Find any IT Solution Provider who is making money from SharePoint and you’ll find a copy of Robert’s SharePoint Guide in their library.

As the former owner of an MSP myself, when I had a question or query on anything SharePoint I’d immediately turn to my copy of the SharePoint Guide for answers. It’s much more than just a book though – the guide is constantly updated with new information. Over the years Robert has grown the guide beyond just SharePoint, first adding Microsoft BPOS and then it’s successor Office 365 to the extensive knowledgebase he’d built.

What is the SharePoint Guide?

Designed for IT Professionals, the guide helps you install, migrate, maintain and get the most from SharePoint and Office 365. It’s an extensive guide with over 1,500 pages of documentation, 9 hours of videos and hundreds of direct content links that will save you time and get you up and running quickly. The Guide is updated monthly to ensure it is current and provides all of this information via a SharePoint portal so everything is in a single place and easily searchable.

Who is Robert Crane?

As the author of the SharePoint guide, Robert is genuinely one of the SMB IT Communities good guys. A key leader in the Australian User Group scene and a popular speaker at worldwide community events for years, Robert Crane is to SharePoint what Jeff Middleton is to SBS Migrations or what Karl Palachuk is to Managed Services. Simply put, he is the expert in his field.

Happy 5th Birthday!

It’s hard to believe that the Office 365 and SharePoint Guide has reached it’s fifth birthday! Congratulations to Robert for reaching the five year milestone with the Guide, and I’m sure I echo everyone’s thoughts when I say a big thank-you for all you’ve put into the Guide over the years.

To celebrate the Guide reaching the five year milestone, Robert is making a limited time offer to new subscribers to the Office 365 and SharePoint Guide that include discounts and special free consultancy sessions. Trust me when I say these Consultancy sessions along are worth the price of the Guide.

Making Money With SharePoint

The vast majority of IT Consultants and MSP’s have SharePoint deployed at client sites, but do little with it. This is a undoubtedly a missed opportunity.

If you’re serious about making money from SharePoint and Office 365, then I’d recommend you support Robert’s efforts and buy the Office 365 and SharePoint Guide. I speak from experience when I say that you won’t regret it!

As the business owner, when things get busy for your Service Delivery team it’s all too easy to  assume that you need extra resource to cope with the increase in demand. But anyone who has ever hired a new employee – especially a Technical member of staff – knows that this is easier said than done. Finding the right person can be a resource intensive job, taking time and energy, not to mention incurring a cost to your business.

Even once you’ve hired someone, what is to stop this pattern repeating in a years time, or sooner? Worse – what if demand from clients falls back down, leaving you with an expensive additional member of staff who is now under-utilised.

Gut Feel vs Fact Based Decisions

The decision on whether or not to bring in additional resource for your Service Desk should not be one made on gut feeling. When you’re busy, juggling lots of balls and with client demands ringing in your ears, the instinct is to bring in extra resource.

But if you measure the demand on your Service Desk on a continuous basis, then you’re in a much better position to analyse trends, predict future performance and ultimately, make fact-based decisions on what you need to do to meet client demand.

Analysing Trends

For instance, measuring the number of open tickets vs. closed tickets on an on-going basis will give you evidence as to whether the demand your clients are making on your Service Desk is actually growing – and if it is growing, whether there is an obvious and clear pattern to this growth, or whether it is just an unusual spike.

If, based on historical demand on your Service Desk, it is a spike – then logic dictates that you hold off on hiring any new resource, or only consider some additional temporary resource.

But if the trend is one of ever increasing client demand, then it may well be time to hire some new resource.

Conclusion

Adding resource to your Service Desk team is not a measure to be taken lightly. Hiring staff is time consuming, can distract key members of your team away from other important work, and can be very costly.

By building simple metrics around the demands placed on your MSP’s Service Desk today, you will give yourself the opportunity to analyse trends and make fact-based decisions tomorrow – decisions that could save you a lot of time and money.

photo credit: michaeljzealot via photopin cc

• WeTransfer – Free and easy way to send files of up to 2GB. No registration required. Uses an innovative ad-supported model.
• DropSync - Keep your Android Smartphone/Tablet in sync with your Dropbox. Full two-way sync.
• One Page CRM - Simple contact management system which uses GTD philosophy, focusing on one thing – the sales process.

