DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

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Microsoft's cashcow

Well can you guess what the biggest earner is for Microsoft right now? I think  most people could guess that its wouldn’t be Vista, but I’m guessing a lot of  people would have their money on Office. Well wrong! The biggest earner for Redmond right now is Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. If that’s a bit of a mouthful then you will be glad to know that most people refer to its as MOSS. Now you know what a money spinner it is for Microsoft, lets take  a moment to find out what it does and what all the fuss is all about…

Sharepoint as its name implies is a collaboration technology where people get together and work on common tasks or projects. It is installed either locally or can be accessed via the web but its real smarts are in the flexibility of the platform.

Your company can no doubt be broken down into teams, for us we have delivery, sales, marketing, commercial services, support customer service and so on. Some of these groups can be be broken down into subgroups and a member of one group may have membership of another group.

Each group can be quickly given its own Sharepoint site and the components of that site can be tailored to the needs to the group. For example, an engineering group may store documentation or project management plans in their site. A sales team will be more focused on reports. Some teams may want to use shared Calenders or book resources such as meeting rooms. Your HR department may wish to have leave requests or workflow entered through Sharepoint.

Practically anything that is possible in custom software can be achieved to some degree with Sharepoint. Sure, it may need some additional tweaking and tailoring to fit but sharepoint has done away with a large amount of the coding that would be done with out it. This makes sharepoint an accelerator for custom software projects which is why we have been using it with some of our clients to deliver software faster and more cost effectively.

Take a look at some of the further reading or contact me to find out more about MOSS

Further reading on Sharepoint

• Why is Sharepoint so darn popular?
• Case Study
• Your free guide to getting started with Sharepoint

WordPress Attack Underway: WordPress Users Must Upgrade [ALERT].

Thanks to Pete Cashmore for bring a vulnerability in wordpress to our attention.

If your running an older version of WordPress the advise is to check to see if you are infected and if not, upgrade as soon as possible.(details of how to check are in Petes post above) For WordPress there is an excellent plugin that you can use that will guide you through the process of upgrading. I just dind four upgrades in 20 minutes!

From your plugins page, click install new plugins and enter

“wordpress automatic upgrade”

Make sure you back up your files and database along the way.

If you can’t find the plugin in you can install it the old fashioned way at

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/

It’s important to keep all versions of your opensource software current to avoid these sorts of attacks. It’s a small downside to having freely available cutting edge technology.

If you are struggling to update your Joomla!, SugarCRM, or WordPress installation to the latest version, please submit a ticket.

https://bircko.com/support/submitticket.php

Visitors to my blog over the last few days will have noticed a brand new look for the site. Not only was it time for a change but it co-insides with the launch of my new website and my new way of working.

As a software sales guy it can sometimes feel like you’re trying to make a square peg fit a round hole. There’s nothing wrong with the peg. In fact it’s a bloody good peg. It’s just not that suited to the scenario to which it is being applied. In software not only does the technology need to fit the problem, the environment and the budget, you also have the dimension of timing to deal with too. Which makes selling a particularly challenging activity.

I thought it was about time I stopped thinking about me selling and concentrate more on the customer buying.

I meet a lot of people on my travels. Sometimes the best thing for the customer is a customised solution, sometimes it’s off the shelf, sometimes money is no object and sometimes they need to squeeze as much as they can from a small budget. The ‘right’ solution for each of these customers is different in every case. That’s why as a salesman, a wide portfolio of solutions is vital and it’s important not to be wedded to just one.

Essentially now I represent three companies. Each has their own area of specialism.

• Solentive Software – Custom software, Project Management, System Integration, Software maintenance and support. Complex websites Technologies, Business Rules and Business Process Automation. Typical Customers are mid to large size companies, government agencies. Technologies strength in .NET and Java. www.solentivesoftware.com.au
• Synoptic Consulting – Boutique management consultancy specialising in Business Process Mapping and improvement including the transactional business process, technology and Management Operating Systems. Synoptic can not only build a working knowledge base showing the relationship between your people, process and technology but they can do it in a fraction of the time. www.synopticconsulting.com.au
• Bircko Business Solutions. This is my business – Web development for simple websites, Joomla Hosting, SugarCRM, WordPress Hosting, Ecommerce, Technology Strength in LAMP, PHP, Domain services and and adwords optimisation. www.bircko.com

With all this technology and expertise at my disposal I feel like I need a bigger utility belt. How many sales people can fall back on such a wide variety of solutions in order to add value to a client? And that’s what it’s all about, Value. You know you are doing something right in sales when your customers keep coming back to you. Contrary to what some people tell you, people don’t buy from people, they buy from people that can guarantee value for their investment.

At the Inman Connect Conference in San Francisco Brian Boreo told the 1,500 strong crowd his top 10 cool new online tools to help any business.

