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What We’re Reading: Summer’s Over, Back to Work

Jenny Sweeney — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:59:03 +0000

With school in session and the summer officially over, we thought it fitting to take a look at productivity for this week’s post.

Two articles stood out among the rest this week.

Bernard Golden looks beyond the buzzword to what BYOD will mean for the workplace.

The first, on CIO.com, reports on a recent study that found that employees who were permitted to surf the web were more productive than those who weren’t.

The study, conducted by the National University of Singapore, included 98 participants with an average age of 21, who were divided into three control groups. Each group either surfed the web for 10 minutes, did whatever they wanted during the time period except look at web pages, or performed the task of bundling sticks into groups of five.

After the 10-minute time period, each group was given another 10 minutes to highlight with a marker the letter “A” where it appeared in a 2,000-word text. After the tests, the participants answered a questionnaire to help determine their levels of boredom, mental exhaustion, and psychological engagement.

From the results, researchers concluded that web surfing offers workers “immediate gratification” and helps them “restore resources that are drained as a result of work.”

Who doesn’t love this kind of study? It’s the kind of thing you want to clip, save, and even send along to a C-suite distribution list.

Read the full article here.

The second piece, also on CIO.com, delves into what consumerization really means to CIOs. Author Bernard Golden looks beyond the buzzword to what BYOD will mean for the workplace. It’s a must-read, especially if you are lobbying to use your iPad in the office.

Here’s an excerpt: “Consumerization of IT is usually contrasted with ‘enterprise IT, ‘ which carries connotations of interminable rollouts, bewildering interfaces, obscure functionality and high prices. The poster child ordinarily cited for ‘enterprise IT’ is SAP, which seems to raise particular ire in commentators.

“Consumerization of IT, on the other hand, is associated with ease-of-use, attractive interfaces, intuitive functionality and low prices. Apple is ordinarily referenced as the exemplar of this type of computing.”

Read the full piece here.

Goodbye Software Suite, Hello Apps

Jenny Sweeney — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:30:21 +0000

Remember when “increased productivity” was a phrase no worker in the business world wanted to hear? About two years ago, during the height of the economic depression, the last thing employees wanted to hear about were ways to increase productivity, or how to “do more with less.” To them, it was just code for taking on more work for the same pay.

With a waning recession, the notion of increased productivity isn’t so frightful — especially not if it means getting your mitts on a neat new iPad.

But today, with a waning recession, the notion of increased productivity isn’t so frightful — especially not if it means getting your mitts on a neat new iPad and the accompanying apps.

With the growing acceptance of tablets in the workplace, some industry folks like Gigaom’s Darrell Etherington see the same happening with apps.

In a recent article, Etherington makes the case for BYOA, or bring-your-own-apps.

“Why is BYOA a good thing for businesses? Because it cuts down on training time, helps employees feel invested in the technical side of doing business, and will eventually save money for businesses by replacing costly licensing fees with cheaper apps.”

Etherington acknowledges that a free-for-all of apps in the workplace may be “a bit too chaotic for traditional businesses,” but he offers this advice for more forward-thinking enterprises: If you do business on the web, and if you rely upon remote employees, you should welcome this trend and make it work to your company’s advantage.

He continues: “That doesn’t mean asking IT to watch what’s being used and then mandating it across all user devices. It does mean encouraging workers to share software tool recommendations and notes about usage of tools in a way that rewards app exploration and discovery, without feeling like an unnecessary and ungrounded imposition.”

In that spirit, here’s a collection of links to top iPad productivity apps and tools:

Got any favorites of your own? Tell us about them in comments.

What We’re Reading: The PC is Dead. Long Live the PC.

Jenny Sweeney — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:19:29 +0000

This week’s crop of articles restates the obvious: That smart phones and tablets are nudging out the PC in the enterprise. This is good news for the world’s workers (Increased productivity! Style! Portability! All access, all the time!), but it poses a challenge for IT departments. With new devices come increased support needs. (But that’s a topic for another post.)