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit! Have a great weekend! 

photo credit: Two Big Paws via photopin cc

Both I and nearly all of the clients I work with in an MSP coaching capacity are in Coventry this week for the CompTIA UK Channel Community event and the CRN Channel Partner Connect event the day after.

Seeing the opportunity to bring everyone together under one roof, I organised the first “World Domination Summit” (well, it sounds more interesting than “Business Networking“, right?) on the evening before the conferences, inviting my clients and a some selected industry thought leaders together in a room.

The agenda? Get to know one another. Share with the group your story, your business, your area of expertise, your biggest successes of late, and the challenges that are keeping you up of a night.

The Results

In conversation afterwards, I found that everyone in the room connected with at least one other person that they definitely saw the potential to do business with directly. In many cases, they had multiple such conversations.

What’s more, I heard a recurring theme in the feedback that everyone had a greater appreciation that their own struggles in business were not unique. The room featured businesses from a one-man-band up to multi-million pound turnover established Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) – many had the same challenges that are common, regardless of the size of your business. It can be reassuring to know you’re not alone.

Why you should build a Community for your own clients

My business is working with IT Solution Providers and MSP’s. By connecting them and making them aware of their areas of speciality and expertise, I hope to help foster collaboration and strategic alliances that will help them grow their business and widen their client services.

At my own client get-together there were Google Apps specialists talking with Microsoft Server specialists. Experts in Audio Visual equipment talking to experts in the Education sector. MSP’s specialising in Satellite Broadband talking to MSP’s who cited rural connectivity issues as their clients greatest challenge. All businesses that can benefit from knowing where to turn if their own clients ask them for expertise outside their core competencies.

But I believe the principle works for any business. If you are an MSP yourself, by bringing together even a subset of your clients to get to know one another and discuss business, they will each build valuable new relationships, and in turn this will strengthen their own relationship with you.

Invite your clients to network

You can start small. Most of us attend business networking events regularly. Why not invite two of your like-minded clients to join you at the next event? As well as getting to know one another, you’ll have an opportunity to introduce them to others in your wider business community.

As you become more comfortable doing this, give some thought to those of your clients who work in similar industries. Estate Agents may benefit from meeting Facilities Managers. Plumbers may benefit from meeting Electricians. The list goes on. Once you start to think about it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t connect more of your clients sooner.

Be The Connector

As the great author Bob Burg says in his book The Go-Giver - try to “Be the connector” and introduce clients you know to one another.

It’s a great way of adding considerable value to your clients, and they’ll remember you for it.

My experience with Three has been mostly positive, with good customer service (albeit through an offshore call centre with sometimes difficult to understand Indian accents) and good service, matched with some of the most competitive pricing for a voice and data network.

Three network coverage inside buildings

Unfortunately, of all the UK mobile networks, Three has the poorest coverage inside buildings. This isn’t normally an issue when I’m in a City, such as at home in Birmingham, but when I’m in a more rural location with poorer network coverage I often don’t get a mobile signal at all.

Such is the case when I’m at my home away from home in Lowton in Cheshire. I’ve blogged before about my experiment in finding free Wi-Fi in a rural location and this lack of coverage applies to the mobile networks – I only tend to get a mobile signal in one room within my house, an upstairs bedroom, making it a frustrating experience to try to make and receive calls.

Putting my geek hat on, I started investigating ways to improve my mobile signal when indoors.

Mobile Phone Repeaters

Having consulted the Ofcom Site Finder web-site I determined my nearest Three mobile phone base station mast was less than 1/2 mile away from my house.

There are plenty of web-sites offering mobile phone repeater units. The principle is simple. You install a small repeater unit, which catches the weak mobile phone signal through an external antennae, amplifies and boosts the signal, and then distributes this signal through a second antennae which allows you to receive a strong mobile signal inside your home or office.

