Rule 2 You have to spend money to make money.

People spend money on IT. That is just the way it goes, and there is no way to avoid it. People also spend money money when they have to play catch up. What do I mean? If your technology goes bad on you or the industry changes and you have to make a course correction in what you do, then you need to be running at full capacity and there is little room for slowdowns or work stoppages.

The theory is this. Run the IT race at a marathon pace.

Spend gradually, and hopefully you will have something when you need it, but, just like a marathon, if you bonk early (Run out of juice), then when you really need technology you get the bad side of oops. There is nothing worse than starting out too fast and then doing the Bataan death march the last six miles.

What does this mean to the average bear?

That is a paradigm.

When you really need the newest technology, when times start to go bad on you, and they always ebb and flow, you need to rely on the tools you already have. You can’t afford to spend money during the lean times, and usually it is a year or two before things begin to change again, so you had better already have newer machines in place, newer operating systems, and newer applications. Failure at this point could cost you your business, and I have seen it happen (Including to me). If you hold on to your technology too long, you run into unnecessary expenses, business interruptions, downtime, production falters, employees bolt and the entire office begins to spin into the giant swirly of life. Pretty soon you’re on the curb with a sign, “Will work for Frappuccino.”

Once you realize that what people are selling you may sound great, but it has to be integrated into your IT department, your existing technologies and it has to coexist with people and their personalities, then you can start to look at the new technologies with a discerning eye.

A perfect example was not so long ago. There was Ethernet, Arcnet, and Token Ring and at the time everyone and everything was beginning this new thing called networking. I had a lab back then, and we tested networks. We created a facility where I could build an environment and test devices and one of the things we examined was this new form of Ethernet called 100Base VG. It was like normal Ethernet (It ran on the same type cables so the distances were similar), but it worked more like a token ring network.

I thought it was magnificent. We could not kill it. We ran at close to wire speed which was absolutely unheard of back then. I thought it would obviously be the right choice for everything. It was more expensive, but why would people choose normal Ethernet with all its known flaws (If you disconnect one device the network shuts down, if you send a big file everyone shuts down and pretty much has to wait, a change of impedance on one side of the building sends the symptoms to the other end of the cable on the other end of the building), certainly the best technology should win.

It didn’t. I convinced a few large companies to rip out their Arcnet and re-cable the entire infrastructure to go to 100Base VG and the manufacturer promptly went out of business, in one case before we had even completed the installation.

I know I will have to explain that to St. Peter…

Then with the dawning of a new day in technology the SQL (Structured Query Language) began to take root. It was imperative that we get in on the ground floor with this one. I was sent to training on the new language so we could harness it, sell it and train people on it. It was a great Idea. It worked just like the MIMMS machine in the Marine Corps. I was all excited on my way home. It could speed up networking by a tenfold.

The product was pulled from the market before I got off the plane. (Another useless plaque for my cubicle).

How do you know what is bleeding edge and what is ready for production? How do big companies do it?

First of all they have an IT department. They get a few copies of the new products, new hardware, and new applications and they create their own beta test. They let their techies spend hours upon hours testing and playing with their new toys until they feel comfortable with making the decision to upgrade everyone.

As a small business owner you will have to do the same thing. You have to.

How do you do it? (Everyone has a nephew that is really into gaming, you’ll be tempted to use him, it would even give him something to do for the summer… DON’T DO IT. You need real information from real time use).

Just purchasing a new computer to ‘play with’ goes against every fiber that is in you, and those fibers are what got you out of the poor house, so I understand. But this is how you minimize the risk. You begin to build a testing facility of your own.

I know what you’re thinking… Is that squirrel staring at me? Or maybe, how does the average bear afford to hire people and equipment just for play? That’s insane.

Every company has someone that is somewhat computer savvy. There is usually someone just like them on the opposite end of the spectrum (Try not to select the average bear for this experiment). Grab them and take them into a conference room. Buy a new system and new software and put it in the conference room with them. Then just observe through a one way mirror.

