The mistakes Vendors make

At the end of this month I start a new chapter in my life - going on maternity leave and becoming a mum. Part of this process has been handing over the IT manager role to my relief person. We have loads of projects on the go for next year - including a CRM implementation, a VoIP roll out, a review of MFDs and a refresh of our dictation system. In between all that, we will be moving buildings. This, and also the handover itself, has meant that I have been spending a bit of time with various vendors lately. It's quite surprising, but many vendors make some really basic mistakes. Here's my list:

1. Not listening to the client
Very often you deal with a sales person who is so insistent on making a sale that they will blithely promise you that their product fits the criteria you need, when in fact it does not. They simply haven't listened. Vendors need to listen to clients and to realise that the client will know more about their business than they will. Of course, vendors should feel free to make suggestions on best practices etc. but if you don't listen to the client in the first place, they really won't be interest in what you have to say.

2. Handling redundancies & changes in staff badly
Many organisations are going through redundancies at the moment and IT services companies are no exception. Whenever a change is made an organised handover should be implemented as soon as possible. The IT grapevine (particularly in Brisbane) works fast and you are likely to hear about redundancies prior to the official announcements. Vendors need to stay ahead of the game and ensure that clients are taken care of, otherwise they will go somewhere else. This also applies to technical staff who may leave an organisation. Very often the reason that you use a particular company is because of that tech. Vendors need to act quickly to avoid the damage and assure their clients that they are well resourced. If they aren't well resourced, they need to be honest with their clients about this. If a client gets inferior service, they will move and they won't come back. If you are honest, you may still retain a client once the resource situation improves.

3. Getting behind on the paperwork (invoices, updates etc.)
Be on time with billing and provide break downs on each invoice. Some firms tend not to invoice for months and then invoice in large batches. This does not help your clients cash flow or their faith in your organisation abilities. Ensure that your client is up to date regarding the state of projects and budgets at regular, agreed intervals - this is so simple and so often ignored.

4. Stating that they will "align IT with the business" without thinking about what that will mean
Most vendors will tell you that their company will "align business strategies with IT" or some version of that buzz line. This is a good thing, but often its just something that is said for the sake of it. For this to work the IT team the vendor is working with needs to have a good understanding of the business strategy. Unfortunately this is always not the case. So unless you have access to someone who is thoroughly knowledgeable about the business itself, this isn't a promise you can fulfil. What some vendors try to do is then "make up" the business strategy - this is arrogant and completely outside the parameters of your role.

5. Over-contact / under-contact.
IT managers are busy. Particularly if responding to a tender, only contact them if you need information that has not been provided previously or cannot be located in documentation. If an IT team member says that they will contact you then honour that and don't keep ringing. This is most important if you don't already have a relationship with the IT manager. On the flipside, if you have an established relationship, ensure that this is nurtured. Organise catch ups as regularly as your client wants them to review projects and update them on new developments in the market. Be flexible with times - remember you need your client more than they need you.

6. Let go of the ego
If the client starts talking about something you haven't heard of - ask for it be explained. Don’t just assume that you know. This goes for IT managers as well. If a vendor talks about something you know little about, ask them to explain it. Pretending you know might save your ego, but it's not going to help your project and you aren't going to learn anything.

And my pet hate - if you are a cold calling sales person DO NOT leave a voice message asking the target to call you back. As a rule, I won't return unsolicited voice mail messages and I know many other IT managers do the same thing. We aren't being rude - we just don't have the time. Oh, and if you do happen to get through to us, don't get mad at us for having the audacity not to ring you back. I might hang up on you and I certainly won't buy anything from you.

What I want from a vendor is someone who listens, who is genuinely interested in being a business partner, who keeps me informed and gives excellent customer service.

3rd annual LawTech conference and awards

I have just come back from the 3rd annual LawTech conference and awards. Unfortunately, while we were short listed, CGW didn't take out the small-med firm IT team of the year award for a second year running. That honour went to Andersen Lawyers this year. However, there were no repeat winners and I'll take some comfort in that.
The conference was at Byron Bay and it was great to catch up with the other legal IT managers as well as a few of the vendors. One of the best things to come out these conferences is the networking you do with your peers. Through this I found out about a great Blackberry tool called Rove. This tool allows you to control your servers from your Blackberry - from checking services to actually restarting the machine. Check it out at: http://www.rovemobile.com/mobileadmin/overview/
The sessions were a mixed bag - some where very interesting and others missed the mark. The majority of attendees were from small - med firms whilst the content tended to be targeted at larger firms. For instance, Baker & McKenzie did a session on outsourcing, which was really inter sting but none of the attendees would be considering moving their help desk to India any time soon.
Peter Williams of Deloitte Digital spoke and as always, was very entertaining and challenging. Peter is a bit of web 2.0 Evangelist who promotes the use of tools such as Facebook and YouTube in the business context. We do allow the use of those sites during the lunch break or during business hours if there is a good reason. But we tend to find that it's the support staff who make the most use of this rather than the lawyers themselves.
Peter had a few great ideas from Deliotte such as a film festival competition submitted through YouTube and an employee referral program through Facebook.