The Three UK networks works on the 2100MHZ signal band, so I bought a 3G 2100MHZ Mobile Phone Signal Repeater Booster from Mobile Repeater Shop and tested it in a variety of locations within my house, all to no avail. My mobile signal wasn’t boosted in the slightest.

Whether I’m missing out on something required to make the system work (I have e-mailed Mobile Repeater Shop for advice, but never received a response) or whether the system is a cheap Chinese piece of rubbish remains to be seen.

For anyone considering buying a mobile phone signal booster, I’d urge you to check out the PC Pro web-site story warning about the legality of mobile repeaters. The unit I bought was sold as “CE Approved”, but when it arrived the unit bore no such stamp, leaving me to wonder about the legality of the unit. It’s unlikely I’d get a knock at the door from Ofcom, but I’d prefer to stay within the letter of the law regardless.

Trying to obtain a Three Home Signal

My next step was to investigate the Three Home Signal device. The device is a Femtocell unit, which in layman’s terms means that it plugs into your Broadband Internet, creates a short-range base station to cover your home or office with a strong mobile signal, and transfers any calls, SMS or data from your mobile phone via the Internet. In a nutshell, you carry on using your mobile phone as normal but in order to compensate for the weak signal from your local mobile phone mast, you use a sort of Voice-over-IP system to make and receive calls.

The Home Signal is not available to buy “off the shelf” so I telephoned Three to explain my lack of signal and to enquire about the Home Signal device, and had to spend some considerable time speaking to a very pleasant lady in Three Technical Support in India who did some troubleshooting – asking questions about my handset, whether I could receive a signal outside, etc. I was told there was a problem with the Three network mast in my area that was being worked on. I explained that I’d experienced the poor signal for 2 years or more, so this was unlikely to be the issue.

At the end of the call I was promised a call back within 48 hours from Second Line Support to investigate further.

Later that same day, Second Line Support called me and worked though some more troubleshooting questions. A little frustrating, as I knew the issue was signal related, not handset related, but I understand why they need to ask the questions.

A third call later, and the Second Line Support engineer agreed that sending me a Three Home Signal device would likely help. The cost was £50, and the device was shipped out for next day delivery.

Setting up the Three Home Signal

Sure enough, the Home Signal arrived the next day. A small device with a signal LED that flashes Red or Green to advise you on status, you plug the Home Signal into your Broadband Router via Ethernet cable, plug in the power cable – and the unit does the rest.

There are setup instructions included, and Three provide an Home Signal setup video on-line too.

My first attempt to setup the Home Signal failed with the device flashing Red five times in succession – the Three Using Home Signal help page advised me this was because I needed to plug in a Smart Card underneath the unit – something that the setup instructions didn’t mention.

My second attempt saw the unit continuously flash green for an hour or more. I telephoned Three Home Signal support on 0800 358 4828 and was told that the Home Signal unit hadn’t been registered (another step missing from the instructions). 10 minutes later, Three Support had registered the unit, and advised me to power the device off and on again and then to wait while it connected to the Three network.

Unfortunately, after another hour the unit was still flashing a green light meaning it hadn’t connected. I used a paper clip to press and hold the units reset button, the LED flashed red, and then went back to a flashing green light. I waited, and waited…

Another ‘phone call to Three Home Signal Support, and they sent a remote reset to the device which caused it to reboot 3 times. On the third time, I saw a solid green light meaning all was well. I restarted my Smartphone and instead of no signal, I had a full 5 bars!

Using the Three Home Signal

There’s not a lot to say about using the Three Home Signal – it just sits in the corner and you use your mobile phone handset as normal, making and receiving calls and SMS with a strong signal.

In use, calls made and received had a slight “Satellite delay” (around 1 second) when talking, but nothing that was too distracting.

Walking outside the Home Signal range and then back into range seems to be seamless, in much the same way you walk between normal base stations outside.

SMS messages are sent and received via your handset as normal.

It seems a bit illogical to use your Three tariff data allowance to send 3G via your Broadband, so if you use Wi-Fi at home, leave that on.

