecessarily practiced. Each of these customers waspushed to see the possibility that they would lose one ormore of the following:

• Use of their office• Functionality of the server(s)• Access to their data (if the servers were down)• Remote operations (if their main site was down)• Ability to recover their business if the site, servers

and backups were lost

A strategic crisis plan need not outline the cause of acrisis, only the needs to prioritize as quickly as possible.Each of these elements really had nothing to do with ahurricane, but they are all elements in a standard disasterrecovery planning process. More importantly, each ofthese issues is something that you can plan for. Iunderstand that some customers would not like to facethe planning steps for “losing their facility” or losingtheir entire data history. That’s really the point, isn’t it?Don’t you need to bring the reality of the discussion withyour customer up to the point where denying thatcondition is no longer allowed?

Improbable Disasters Happen ConstantlyThere’s no way to predict recovery of a business

that has no plan to survive a disaster. I don’t find largescale disasters like Katrina to be scarier than smallscale disasters like a fire or burglary. They both happenevery day…somewhere. Most of us need not feardying from a lightning strike, but a lot of people arekilled this way every year. Do you not believe you canavoid that threat with preparations and survival-minded behavior?

Stop seeing theseconditions as tooimprobable toprepare for; rather,see that they areinfrequent to any oneperson’s experience,but they actuallyhappen constantly.It’s unfortunate thatwe consider crisis tobe a special event,one with differentrules, an event youdon’t plan to dealwith in a normal

manner. I think crisis is normal. Disaster is normal. All ofthis is normal, just infrequent. That doesn’t mean you canignore basic steps to prepare to survive a crisis.

I’m not going to wrap up this story with a checklist ofpreparations. If you really need my thoughts on achecklist, go order the yellow book from SMB NationPress. It covers skills and needs in the chapter on DisasterRecovery. Yet, there’s more than a list of items you packbefore the end of your world as you know it. You need toget motivated first.

Determine what you need to survive and what theminimum is any business can recover from in a crisis.From there, you can start a bracket for your risk, a bottomline starting point that improves above losing everything.For some businesses, this minimum might be nothingmore than the backup of an SQL database, or the e-mailfrom the last month. Survival looks pretty good whenyou are in a crisis. �

Jeff Middleton is a Small BusinessServer MVP who lives in NewOrleans, Louisiana. He has built anentire conference around the topic of“Small Business IT Disaster Planningfor Risks and Crisis Recovery,” whichwill be held in New Orleans May 26-

27, 2007. You can find out more about the conference athttp://www.conference2007.sbsmigration.com and reach Jeffdirectly at [email protected]

What other topics would you like to see covered inSMBPC? Write us at [email protected]


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


SMBby Mei Ying Lim

n early 2006, Microsoft announced plans for its nextgeneration of portal technologies – Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server 2007. Up until then, what was code-

named “Office 12” was shrouded in years of secrecy,speculation and rumors. Everyone knew that Microsoft wasplanning an upgrade of the existing SharePoint PortalServer product technology. What wasn’t revealed was theextent of the upgrade and how it would measure up withcompeting products.

Fast forward to today and the secret is out. Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server 2007 is hot off the press. Microsoft’s ambitionfor the product is clearly huge. It is positioned to be theheartbeat of Microsoft’s overall Enterprise ContentManagement strategy and part of its “New World of Work”vision - a world that will transform the way informationworkers connect, collaborate and communicate with oneanother. Apart from its obvious potential as a portal, the producthas also been branded as a web content management server, adocument library, a records repository, an electronic formsserver and even a search engine.

Get the Best out of SharePoint and Content Management Server

The year was 2001. Microsoft had just released SharePointPortal 2001, its latest offering for portals, documentmanagement libraries, team collaboration spaces and search.Using SharePoint, employees could easily share reports,meeting notes, calendars and project documents online,without having to engage developers.

A couple of months later, in April, 2001, Microsoft acquireda company named NCompass Labs, Inc., which had justreleased a new version of its web content managementsoftware, NCompass Resolution 4.0. The product waspromptly re-branded as Microsoft Content Management Server2001 (MCMS) and provided the capability to quickly build andmanage large scale web sites.

I The release of two web-related products in the space of 6months confused customers. If they were planning to build awebsite, which product should they choose? The official answerwas to implement both. SharePoint’s strength was its ability tomanage documents and lists at a fine grain level and to provideready-to-go portals largely for the Intranet. And MCMScompleted the picture by handling the presentation of webpages and creating Internet-ready sites.

The strategy, however, did not pan out. Customersoften viewed the two as competing products, frequentlychoosing to implement one over the other (with SharePointclearly the winner, at least in terms of volume of licensessold). It made more sense to pick one product, and fill in thegaps by going through the painful process of either buildinghome-grown customized modules or buying competing off-the-shelf products.

The good news is that the confusion stops here. MicrosoftOffice SharePoint Server 2007 unites both SharePoint andMCMS. In fact, content management has merged to be part ofthe backbone architecture of SharePoint. No longer do youhave to choose between the products; you can enjoy the bestfeatures that each has to offer and build sophisticated, tightly-integrated Intranets/Internets using the same product.

If you’ve got a SharePoint implementation, you willimmediately get a complete web content managementsolution. The new template-driven sites can quickly assumedesigns of any shape and size. In addition, expanding sites forthe Internet is a lot easier. You can apply Internet-style securityand activate complex workflows.

MCMS-based websites will enjoy what used to be onlyavailable in SharePoint. You now get full documentmanagement capabilities, version control, history rollbacksand check-in/check-out features. You will also be able to tap

Content Management for

Office SharePoint Server 2007 retails around $4424(depending on licensing model). Compare that withother popular content management products likeDocuWare, Filenet, Kofax, Captaris and others.

According to Forrester Research, purchase plans forcontent management technologies increased 15% fromlast year as firms of all sizes adopted strategies formanaging documents, web content, and digital assets.A large portion of this growth can be attributed to theSMB space.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


into the rich collaboration environment that SharePoint iswell-known for: Calendars, surveys, tasks andannouncements are all available straight out of the box.

Together, SharePoint and MCMS make a formidablepartnership. Nevertheless, the list of goodies doesn’t stopthere. More features have been added to make the pairingeven more irresistible.

Go MobileNo other technology has penetrated the consumer

market as rapidly as the ubiquitous mobile device. Today,almost every mobile (phones, personal digital assistants andother handheld devices) in the market ships with a browser.People may surf the Internet, pay bills, book movie ticketsand perform a myriad of tasks from virtually any location inthe world.