Simon Baker has the low down

10 Cool New Online Tools at Inman Connect | My CEO Life.

The Innovation Triangle

I’m not going to claim that this is my idea or my concept, that belongs to my good friend and collegue Brett Raven. He has been talking about the innovation triangle for some time now. Its such an easy way for clients to get their head around the partnership needed in order to be successful on any project. It forms a large part of our conversations with clients so I guess its worth sharing via the blog.

This is largely common sense but it’s worth really giving this some thought if your evaluating relationships and capabilities around software engineering (internally or externally). I’ll explain this firstly by going through and discussing the three elements, then I’ll talk about what happens when people get this wrong. That’s the really interesting bit.

• Finance - Software projects take time and time usually means money. Unless your in the position where you can develop the software yourself of course. Its not just the development that bleeds your bank balance dry however. The new solution to be marketed even if its an internal project (its then called education). The project needs to be thought through from conception to implementation and adoption and you need to put realistic figures around what that will cost. Do try and get value for money but don’t try and boot strap the development, it just never works and you lose in the long run.

• Domain Expertise – You can have all the money in the world and you might have won ‘king coder of the month’ for the last three months running, but unless you know enough about the domain that the solution is intended for, you’re the equivelant of a ship without a rudder. Your sailing in no particular direction but hoping you will hit land. This, I believe is the most important element of the triangle because the other two piece of the puzzle can be acquired from else where. To be a domain expert, you need to have an indepth knowledge of the problem you are trying to solve and business goals and drivers you need to meet.
• Software Engineering Expertise – Okay so your building a software solution so you need to bring some expertise to the table in the form of dedicated software engineers. No surprises here I am guessing for most people. Why is it then that people get this wrong so often? Successful software projects involve so much more than writing code. Think about it. If the only barrier to entry for every wannabe facebook owner would be to buy a copy of PHP for dummies then there woul be alot more millionairres out there right now. In the real world, there are a multitude of  factors to consider – What methodology is to used. What project management skills does the team have? Do you have the set up and infrastructure such as continuous integration to be able be efficient in the build?

So hopefully by now you are starting to get an idea of the team that you need to put together in order to be successful. I have never met an individual that possesses all of the attributes to be able to cover all of these success factors. I have however a great deal of respect for the entrepeneurs that I have met who understand their limitations and bring in the neccesary expertise to get the job done. Often they are commercially savy domain experts who understand how to engage a software development team.

Why would you rather be?

Imagine you wanted to start a new web based technology business and you were looking to build a team. Who would you rather be?

1) Lots of capital, no domain expertise, no software engineering talent: While this is a nice problem to have (of the three) , its not sustainable. You can fund a development, your software team will gladly help you spend it but what result can you get without good domain knowledge

2) Software engineering, no finance or commercial awareness and no domain expertise: We meet these people all the time. The open source world is full of them. Back bedroom coding experts who spend so much time thinging about the solution that the business never gets a look in. The best we can hope for here is that they partner with someone who can level them out and stop them writing code for codes sake and also find a domain expert who can tell them honestly what is in scope and what’s not.

3) Domain expert, no finance, no technical expertise: The domain expert can bring in a third party for commercial direction and capital raising. Money is easy to find if you know where to look. They can also engage the services of a professional software development team who can systematically extract the requirements of the solution from your knowledge of the domain.

Its about team spirit

Don’t get me wrong I love clients who have money to burn, but thats only part of what we need to get a successful project over the line. If you also want to be a happy customer, you need get involvedwith your team and often. If you’re the domain expert then we need to get the requirements from your head and let the technology experts do their job.

Hands up!

Hands up? Who reading this owns a software programming business? My guess is not a lot of you right? Now hands up if your a business owner or director of a company that isn’t a software engineering business but you hire developers. Yeh you not so keen to admit it now are you but I know your out there. I talk to you every day…

Okay I’ll get off my judgemental high horse for a second or two. I’m not saying that every company should outsource their IT but I am saying that you should really have a think about why you want to do it. It costs money to own a software engineering department so why not share that cost with someone else?

Outsourcing has come a long way in the last few years. If you can have a team that is outsourced on paper but feels in every respect like they are part of the company, then why wouldn’t you do it?

Being a bit of a self confessed nerd, I get very particular about the way my PC is set up and I hate having to change. I spend most of my working day in a browser and my preferred browser is Firefox. Unfortunately our preferred CRM favours IE which means that I have had to to use IE. That is until now.

There’s a nifty little add in for firefox called IE tab. It allows you to use MS technologies en firefox. Just don’t forget to add the URL of your application once you’ve installed it.

How…

From the top… tools>addon> search IE tab and follow the prompts

After the restart … tools > IE tab options > enter the URL of your application (for the root folder) followed by asterisk eg http://mycrmserver/theinstallationfolder/*

Tada!!

Enjoy, now you can enjoy accessing all you Microsoft technologies from Firefox!