Gartner predicts that by 2013, more people in the world will access the Internet on a mobile device than on a PC.

“Smartphones have conquered PCs” — CNN

According to research firm IDC, over the past two years, smartphone shipments have tripled, while PC shipments grew by only 45 percent. The trend, reports CNN, is indicative of a marked change in the kinds of devices people are using for everyday computing needs. The article also points to research from Gartner that predicts that by 2013, more people in the world will access the Internet on a mobile device than on a PC.

What does this mean for business? Read the full article here.

“Who Needs PCs? Growth Slips as Tablet Demand Explodes” — Forbes

In this article, Forbes writer Eric Savitz looks at the exploding tablet market and its effect on PC demand. Savitz notes that two Wall Street analysts cut back their projections for 2011 PC unit sales, blaming the reduced outlook partly on “cannibalization of demand” by tablets.

Writes Savitz: “This could be trouble for a whole assortment of companies in the PC food chain…there’s trouble here for the disk-drive companies, for instance, and a potential reshuffling of the players in the microprocessor business. It certainly seems like it’s the end of the PC world as we know it.”

Read the full article here.

Unrelated, But Interesting: “Password Reuse is All Too Common, Research Shows” – CIO.com

In an unrelated but fascinating piece, CIO.com reports on the rising reuse of passwords across web sites, and the implications of such “laziness” on the part of users. The research was conducted by Brit Joseph Bonneau and the article makes special note of the password hack of media gossip site Gawker in December 2010.

The article offers tips on creating secure passwords, and safer methods of keeping track.

Read the full article here. And for a super-geeky take on the issue, read Bonneau’s blog.

Avoiding Office 2010 Upgrade Pitfalls

Jenny Sweeney — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:43:59 +0000

In case you missed it, Forrester Research Group released a report in December warning of the pitfalls when upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010. And it’s what we here at PC Helps have been saying all along — as far back as Office 2007 upgrades.

We think the FAQ is a wonderful thing. But a FAQ cannot stand on its own.

As reported on recently by CIO.com’s Shane O’Neill, the Forrester report outlines four pitfalls to avoid during upgrades: underestimating compatibility issues, leaving workers to figure out the migration with no assistance, assuming workers will use the software’s new features, and neglecting to emphasize peer-to-peer learning.

Here’s what we’ve been saying:

On compatibility issues

We couldn’t agree more. Your company needs to have a plan in place before the migration begins to handle compatibility issues.

As with any new or changed software, incompatibility with prior versions may require users to manually rework documents. Compatibility of versions has been a focus for Microsoft over the years, and improves with every new release, but users don’t always follow the best practices when creating documents, and end up with versions which are not automatically converted with an upgrade.

Files received from outside the organization in older formats may not open properly and need some rework or, sometimes, may need to be resent. Files with links, Access databases (especially if they integrate with other systems or use extensive code), and custom animations in older PowerPoint versions may be corrupted or impacted by compatibility issues. In cases where users have documents they regularly use, often containing complex formulas or formatting, and which need to be updated to the new versions, there can be a significant amount of time spent on reformatting and recreating documents.

On making workers handle the migration with no support

The “ribbon” and other new aspects of the Office 2007 interface reflect major changes in the look and feel of the core Office applications. In Office 2010, these differences carry forward and are coupled with the incorporation of the ribbon into Outlook, impacting usability of this critical communications application.

We think the FAQ is a wonderful thing. It tells your employees what to expect from a migration, and answers the most commonly asked questions. But a FAQ cannot stand on its own.

User confusion and frustration is almost guaranteed when attempting to learn and work with the ribbon for the first time. Basic functions that were performed without effort in the past, such as opening and closing files, managing day-to-day calendar and meeting entries, and applying formats, require a relearning process with the new application versions. For some users, relearning these basic functions is fairly straightforward, and for others it takes a more effort and help. More complex tasks in PowerPoint, Excel, Word or Access often require a combination of training and support in the migration process.