The latest version of SharePoint supports mobile devicesout of the box. Each page has a mobile equivalent version thathas been stripped down to contain only text and mobile-friendly form fields. You access the mobile version of the pageby simply appending “/m” to its URL. For example, the mobileequivalent of http://www.YourSharePointSiteName.comwould be http://www.YourSharePointSiteName.com/m/. Youcould, of course, customize the solution to detect for mobiledevices and automatically redirect users to the mobile page.

A potential productivity gain is the ability for the samepiece of content to be published to multiple places. Contentcould be simultaneously published to both the regular Internetweb site and the mobile site. Behind the scenes, SharePointkeeps only one copy of the content which preventsunnecessary duplications.

Key SharePoint applications are also accessible frommobile devices. You can create blog entries while on the moveor update the corporate wiki. Need a profile of a customerbefore meeting up with them? No problem, just download thespreadsheet from the shared document library with your niftymobile. The possibilities are endless – you could file expensereports, participate in online discussions, and of course, checkfor messages.

As of the release edition of SharePoint, there are stillsome kinks to be ironed out. For instance, only the latest

HTML mobile browsers are supported. If you have olderdevices loaded with browsers that require pages to be codedusing wireless markup language (WML), you will have tofind some way to translate the HTML to WML. For sites thatplan to reach out to all mobile types, this could be a majorstumbling block.

The default look and feel of the pages also leaves much tobe desired. List-type pages display all items in the galleryincluding those with system names like “Pages” and “StyleLibrary.” Apart from the most utilitarian of sites, much re-work has to be done to re-brand the pages, which is probablywhere the SDK will come in handy.

Collaborate with Windows Workflow Foundation

The much anticipated workflow engine has finallymaterialized in the form of Windows Workflow Foundation.In previous implementations of SharePoint (or MCMS),developers either had to purchase third-party workflowengines, or go through the painful process of building one oftheir own creation.

Probably one of the biggest selling points of usingWindows Workflow Foundation with SharePoint is that youdon’t have to engage developers to build the workflow.SharePoint Designer, the Office 2007 equivalent of FrontPage,provides a step-by-step graphical user interface that leads youthrough the process of creating workflows. Nevertheless,without coding involved, the types of workflows that you canbuild here cover only the most common of scenarios. For morecomplex workflows, you could program with WindowsWorkflow Foundation.

Workflows could be initiated in several ways. You couldtrigger a workflow when an item has been created, or whenit gets modified. Say you define a flow where all newsubmissions to the “Staff Suggestion” box will be forwardedto the human resources department. Users keep track ofpending items on their task list, which may be added as aweb part to the portal. They are also able to interact with theworkflow using InfoPath forms. For example, the humanresource personnel reading the staff suggestion could entercomments in a separate web form instead of modifying theoriginal document.

The integration of Windows Workflow Foundation andSharePoint could well be Microsoft’s trump card. The biggestdrawback would probably be the relatively high learning curvethat new developers face when attempting to build acustomized workflow. Nevertheless, once that hurdle is crossed,it should be a lot easier to create workflows to fit the businessrequirements of the organization.

BusinessIntelligence

Collaboration

Portals

EnterpriseSearch

EnterpriseContent

Management

BusinessProcessesand Forms

You can download code samples and tools and learnmore about Windows Workflow Foundation athttp://wf.netfx3.com/

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


Do Everything from OfficeIf you already own a mature product that offers similar

services, you are probably wondering why you shouldconsider SharePoint at all. Here’s something to think about:SharePoint offers a level of integration with Microsoft Officethat few other solutions, if any, do.

In any case, the ubiquitous Office suite, comprising Word,Excel, PowerPoint, InfoPath, et cetera, has been one of the mostsuccessful products ever launched by Microsoft. There aremillions of copies distributed worldwide. Look around andyou’ll probably find that almost every Windows desktop has acopy of Office installed.

SharePoint leverages the popularity of Office extensively.In the not too distant past, spreadsheets were simplyattachments in document libraries. Today, SharePointintroduces Excel services, a new technology capable ofdisplaying worksheets on Browsers. Business users canexamine pivot tables, perform what-if analysis, apply filters,compare data side-by-side and interact with workbookscompletely online. Best of all, confidential information is keptout-of-bounds. Users can choose to publish selected portionsof the workbook and keep classified information offline. Thebest part is, none of these new features require clients to installadditional ActiveX controls or other components. Everythingis displayed as HTML on the web.

Major improvements have also been made to InfoPath, atool for business users to create and manage online forms.Anyone who has a Browser can use an InfoPath form. Theycan be used virtually everywhere, from workflows to customapplications and, more specifically, in SharePoint. You couldupload that expense report to a Forms list on the Financeportal. All employees need to do is to click on the form to entertheir claims.

To add icing to the cake, all Office products have built-inintegration with SharePoint. You can check-out the document,edit its contents and publish it again all without having to openup a browser to access the document library. The usualapproval workflows and audit checks will kick off, ensuringthat only accurate information gets published.

The tightly knit integration of Office to SharePointprovides Microsoft with several key advantages. However, toreap the benefits of these new sparkling features, upgrades toOffice 2007 are required. It may be a challenge to persuademanagement to pay for upgrades to replace perfectly goodversions of Office running today. But if the go-ahead is given,it makes collaborating and sharing information a lot moreproductive than it is now.

ConclusionMicrosoft Office SharePoint Server offers a myriad of

possibilities for organizations. Critics may consider the productto be lacking an identity, and trying to accomplish too manythings in a single product. However, a product that provides acomplete solution is a good thing to have. Instead of gettingmultiple products to achieve the same results, you need onlyconsider scope and budget. Will it be the magic silver bullet thatit aims to be? Only time will tell. �

Mei Ying Lim is a Senior Consultant atAvanade, a global technology integratorspecializing in the Microsoft platform.Mei Ying has extensive experience indesigning, implementing and supportingenterprise web applications as well assetting up content management and portalsystems. Mei Ying has earned theprestigious title of Microsoft's Most

Valuable Professional award for SharePoint. Mei Ying lives on thesunny island of Singapore and blogs at meiyinglim.blogspot.com

To learn more, watch a webcast, take an online testdrive, or download an Office SharePoint Server 2007trial, go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX100492001033.aspx

Description

Business Document Workflow Support

Document Management Site Templates

Integration with Microsoft Information Rights Management (IRM)

Document Information Panel

Document Action Bar

Retention and Auditing Policies

Records Repository

E-Mail Content as Records

Legal Holds

Navigation Controls

Content Authoring

Content Publishing and Deployment

Site Templates

Page Layouts

Site Variations

WYSIWYG Web Content Editor

Policies, Auditing and Compliance

Slide Libraries

Office SharePoint Server 2007

Standard CAL

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

New

Improved

New

New

New

New

New

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Improved

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


hen is good no longer good enough?One place where that somewhat odd riddle mighthold true is the business world—at least so far as

customer service is concerned.Simply put, adequate—or worse, mediocre—service

simply doesn’t cut it with customers and clients any more. Formany, excellence is a given — either that, or they’re happy totake their business to a competitor whose focus on excellenceis a bit better honed.