Notes on the Three Home Signal

Some things to be aware of. The Home Signal is only for use at the address you register it at (and to ensure that if you dial emergency services on 999 then they know where you are) try to use it elsewhere and it likely won’t work.

The Home Signal will also only work with Three mobile handsets that have been registered with it (presumably to stop your neighbours nicking your signal and bandwidth). You can easily add up to 24 numbers with Three Home Signal via an on-line form that is processed within 24 hours.

The Home Signal will only work with four concurrent handsets at a time, and won’t boost signals from any other network, or non-registered handsets.

It doesn’t use much bandwidth, around 37mb for an hours call. Negligible, unless you’re on a metered Broadband plan.

Conclusion

It was a little bit of a pain to jump through the Three Technical Support hoops to buy a Three Home Signal rather than being able to buy one directly, but I understand that there are issues that prevent Three doing this.

Once I’d persuaded Three to send me a Home Signal, the setup was simple albeit frustrating. The setup instructions could do with updating to include minor but important points such as the need to insert the Smart Card and telephone Three to register the unit.

However, once the Home Signal was up and running it made a vast improvement – I can now use my Smartphone anywhere in the house without fear of missing calls.

I know Vodafone provide a similar Femtocell device in the UK called Sure Signal, and Verizon offer something similar for US customers too.

If you’re suffering with a poor mobile signal at home, it’s worth contacting your network to see if they offer something similar to help you as the Three Home Signal helped me.

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

• Tamsen Webster – expert in specialising how to tell the right story to the right people at the right time to drive business results.

• Mark Schaefer – globally-recognized speaker, educator, business consultant, author and owner of one of the top marketing blogs in the world.

• Mari Smith – renowned Social Media Thought Leader and one of the world’s foremost experts on Facebook marketing.

• Tom Webster – author and 20-year veteran of opinion, media and marketing research.

Not a bad line-up, huh?

The conference promises to be a social media master class from the brightest brains in the business, covering:-

• Facebook marketing
• Content creation
• Big data
• Foundational social media elements

I’m excited about the conference because it’s not only a chance to learn cutting edge Social Media marketing techniques, but unusually for these types of Conference, you’ll also get the chance to meet and network with the speakers and other attendees throughout the day too!

Th UK event takes place:-

• 11th June, 2013 – Cardiff

• 12th June, 2013 – Birmingham – *I’ll be attending & involved answering your questions during a panel session*

• 13th June, 2013 Manchester

EDIT, 12th May, 2013: Sadly the Birmingham and Manchester sessions have been cancelled.

Early Bird tickets are available at £99 plus fee, so get in quick before the tickets revert to full-price of £149 each!

For anyone who has been to one of these types of conference featuring this calibre of speakers – you’ll know that they usually cost a *lot* more, £99 being an absolute steal! Don’t hesitate to book your tickets and support this type of event coming to the UK!

If you’re going along to the Birmingham event, please let me know – it’d be great to say hello on the day!

There is an old phrase “What can be measured, can be managed”. Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) would be wise to create metrics within their business to measure themselves against – but should these Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) be measuring your businesses financial performance, Service Delivery or something else?

Eric Dosal is the CEO of Brightgauge, an tool that helps IT Solution Providers to measure and manage their business. Dosal has recently joined Brightgauge full-time after brokering the sale of his families MSP business, Florida based Compuquip, to Konica Minolta.

I chatted with Eric to discuss his background and the family business, and to talk about the metrics that should matter to MSP’s – with some surprising insights.

Do you want to know the MSP metrics that matter? Then watch (or listen to the audio only, if you prefer) to my chat with Eric Dosal.

You can find Eric Dosal on Twitter and Eric has very kindly also created a short white paper with more details on the points we covered in our discussion. You can download “Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs” Whitepaper for free.