Bolster it with a dedicated migration staff to help workers through a migration/upgrade.

On assuming employees will find and know how to use enhanced or new features in Office 2010

Don’t make assumptions. You know the old saying.

For example, if someone using Excel 2010 for the first time doesn’t know about the new functions, he will not necessarily seek them out. A good how-to tech can show him a SUMIFS formula, for example, which is one of the newbies. Sure beats the 2003 alternative of using arrays or helper columns.

On not emphasizing peer-to-peer learning

Finally, Forrester’s fourth pitfall, not emphasizing peer-to-peer learning, is one we’re split on. CIO’s O’Neill suggests using wikis and discussion groups to share best practices. It’s a great idea, but we know from experience what happens often with peer-to-peer: it’s called shadow support, or tapping the “office guru,” and it turns the downtime of one worker into downtime for two, which can cost a company dearly. A better alternative is to outsource to a company that specializes in Office 2010. The cost savings and downtime avoidance are significant. (See a previous blog post, “Efficiency Redux.”)

Tell us in comments how your company is handling the upgrade.

Migrate the Right Way

Jenny Sweeney — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:00:56 +0000

Tech publications are abuzz about Windows 7. One article in particular, written by CIO.com’s Shane O’Neill, offers smart ways to use your migration as an opportunity to increase IT department efficiency.

Look for case studies of companies that have already migrated successfully. Use them as a guide.

Good stuff, all around. If there was one loud-and-clear point in the piece, it was that planning is vital to a successful (and not exorbitantly expensive) migration — no matter the operating system or software suite.

And it happens to be this company’s mantra. We know from experience that, whether it is a small firm switching over a few hundred users from Lotus Notes to Outlook or a Fortune 500 company upgrading to Office 2007 en masse, a successful migration depends largely on preparation.

In addition to the four points mentioned on CIO.com, I’d like to add a few more migration tips for CIOs:

1. Seek out proven migration successes: Look for case studies of companies that have already migrated successfully. Use them as a guide. Read up on Windows 7 trouble spots (that is, where users will likely experience productivity loss.

2. Bury yourself in research: White papers from migration partners can add a level of understanding that no news article or Microsoft blog can. (In a recent white paper, we asked the question “How much will a Windows 7 and Office 2007 migration hurt?” – read it here.)

3. Do the math: Make yourself aware of all the variables before you begin. Compare costs and staffing models. For example, how much would it cost you to migrate using existing IT staff? How would it affect their ability to get their regular work done? (When conducting our research, we found that using existing staff for migrations often proves costly – financially, and in its effect on the internal help desk’s reputation. Here’s a rundown of costs with different staffing models.)

Happy migrating!

This Week in Comments: Office 2007 with a Side of Vitriol

Jenny Sweeney — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:31:17 +0000

Way back in April 2009, I posted a piece on CIO.com titled “Office 2007 Doesn’t Really Suck; It’s Just Misunderstood.” Little did I know it would create such a fuss.

Over the past 11 months, the piece has received a smattering of comments, many of which are tinged with vitriol. Office 2007 doesn’t just suck, according to CIO’s readers; it’s reviled, despised, detested, loathed.

Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version of Office is hardly a political move.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

“I’m a longtime Office user (since its inception). Office 2007 is an abomination and shows just how out of touch those developers are with real world use and workflow.”

“Thought my suckage meter was just already broken or something, it being beyond the warranty period, but as the 10 or so days went by from having installed this step backwards in software development, and having not latched onto what I had assumed was some kind of groundbreaking innovation in GUI, I started to suspect that Microsoft’s product itself had gone beyond the limits of my suckage meter and broken it… and everyone here has affirmed that.”

(That previous commenter called Office 2007 an “emotional disappointment” and offered an SAT-style analogy: “MS Office is to ‘misunderstood’ what Charles Manson was to ‘goofy.’”)

