Time to dot the ‘I’ and cross the ‘T’

Last year’s Symantec Global Security & Storage survey found 58 percent of small and medium businesses in New Zealand and Australia had experienced computer security breaches in the preceding 12 months; 40 percent of them cited lack of employee skills as the leading reason and 46 percent said they had no dedicated IT staff. Go figure.
When it comes to IT training and support too many businesses are neglecting to dot the ‘I’ and cross the ‘T’. Brett O’Riley, CEO, New Zealand Information and Communications Technology Group (NZICT), says that’s symptomatic of what they see as a challenge across the whole New Zealand economy. “There’s no doubt New Zealand companies are innovative and early adopters, but because many companies are small they don’t have the resources or the focus to capitalise on the investment they’ve made in technology.”
Training is frequently seen as a nice-to-have rather than an essential, and support is dealt with in-house, leading to what Maclean CEO, Chris Maclean, sees as “a waste of precious time and money”, as mundane work, rather than value-added activities, is carried out. “Time is spent on fire-fighting and dealing with issues as they occur, rather than pro-actively avoiding them in the first place.”
Buying the tools is only part of the equation; the people using those tools are hugely important. “You often see a huge investment in the purchase and installation of a new system but the implementation will fail to extend to end-user training, which in turn leads to the desired benefits of the change never being fully realised,” says Maclean. 
New technology should enable an organisation as a whole to benefit, but to become immediately more productive, staff need to be upskilled, says Shiree Hart, a knowledge consultant at Allfields, an ICT training and software development specialist. 
“Training should be well planned and job related, and focused on how someone will best use the features in their day-to-day job.” But that’s not where it ends. “Often staff need to be sold on the benefits, and that takes effort. Training needs to accentuate the benefits, and how using the new technology as instructed will make the employee’s life easier!”
Training is an important investment decision, adds Hart. “An organisation should expect a return on any training investment and the best expression of this is increased productivity.”

Challenging our skills deficiency
Increasing productivity through computer literacy is the thinking behind The Kiwi Computer Challenge which aims to have one million New Zealanders achieve an internationally recognised core computer certification by 2015, “and have fun doing it”, says Pam Martin, the driving force behind the initiative (see NZBusiness June ’10).
“The Challenge is about finding ways to motivate, sweet talk, cajole and prod New Zealanders into getting the internationally recognised IC3 (the Internet and Computer Core Certificate) certification. This is recognised by all our trading partners and will give us a clear benchmark for our core computer skills. What better way to show the world we are digitally capable?” (IC3 consists of three modules and is self-paced online training which, depending on the existing level of knowledge, takes around 40 hours to complete.)
Too many people regard themselves as ‘digitally capable’, when in fact they’re better described as “confident but not competent”, says Martin. Business owners, who may lack computer skills themselves, employ people – particularly younger workers – under the misapprehension they can use computers effectively when, in fact, this may not be the case. “They understand social media and the fun elements of technology but can’t always use email, Word or Excel, to work standards.
“It’s interesting that with the multi-million dollar industries that have arisen to help businesses set up and grow, there’s no reference to the need for basic computer skills before they start. What’s the point of a 24/7 website if you can’t process the orders that come from it?”
Martin launched the Challenge in April this year and says more than 52 companies had come on board by the end of September with a number of heavyweight organisations in the process of signing on. It’s a case of “watch this space” (www.kiwicomputerchallenge.co.nz).
The Kiwi Computer Challenge has the support of the NZICT, which has laid down its own challenge to business. They’re currently choosing finalists in a competition challenging the owners and managers of businesses with between five and 25 full-time employees, to consider how technology can assist their business. At stake is a prize worth up to $10,000 with the NZICT matching the winner’s investment, dollar-for-dollar, to that value.
The aim is to raise awareness around investment in technology for small and medium businesses by creating working case studies showcasing the practice behind the design of ICT projects, and the processes that follow, says Brett O’Riley. “We want to publicise the successes that are out there and make people aware of the fact that there are a lot of opportunities. We believe that a bit of planning and a bit of interaction can help businesses step change their performance and ultimately that’s going to benefit all of New Zealand.”
The winner, or winners, will be announced in December.
Penny Smith, of training providers Penny’s Worth, agrees that in too many cases confidence outweighs competence, “especially as there are so many versions of Microsoft Office!”
(Shiree Hart also makes that point. “Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 vary remarkably. Throw into the mix staff going from Windows XP to Windows Vista, or now Windows 7, and there’s a lot of change facing even the experienced end user.”)
Penny’s Worth specialises in training around MYOB and Xero and Smith says there’s often little understanding among employers of the capabilities or limitations of accounting software. But because it’s seen as critical, “there’s no room for error,” most people are prepared to pay for training to upskill, she says.
The choice of technology is something for a whole other article, but it’s worth noting the importance of asking the right questions when buying. “People need to really know what they’re looking for,” says NZICT’s O’Riley. Smith says they’ve often saved a client significant dollars by having them consider key points and make good business decisions around what it actually needed for their business. But it’s not just an issue for businesses, says O’Riley. “We, as an industry, need to take some responsibility for ensuring the right decisions are made. Anecdotal evidence suggests quite often during the sales cycle it will be the training that gets lopped off. That’s one investment that should be non-negotiable.”