TECHNICAL NOTE: If you’re having problems listening to audio here, disable any Ad-Blockers and make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash. If you’d like to download an MP3 audio copy of this interview to listen to away from your keyboard, then click the download button above or visit http://snd.sc/12OIFZh

• Spoon.net – Run Desktop applications with no installs. Useful to test new applications or to reduce the clutter on your PC. Thanks Matt Barton of Ostrich IT for the link!
• WorkAround.me – Find local jobs and workers in real-time. WorkAround.me is a location-based app which connects local candidates and employers
• LinkedInstinct – A free weekly surgery delivered by Michael De Groot of Staying Alive over Google Hangout, where Michael will help you create the best profile possible on LinkedIn. If you feel you aren’t making the most of LinkedIn (and most of us aren’t) then this free surgery will help.

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit! Have a great weekend! 

photo credit: Ksayer1 via photopin cc

• NeedTagger - NeedTagger uses natural language processing to identify customer engagement opportunities on Twitter that matter to your business. Let NeedTagger know about your business, and it will then monitor for and e-mail you with any opportunities.
• The Secret Weapon – A no-nonsense approach to personal productivity using Evernote and your e-mail client to follow the GTD time management philosophy. Thanks to Bruce Penson at ProDrive IT for the link!
• TOSDR.org – Do you ever read the Terms of Services (TOS) of software or web-sites? No, most of us don’t. TOSDR (Terms of Service, Didn’t Read…) rate and label the TOS on web-sites to help you understand what you are actually agreeing to!

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit! Have a great weekend!  photo credit: soundfromwayout via photopin cc

Quite apart from the technology involved in making a tool like Sanebox so useful to me though, is how Sanebox has allowed me to take a matter-of-fact view on the number and type of e-mails I receive – matter-of-fact because when it comes down to it, it’s made me realise that hardly any of the e-mail I get is important at all.

E-Mail is not for conversations

Last year I wrote about my experiment in using the Telephone instead of E-Mail and how it helped me to drastically reduce the number of e-mails I have to deal with.

E-Mail is useful for disseminating information. But nowadays the majority of us miss out on important stuff because we’re convinced that dealing with lots of e-mail and being busy is a standard operating procedure of successful people.

It isn’t.

Being productive is about getting things done. A year on from my experiment in using the telephone instead of e-mail, the quickest way to get more than 75% of the things I need to get done is by picking up the telephone and talking to somebody instead of e-mailing them.

As a general rule, if I receive an e-mail and I know I can reply to that e-mail with some information without expecting any follow-up – I’ll do it.

But take that rule and apply it to all the e-mails you receive – questions about products and services, enquiries about availability, requests for advice and guidance and more – and I’m guessing that, like me, you’ll find it quicker to pick up the telephone and call the person to close the loop instead of having a conversation with them over e-mail.

Dealing with non-important e-mails

Once you’ve used that rule to deal with important e-mails that require a response, you’re left with the rest of the e-mails you receive on a day-to-day basis. LinkedIn connection requests, Social Media invites, e-mail newsletters and the like.

The interesting thing I’ve found is – you begin to realise that hardly any of these messages are important.

I like to think I’ll read the e-mail newsletters I subscribe to – but I never do. Thanks to blogs and social media, I still manage to keep abreast of current events.

I’d like to respond to all the LinkedIn requests I receive – but I never do. Somehow, those people who are genuinely interested in connecting with me still find a way to.

If something is important, it’ll find it’s way onto my radar. If it’s not – it can safely be ignored. And if it can safely be ignored – what’s the point in receiving an e-mail about it in the first place?

My latest experiment

With this in mind, my latest experiment is to reduce the number of e-mails I get by half.

In March 2013, my Google Account Activity tells me I received a 1042 e-mails.

I’m going to try to get that figure down to around 500 e-mails a month or less and see if I’m still as productive and as profitable as before.

How about you? Is the volume of e-mail you receive important, or does it just make you feel important?

photo credit: epSos.de via photopin cc

Cool stuff I’ve found this week, ending 19th April, 2013:-

• The Open Photo Project – A photo application that lets you store your photos on Dropbox, Amazon S3 or in your garage! All your photos in one spot, wherever you’d like. Thanks Mike Hudson for the heads-up on this!
• QuotesCover – Turns any ordinary saying texts into a beautiful typography art picture for use on Pinterest, Facebook, Google Plus, E-Cards, Wallpapers, and more.
• LinkedIn Labs – A small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of LinkedIn. If you’re a LinkedIn user then you’ll find some very interesting tools here.

