We can't add new staff because our current IT systems can't cope. Help!

In small business, we often forget to plan as we are too busy with the day-to-day activities involved in delivering our product or service. I’m a big fan of planning in business, because if you’re going to run a business that grows beyond the micro level, it will involve many people over time. To keep people working effectively, there needs to be a degree of planning.

Planning for your business should be reflected in an IT plan to ensure your costs are anticipated and budgeted. Rapid growth is good, but when it’s impeded by underperforming or under-specified IT solutions, it can be very costly to your productivity or quality of delivery. Fancy losing clients because your business could not add the staff fast enough to deliver a quality product or service.

Areas that you should cover in your IT capacity planning include:

• Server storage space (hard drives to store data)
• Licensing (many programs lock out additional staff when limits are reached)
• Server speed (many factors can effect server performance)
• Hard Drive Speeds
• Number and speed of processors
• Memory (RAM) capacity and speed
• Number of users being supported
• Number of applications per server
• Quality of server equipment (age, transfer speeds etc)
• Tuning of applications and operating system
• Number of PCs or terminals available
• Internet bandwidth for accessing web-based or external office based information or applications
• Quality of internal and private networks
• Capacity of backup systems to protect all data and systems information
• Power to run and cool the systems
• Cooling capacity
• Physical space in the server room

Often these simple planning aspects are overlooked. Take, for example, a real estate agent who opens a site office on a local development project, and a branch office five kilometers down the road. He has a combination of web-based tools and in-house server-based systems that his 35 staff already use. Now, he has three PCs required in the site office, and they need to be laptops so that they can be taken off site each night, as security is a concern. He also needs five attractive PCs for the branch office, which is a modern showroom environment to bring people in off the street to browse properties on clean, new screens.

The head office internet connection is okay for the current use of web-based applications, but will not support all the remote staff accessing the server-based applications. It also won’t support the IP-based phone calls between the offices. The servers in the office also need additional licenses, and possibly an upgrade to one of the servers is in order. All of this could have been planned as part of opening new offices, but instead has been left until staff in the new locations are disgruntled and feel like second-class citizens.

Do people who feel like second-class citizens make the best representatives for your company?

Click here to read more IT Systems expert advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

How can I make sure my IT people are strong in all of the right technologies?

In small businesses, I often find people who look after their own computers, or have staff who are responsible for looking after the computers in their "spare time". While a business is in the micro stage, using what is essentially home computer technology, this can work. But, as a business grows, more help is required as systems take on new dimensions. Staff become busier, and simply don't have the time or expertise required to cope with greater complexity as new servers are added, phone systems are thrown into the mix, and so on.

As a business continues to grow, yet more technologies are added and business systems become even more complex. These technologies include: internet security, printing, servers for multiple tasks, remote access devices, mobile phones, email servers, and more.

Pretty soon it takes a wide variety of skills to support just one office of staff. Very quickly, a single internal or external resource becomes stretched as they try to master all the different technologies.

Think about it this way – if you were to send one of your team to training on Microsoft servers, Email servers, Firewalls, Printers, Server hardware, Virtualisation platforms, PCs, Windows 7, VOIP phone systems, and all the other key applications in your business, you could have them out of the office for 30 to 50 days each year just to stay up-to-date!

Yet, it is common for small businesses to expect one person to pick all of this stuff up on the fly, and work across multiple levels of the IT environment. Check out poor Bree's all-too-familiar comment on one of my earlier blogs here.

So, this is not a training problem – it is a breadth problem. Symptoms of a breadth problem include:

• Running a sub-standard email system that does not offer shared calendars or shared public folders.
• Not running an intranet to share company information.
• Poor filtering of spam and viruses.
• No firewalls, or firewalls that are too old to defend against modern threats.
• Developing an in-house database to solve a small business problem (it's usually better to source an off-the-shelf product with no hidden costs).
• Poor backup systems that have not been tested for data recoverability.
• No off-site backup for disaster recovery.
• Running old versions of operating systems that are at end of life.
• Aging PCs and Servers (more than four years old).
• High numbers of servers relative to staff, needing high levels of attention.
• Regular outages of critical systems.
• Slow performance of business systems.
• Slow response to technical issues once they arise.

All of the above problems may occur to a greater or lesser extent even on a well-managed network. It's how many that arise, and how often, that will lead to you requiring a broader solution. I suggest you think about it like this – when IT gets to a point where it is IMPEDING the growth of your business, you should look for a team of people who have current training in the relevant technologies, and a training plan to ensure they stay up-to-date. If you're at this point now, there are two options:

1. Hire new staff and set up your own training regime; or
2. Find a trusted advisor with a team of technical resources you can tap into, as you require them.

There are many Managed Services Providers (MSPs) around Australia who offer such services, and can step in directly or remotely to solve many issues promptly. In MSPs, it is not uncommon to send each staff member to five to 10 days of training each year, and to spread the training load across the whole team to ensure a great breadth of knowledge is held and skills are kept up-to-date.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Should I upgrade IT gear now, or put it off until the economy really picks up?

If your answer is, 'There's no way we can get blood out of a stone to invest more in our business', then upgrading your IT equipment is simply not an option for you right now. My recommendation is to wait until your business moves in one direction or another, then do an upgrade. Chances are you won't need to buy new computers in the interim.

If, on the other hand, you are running a successful business that is growing and has a real need for efficient systems, here are some compelling reasons to upgrade sooner rather than later:

1. The most critical reason is that the big four banks are predicting that their average cost of funds will increase by 85 to 110 points by mid-2011. So, if you need to invest in equipment upgrades or additional systems within the next 12 months, now would be a good time to lock in a favourable interest rate.

2. We are also about to see an increase in computer costs as the global IT industry trades on the US dollar. With a 10% decline in the relative strength of the Australian dollar, we can expect the cost of equipment to go up by 10% over the next several weeks, as stock is replaced with more expensive supplies.

3. Many IT companies, mine included, have spare capacity for projects at the moment, as it has not been the busiest of quarters leading up to the end of financial year.

4. You should be financing your IT equipment and licensing, to preserve cash in your business for other things. Finance from the big vendors is still fairly cheap money, and means you won't restrict your cashflow for other parts of the business. Make sure you do seek proper financial advice before agreeing to any finance package, as I'm an IT expert – not yet a financial expert!

For all of the reasons above, June this year is a great time to upgrade your computer equipment, and prepare your business for better times ahead.

Of course, I always argue that any time is a great time to replace old IT equipment, just because it facilitates more productive work. So, to finish, here's a throw away tip on productivity...

It has been shown that for many information workers a second screen on a PC can improve productivity by over 5%. Given a monitor is only a hundred dollars, and will last over four years, it is now only a question of – is the desk big enough for another monitor?

So, perhaps the question you really need to ask yourself is, 'How will my staff feel if I DON'T spend on IT soon?'

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.