This means that excellent customer service is no longermerely a worthy goal--it’s an out and out necessity. And, toachieve it, it’s essential to know just what excellence means toyour customer service—and, in turn, how to execute it, day inand day out.

Here are seven ways to do just that:

1. Start by knowing what excellence means. When you thinkabout it, excellence is a rather mercurial term. What’s excellentto someone may be rather run-of-the-mill to another. Howeverhard it may be to pin down, knowing what exceptionalcustomer service involves is essential to delineating thepractices and attitude needed to achieve it. So, map out whatextraordinary customer service means. Is it a matter ofkeeping appointments on time, lower prices, a constant senseof respect for clients and customers or a combination of thoseand other similar factors? Separating what is good from whatgoes above and beyond is what lets you pinpoint preciselywhat you need to do to consistently implement customerservice excellence.

2. If you’re not certain, ask your customers. Many smallbusinesses are rather insular when it comes to knowing whattheir customers genuinely value. Don’t be one of them. If you’renot really clear on what customer service excellence means, askyour customers to define it. Focus groups are one great way todo this, as is feedback from a complaint department or someother means of analyzing problems your customers mayexperience. It’s an important step, because defining excellencemeans knowing what works as well as those areas in whichyour business that could stand improvement.

3. Involve your staff. Customer service excellence isn’t astandalone proposition. To achieve it, you need to involvethose around you. Start by asking your employees what theythink customer service excellence means and, from there, thesteps they feel are necessary to deliver it. Finally, allow themthe freedom to pursue it. One of the biggest hurdles toproviding consistently top-notch service is changingconditions. One customer may be perfectly happy with a levelof service, while another may be completely dissatisfied. Giveyour people the freedom to interpret each situation and to actin the manner they think can best address the issue at hand.

4. Walk the walk. Saying you want your people to pursueservice excellence at every opportunity and failing to do soyourself can derail the entire effort. If you talk the talk, walk thewalk. If your employees find that certain procedures are effective

in providing top drawer service, use them yourself. If training orsome other form of instruction might be helpful, don’t be gunshy about investing the time and money. Finally, be sure toreward solid performance. Praising others for great service iseasy, but promotions, salary increases and bonuses are far moretelling signs that you value others’ energy and commitment.

5. Be sure to share supporting information. Data on customerpreferences and needs can be critical in establishing aconsistent level of solid service. Be sure to track informationsuch as buying habits and patterns, needs, how often youcome in contact with a particular customer and other empiricaldata. From there, share that information with any employeewho may have to deal with that customer. Knowing thatinformation in advance can help you and your employeesanticipate what a customer may need or want. By the sametoken, knowing a customer inside and out affords you theopportunity to suggest certain types of service or products.That sort of proactivity bolsters a customer’s confidence inyour complete commitment to solid service and performance.

6. Don’t expect perfection. Identifying and establishing apattern of outstanding service is no different than any otherelement of your business. You and everyone around needs tolearn what to do and how to make it a habit. That can’t happenwithout an occasional service snafu—a missed appointment,perhaps, or a telephone call that goes unreturned. Howeverfrustrating, accept those sorts of problems as inevitable bumps inthe road. Moreover, rather than agonizing over mistakes, take alesson from them. Identify what went wrong, how it happenedand what can be done to prevent it from happening again. And,if need be, make it up to your customer to restore whateverconfidence may have been compromised by the mistake.

7. Give the process enough time. Service excellence doesn’thappen in a heartbeat. In many cases, it’s a decidedly long-term proposition, one that you need to allow sufficient time totake hold in your business. So don’t expect perfection right outof the gate. Instead, monitor your progress carefully. Solicitcustomer and client feedback on how they feel about theservice you provide. Touch base with employees to see if theyspot any ways to fine tune the process. Stick with your planand, over time, you’re likely to see steady, encouragingprogress toward a level of customer service you once mighthave only dreamed of.

It is easy to plan for the worst and work for the best. It isnot so easy to walk your customer service walk when you arein the midst of a client crisis. However, that is precisely thepoint in time when you prove your business integrity andyour talk has been surpassed by your walk.

Congratulations! Handling a crisis with a client andsurviving it is frequently how loyal customers and friends aremade for life. �

Jeff Wuorio is a business author and columnist. He can be reachedat [email protected]

W

Customer Focusby Jeff Wuorio Customer Focus

Seven Steps toCustomer Service Excellence

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


Centerpiece

n our July 2006 issue of SMBPC magazine, we did aphoto layout of an HP laptop that had been recoveredfrom a platinum mine explosion and painstakingly

cleaned and rebuilt by Shelagh, then successfully put backinto service!

This month Shelagh surprised us with a story about anoil drilling ship named the “Deep Venture,” whosemanager was a good customer of Shelagh’s ten years agowhile he was stationed in Cape Town. When the oil drillingship came for massive maintenance repairs to Cape Townrecently (it was just coming back from Argentina on its wayto Nigeria), it was also in need of computer services, andShelagh got the call.

In general, the Deep Venture spends several months atsea at a time. In the past, the ship’s overall condition wastracked in maintenance records that were kept on aWindows Server 2000, which has now reached the matureage of seven years and been sent to retirement. Eventhough the Windows Server had been remotely accessible,the managers who spend most of their time ashore werenot able to access the maintenance records themselves,which are contained in an Oracle database. When Shelaghwas presented with the customer’s query on how thiscould be improved, she suggested they install SmallBusiness Server (SBS) 2003 on the Deep Venture as the shiphad recently installed a 384 KB Satellite connection with afixed IP address. Normally you would think that the servershould reside on land while the ship’s computers remote in

from the high seas, but not in this case. Needless to say, thiswas an instant hit with the managers ashore, who are nowable to access the maintenance database through the remoteaccess capabilities of the shipshape SBS server!

Along with the SBS server, Shelagh set up 18 WindowsXP Professional clients, 14 to travel on the oil drilling shipand four stay on the mainland for the managers to remotein. But there was more that could be done, and MicrosoftOffice 2003 was also installed on all the client machines.Seafarers usually work back-to-back four weeks on andfour weeks off. Each job on the drilling rig requires twopeople to work it. Before the SBS server and Office wereinstalled, workers each used their own Yahoo! or MSN e-mail account, which was a constant communicationnightmare. Shelagh circumvented this by setting up newdomain based e-mail accounts, with names based on jobdescriptions. This resulted in a single mailbox per job thatcan be accessed by both workers, containing allconversations and history pertaining to the job.