Chassis v Stackables, HP v CISCO

I am at work (sob, sob on a Saturday night) upgrading our switch from some aging (ancient!) 3Comm boxes to a shiny new set of HP chassis. Ah, the beauty of tidy cables - is it odd to be excited about that - please refer to the pictures below!

This is actually the culmination of a very lengthy process which involved deciding stackable v chassis and HP v Cisco v NetGear. NetGear got left off the list pretty quickly - they make decent stackables for the edge, but I am just not comfortable having them at the core. In the end we decided on the HP ProCurve Chassis solution (3 chassis with a backup). I like the modular nature of chassis (perhaps this is the programmer background, but it just seems a much more elegant solution than the stackables). And of course, you have the advantage of the backplane speed and redundant modules.

The decision between CISCO and HP wasn't as easy. The thing that turned me off CISCO was the maintenance. You have to pay yearly maintenance in order to gain the latest software updates and to have access to support. HP offer a lifetime warranty on their chassis, with a guaranteed next day replacement of parts if anything goes awry. They also have access to software updates without paying a yearly fee.

In then end, it was this that really made it clear.I have talked to a few IT managers of law firms and many of them do use the HP solution - and have found it to be robust. Eventually CISCO will need to review their SmartNet as I can't imagine we are the only potential clients to have decided on HP because of the ongoing cost of ownership.

Now, the before and after photos, so that you can understand my excitement....

The mess before...

The tidy bliss after....

BTW - Thanks to those who have left comments recently!

TechEd - Day 3

Last day of TechEd and there were a few sleepy heads around - not sure if that was from brain fatigue or just garden variety after party fatigue.

The first session I attend was the The Hour of Power: 6 of the Best - Best of the Best in VS2008 which saw six presenters show their favourite parts of VS2008. I particularly found the debugging tips useful.

The panel session Web Futures - the next 18 months addressed what we can expect to see on the web in the next little while. There is a lot of talk about cloud computing - but at the end of the day I am not sure that corporates are going to trust the "cloud" with their data. There are still quite a few security and privacy concerns. It was asked whether touch technology would become a bigger part of the web in the next little while. The panel agreed it would, and one panel member thought that web cams and projectors would play a bigger part in the future. If the web cam interpreted gesture this could be quite natural.

Office Communications Server 2007 Security basically covered the architecture models for OCS plus the ports that need to be opened up to allow for OCS to work and why (there are quite a few).

Shh data mining works in Excel showed a SQL add in for Excel 2007 that allows data mining - looks pretty cool and I will be sure to check it out.

The last session was Upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2008: Notes from Early Adopters and Best Practices and I could only stay for a portion before I needed to leave for my flight. However, the upgrade path for 2000 to 2008 is supported, so we might bypass 2005 all together. He made the really good point that a number of users simply upgrade but then don't review their databases to see how they can actually take advantage of the new features.

All up, Tech Ed was very useful and I met some pretty cool people. I am always happily surprised by how up for a chat everyone is. Most of the time you need to make the first move and break the ice, but after that people are really keen to talk.

Being a woman at Tech Ed does come with some unique challenges, one of which is handling some pretty inane questions from bloke techs. For women at Tech Ed (herein WIT) I recommend the following responses to commonly asked question by slightly ignorant male techs (here in SIMT).
SIMT: So you work in IT?
WIT: Yes, do you?
Seriously, why else are you going to be a TechEd? I got asked this so many times.
SIMT: There aren't many women here, I guess guys are just better at technical stuff
WIT: Actually, I have managed both male and female programmers and I have found that the female ones consistently out perform the guys, in particular in the areas of understanding user needs and managing scope creep.
No word of lie, I actually had a guy say this to me.

