Small Business Computer Consulting

When you are selling your services to sweet spot small businesses, keep in mind most will not understand the difference between certain IT certifications because you will not be selling to a real IT manager.  

Who is Investing in Your Services?

In certain industries and with specific types of businesses, you might be selling to real IT managers.  However, typically you will be pitching to a non-technical small business owner and someone that understands his/her own business but will probably not understand IT certifications and other IT issues.  

Because you will be selling services to non-technical individuals, they will not understand the difference between a CNA or a CNE, or between an MCT and MCSE IT certification.  Your IT certifications will not be critical.  

Begin at the Bottom with IT Certifications

If you really want to get IT certifications because you feel that not having them is preventing progress, get one or two entry-level certifications and work towards those that are more advanced.  Just don’t get too wrapped up in IT certifications, or you might lose potential clients.  

The Main Idea About IT Certifications

If you have already started your business but are not networking, following up or going out on sales calls, chances are you are missing a lot of potential business.  Don’t spend money on classes if you have no billable hours and nothing to back it up business development-wise.  Set your priorities before going after IT certifications to get the most out of your business.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

On May 17, 2007, leading company Agilysys, Inc. was awarded the 2006 IBM Retail Store Solutions (RSS) Solution Provider Excellence Award.  This award for solution providers is the highest RSS acknowledgement IBM presents.  Agilysys was one of only five award winners, chosen from 451 solution providers in North America.  

Vice president of sales for Agilysys Paul Civils expressed that he is honored his company has been recognized for its achievements among solution providers, particularly by a top company such as IBM.  

Those that win Solution Provider Excellence awards are presented with the awards for making great contributions as measured by revenue.  Solution providers receiving this honor have shown great leadership in the channel as marked by RSS revenue, achieved committed business targets with IBM RSS during the previous calendar year, successful promotion of IBM product offerings and their abilities to provide an excellent marketing and technical support team.  Solution providers that are recognized with this award must be Advanced or Premier level IBM partners.  

For more information on Agilysys and this story for solution providers, visit the attached link.

Created By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Your client relationships are critical to getting IT sales.  Your customer list and even your revenue are not as important as the quality of the long-term relationships you build with clients and customers.  Because your ideal clients will bring you perhaps in the six-figure range in terms of lifetime value, you would benefit from investing time in building the best relationships.  

Manage Customer Expectations

If you are in charge of IT sales at the beginning, you won’t have to worry about sending a different salesperson each time with customers and prospects and having to begin again each time.  Salespeople notoriously misrepresent the abilities of a company just to get to IT sales, a fact which becomes a problem later and makes the job of managing customer expectations very difficult.  Build a personal relationship with customers at the start of the IT sales process to prevent issues later on in your business.  

Train IT Sales Staff Yourself

While at the beginning of your business you will most likely be directly involved in the IT sales process, as this procedure becomes more routine – once you have five to ten solid clients that are generating a combined income of $5,000 – $15,000 monthly – you will probably consider bringing someone else with you to help with some sales calls.  Delegating responsibilities will become important as your business grows, and you should be involved directly in training your own IT sales staff to make sure you keep good relationships with clients and build a consistent reputation.  

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Sony’s computer business and electronics division is set to win over the industry this fiscal year with demand for bigger televisions and digital cameras on the rise.  A fall in component prices could increase profits, according to a representative from Sony.  

President and CEO of Sony and its computer business and electronics division says the company’s electronics sales increased seven percent in the last fiscal year, which ended in March.  The company boasts an 18 percent share of the U.S. consumer electronics sales.

Sony’s electronics unit has helped improve the company, which was hurt last year by the cost of launching its Playstation 3 gaming console as well as recalls of over 9 million laptop computers that was using its defective batteries.

Last month, the computer business and electronics arm seemingly was on its way to recovery, reporting a quarter loss but a forecast for a rise in annual profits thanks to flat-screen TVs and digital cameras.   

Sony will still have a challenge ahead as it tries to get profits from its movie studio and computer business in order to meet its profit goals.  Glasgow reported that one if its goals is to help new Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer achieve its four-to-five percent increase in profit in his third year.  Glasgow is confident that the fact that components of electronics are going down in price could help profit margins increase for the computer business and other areas of the electronics division.   

Sony also reports, in its computer business it is discussing a possible improvement to its Bravia Internet Video Link that allows new Sony televisions to use Internet video.  

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you currently have a full-time day job and are moonlighting as an IT consultant, you might be wondering how you can move into a job as a full-time IT consultant.  Think about the following rules and help yourself avoid the common issues that prevent IT consultants from transitioning into full-time, self-employed consulting.  

The First Rule:  No Assumptions

Many IT consultants that moonlight initially are so excited and taken by the idea that they can be self employed that they don’t plan appropriately.  Start off right by having no assumptions about what will and will not happen.  

The Second Rule:  Plan in Advance

Many moonlighting IT consultants want badly to become full-time consultants, but a lot of them will not make it because they do not plan ahead for the transition.  They hope it will happen, but they do not think about how and when the transition will happen.  