Picturing a Small Business Server on the ocean, onething that comes to mind immediately is the possibility of

I

Shelagh’s “techie”Marc de Wet working on the SBS server on the Deep Venture

Small Business Server goes shipshape! An interview with Shelagh Harrop by Beatrice Mulzer

A close-up of the drilling tower on the Deep Venture

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


an outage, of any kind. This is not exactly a natural server environment! Theserver is backed up to two external 250 GB hard drives using Acronisbackup imaging software and protected from viruses with Trend MicroAnti-Virus. Shelagh plans to install ISA (Internet Security and Acceleration)server in the near future so that Internet access can be limited to certaintimes and certain logins, and fully lock down the server.

The Deep Venture can now continue to travel the oceans, remotelyconnected and secured, and lay claim to being the first sea-faring SmallBusiness Server.

Have an interesting story to share? contact us at [email protected] �

The communication systems, including the Internet satellite,are all on the highest point of the vessel.

Small Business Specialist Shelagh with a great view of Cape Town, South Africa behind her.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

’all know how much we like cycling here at SMBNation and you can imagine that we were elated tolearn that Microsoft South Africa has its own cycling

team! The person who brought the cycling to Microsoft isnone other than Douglas Ryder, the Microsoft cycling teamdirector. Douglas is a professional cyclist and hasrepresented national teams since 1993. The Microsoft raceteam has been in existence since 2002, with eight pro riders,but Doug also started a cycling club that now has over 850members. (Visit the Club 100 site www.club100.co.za.)

Even though Doug was born in Cape Town and livedthere most of his live, he also lived in Europe and theUnited States between 1989 and 1995, and has raced allover the world. Hmm, so how did a professional cyclist likeDoug get involved with Microsoft in the first place? Turnsout that in 1996, after Doug returned to South Africa fromthe Olympic Games held in the United States, he met themanaging director of Lotus development while out ridingone day. A conversation started and next thing you know,Doug was hired in a marketing role for Lotus where hestarted Team Lotus in 1997. Lotus then was acquired byIBM and it became the IBM Lotus cycling team in 1999.Then in 2001 Doug cycled in and won the Cape ArgusPick’n Pay Cycle Tour, the world's largest timed cycle race.(In March of 2007, 30,000 riders participated, includingGreg LeMond, Jan Ullrich and Steven Rooks.) Because he

won the Argus for the IBM cycling team, Microsoftapproached Doug and the rest is history!

Now Doug is an Account Manager managing accountson a global scale, but that doesn’t stop him from trainingevery morning when he cycles 60 miles (100 km) at 4:30a.m.! Doug has a manager, a PR person and anadministrator to help run the racing team and his dailymorning regimen keeps him in shape to continue to race onthe team.

Y

Microsoft Insiderby Beatrice Mulzer

Meet Douglas Ryder!

Title: Major Account Manager

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Responsibilities: Software sales and relationshipmanager into four South African-based companies witha global presence.

Education: Matric Exemption

Age: 35

Currently reading: The Google Story and the Deathof Marco Pantani

What Do You Do In Your Free Time? What free time?

What Motivates You? Challenges that are perceived tobe unachievable, records (in a sporting context),positive people who are self-critical.

Life Philosopy? Live life by the seat of your pants

The MTN Microsoft Professional Cycling Team, South Africa


Douglas Ryder, team director. Doug took 37th place in the 1996 Olympic road race and 1st place in the

2001 Cape Argus Pick’n Pay Cycle Tour.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

Biggest challenge: “The biggest challenge I had was in1996 when I went to the Olympic Games. It was in fact thefirst time where amateurs and professionals racedtogether in an event. It was the first open Olympics. Thatyear when I lined up on the start line for the 230 km roadrace, there was Lance Armstrong, Miguel Indurain and allthe guys who had been superheroes. He was there and hewas the number one rider for America. That was the mostamazing experience, to be a part of that; and then Ifinished 37th that year in the race. Which was great; out ofthe 200 starters … I was the best South African in thatrace; I kept the South African National team in that year atthe Olympics. It was a big challenge and it was amazingto be part of such a big spectacle; and so few people get toexperience that, I think. The OlympicGames were the biggest Olympics theyhad; the Americans don’t do anything onsmall measures and Atlanta was nodifferent. My biggest challenges werealso my best experiences I’ve had.”

Lessons learned: “If you set yourselfboundaries then you will never besuccessful. And if you don’t setboundaries and think that anything isachievable then you can actually attainthe goal you want to achieve. For me torace in the first Olympic race whereprofessionals and amateurs are togetherwas awesome. The year before, I was atchampionships and amateurs andprofessionals were separate and this wasthe first Olympics where everyone wasgoing to be put together; so everybodywas saying there is no way you aregoing to finish the whole thing, it’s such

a long race, such a hard one to achieve. That can alsolimit your capabilities of doing something if you believethere is a boundary. So what I learned is that if you takeaway the boundaries and believe in yourself and havefaith in your timing and your ability, then you canabsolutely achieve anything.”

Next Steps: “The team just won the Tour of Egypt a coupleof weeks ago and we want to focus on winning some moreraces in Africa and then possibly go into the East and Japan.That is our next goal.” �

Doug riding this year’s Pick’n Pay Argus Cycle Tour

The official MTN Microsoft Professional Road Team site www.ryder.co.za.com

The Argus Cycle Tour site www.cycletour.co.za.com


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

Symantec Buying ProgramsDesigned especially

for small to mid-sizedcompanies that need aneasy way to purchase small

license quantities—the Express Program allows smallbusinesses to purchase all Symantec security andavailability software products, as well as support andmaintenance service options.

http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/licensing/

program.jsp?programid= express

Messsage Labs Provides Managed servicesMessageLabs is a

leading provider ofintegrated messaging and

web security services, with over 15,000 clients rangingfrom small business to the Fortune 500 located in morethan 80 countries. MessageLabs provides a range ofmanaged security services to protect, control, encryptand archive communications across Email, Web andInstant Messaging.

See the .pdf atwww.messagelabs.com/Threat_Watch.

And check out theopportunity to win a free year’s securitymakeover.

Nexsan Introduces Easy Disk-Based ArchivingFor SMEs, Branch Offices, Departments

Nexsan Technologies,announced its AssureonNX™ Easy Archive

Appliance, an intelligent disk-based solution for the long-term storage of business-critical information for smaller

enterprises, branch offices and departmental groups.The plug-and-play Assureon NX is a simple, secure,

and self healing disk-based archiving appliance.

GRISOFT Unveils New AVG Small BusinessServer Internet Security Products

Based on AVG InternetSecurity Network Edition7.5, the SBS Editioncontains anti-virus and

anti-spyware protection, personal firewall and anti-spam for e-mail on the clients. AVG Internet SecuritySBS Edition protects data on individual workstations aswell as on e-mail and file servers.