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit!

Have a great weekend!

photo credit: DVIDSHUB via photopin cc

Do you know how to measure the MSP metrics that matter?

There’s an old phrase that I’m very fond of “What can be measured can be managed”.

Measuring the progress of your IT Solution Provider or Managed Service Provider (MSP) business is a big step towards managing the growth of your business. Once you start measuring yourself against metrics within your business, you begin to make fact based decisions rather than decisions based on “gut feeling”.

Measuring things like your engineer utilisation rates, your client satisfaction, your ticket closure times, and importantly – your profitability – allows you to focus your attention within your business where it is needed most and make improvements that help your business grow.

Benchmarking your MSP business against your peers

Then, after you start measuring your performance internally, the urge rises to measure yourself against your peers. How are you doing compared to other MSP’s?

Every year the Service Intelligence team at Autotask undertake their annual IT Service Provider Benchmarking study – polling hundreds of IT service providers around the world to hear what they had to say about various aspects of their business.

This year, Autotask have created a free eBook sharing the results of the survey – and having downloaded my own copy, it makes interesting reading.

Free eBook: Metrics that Matter

You can download “Metrics That Matter: An Intelligent Approach for IT Service Providers” for free.

Grab a copy, take a look at what your peers are sharing- and then let me know about your own MSP business compared to others by answering this question – Is this you?

photo credit: David Paul Ohmer via photopin cc

But on the flip-side of the coin, ask any IT Consultant or MSP which business activity they struggle the most to master – and it’ll be sales.

If sales is important to your business, but you still find sales an uncomfortable or difficult process – then you will find my conversation with experienced IT sales professional Paul Lloyd of interest.

Paul made his first sale in the IT industry providing an Apple II with a bespoke delivery note system to a Coal Merchant. Since that time he’s worked at highly recognisable industry names such as ICL, Specialist Computer Centres and Fujitsu as well as a raft of US Tech Start-up companies.

In short, Paul is one of the most experienced IT sales professionals you’re ever likely to come across.

Paul now runs Treemount, a tactical marketing and lead production business that helps IT Solution Providers and MSP’s to win more business. You can find Paul on LinkedIn and Twitter.

In my chat with Paul, we discuss why so many MSP’s waste time chasing business they were never likely to win, how you can qualify business at each stage of the sales cycle, and we explore Paul’s system for minimising wasted time and maximising closed business.

Enjoy our chat!

Thank-you Paul for your time!

Did what Paul had to say strike a chord with you? What key takeaways did you receive that will affect the way you approach sales?

Please feel free to share with us!

TECHNICAL NOTE: If you’re having problems listening to audio here, disable any Ad-Blockers and make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash. If you’d like to download an MP3 audio copy of this interview to listen to away from your keyboard, then click the download button above or visit http://snd.sc/116XzZR

Cool stuff I’ve found this week, ending 12th April, 2013:-

• Yesware – A GMail plugin that allows you to sell more effectively from your inbox. Allows you to know if people have opened e-mails you’ve sent, what links they’ve clicked on, whether they’ve forwarded e-mails, and more. Thanks to Jakob Thusgaard of YourSales for the link!
• SimpleWa.sh – The Internet never forgets! Do you have status updates, photos or other digital tracks that you would prefer not to have shared with others? SimpleWash helps you hunt down all those little details that you might not want representing you on-line. It is free, and works for both Facebook and Twitter to highlight any dodgy updates.
• Mural.ly – Google Docs for Visual People.  Useful tool to allow you to collect together docs graphically, then think, imagine and discuss their ideas collaboratively. Worth checking out!

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit!

Have a great weekend!

This weeks photo is a shot of a mural I took from atop the High Line in New York City while on holiday. Thanks to Mike Judd of Enroute Networks for suggesting I visit the High Line, it was well worth the trip!