Theresa O’Neil on buying cars and rules engines; and the questions your should really ask yourself when evaluating products you options.

http://www.thinkinginrules.com/trackback/a4d9079b-e94a-4d1d-a5c9-ae2ae50baa94/Which-Engine-Has-the-Best-Performance-.aspx

Nicely put Theresa!

WAIT! I’m not here to evangelise Twitter or to pick news items out of it merely because it seems to be a slow news day. There’s enough of that out there already. The merits of Twitter still need to be demonstrated to me. To me, it seems like the digital equivalent of entering a sports arena full of people all shouting random things at the top of their voice in the hope that someone is listening. This goes against the very basics of marketing – segment then target.

What I’d like to share with you is an experience I had last week that made me think there may be something more in this after all.

Last week it came to my attention that St Vincent de Paul held an annual fundraiser to give CEOs an experience of what it’s like to live on the street. A quick web search revealed that the annual CEO Sleep out was happening that night.

Later, in the lift, I joked with our CEO that he should attend. He said nothing but instead just gave me ‘that look’. You know, the one that says, ‘Stop talking. Now.’

An hour later he was back at my desk with a challenge. If I can raise at least $300 in sponsorship, he would attend. Within minutes, his profile was registered and an email went out to staff, friends and family asking for donations to put a CEO on the street for the night. I copied this email to my blog and used that as a gateway page. I created a tiny url to my blog and announced my evil plan to the twittersphere.

My profile has over 1,500 followers, so it made sense to twitter from that account rather than his. Using one of the fundamentals of offline networking, I asked for the referral and asked followers to spread the word with a retweet. Within minutes I was getting replies passing on the requirement to donate and make a CEO sleep rough.

In the next hour, I saw the fundraising total move past my $300 baseline target, and it didn’t stop there. The total continued to grow, $400 … $500, and I started to wonder how far we could push this.

I kept the updates flowing as the totals climbed and climbed. Before I knew it we were looking like we could be on track for $1,000. By the end of the afternoon we had raised $1,250 for charity from nowhere. It seems this Twitter thing could have legs after all.

Lessons learned

So what lessons can we take away from this experience? Lessons that we may be able to apply to using Twitter for business?

• First and foremost, understand that my tweets were not about selling anything or self-promotion. Instead, we used our twitter networks to spread the word about a greater good or worthy cause. To put it another way, get to know your network and deliver value to them. Send them links to news articles that you find which you think will be genuinely valuable to them. By default we raised our profile, but that was really a secondary outcome.

• Count downs. Twitter seems to be great for counting down to events or deadlines. “Only $125 to go before we break the $1k mark!” or “2 days left to register for the Business Solutions showcase.”

• Hash tags and keywords. Advanced users don’t really follow other users, they follow trends by using keyword digest tools or hash tags. Tweets relating to this event used the hashtag #CEOsleepout. In this way we knew that people who followed us from this activity were likely to be Sydney-based and networked at CEO level.

• Ask for a retweet. The benefits are obvious.

• It’s not about you. Nobody likes a show off, so start getting to know people and discover what you can do for them. Karma will pay you back, I promise.

• Use opposing concepts. A little trick I learned for writing an attention grabbing headline is to use two seemingly contradictory concepts in the same sentence. In this case, the CEO and the concept of sleeping rough were at odds with each other and invited people to click through to find out more.

• Use a landing page. There’s only so much you can do in 140 characters, so explain what you mean in more detail before you invite people to take action.

• Surprisingly, this didn’t take all afternoon. I still met my deadlines and had a full, productive afternoon. I simply took time out for a few tweets here and there.

Originally posted at http://anthillonline.com/how-i-used-twitter-to-put-a-ceo-on-the-street/

Tonight CEO’s and business leaders will sleep rough in order to raise money for charity. Every year St Vincent de Paul invites CEO’s to experience the hardship that is endured daily by Australia’s homeless for just one night. At the eleventh hour, I have registered our support!

Kareem, our CEO has pledged to take part on the proviso that at least $300 is raised for the cause. I have started the ball rolling by donating $30 to his fund. If you wish to support St Vinney’s and help counter the problem of homelessness or simply to see Kareem Tawansi sleep rough for your own personal enjoyment, please donate by following this link:

https://www.ceosleepout.org.au/donate/donate2/ceoId/4404

Please also feel free to forward this email in order that we can raise as much as we can.

p.s. Its tax time and deductions are available for donations above $2

I guess you have to be in IT sales to get this. All it takes is an afternoon of cold calling to understand why I find this funny.

Gatling Gun comic strip, war to fight

Most business leaders are so head down fighting the war that they forget to take a moment to think about the bigger picture. Maybe, you don’t need 1000 archers… maybe you need to keep pace with technology and do more with less

This is also a great reminder for me to get to the point and explain ‘what’s in it for them.’