GRISOFT offers AVG SBS Edition license packages for5+1 up to 100+1 concurrent users, with price based on totalnumber of active computers in a network.

AVG Internet Security SBS Edition starts at $340; AVGAnti-Malware SBS Edition pricing begins at $289.

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/321/us/crp/3

First time to the U.S. Market, Moonwalk Softwarewww.moonwalkinc.com

Moonwalk Inc., the Australian developer,made its U.S. debut withthe introduction of its

new Moonwalk 6.0 software suite. Moonwalk automatesand proactively manages the migration, copying and movement of data transparently throughout the business.

“If Moonwalk’s technology has not blown your mind andmade you rethink all of your assumptions about how datamanagement should be conducted, then you just haven’t spentenough time with the software yet,” said Brad O’Neill, SeniorAnalyst with Taneja Group.

Technology Watch


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM


10% Partner Rebate for Microsoft Open ValueLicenses purchased through Open Value until June

29, 2007 are eligible for a partner rebate of 10% of theMicrosoft ERP for Year 1 revenue. Year 2 and Year 3billings will be rebated at 5% of the Microsoft ERP. Thisrebate program is open to US resellers purchasinglicenses through a Microsoft Authorized Distributor.

You must sign up to receive your 10% partner rebate.https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40035546

SBSmigration.com IT Pro Conference 2007 Jeff Middleton is

inviting IT Profes-sional to enjoyMemorial Day with a

2-day weekend conference May 26-27, 2007 in New Orleans, plus theoption to sail to Costa May andCozumel, Mexico the following dayon a 5-day Caribbean Cruise. SmallBusiness IT Disaster Planning for

Risks and Crisis Recovery is the topic for both events. For information, go tohttp://www.conference2007.sbsmigration.com or call866-464-9976.

http://www.conference2007.sbsmigration.com

6/50 PromotionSell more, more often

with the 6/50 CustomerFinancing Offer. MicrosoftFinancing is offering specialcustomer financing of$50/month (local currency)for 6 months, followed by 36regular monthly payments.Use the 6/50 Promotion to

help your customers get the IT they need now, includingsoftware, hardware and services - with easy, predictablemonthly payments.

https://www.microsoftfinancing.com/Promos.aspx

Microsoft Servers CALs PromotionClose More

Infrastructure Deals: Save20% on CALs, OfferFinancing Options Here

are two great ways to help close the deal. Offer yourcustomers a 20% savings on Windows Server 2003 R2and Exchange Server 2003 Client Access licenses(CALs), paired with the 6/50 Promotion fromMicrosoft Finance. Your customers can finance their ITsolutions for only $50/month (or relevant localcurrency) for the first six months.

https://www.microsoftfinancing.com/Promos.aspx

IT Matters announces new Microsoft MVPwww.itmatters.ca

“IT Matters is aleader in providingcomputer service and

network solutions to the small to medium size businessmarket in the Calgary area. Service is the heart of ourcompany!”

Stuart Crawford has been announced as aMicrosoft Most Valuable Professional in the WindowsSmall Business Server product line for 2007.

From all of us at SMB Partner CommunityMagazine, Congratulations Stuart!

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:15 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

while back I found an article in EntrepreneurMagazine about a moving company, C&MMoving, that is growing exponentially by

specializing their services exclusively for people whoneed to move “prized artwork and ultra-chicfurniture.” I absolutely love this example because itdemonstrates how an average and otherwise boringbusiness can become exciting and unique whiletargeting high-end, affluent customers.

Another profit center (and great example of anupsell) for C&M Moving is their move-in services. Foran extra fee, they will hang drapes and pictures, andwill even refinish and clean furniture, artwork, anddrapes. The point to take home here is that not allcustomers are created equal, so why not followC&M’s example and build and position yourproducts and services exclusively for the high-endclient? The people who are willing to pay top-dollarfor any service are usually very busy people whovalue their time. They will gladly pay a premium forconvenience and done-for-them services.

And while C&M Moving is cleaning up andgrowing like a weed, I’ll bet you a dollar to a donutthat if you asked 100 moving company businessowners to tell you about their customers, theywould all complain that they only care about price.I also can bet you that few, if any, of them havestudied marketing and fewer are not applying triedand true direct marketing strategies to differentiatethemselves, justify higher prices, or explain whycustomers should use them over all the othermoving companies available. Don’t believe me?Check out your own Yellow Pages ads and see ifyou can find ONE mover ’s ad that clearlycommunicates a reason why you should dobusiness with them over all the other movingcompanies advertising there.

But this article didn’t just highlight this verysuccessful moving company. It also featured a storage

facility that specializes in storing top-of-the-line cars.As you might guess, running a storage facility ispretty much the same regardless of what you arestoring— you need a good security system, honeststaff, a location to hold the stuff, etc. The only thingthey’ve done differently is to position themselves as ahigh-end storage company for expensive cars. Nowthey did spend a bit more than the average storagefacility on making sure all the units were air-conditioned with a TV and cable connection, but isthat really all that amazing? However, I guaranteeyou they are charging two to three times more thanthe average storage facility, probably have fewercollection problems, and enjoy a much higher profitmargin for doing practically the same work.

There was also a fast-growing nail boutiquefeatured in the article that provides in-homemanicures and pedicures. The owner of the salon I goto has said, on numerous occasions, that she can’tcharge more for her services because everyone else inthe area is charging the same or less. What she doesn’trealize is that it’s all in her head. I would gladly pay$100 or more to have her come to me and have toldher that. Has she ever offered to do it? Nope. She alsohas her salon close to a very affluent part of town andhas a better than average opportunity to charge moreover other salons in lesser-affluent neighborhoods.Will she? Highly unlikely— her mistaken beliefsabout her customers’ willingness to pay for a servicelike this trump all other possibilities and prevent herfrom even testing the idea.

So the question becomes, how can you positionyour services to affluent customers? Remember,businesses don’t make decisions to buy things—people do. If you offer computer support toconsumers, I guarantee there are affluent homeowners who would pay a premium to have youcome to their homes and fix their computers. If youare selling to businesses, there are also business

A

How to Market Your Services to Attract and Secure Big-Spenders with Big Budgets

by Robin Robins Money Shaker


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


owners who are willing to pay a premium forconvenience and service—BUT you have to be ableto deliver on the goods. You cannot charge apremium price and deliver mediocre services. It hasto be first-class all the way. You have to go the extramile in responding with lightning speed, providingclear communication and follow-up, and accuratebilling. You’d better be able to solve their problemsfast and right the first time. I would also suggestuniforms or a dress code that conveys top qualityand professionalism.