However, there are several benefits to being a female at TechEd:

1. Despite being a conference of 3000+ people, you never have to line up for the bathroom.
2. You have huge novelty factor and pretty much any of the guys are keen for a chat.
3. Apparently you get more free stuff (I never do the kiosk trawl for freebies because if I give over my details I have to field sales calls for the next fortnight, but I have this on good authority)
4. At the Tech Ed party guys will willingly bring your drinks etc. and you never have to leave the dance floor (more applicable when party not held on site)
5. You don't have to worry as much about appearance - you could turn up in your PJs and Ugg boots and no one would blink an eye - Us girls definitely dress for other women, rather than the guys!
6. You can play XBox games, totally suck and the guys will still think your great for giving it a go - if you happen to excel then the guys think you are the hottest thing out.
8. If you happen to be single, you are never going to see so many men in one place (apart from maybe Mt Isa)

Til next year Tech Ed!

Tech Ed - Day 2

Party day! But more about that later. The first session I attended was 21st Century Networking by the ever entertaining Steve Riley. Suggested that we should approach all business applications like we do email - it's too important NOT to be available anywhere, anytime from any machine. He suggests a combincation of IPv6, IPsec, NAP, and group policy to build a replacement for VPN gateways.. His blog explains his step by step plan: http://blogs.technet.com/steriley/
Developing an Active Directory Disaster Recovery Plan was a little disappointing - I was expecting a technical how to on what to do if AD goes down, instead we got a session on DR planning and assessing risk.
I attended an MVP session on ADO.NET data services. Our developers are working on a project needing synchronisation and I thought this would be a good start. I felt a bit sorry for Angel, the awesome presenter. He had just two of us in the room to start with and both of us had blank looks as he explained JSON, ATOM and REST. The other guy was a systems admin and I realised how far behind I am in the developer world after not being in it for the past several years. However, the new EDM tools look very useful and make coding against databases much simpler. I then trotted off to a lab to exercise my new found knowledge and found the ADO.NET data services lab very useful (once I could get a development lab PC - they were popular!)
IE8 Application Compatibility - What Every Developer Needs to Know to Get Ready was very useful and gave some good tips about using meta tags in order to start using IE8 without having to ensure that all your pages are compatible. Basically you can tell each site or page which version of IE to render the page in. Go -on, download IE8 - I know you want to! - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx. (if you are on XP still, upgrade to SP3 first)
Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, formerly from Kidaro went over Microsoft's answer to VMWare VDI - I gotta say I am not convinced that they have caught up just yet. Also the desktop optimisation kit which contains the virtualisation product is only available to software assurance customers.
The party was held on site this year. I seem to always miss the Lunar Park, Movie World parties - whenever I have gone it's been the nightclub ones. This was kind of similar without the dancing or the free mixed drinks on offer (maybe a good thing!) The theme was carnival and the place was decked out like a 1930s fair complete with sideshow alley. I was thrilled to actually win on one of the games (getting balls into a bucket) and proudly showed off my prize - a sparkly pink cowboy hat. (We shall not talk of my lack of prowess at the pinball machine). There were also several boys (as there are at Tech Ed) who were similarly chuffed with their pink sparkly cowboy hats. Ah, techs - you will say one thing for 'em - they really don't care what other people think! Overhead: "What's the point of a party with 3000 guys and no chicks. They could have at least bussed in some strippers." Ladies, we have some way to go!

Corporate uses for iGoogle

I am not sure if I will be excommunicated from TechEd for blogging about the G-Word on a TechEd CommNet machine, but I have been meaning to post about iGoogle for a while now. A few of our lawyers have asked for a tool to manage RSS feeds. Outlook would seem the obvious choice, but with document management it's just way too busy in there. iGoogle provided a great solution for us and we are now looking at ways to incorporate a CGW themed iGoogle into our intranet. Google is a familiar interface for our lawyers and they find it easy to use. The tools like the meeting planner gadget, which allows them to easily plan meetings with overseas attendees, have also proved popular.

"Geek" Girls

I felt that I needed to explain my position against attaching the word "Geek" to every women focused group in IT. Now, a few years back when I was programming full time I wore that geek badge very proudly and I know lots of other women in IT do too - and that's cool - I understand that. But I can be technically great and not feel that I need to call myself a "Geek." I personally love fashion and art and whenever I tell anyone I work in IT they tend to do a double-take. When we talk to girls in schools I don't want to just appeal to the quiet, perhaps socially awkward girl who excels at Maths & Sciences. I want to appeal to the dreamer at the back whose life is about art and music. I want to appeal to the overachiever at the front that excels at both sport and school but feels that with her guaranteed OP 1 she should go into medicine or law. I want to appeal to the slightly rebellious girl who isn't sure what she wants to do, but knows it will need to change all the time to be exciting for her. I feel strongly that if you talk to a group of a young women and only present this "geek" personality you will alienate more than half the room. I get that "Geek Girls" etc. is fun and cute and tongue in cheek, but we just need to avoid creating a stereo-type that will ultimately defeat the purpose of many of those groups - to attract more girls into IT.