Actually it is more like this:

Make them do their jobs on it. Don’t replace their old machine, just put the new device in the conference room and have them report to it once a day for four hours, like a morning shift. Then, have them work as a team. Test it and see if they can use it. They will find all the flaws I can guarantee it, and let them voice their opinions (and you will get an earful), but keep in mind this is the future.

You can’t NOT do this.

This will do two things, number one; this process will ensure everything is compatible. If you need more RAM in the computer, this is the time to find out. If you buy the new accounting package will it print to your printer? Now is the time to find out. Number two; It will provide a way to do training and prepare the employees as well. Once the bugs have been worked out, start sending in other employees from that department to do their work in the conference room for a shift (Just half their work day).

At some point, when you see they are no longer flapping around on the floor and gnawing the furniture to pieces, then it will be easier to migrate a few into their departments. Now you have a standard cost for each workstation deployment and you can start budgeting them into your system, and when you do – make sure you STANDARDIZE. Find out what will work and duplicate that exact system to everyone in that department.

Plan on spending a solid month in testing, before rollout, and you also have a new machine you can do training on. You can now expect users to be at work right after the upgrade. They should not miss a beat, some will as they build a routine, but there will be less belly aching and more production.

As you are so fond of saying, “Me likes production.”

Rule 1 Businesses want to sell you stuff, they don’t care about your business.

It’s not that they aren’t trying but a small business is nothing like a larger corporation, in scope or in technology, so why would you think that a billion dollar software company knows what you need? They know what they want you to need… They will tell you what they want you to need.

How I learned this…

I was a young cryptographic repair man who stumbled on a rules and guidelines book concerning the setup of a cryptography work center. It covered everything from the bench setup to how to cover and bar the windows. I was fixated and I set up my room exactly like the book.

In the Marines, when you set up things just like the book it means, number one, that you read, and number two that you follow directions. I got noticed by the Inspector General’s office in Washington. Pretty cool? Well not really they notice everything, and I had a previous run in with them, which I will explain later.

When they noticed me they snatched me out of First Tank Battalion and sent me to a new duty station to ‘fix it’. I thought it was a promotion. First important note about the military is there is no such thing as a promotion, just a higher level of responsibility that becomes solely your responsibility. I was sent to my first maintenance shop as a Lance Corporal. I was filling the billet of a Staff Non Commissioned Officer so you can imagine no one was interested in what I was doing, or should I say no one wanted to cooperate with what I was trying to do.

First thing I did was examine the platoon and facilities I was taking over and I was stunned. It was like a TV sitcom. The technicians had never worked on the equipment, piles of broken parts were hidden in wall lockers, and every day the toughest Marines in the platoon would crawl under the test bench and take a nap on a mattress supposed to be used for transporting equipment. No one had the courage to do anything about it.

One of the big new things in 1982 was the MIMMS system. The Marine Integrated Maintenance Management System. It was a computer.

Just so we are clear, a computer back in 1982 was neither user friendly nor was it easily serviceable. When something went bad on this truck like behemoth, it was a major problem.

The Marines already had a system, a manual paper system, but this giant machine was sold as a replacement for that process. It would remove the tedious task of daily organization of spreadsheets and allow the Maintenance Management Office to see how things were being done in the battalion. It tracked the parts and all the equipment needed to run a military outfit.

To me however, it just required three times the tedious input and ten times the tedious time to get the same results, but the important thing was the Marines had a computer.

Putting a million dollar machine in the hands of a Marine is shady business, but we had one. And I had the perfect antidote to technology. His name was Merryman. He was a virus before there were such things.

That’s Merryman, M.E.R.R.Y.M.A.N. spells Merryman. I can still hear him singing that song.

I wish my family had a song.

Merriman could walk by the computer and technicians leapt to their feet. Their faces were stern and puzzled as they watched their displays do fantastical things to the data before their eyes. Merriman would input pages and pages of data, which he was supposed to, and within minutes he would be running into my office to hide. Sure enough, as I expected, there were a crew of angry technicians rushing in right after him with pitchforks and torches.