Of course, your marketing should differentiateyou as well. Remember, clients cannot tell how good(or bad) your services are before they buy; they arecompletely judging you based on your marketing andyour initial presentation. That is the REAL reasonwhy so many people rely on referrals to find vendors.Most companies’ marketing is completely inept ateducating the client as to how they can do a job better,faster, and more effectively than their competition. Ifyou look, sound, and read just like everyone else, howcan you possibly expect a prospect to be interested incalling YOU?

Creating this type of marketing message andmaking it consistent throughout your organizationtakes work -- work that most are just unwilling to dono matter what the payoff is. This is good news forthose of you who ARE willing to devote time andeffort to this because you’ll not only get the peace ofmind that comes from knowing that you CAN attractclients and revenue on demand, but you’ll also skimthe cream from the top without much resistance fromyour less ambitious competition who are unwilling todo any kind of marketing at all. �

Robin Robins has over 14 years’ experience in directsales and marketing. Robin is an independent marketingconsultant, sales trainer, and author who specializes inlow risk, low-cost marketing strategies for smallcomputer resellers, solution providers, and IT consulting firms. To learn more about Robin, visit her online atwww.technologymarketingtoolkit.com.

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


hat makes you tick? To answer that, this monthI’m writing an “evergreen” column with a lookback at several years of polling data to profile

you. Why? Because once you understand who you are, in ageneric sense, you’ll better be able to target your socialnetworking buddy lists like LinkedIn and do GOODBUSINESS with each other!

Hopefully my efforts this month will cut to the chaseand save you thousands of dollars in therapy. Huh? Here iswhat I mean. I know some “basics” from our long-termpolling data in that you are:

• Middle aged (right around 40-years old)• Male (92 percent)• Experienced (10+ years in technology; 3 to 5 years in

the SMB space)• Self-employed or in a small consultancy (three or

fewer employees)• And all around good fun (personal observations)

So when you have a bunch of middle-aged males atmid-point in their professional careers, you also have athriving industry of therapists resolving the proverbialmid-life crisis that most assuredly will hit and allow all ofyour repressed gremlins to emerge! Perhaps you alreadyknow more about yourself than you let on – and myobservations will allow you to easily ascend into yourretirement years without pain.

Minneapolis, MN (USA) vs. Brisbane, Queensland (AU)

I thought it would be interesting to compare data setsfrom comparably-sized worldwide cities: Minneapolis and Brisbane. The following table summarizes my findings, followed bymy analysis. (Notethat unless other-wise stated, I amdisplaying the largestresponse category.)

WiPOD Economics: Apples and Oranges

Perceptions by Harry Brelsford

Question

1. How many employees at your company?

2. Are you profitable?

3. On average, how many desktops are at your customer sites?

4. On average, how often do you sell and deploy SBS 2003?

5. How much service revenue do you generate from a single SBS 2003 installation? Kindly note the AUD is worth $0.78 USD as of this writing (see www.xe.com)

6. Do you pirate software?

7. What percentage of your SBS installs are on branded servers?

Brisbane

2 to 5 employees = 44.4%

Yes = 77.8%

6 to 10 = 55.6%

Twice yearly = 71.4%

$5,000 AUD and $2,500 to $5,000 AUD

tied at 28.6% each

0%

75-99% and Less than 25% each tied at 42.9%

of the responses

Minneapolis

1 employee = 46.7%

Yes = 66.7%

6 to 10 = 40%

Twice yearly tied withquarterly at 30.8% each

$1,000 to $2,500 USD = 46.2%

0%

100 percent of installs= 46.2% of the responses

Brisbane, Queensland

Minneapolis, MN

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


Now some analysis!• Question 1: I concur that it’s common to see worldwide

organizations with more employees at this Partner level.Americans are often self-employed and for whateverreason, keep it that way!

• Question 2: Hats off to the Aussies! They have enjoyednearly 30 years of positive economic growth and it’sreflected herein!

• Question 3: It is not a surprise that the Australians wouldhave a larger percentage of “smaller” businesses as itspeaks to the small business geography witnessed downunder. Compare to the USA with its “enterprise Fortune500 base.”

• Question 4: I was truly surprised and can’t easily explainthis finding. I expected the Australians to have morefrequent installations than the Americans. The only thingI can figure out is that Brisbane is in a wonderful region ofAustralia (Gold Coast/Sunshine Coast) and it’s simply toonice to work. ☺

• Question 5: The Brisbane SBSer appears to be engaging ata deeper level with the customer than the MinneapolisSBSer. Looks like a trip to Australia to thaw out anddevelop better customer relationships is in order!

• Question 6: This is a joke. ☺

• Question 7: Again – I can’t easily explain this other thanthe system builder community is apparently more vibrantin Brisbane compared to Minneapolis. In my past trips toAustralia, I have seen better uptick for branded servers(e.g. HP) than I have witnessed in Minneapolis. Hmmmm.

iPods versus Professional EducationAllow me to ask a rhetorical question. Why is it that

our demographic has no bones with buying an iPod devicefor a son or daughter but keenly and correctly scrutinizesattending a workshop? I’ve seen it time and time again –Microsoft and third-party training sessions, priced atmarket, are avoided while a trip to the Apple store to spend$350+ USD for a music maker is made with ease. All I ask,for the sake of the profession, is that you consider firstbettering yourself with training opportunities and then youcan buy all of the iPods you want!

Poll of the MonthWhat would you like to see at the SMB Nation 2007 fall

conference in Redmond (September 29-October 1, 2007)?Start the survey at www.smbnation.com. Send us yoursurvey suggestions at [email protected]. �

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


Partnering

he recent Microsoft SBSC Symposium was a presentfor all in attendance. Three venues, 300 SBSC Partners,a bunch of senior Microsoft staff, all wrapped up with

plenty of party-colored enthusiasm and wrapped with ideasand you have cool people in a hot situation!

The February event was held at Microsoft UK(Thames Valley Park) and was introduced and hosted byRobbie Upcroft. Aileen Hannah addressed the audiencewith an update to the SBSC Partner Program, and SteveHaddock gave his views on the SMB market from aMicrosoft Perspective.

Steve Haddock emphasized that Microsoft’s aim is toincrease the sales of their software by encouraging the“attach rate” level – that is a higher percentage of Officeand other products on desktops. And the best way to dothat is to work hand in glove with us – the Partners.

Scott Dodds and Karl Noakes joined Aileen and Stevefor an Executive Q&A and made themselves available afterthe session for some honest and more in-depth discussion.The likes of Scott, Karl and Steve taking the time to haveopen debate with Partners helped work through someissues and build a sense of community. Steve’s humorousobservation of UK Partners is that we are “far too polite.”

Other people from Microsoft including Chris Parkes(DemoShowcase), Nicola Young (Partner Program), StevieNeilson (MS Scotland), and Sinead O’Grade (MS Ireland)popped in to talk to Partners.