Tech Ed - Day 1

I attended four sessions today as well as the women in IT luncheon and the ask the experts dinner. Relational Engine SQL Server 2008 Improvements was an interesting topic, but unfortunately the presenter lost quite a few of us - not because the concepts were too difficult to understand but they weren't presented clearly. However, the new merge capability will be useful for our developers. Merge allows you to compare new data with existing data in a table. If a portion of the data exists you can choose one option (e.g. update) and if the data doesn't exist you can choose another path (e.g. insert). The art and science behind creating a great user experience was a great session with Deep Zoom providing some very cool visuals. The basic message there was simplify the functionality in your applications. Unify Your Communications! was presented by Eileen Brown, and was both useful and incredibly entertaining. Eileen relied on a live demo of office round table where we got to meet some of her team in the UK plus their laundry. She also used the following to demonstrate unified comms - check it out:

How to get Social in the Office with Office talked social networking using the Microsoft tools. They are obviously trying very hard to be leaders in this market but I am still not sure why you would pay for some of these tools when there is so much available for free. Microsoft has obviously conceded this and joined the open source universe with http://www.codeplex.com/ . The women in technology lunch was great - there are more than 6 of us! It should have been at least half an hour longer as there was a lot to talk about. The one thing that concerned me was the continued promotion of "Geek" girls. As I have blogged before, I think that this approach alienates quite a number of girls that would be interested in IT if the "geek" idea wasn't part of the promotion. Again, the focus was on maths and science, which ignores the holistic nature of the IT profession. Girls that are a great at art and design are needed by the IT industry just as much as those with more traditional technical skills.

Tech Ed 2008

I am at Tech 2008 and have just attended the opening party which was above all things, blokey. Picture this - around 700 people, mostly male, mulling around, drinking beers and checking out some pretty cool new technology as well as some pretty old technology by way of classic arcade games. In sharp contrast to PacMan and Space Invaders, a Guitar Hero competition saw some very impressive hand-eye co-ordination. I am looking forward to attending a good variety of sessions, mainly focussing on development streams and unified comms. Tomorrow they are also hosting a women in IT luncheon which will be interesting, considering I think I spotted around 6 other women tonight. Looking forward to the party on Thursday night, although sadly I will have to leave the champagne drinking to those 6 other ladies.

The Data Centre continued....

After thinking about the business pros and cons for outsourcing the data centre, I started to collect some pricing. It's become very clear that the only way that outsourcing makes sense is if you have several offices - otherwise data outsourcing is simply cost prohibitive (even compared the rent in Brisbane city). So we will be keeping our data centre in house and I am looking forward to having my "toys" nearby.

Outsourcing the data centre - pros and cons

Next year our firm moves to new premises in a building currently being constructed, which means the IT team has a challenging and exciting project ahead.
As we are utilising an integrated fit out, decisions around the data room need to be made within the space of a few weeks.
Inevitably, the issue of outsourcing our data centre has come up.
Historically, we have kept our servers in house and there is a certain level of comfort that we derive from that.
However, we are a law firm - IT is not our central service offering so I am keeping an open mind about whether outsourcing the data centre is for us.
There are two models we are considering, co-location, where we still own the equipment and just house it remotely with a dedicated organisation and true outsourcing where we simply "rent" server space.
I found a conversation on Tech Republic very helpful in this area: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11179-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=188756&start=0
An interesting thing to note is that outsourcing/in-sourcing is a cyclical trend with pendulum currently swinging back in the in-source space.
What has become clear to me through researching our options is that outsourcing will only work if your data centre provider is truly a business partner who understands your needs. From this kind of relationship innovation can grow. Many outsourcing projects appear to have failed due the lack of flexibility and agility compared to administrating servers in house.
Another point is that outsourcing may not necessarily save you money in the long run if your current IT team is running the system well and within budget.
However, as city space becomes rarer and rarer and rents continue to rise, companies do need ask themselves if housing servers is the best use of square metres. An off-site dedicated facility will undoubtedly have better cooling, power and security than you can provide in a city high rise. There are number of issues that I have not yet resolved in my mind:
1. Introduction of critical point of failure in your link back to the offsite facility.
2. How to maintain proprietary products that may need maintenance at a server level by third parties.
3. How agile can outsourcing be? Am I prepare to wait several weeks for changes to be made?
4. How will this mind shift affect the partners (the owners of the business) and IT team.
I am not discounting out-sourcing, but at the moment I haven’t fully realised the business case for it.