In the webcast, we’ll be focusing on building backup and backup disaster recovery (BDR) services into your IT Solution Provider business to help you to build one of the most important aspects of any Managed Service Provider (MSP) business – recurring revenue.

Advice for IT Companies on selling Backup Services

From the StorageCraft live webcast registration web-site (where you can find more webcasts to help your MSP practice):-

“Backups shouldn’t be about luck; they should be common practice, controlled and calculated; both for your customers as well as for your business’ bottom line.

Join expert MSP Richard Tubb in this special webcast to learn why it is vital for IT solution providers, such as yourself, to build recurring revenue services into your business.

During this webinar you will learn how you can generate recurring income through Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS), grow your business in a sustainable manner, all whilst solidifying your customer base.

Richard Tubb has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years, working at large corporations such as Ernst & Young and the NHS, as well as being the owner of an award winning IT MSP, providing outsourced IT solutions to small and medium sized businesses within the UK.

After selling his MSP business, Richard now works providing expert advice to help IT companies who want to grow their business in a scalable and sustainable way.

Don’t miss this special webinar!  Sign up today!”

Free registration for the Backup & BDR as a Service webinar is now open. I hope you can join us!

This weeks Friday Favourites is a “Alternatives to Google Tools” special. With the withdrawal of it’s Google Reader service, Google has made a lot of people nervous about which of their other free services they may pull next.

Here are some alternatives to Google tools that I’ve found for the week ending 29th March, 2013:-

• Feedly -  With Google announcing the retirement of the very popular Google Reader RSS service, there has been a scramble to find replacements. My favourite is Feedly, which is cross-platform and gorgeous in use. They also have a absolutely seamless migration process for existing Google Readers users.
• Mention – There are also rumours that Google will discontinue its Google Alerts service. Certainly, many users are finding Google Alerts less reliable than they were. Mention is a great alternative. Create alerts for your brand, your industry, your company, your name or your competitors and be informed in real-time about any mentions on the web.
• JoliDrive – Not a replacement for Google Drive, per se, but JoliDrive is a fantastic way to pull together all your various cloud storage solutions (including Google Drive, Dropbox, and even Facebook, Flickr and more) into a single dashboard. Thanks to Mike Hudson for recommending this great tool!

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit!

Have a great Easter weekend!

photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal via photopin cc

A focus on Consulting

With margins on hardware and software rapidly diminishing thanks to the surge in Cloud Computing, a large number of IT businesses are now focusing on providing consultative services to SMB clients. While it’s true that IT has changed with a much greater emphasis on consumer devices, it’s also true that SMB’s still want guidance from a trusted advisor – and that’s the role that MSP’s can focus on.

Service Intelligence

But with a an increased focus on providing consultative services, the time and effort associated with running essential IT business operations will need to evolve as well. MSP’s will need to adapt their business to meet the changing needs of the marketplace and deliver higher levels of service to their clients.

• If you are providing a flat-fee Managed Service contract to your clients – do you know where you are spending your time, and which client contracts are actually profitable?
• Do you know which of your engineers is most effective? The most effective engineer is often not the same to the engineer who logs the most time – do you know the difference?

The most effective way to answer these types of questions is through a concept becoming know as Service Intelligence. Put simply, Service Intelligence allows you to effectively measure your IT business performance, bring about efficiency, and as a result build an IT business that is both profitable and predictable in nature.

Free Whitepaper – Understanding the Changing Landscape for IT Services

To help IT Solution Providers take advantage of these opportunities, I’m flattered to have been asked to co-author a Whitepaper with Autotask CEO, Mark Cattini titled “Understanding the Changing Landscape for IT Services – A Guide for SMB IT Managed Service Providers and IT Solution Providers”.

The Whitepaper clearly lays out some of the new opportunities your IT Solution Provider business should be focusing on, and outlines the advantages that Service Intelligence can bring to you and your SMB clients.

You can download a free copy of the Whitepaper “Understanding the Changing Landscape for IT Services” now.