The afternoon sessions gave the opportunity to listen tosome of the leading Partners, who offered advice and

insight into their businesses based on their experiences sofar. Topics such as SPLA, marketing your business,building a better business model, Partner Power, and usingyour local organizations, were all covered. Each sessionhad interactive time to allow for questions and ideas to bediscussed further by the audience.

Edinburgh was equally booked and well received.Manchester was popular and although it was a successfulevent, there was room for more Partners. Partners such asVijay Riyait, Gareth Brown, Angus Eddy, Duncan Reid, VinJauhal, Alex Stanier, Richard Evans, Steve Wright, DuncanGray, Bill Wells, and Julian Wilkinson (amongst manyothers) made significant contributions to the Partner-to-Partner discussions.

T

Aileen Hannah and Robbie Upcroft are kicking off the SBSC Symposium

SBSC Executive Q&A

The Midlands Mob

by Susanne Dansey

UK SMB SymposiumFebruary 2007

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

The feedback so far has been immensely positive, atleast two businesses have changed their business modelssince attending and many found that the mix of Microsoftand Partner discussions of real business value.

There is talk of a second series of Symposia being madeavailable in late 2007. The whole event would not havebeen made possible without the dedication of RobbieUpcroft, Aileen Hannah, and David Overton. They havecreated favorable waves about the importance of SmallBusiness Specialists within Microsoft.

What hot topics made themselves known during thecourse of the event?

• Office is a “hot button” for Microsoft. • THE opportunities for small businesses are mobility,

sales & marketing, productivity, security.• Overall growth in the UK PC Market is 10.5%. • 11.5m new PCs will be shipped into the UK Market;

10.5m will be genuinely licensed with Microsoftsoftware.

• A significant shift from desktop PCs to Notebook PCs. • 92% of people questioned consider IT important. • 82% of people questioned have an online presence. • 85% of people questioned use IT for communication. • 50% don’t back up daily. • 40% don’t have a firewall. • 33% of people questioned waste 10+ days on IT

inefficiency. • Security is the biggest time drain on small

businesses. Partner-to-partner sessions covered subjects including

Legal, Licensing, Marketing your business, using localRDAs and organizations to help your group/business;SPLA, and “Partner Power”! It was interesting to hear how,in most of the presentations, our community wasrecognized as a real opportunity to improve existingbusiness practices.

This was Microsoft and its Partners working togetherat their best.

For a detailed report of the Edinburgh event, see UK SMBGirl, Susanne Dansey’s “Soap Box in the SMB Community”at http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/143! �

Susanne Dansey is the Kent, UK SBS Partner Group leader.Youcan reach her at [email protected]

Vin Jauhal and Vijay Riyait

Aileen Hannah and Emma (Microsoft)

Robbie Upcroft (Microsoft) and Julian Wilkinson (Partner)

Manchester Break


Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


here’s an old joke here in America about a man who walksinto a fast food restaurant and orders a “Zen hamburger.”When the puzzled waiter asks him what he means, he

replies “One with everything.” Whether you like the joke or not,it’s a great way to think about accounting software for a smallbusiness, because the accounting process really is – or should be –one with every other business activity.

• Accounting reflects and informs every aspect of thebusiness: sales, services and inventory, payroll, reportingand taxes, regulatory compliance.

• Accounting involves a lot of people: customers, employees,suppliers, bookkeepers, an accountant, a payroll service.

• Accounting can and should provide a day-to-day windowinto the whole business, so managers can assessperformance and control results.

With these facts in mind, let’s look at our Zen Top 10 forsetting up small business accounting systems:

1. Seek harmony with the business. Any accounting packageshould do the basics: track orders, invoices and payments, trackexpenses, post and pay bills, generate basic reports. There are alsomany special-purpose accounting packages for specific industriessuch as retail businesses, construction firms, or non-profitorganizations. The better the fit between the business and theaccounting software, the easier it is to manage cash flow and thebusiness.

2. Anticipate growth. Choose an accounting package and serverthat can meet business needs now and handle growth in data,number of users, and usage models. For example, will there becapacity for new lines of business? Will the business add remoteoffices, or will they want to add remote access for field staff. Makesure the accounting system deployed today will be able to meetnew requirements.

3. Be one with your accountant and payroll service. Most smallbusinesses use an outside accountant and payroll service. Thebusiness should use the same software the accountant uses or acompatible software package. Compatibility with youraccountant’s system saves time and money, and the accountantcan easily set up a correct chart of accounts for the business. Theycan also show you how to reflect payroll payments, taxwithholdings, etc., based on reports from the payroll service.

4. Customize as needed. Every business has its own format forcustomer quotes, invoices, and other transaction-relatedcommunications. Setup of the accounting system should includecustomization so the software supports these formats from thetime it’s deployed. Sophisticated accounting packages aren’t easyto customize, so it’s best to plan for a system integrator orconsultant to do this.

5. Seek knowledge. People aren’t born with accounting skills. Forexample, one business owner I know decided, logically, that sincethe default screen in his accounting package looked like acheckbook, every transaction could be entered like a check. Soincome was entered without being tied to customer invoices, andchecks were entered without being tied to vendor bills.Eventually, this led to a very large vendor bill from the accountantwho had to correct all that data. Everyone who interacts with theaccounting system needs to be trained on how to use it correctly.Training costs less than paying an accountant to correct mistakes.

6. Make accounting one with the business process. Wheneverpossible, make sure transactions are entered directly in theaccounting system, so the accounts are always up to date. Thismay mean training sales personnel, giving wireless access to salesor service people in the field, or integrating the e-commerce website with the accounting system. Timely information makes forbetter business decisions, whereas transactions that are made andthen re-keyed lead to costly mistakes, unhappy customers andsometimes to more accountant fees to straighten things out.

7. Make accounting one with other systems. This step is acorollary to step 6. If there are separate applications for sales,inventory management, project management, customerrelationship management (CRM), etc., figure out how to moveinformation often and automatically between those systems andthe accounting system. This can be as sophisticated as aprogrammed interface or as simple as exporting a tab-delimitedfile from one system and importing it into the other. Theimportant thing is that the integration strategy works and thebusiness runs on up-to-date information.

8. Simplify compliance. Businesses have to comply with a varietyof regulatory requirements in different countries and industries:VAT tax reporting, Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulations in theUnited States, HIPAA regulations in the medical industry,employment laws and others. The accounting system holdsfinancial records, customer and employee data, product data andother information that may be required for regulatory reporting.When selecting and setting up the accounting system, look forways that it can be used to automate reporting for regulatorycompliance.

9. Guard against harm. The accounting system should becomeone with the business process, the accountant, payroll service, andother authorized parties. But if sensitive financial and customerinformation becomes one with a computer virus or a hacker’sfiles, forget joy and harmony! The accounting system should behosted on a secure, reliable server, protected by the companyfirewall, password access, and the best security softwareavailable. It should be backed up at least daily, and the backupsshould be tested and verified on a regular basis. Analysts estimatethat at least 50% of tape backups fail, and small business expertsreport that at least 70% of small businesses that experience a majordata loss go out of business within a year.

10. Attain enlightenment. Accounting is more than quarterly roll-ups and end-of-year taxes. The true value of an accounting systemis to provide a timely and accurate view of operations that can beused to guide the business to better results. Who are the bestcustomers? What are the best-selling products? Businessmanagers can use this information to create sales incentives orreduce inventory carrying costs or to negotiate a better deal witha supplier. Knowledge is power, and the data in the accountingsystem can empower business decision makers to improvecustomer satisfaction, revenues, and profitability.

When the right accounting system becomes one with everyaspect of the business, there is almost no limit to what can beachieved. �

Anita Osterhaug is a marketing consultant and technology writer. Shecan be reached at [email protected].

T

Customer Focusby Anita Osterhaug 101 Series

The Zen ofSmall Business Accounting

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM


by Ron GrattoppTS2Nami

ell, the Vista-Office-Exchange Launch events have comeand gone. I hope you got to attend one and pick up yourfree copy of Office 2007 that you can use anywhere you

want. (Remember, Action Pack software is strictly licensed foryour internal business use only.)

TS2 is getting ready for our Spring 2007 (Q4-07 to us) eventswhere we plan to move our focus more to SharePoint technologieswhere we believe our Partners have one of the greatest smallbusiness value add propositions ever. We’ll be showing you howto implement the new WSS v3 in an SBS environment in our events– be sure you do your homework on this and don’t just install WSSv3 over the top of WSS v2 in an SBS environment. Additionally,we’ll show you how to implement the SharePoint templates.

By now I hope all of you are also familiar with the licensingchanges we’ve made to your Microsoft Action Pack Subscription(MAPS) software. Here’s a quick rundown in case you’re notfamiliar. Windows Vista Business Upgrade Edition was includedin your January MAPS update. You probably noticed that it’s an“upgrade,” not the “full” version. This change was actually madelast summer but was not obvious then because the pre-releaseversion of Vista you got at that time was not affected. In addition,also know that you are not required to upgrade to the newsoftware in MAPS as long as your subscription remains current(doesn’t expire). When you do upgrade, however, you need to beaware that you don’t retain any previous licenses – you only have

the total number of licenses listed in the current MAPS, but youcan now use them in a combination of product versions (e.g. XP &Vista, 10 total). And if your subscription should expire, you loseALL licenses from the expired subscription and the softwareshould be destroyed. Hopefully, you’ve already started evaluatingand/or using the Office 2007 and SharePoint technology products(Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2007) thatcame in your January MAPS update.

I’m also hopeful that many of you are starting to reallyrecognize the growing Microsoft investment in and increasingfocus on the Small Business Community program – and evenmore enhancements are coming. Plus, there are now “onboarding” and “Exam Cram” events that are basically one-daytest prep and exam sessions coming to a location near you. Theseare a great way to get the technical exam hurdle met in aconcentrated and efficient manner. There’s always the great examprep webcast featuring SMB Nation’s very own Bea Mulzer thatyou can take advantage of for free. If you’ve read this far AND usethe webcast series I just mentioned for your prep (and plan to takethe exam before the end of June) I’ll give you a 30%-off e-couponfor the exam while supplies last. (You can get my e-mail off thewebcasts ☺. Is that sneaky or what?)

Cheers, and have a great spring and summer!Ron

W

State Date CityAL 04/26/2007 Huntsville

06/21/2007 Birmingham

AR 06/28/2007 Little Rock

AZ 05/24/2007 Phoenix

CA 04/19/2007 San Francisco

05/01/2007 Burbank05/03/2007 Irvine05/08/2007 Redding05/10/2007 Santa Rosa05/15/2007 La Jolla

(San Diego)05/17/2007 Santa

Barbara06/05/2007 Modesto06/07/2007 San Jose06/12/2007 Ontario06/14/2007 Los

Angeles

CO 05/08/2007 Grand Junction

06/19/2007 Boulder06/21/2007 Denver

CT 05/01/2007 Norwalk05/03/2007 Farmington

DC 06/14/2007 Washington

DE 06/12/2007 Wilmington

FL 04/17/2007 Sarasota04/19/2007 Palm Beach05/15/2007 Boca Raton05/17/2007 Jacksonville06/07/2007 Tampa

GA 04/24/2007 Columbus06/19/2007 Atlanta

IA 06/26/2007 Des Moines

IL 05/01/2007 Springfield

IN 05/03/2007 Evansville

KS 05/08/2007 Topeka05/10/2007 Wichita06/12/2007 Overland

Park

KY 06/19/2007 Lexington06/21/2007 Louisville

MA 04/17/2007 Springfield05/22/2007 Worcester06/07/2007 Boston

ME 06/26/2007 Bangor

MI 05/10/2007 Detroit

MO 06/14/2007 St. Louis

MS 06/26/2007 Jackson

MT 04/17/2007 Billings

NC 05/24/2007 Raleigh

NE 06/28/2007 Omaha

NH 04/19/2007 Portsmouth06/05/2007 Nashua

NJ 04/12/2007 Mt. Laurel05/24/2007 Edison06/19/2007 Princeton

NM 05/22/2007 Albu-querque

NV 04/17/2007 Reno06/28/2007 Las Vegas

NY 05/08/2007 Buffalo05/10/2007 Syracuse06/21/2007 New York

OH 05/08/2007 Toledo06/05/2007 Dayton06/07/2007 Cincinnati

OK 06/05/2007 Tulsa06/07/2007 Oklahoma

City

OR 04/24/2007 Eugene04/26/2007 Portland

PA 04/26/2007 Philadelphia

RI 06/28/2007 Providence

SC 05/22/2007 North Charleston

SD 04/19/2007 Rapid City

TN 04/24/2007 Knoxville04/26/2007 Chattanooga

TX 05/01/2007 Fort Worth05/03/2007 Dallas05/22/2007 Austin05/24/2007 Houston

WA 05/15/2007 Spokane05/17/2007 Seattle

WI 06/12/2007 Milwaukee06/14/2007 Madison

WY 05/10/2007 Cheyenne

Sign up for TS2 Seminars coming to you at http://www.ts2seminars.com/

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

Apr 2007 4/10/07 9:16 AM

apr 2007

Documents

thesmb small

bainbridge island

distributionsmb nation

medium business space

months issue of smbpc

dont worry

word accounting

office managerlindsay