IT Strategy and Law Firms

I have read a few articles lately discounting the role of IT in law firms and whether IT's role can even be strategic. Some of these articles have come from vendors obviously wanted to push themselves as the "real" IT experts and others (more disturbingly) from IT managers and CIOs within law firms.
To my way of thinking any law firm with a hope of being succesful must have an overall vision and strategy for attaining that vision. It is then up to the workgroups and departments that comprise a firm to align their strategy with that vision. In our firm each department (marketing, HR, finance and IT) are involved with annual business planning and strategy sessions. This ensures that our corporate service team are able to support the work group within their own strategic plans. In IT I see our role as dual, one to provide the support the workgroups need to achieve their plans and second to look at how IT can provide our firm with a competitive advantage. Some argue that IT cannot be used to gain that competitive advantage because every law firm really operates from the same level playing field -Document Management, Practice Management etc. are fairly standard. However, there are always new and exciting technologies to take advantage of and use to promote any firm. IT is more than just keeping the lights on - although you cannot deny the importance of tactical IT operations. IT is generally a group of people with excellent process skills that are utilised accross the whole firm in a way other team members are not. That's a potent combination that can definitely be used strategically.

Training

Training is a funny beast - everyone agrees in job interviews and performance reviews that it is important. Companies with great training programs are promoted as great employers, but when the rubber hits the road and it's time to do the training, the attitude can change very quickly. Particularly in law firms where the billable hour is king, it can be very difficult to convince team members that training is necessary.

A few things we have tried are:

• Make sure that the benefit of the training and the scope of training are clearly understood. If you can give team members a sense of their ROI they will understand the importance of the training.
• Offer training in a variety of formats at a variety of times. People learn in different ways, so it's important to cater for all styles of learning - not just auditory.
• Make training as interactive as possible through the use of workshops
• Try to get other lawyers in the team to promote the training, rather than just the management groups.

With regards to training on technology, we try to build applications that are easy to use and intuitive as possible - if an application needs loads of training to be useful then I think there is something wrong with the design of the application.

Another exciting development in training is the concept of "nano-training" - breaking up training into small bite sized chunks that can be easily fitted into a quiet time at work, using online tools to do so.

Anything that diverts time away from the billable hour is a difficult sell, but by being flexible about training you get the best results.

Getting girls into IT

We live in a time of talent shortage and every industry is competing to attract the best and brightest. It's been a matter of fact that for a long time technology has ceased to attract the attention of young women. As a female in IT I can vouch for it being an exciting and satsifying career path. Yet the number of women enrolling in IT at uni is dwindling (and when I was there a few years back it was me and five other girls, so there must be one lone lady sitting in lecture theatres wondering where the sisterhood has gone). Articles on how to get girls into IT focus on encouraging young women into science and math. And while that's admirable, I don't see how that exclusively leads to a career in IT. I think it enforces a fairly dangerous stereotype. It ignores the creative and artistic side of technology. Technology is pervasive and you only have to see how girls interact communicate with one another to realise that they do love technology - they just don't associate their texting, FaceBook and MySpace-ing with a career in IT. My question for the young ladies at school now is - what tech product are you going to create that will completely alter my world - that's the kind of question that gets people excited.

Social Networking & Law Firms

What is the value of online social networking to law firms? What are the risks in allowing access, or disallowing access amongst team members?

These are a few of the questions we've been discussing lately at CGW.

It's rare these days to open a newspaper or magazine without some reference to Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, MySpace & a host of other online networking tools. Whether the article bemoans wasted productivity on Facebook or welcomes the tools a facility like LinkedIn provides, it's at the forefront of our social conciousness.

There are two sides to the social networking issue, the first is on the people side - if our team members want to communicate with their friends and colleagues online using tools like MySpace and this is important to them, shouldn't we allow this? We think so, but we realise it is also important to ensure that the business is protected. So we allow access to sites during lunch times and before and after work. We have a CGW group on Facebook and we encourage current team members and Alumni to join up. It allows us to learn a little bit more about the people we work with.

On the other side is how we can use social networking to actually promote our firm. Marketing is hard work and online tools like LinkedIn make it that little bit easier to manage our contacts.

Social networks are just another tool we use as people to communicate with one another. In a business that's all about relationships, that can only be a good thing.