Webinar – the Changing Landscape for IT Services

To compliment the Whitepaper, Mark Cattini will also be hosting a free webinar on Thursday March 21st, 2013 at 3pm GMT (1100 EST) where he will be discussing the current global IT marketplace, primary influences affecting SMB technology consumption, and explaining the opportunity for ITSPs and MSPs.

If you’ve never seen Mark Cattini present before, then I strongly encourage you to register for the webinar – you’ll gain some invaluable free advice from one of the most experienced CEO’s in the business.

You can register for The Changing Landscape for IT Services webinar now.

Conclusion

The role of IT Solution Providers is changing, and sadly, many companies are in danger of being left behind by these changes – finding it increasingly difficult to win new business due to a lack appreciation of SMB client requirements, and unable to compete with those businesses who are leveraging service intelligence to deliver better, more efficient and more profitable service.

As the former owner of an MSP, I know all too well how easy it is to get caught up in the day-to-day running of the business and neglect to keep an eye on the changing landscape of the IT industry.

I’d therefore encourage you to make the time to educate yourself, download the Whitepaper, register for the webinar – and make sure you are ahead of the curve.

Cool stuff I’ve found this week, ending 15th March, 2013:-

• Bulkr – A desktop app to backup, browse & download photos & videos on Flickr.
• Summly – Pocket sized news aggregator for iPhone and iPad. Pulls together news stories from around the web in an easy to read format. Thanks to Karen Strunks for the link!
• Skillshare – Skillshare is a global community centred around creativity, collaboration and learning by doing. There are some fantastic bite-sized learning courses available on-line. I’ve started a “Learn to Program” coding course in March!

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit!

Have a great weekend!

photo credit: Menage a Moi via photopin cc

Those IT Solution Providers and Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) who have embraced Social Media know it can be a valuable way to have conversations with prospective clients, but a common challenge for MSP’s is making the time to consistently maintain their Social Media presence and grow their following.

In this free one-hour webinar, I’ll present some key tricks and tools that you can use to build and maintain a Social Media presence without having to spend all day in front of the keyboard!

Rich will also be talking about how to incorporate Social Media into your IT business Customer Relationship Management, and we will both also be answering your questions on Social Media strategies.

Register for Social Tools for MSP’s

You can now register for the Social Tools for MSP’s webinar, which takes place on Thursday April 11th, 2013 at 3pm GMT Damned Daylight Savings time! 4pm GMT (11am EST).

Registration is free and open to all, so I hope you will join us!

photo credit: L. Marie via photopin cc

This week I’ve been testing out Voice Recording software for Smartphones. Here’s my three favourite finds:-

• NetMemo Voice Recorder – Android App for recording Voice Memos. Press a button from your home screen, record your voice memo, then press again and a Netmemo will send you an e-mail containing an MP3. You can set up multiple icons on your home screen and configure NetMemo to send messages to different e-mail addresses (such as a personal assistant or virtual assistant, or even Evernote) at the push of button. Very useful for making notes when you are on the move.
• Instacorder – Instacorder for iOS is an easy way to take voice memos and have them e-mailed as sound files. Press and hold the big Instacorder record button, speak your message, then release the record button and Instacorder immediately e-mails your voice recording. Simple and effective.
• Google Now “Note to Self” – If you’re using Google Now on your Android Smartphone, you should be aware that you can tell it to leave a “Note to Self”. From within Google Now, simply say “Note to Self”, speak your message and Google will transcribe your voice into text that it emails to you.  Thanks to Andrew Bunner for the heads-up!

I use “Note to Self” on my Samsung Galaxy s3 Android Smartphone when I’m in quieter surroundings, but have found that it doesn’t cope well with background noise. I therefore also use both Instacorder and NetMemo on my iOS and Android devices respectively for when I’m out and about.

Do you have any cool content or tools to share with me? Why not e-mail me, Tweet me, or share with me on Google+ and I if I feature them in my blog you can be sure to give you credit!

Have a great weekend!

photo credit: Beverly & Pack via photopin cc