That was back in the day when everything was manually programmed, there was no running to the Walmart to pick up a new Maintenance Software Package. So every time Merriman would do something inconceivable, there would be much programming to follow. Every time a circuit was blown apart, the ritual five day warranty period would have to be observed in which Merriman was sent to the rifle range or driving school.

It was an important moment in history, the Marines had a system that would track all their parts and serviceable gear in one giant computer. It was an important step to have a system that took twelve men to do previously now take only two men.

That was a fallacy. That did not include the twelve guys it took to maintain the beast when things went bad, or the extra 5 hours it took to double check all the data. If we took the original twelve guys that worked in the MMO’s office and put them in the room next to the MIMMS machine, gave them each a 5 million dollar raise, they would still not cost taxpayers as much as that damn machine cost.

On one hand, I remember the reports, we could see real information, and that was good. On the other hand, what actually constitutes a machine that is ‘ready for production?’

There were other ways to do things, there were better systems, but that was the one that the Marines had chosen, and that was what we were going to make work.

That is progress you see. The bugs would soon be worked out, and that giant beast that required its own air conditioning system would actually be able to prove it’s worth in roughly nine years.

That was 1982. Blast forward to 2010.

As a business owner you will need the newest version of Microsoft Office, and Windows 7 to run your business. It may not be ready for normal use, and your employees may not be able to use it but what is more important? Your productivity obviously so you need this stuff.

Windows 7 makes it much easier to play with images and pictures, and music. That’s exactly what most employees spend most of their time at work doing, right? Who cares if you can’t see the printers on the network now right? Who cares if it takes ten minutes to find the menu that shows you how to paginate a document, you now have fifty thousand different options you did not have in the old version.

That’s what they want you to believe.

The savvy business owner will notice right away that everywhere the new versions go, productivity drops down to virtually a standstill. All the icons are different. All the menus are different. All the normal processes, taskbars and desktops are different.

The average bear that actually does the work on the computers, whose entire day and entire career is built upon how fast they can do their job is now thrown into this whirling dervish that they have no control over.

Their bonuses and paychecks still use the same grading system, but what used to take them 5 minutes now takes hours. Nothing works right. It could be years before they can get back to the productivity that they once thrived at.

If a business owner wants to stem the tide he must send his employees to training prior to upgrades, at roughly $800 per person, just so they can continue their production. Aye there’s the rub.

Once the employees learn how to use the new versions of software, business owners must buy new products to limit what they just taught their employees they could do. Now they can play movies, transform images, chat and communicate with friends, family and lovers all day long, it’s integrated. It’s so flippin’ integrated now they have personal accounts loaded on company machines and they are communicating personal stuff 50% of the time.

Small businesses don’t need that. I don’t even think big businesses need that. Sure you talk to some vendors by IM, but who else are your employees talking to. The sad truth is you don’t know. You cannot control that.

This is what I say, this is my rule number 1 for small business...

Don’t spend the money. Vote with your feet. Don’t buy the new products until they can guarantee they won’t disturb your business. Who gives a crap about music and movies, you’re employees are at work! They should be working, and believe me, I can look at the traffic going through the firewall, I can look at what web sites they go to, so I don’t care what Microsoft says, new versions do not improve production.

And it is not that hard to do right by small business.

Microsoft can improve their products and keep the same icons and the same procedures for everything. They could, they just choose not to. So I say – if they chose to ignore what I need as a business, I choose not to buy the new products.

Look at the viruses. The current rate of virus infestations keeps growing because people are easily duped into going to these websites and chatting or reading about friends, heck even blogging. What the?... They should be working!

Don’t feel the pressure to upgrade because Microsoft pulls their old versions off the market. Let the big companies do the debugging and beta testing for Microsoft, and never by any version ending in a zero. Windows Vista was the millennium edition all over again. Windows 7 has been out for a while and they are still fixing vulnerabilities. When will they actually put a production version on the market, and where do they get their ideas about what employees are supposed to be doing all day?

Don’t tell me it is more productive. That is why there are great new products on the market like iFilter from Futuresoft.