The support factor
Hand in hand with proper IT training for a small or medium business is a well managed IT support programme that can minimise those frustrating downtimes caused by hardware malfunction – those times when it really is “the computer’s fault”.
“Computer systems by their complex nature will always experience issues from time to time, but these can be reduced significantly by regular maintenance and proactive management,” says Chris Maclean. (A recent New Zealand SMB Threat Survey they carried out with Symantec indicated 37 percent of those surveyed had a major computer systems failure in the last 12 months). “A planned approach to refreshing hardware of both servers and desktops and laptops, will also minimise the frequency of downtime.”
But Maclean says “the boring stuff” shouldn’t be left to a company’s IT manager. “With the change in technology and remote support tools, this is better outsourced to experts, leaving the IT manager to focus on value-added work and projects.” They need to concentrate on creating better user and customer experiences, such as ease, or otherwise, of interaction over the web, he says.
Knowing why you need a technical support team will make choosing the right one for the job easier. Support comes in “different flavours and packages”, and it’s important to find, and invest in, the mix that works best for your organisation, says Shiree Hart. “The technical focus for hardware and software support should be around responsiveness and anything server related – redundancy, offsite backups and disaster recovery. 24/7 support is not necessarily a cheap investment so make sure it’s what you need before triggering it.”
And, she says, for smaller organisations which are relying on internal support, processes need to be in place and tested. Hart advises not leaving it to just one individual. “Having at least two people with systems knowledge is vitally important.”
That’s an issue which also concerns Adam Dunkerley at Need a Nerd. “Who looks after the critical IT systems when the in-house IT person is on holiday or sick?”  He doesn’t believe it’s cost-effective for most smaller enterprises to have an in-house IT resource. “An SME owner needs to look for a sound IT company that provides pro-active support and advice and reacts quickly to faults.”
Most good IT companies provide maintenance contracts, says Dunkerley. “They can also install a small piece of software that monitors the business’s IT infrastructure 24/7 and sends messages to the support company if something has, or is, going wrong.” And, he says, while user error can cause issues, “most people know their limitations. Most faults result from poor maintenance, hardware failure and viruses or spyware.”
The best organisations have comprehensive support, and that extends to people on the phone, says Hart. “Well trained support staff can alleviate and prevent distressful situations occurring – they help, rather than making excuses for why things are not working.”
She says most large software providers also have 24/7 online knowledge bases accessible via a customer login.
For many business owners the cost of 24/7 support is a deterrent. Support providers respond by asking ‘what does downtime cost your business?’ It can be a major monthly expense, says Chris Maclean, but the thinking needs to shift away from the cost overhead, to one of insurance and prevention against the vastly more significant cost if there’s a problem. “According to our recent SMB Risk survey, 69 percent of small and medium businesses in New Zealand said an eight hour outage would cost them up to $10,000.” Ask for the cost to big business – following Virgin Blue’s widely reported September computer crash, Richard Branson could probably come up with a figure!