The readers are angry with Microsoft, and used the comments section to vent. They took umbrage with what they perceived was my defense of the Ribbon. And I’m OK with that.

Here’s my take (you can retract your claws for a moment): There are plenty of things wrong with Microsoft’s Office 2007 product. We could create an entire social community focused on sharing what we think is unintuitive about its software. (They may already exist.) However, a large portion of businesses uses Microsoft, and many people learned basic computing skills on Microsoft software. (Personally, I dropped out of a FORTRAN class in college because I didn’t see its practicality. I opted to study Spanish too, instead of the languages I really wanted to learn — Icelandic and Swahili.)

So they are stuck, for now at least. I think Office 2007 was a much-needed slap on the back of the head for IT leaders. Complacency is not an option anymore, not in this economy.

If they have migrated or are about to migrate to Office 2007, they cannot treat it like any other upgrade. Employees will need assistance in order to keep productivity at pre-migration levels.

Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version is hardly a political move. It’s like not paying your AT&T bill because you think their 3G sucks. Nothing will change — except your service, which will be shut off.

Likewise, taking the martyr approach (We can do it alone! We’ll face the learning curve together!) will get companies nowhere.

If you really despise Microsoft, take a actual stand and find an alternative.

Just be sure to call us when you need software support.

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“Mumbo-Jumbo and Smug Conceit”

Jenny Sweeney — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:14:34 +0000

If you read only one article this week (not counting this blog post), make sure it’s this one by CIO.com’s Thomas Wailgum – “Enterprise IT’s Top Enemy: Its Own Arrogance.”

An IT department that points and laughs is hardly encouraging learning and business alignment.

The piece highlights the fact that the help desk, despite the growing importance of IT/business alignment in the enterprise, remains in the “condescending gatekeeper role.”

As evidence, Wailgum includes a video that features Andy Bitterer, co-chair of Gartner Group’s BI Summit, doing Jay Leno-style “man-on-the-street” interviews in London. Among Bitterer’s questions to the masses: “Do you use a database?” “Do you know what Business Intelligence tools are?” “Do you know what OLAP is?”

Honestly, does this Gartner bloke really expect everyday people to know what these things are? As Wailgum asserts, Gartner conference attendees may find it amusing (ha, look at the stupid users!), but it really demonstrates how out of touch IT is with its customers.

This paragraph, in which Wailgum describes IT’s image problem, is particularly illustrative: “A technological arrogance that lurks behind and manifests itself in arcane techno mumbo-jumbo and smug conceit, that, for lack of a better word, really pisses off end-users and has turned them against IT departments.”

Nicely put, Wailgum.

What’s really troubling about the five-minute video, however, is the fact that a number of the interviewees seem to be lying when the say they do know what OLAP and BI are. Perhaps they feel compelled to pretend they know, even though they clearly have no idea.

Feigning knowledge to avoid appearing ignorant happens in the workplace all the time. And an IT department that points and laughs is hardly encouraging learning and business alignment. Such a help desk delivers only lost productivity, and a whole lot of errors.

I don’t find that funny at all, and neither should a CIO.

FOR THE RECORD: OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing (Wikipedia page here); and Business Intelligence, or BI, uses technologies, processes and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes (Wikipedia page here).

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Coup d’IT

Jenny Sweeney — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:18:09 +0000

The headline of a recent article in Computerworld magazine grabbed my attention: “Help Desks Under Siege.” An image of angry workers armed with flaming torches popped into my mind. They were storming the help desk, calling for an immediate moratorium on rebooting and demanding basic rights like software that doesn’t require patches and updates. There were even rumblings of self-serve password reset capabilities.

A supply closet as an office? For employees who are responsible for the computing capabilities of an entire company? Shame on them.

Alas, the piece wasn’t about corporate coups d’etat (it’s a little far-fetched, I concede), but it did highlight the pressing issues help desks are facing today, in this sorta-kinda-post-recession era. Namely…

1. Efficiency

The piece’s author, Cara Garretson, mentions improvements that would make help desks more efficient, such as a central knowledgebase, remote control capabilities, and a database of standard responses to common problems. The problem, says Garretson, is that those improvements cost employee hours.

They don’t have to.

There are companies out there, outsourcers or “best-of-breed” service providers like us, who specialize in efficiency. They are experienced with providing remote desktop support, and maintain extensive knowledgebases that include ample information about common software problems. Best of all, when you hire them, you don’t pay all the ancillary costs of having a hulking, certified IT department – you pay only for what you need.

2. Appreciation, Understanding, Alignment

Garretson also mentions the disconnect between IT and the rest of the business and its effect on how well the help desk can operate. One of her sources laments that his department is not fully appreciated by the rest of the company, and that his previous office was actually a supply closet.

A supply closet as an office? For employees who are responsible for the computing capabilities of an entire company? Shame on them.

This misalignment is a holdover from a different era, when IT’s job was to fix things that broke or caught fire. Plus, IT historically hasn’t been seen as a proactive bunch, at least not by the corporate population in general.

When the help desk gains the budget funds, loses the attitude, and actually begins to help people get their jobs done — that’s when its reputation will undergo a renaissance.

3. Full-Timers, Temps, Outsourcers – Oh My!

I agree with the writer’s assertion that piecing together a department with a mix of full-timers and temps isn’t a long-term strategy. But I also believe that it’s impossible to staff a department with techs who are expert in every application a company uses.

I’ve written a few posts on this issue and have included a breakdown of just how much money a company “saves” using each. (Click here to read the full posts.) Here’s a sampling:

Most temps are generalists who cannot support advanced issues like macros and application development. They can support only 18 applications on average. And while they may seem cheaper than full-timers, you’re still paying them a fixed rate plus overhead. That amounts to an average of $43,000 annually.

Factor in the temp response time (6 minutes), the whopping abandonment rate (10 percent), eternal peak hold time (15 minutes), and the troubling amount of time it takes to resolve an issue (45 minutes on average) and the savings disappear.

With full-time employees, the numbers are not much better.

4. Quality of Service

If a CIO expects quality from a deep-discounted, all-in-one outsourcer whose techs’ main goal is to get the person OFF the phone, then that’s just bad business. Likewise, overloading existing IT staff with too much work will only decrease quality.

Although much can be said about each of the points individually, they do not operate independently. The help desk’s quality of service is directly tied to its perception by the rest of the company, and its perception and efficiency affect how big a budget it receives. Everything is related.

Maybe a coup is needed after all.

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Reinventing Customer Service

Jenny Sweeney — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:17:57 +0000

We may very well be embarking on the decade of the customer. Social media, especially Twitter, has empowered customers, and the recession has reminded businesses that keeping clients is easier than bringing in new ones.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

With the current state of customer service, a renewed focus would be a welcome change.

Look at current tech publications and you will surely find a rant or three about horrific customer experiences (for a recent one, see CIO.com’s “Tech Vendors Behaving Badly”). Search Twitter for “customer service” and you will find scores of tweets cursing the ineptitude of Company X and Company Y.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

You can start by taking note of a recent book, “Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us,” written by Emily Yellin (http://www.emilyyellin.com/) and featured in a recent AARP Bulletin story. Yellin, a journalist, wrote the book after enduring a particularly frustrating customer service experience herself.

Her book presents a fresh look at the customer service industry, and offers the average person some insight into the reasons many companies opt to automate and outsource to foreign companies.

Here are a few numbers from the AARP piece: According to Yellin, Americans contact customer service 143 times per year, or 2 to 3 times per week, on average. The average cost to companies with an American-based call center is about $7.50 per call. Outsourcing to another country knocks the price down to $2.35 per call, and letting customers take care of the issue themselves through an automated system drops it to about 32 cents per call.

The AARP reporter asked Yellin about the declining quality of customer service. Here’s her response: “What has happened increasingly, especially in the last five years, is that many companies haven’t paid attention to customer service and continue to view the success of a call center from their own viewpoint — as a cost whose success is based on the number of calls they can handle in an hour.”

Bingo. Just because a outsourcer can take thousands of calls a month at a bargain price doesn’t mean they can actually resolve issues. Bye-bye company cost savings, hello customer (and employee) rage.

This is where the new technology comes in. In the past, miffed customers had few outlets for their rage. Today, they have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a horde of sites that encourage commenting and reviews. A company can only ignore criticism for so long.

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What We’re Reading: Lemons to Lemonade Edition

Jenny Sweeney — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:48:44 +0000

The recent software and tech news is all about making the best of what you have. Bloomberg reports that in Venezuela, they’re tweeting their way around traffic snarls to get to work on time; Chief Learning Officer reports on the unlikely good that’s come out of the recession; and CIO.com offers three tips to get the most out of Microsoft Office. Read on…

Training is likely the number one way to get more out of Office, or any software for that matter.

Tweeting in Traffic is OK… in Venezuela

Whoever says Twitter is an ego-driven time-waster should spend a day in a Caracas traffic jam. In a recent Bloomberg News article, reporter Daniel Cancel writes about the Twitter revolution in Venezuela. Because the country’s gasoline is so cheap, there are twice as many cars than the roads can handle — which, naturally, means ample traffic jams. Enter the BlackBerry, Twitter and @Trafico, which Venezuelans are using to navigate their way through the gridlock.

Venezuelans, Cancel notes in his article, are way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of using Twitter as a traffic tool. And, for anyone concerned about Tweeting while driving, average speeds in Caracas are 7 to 9 miles per hour. Read the story here.

The Beauty of Recession: Increased Adaptability

November’s Chief Learning Officer offers up the finest in Glass-Half-Full news with “Recession’s Silver Lining? Increased Adaptability,” which reports that American workers have become more flexible in the past few years. Some highlights from the piece:

57 percent of business leaders say the people in their department or organization are more adaptable
Senior executives and managers say their colleagues are more knowledgeable (50 percent) and more productive (44 percent) compared to a few years ago

The lining isn’t entirely shiny, however. The same survey found that employee happiness has decreased.

(The survey was conducted by NFI Research, a U.S.-based research firm that identifies and analyzes trends and attitudes in business, organizational management, information technology and organizational behavior.)

Read the full story here.

Office: It’s Here to Stay

Everyone’s talking about The Cloud and how it will revolutionize the way we work. The reality, however, is that many companies – 78 percent, according to Forrester Research – will not be switching to it from much-maligned Office any time soon.

The Office suite — and Office 2007 in particular — may be despised across the board, but for many workers and IT leaders, it’s all they have to work with. Their job is not to critique it (publicly at least), but to figure out the best way their employees can use it.

This week, CIO.com offers a trio of tips for “making the most of” Office, and it’s a good read. For the first tip, author Shane O’Neill suggests that IT leaders divvy up their workers by the applications they use most frequently. Not all employees need Access or PowerPoint, for example. Others work mainly in Outlook. By determining how much of your workforce actually needs full Office functionality, he writes, you can cut costs.

In another tip, O’Neill merely hints at the issue of training, which deserves more attention. Training is likely the number one way to get more out of Office, or any software for that matter. Back in May, I wrote about the troubling trend of “oversoftwaring,” which is when companies install up-to-the-minute software on its workers’ computers but do not teach them how to use the new features. In that post, I pointed to an Accenture survey in which researchers found that organizations use only 64 percent of their enterprise systems’ basic functions. In the same study, about a fifth of respondents said they didn’t use certain features because they didn’t have the time to learn how.

Read O’Neill’s piece here.

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