The Bottom Line

As a moonlighting IT consultant hoping to transition into full-time consulting, you need to plan ahead.  Don’t get stuck taking huge risks that make no sense or hiding because the task gets too overwhelming.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

At the TechEd 2007 conference for solution providers in Orlando, FL this week, ISV’s showed up to show their new products designed to accompany Microsoft’s latest products:  Exchange 2007; Windows Vista; Office 2007; SharePoint 2007 and SQL Server 2005.

The ISV’s applications for solution providers included e-mail backup and recovery and system management tools and workflow platforms, application virtualization and Web 2.0 products for .Net application development.  

The following vendors appeared at this solution providers conference:

1.    Double-Take Software.  This company showed its latest data protection and recovery platform for Exchange Server and SQL Server.  This platform features a new reporting center for data analysis and collection along with the ability to predict future protection situations.  It also recommends ways to prevent outages and ways to reduce recovery times and increase functionality.  

2.    AppAssure, of Reston, Virginia.  This company displayed its Replay for Exchange.  This new solution providers product features rollback for one message or a whole server.  The product uses block-level data protection to protect Exchange databases.  Quick volume recovery time (in minutes) along with search features for e-mail and legal documents make this product unique.  

3.    Captaris of Bellvue, WA.  This company demonstrated a new product to help manage workflow.  Workflow 6.5 works with Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office InfoPath 2007, Office Forms Server 2007, SQL Server 2005 Express and also gives more support for BizTalk Server 2006’s business rules.  This product also works with .Net Windows Workflow Foundation with a simulation that helps optimize performance.  

4.    Symantec, the Cupertino, CA giant.  This company showed solution providers an updated Altiris Virtualization Solution 2.1 that now supports Vista and has application streaming aided by Appstream.

5.    TNT Software.  This Vancouver, British Columbia company announced it had shipped ELM Enterprise Manager 5.0.  This real-time monitoring, alert, reporting and archiving product is for the Windows platform for small businesses.  The upgrade for solution providers offers audit support features and access to SQL Server along with a Database Archive Management System.  It has advanced monitoring features and a variety of bundled extras.   

6.    Quest Software.  This company announced to solution providers at the conference its Change Director for SQL Server.  The product enables enhanced monitoring of databases to help manage outages.  

7.    Strangeloop Networks of Vancouver.  AppScaler was presented by this company, which is a product that helps improve the performance of Web applications created with Microsoft’s ASP.Net system.  The application for solution providers will be released in September.  

8.    Falafel Software.  This San Jose, CA-based company introduced its Web 2.0 project management product ActiveFocus.  The product is made to help manage products during their life cycles.  

For more information on the latest solution providers conference and Windows-based products, visit the attached link.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Expertise with IT support comes in many levels.  What expertise does your IT support business need, and what skills do both you and your employees need to succeed?

Experts at Every Level

You will find experts at all different levels of IT support.  For example, in a big-enterprise IT company, you will find help desk technicians alongside senior systems managers and the CIO.  You will find a lot of different levels in between, but ideally each will be an expert within his/her own specialty.  

Your IT support contractors will also be different.  You will have some technicians that can deal with simple tasks like hard drive installation or a LAN adapter installation.  You will also have some people that can install simple P2P networks or dedicated servers.  You might also have an expert able to work with server-class firewalls or able to set up VPNs and other sophisticated technologies.  

People Skills are Critical

The most successful people in IT support are strong technically or strong in their skills working with people and selling.  Consultants great at both aspects are pretty rare.  

However, the best technicians and systems engineers have great people skills that will help them during a big project, such as installing a 10 – 25-node network.  When vendor products from many different companies are involved, a lot can go wrong.  Project management, therefore along with administrative management and account management skills are critical components of IT support.

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

The latest in network consulting news is Microsoft’s new branch, Windows Mobile that will compete for mobile customers from RIM and Symbian.  

The Enterprise Mobile Strategies report coming from the network consulting firm BRC said the capabilities of Microsoft’s mobile technologies will match and in some cases potentially exceed those of Linux, BlackBerry, Symbian and others.  BRC stated that as technologies evolve to combine personal computing with mobile devices, the number of available tools that can get corporate applications onto mobiles is what will help companies stay on top of the competition.  

Packages have already become available through Windows Mobile that allow users to access Lotus, some SAP offerings, Oracle CRM and Microsoft Office.  The availability of these products, according to the network consulting firm will encourage many corporations to go with Windows Mobile over other companies.

Symbian and BlackBerry will have to update systems if they want to compete with the ease Windows Mobile is set to provide with professional users.  The strength of RIM and Symbian has been personal information management and e-mail.  But without middleware solutions, they may lose business to Microsoft.   

RIM made an announcement in April that it would improve support for Windows Mobile-based devices on its website.  The software would allow devices from third-party manufacturers to use BlackBerry software applications, according to the network consulting firm BRC.  

Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit