February, 2009

The economy may be bad, but prices of some items are falling too

With all the bad news we hear everyday about the economy; there is some good news too. Prices of some items and services are dropping:

1-oil prices are dropping
2-hardware are getting cheaper
3-we are getting more band width for less
4-communication are getting cheaper
5-small business can host their websites almost for free
6-traveling is easier then ever
7-real estate prices and rent are dropping

and the list can go on…..

So try to take advantage of these low prices, its not all bad

Why companies always under estimate the value of phone support?

When I started to work as technical support rep for a major PC manufacturer, I felt great responsibility of solving customers’ issues over the phone, I felt each customer was really important and I must resolve his or her issue to a complete satisfaction. But the management had a different objective, they waned me to calls, they wanted to make sure a take certain call per hour, it was not important to resolve customer issue as long as I can make the customer feel that he was giving great help.

In my job performance reviews, I used to get modest rating because I was spending so much time helping customers over the phone. I could never understand why companies won’t give support that was promised when the customer purchased the product, why companies treat phone support as a marketing tool while they should consider phone support as an obligation they must fulfill.

In the small company that I run, our customers are always our number one priority and its one of my top concerns each day that each customer who calls us get an excellent support over the phone.

Information Overload

Are you addicted to your in-box? Can you live one day without your cell phone? How often do you check your e-mails from home? Do you find it hard to hide? Can your boss track you even when you are on a vacation? Do you look up and search for everything online?

I think this is the typical profile of most office workers today. The availability of information and the ease of communications crated information overload for many people.

I am on the those people who must check his e-mail every few minutes, must check my cell phone for missed calls if I walked away from the phone for a bit and constantly browse the net for information.

How can you handle this information overload or the urge to go online? I am trying to train myself on setting up limited time each day for e-mail check, I would not check my e-mail each time I am free, but I will only check it at a certain time each day, I would not have my cell phone with my 24hrs and I would go online each time I come across something I don’t know.

These seem to be simple rules to follow, but hard to do actually, I have been trying to such a long time to stick to them.

I write this article from my bed at 11PM, so I better practice what I preach.

Management Information Systems, a bit of history

In the early days of business applications programming, there was little interaction between programmers and other IT staff with the rest of the business units. The business people didn’t understand IT and IT folks didn’t understand the business process.

Business people wanted programmers to come up with the ultimate solution for their problems and programmers had hard time explaining to management what is possible and what is not, technically, possible. This created a gray area between management and IT.

The solution was to design a course of study where both IT and Management courses are taught. The idea was to turn-out future managers who start their carriers in IT and move up the corporate ladder to take managerial occupations. These managers will have backgrounds in both IT and business which will help bridge the gap in communications between the two units.

Today, increasing numbers of companies are requiring their IT managers to have business skills since IT is increasingly becoming an integral part of the business process.

Common sense management

We hear a lot about the need to “think out the box” strategy when facing uncommon problems. The problem with certain management styles theories is that they shield you from the reality. I am sure studying management has its great benefits and it’s a must for managers today, but I deal with many managers in my work everyday who are not in touch with their local environment.

Some managers insist on going by the book which really limit their scope and hinder their ability to seek creative solutions. In a rapidly changing world, things change faster then management ability to write new business procedures, common sense management should guide the manager to the right course of action.

What really differentiates a progressive company form an ordinary company is the ability of the first to move faster, using common sense will liberate your mind from the established procedures so you can think more freely.

Behavioral Management and process improvement

I am living in a region of the world where there is so much talk about change; they want to change almost every part of the society to compete in this era of globalization.

But these changes are not happening fast enough for two reasons:

1-The government is not committed 100%
2-The public wants to see change, but not willing to work for it

This same concept can be applied at the organizational level, process improvement will not be affective if there was no change in management style or there was no change in employees’ attitude toward change.

Since I started my current job, I have been struggling with managing change; management is not fully supporting change and employees not believing in change. Changing the old ways of doing things is the most difficult part of management.

In order for the process improvement to work, two things must happen:

1-Total commitment from management, who has the power to make things happen
2-Behavioral change at all levels of the organization

These two factors must go hand on hand, employees will not change for sake of change, there must be a strong bush from the upper management. Some organizations, and there are many of them, spend large sum of money on training only to find out there is no improvement on the business process and that is due to lack of management support.

The Issue with American “Date” Format

In the US, the Month always comes before the day, so, February 25-2009 would be written 3-25-2009. I am not aware of any other country that uses the same format; I don’t know what is the history behind it.

But using this date format could create serious problem when dealing with international customers. In my work outside of the US, we have to send various types of documents back to US companies and not knowing the exact due date on some document lead to serious performance issues.

Also some software developed in the US have the same issue. Currently I am using a vehicles maintenance software that I bought from a US Company and the date format in it is based on US standards, although I will continue using the software, I have to inform all users about the problem with date format.

In order for US software development companies to make their product more appealing to international customers, software development standards in the US must be aware of these small but important issues.

World’s Friendliest Countries and Relocation tips for Expats

At no time in human history the world has seen mass labor movements as we see it in the current years. In the past, a person would spend his life working for one or maybe two companies at the most and in his own home town. Now, a person may work for more than 5 companies in his life time and these companies could be located in various parts of the world.

We usually see surveys on what are the best travel destinations for vacations, but it’s not so common to see surveys on what the best countries for Expats or foreign workers.

See the link for Forbes Magazine survey on the world best countries for work.
 http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/relocat…

Also you can visit this site: http://expatexpert.com to download a PDF file on relocation tips for international workers.

Software Developers must look at the global market

“Think about a borderless market”, this what one Microsoft executive said upon establishing a new operation for Microsoft in Dubai. It’s true, we live in an increasingly borderless world, a product that once was designed for a particular market now can be marketed in other parts of the world.

What gave me the idea about this article is the problem I have been facing for quite sometimes finding a good CRM or HR software for my company. I am not looking for solutions provided by major software vendors; I just want something that can be used in the small business environment.

While doing on-line search, I found few good software but the problem was that most of these software were designed to work only in the US or most of their features were set for US work environment.

I tried to search the local market where I work now, Doha, Qatar, for good HR software that fits our business needs and I was very disappointed by the results, most of the software I found were either too expensive or were not well developed and lacked customer support.

I believe there is a huge market in the part of the world, Asia and the Arab world, for small business software, with little customization and localization, many business software that were developed for the US market can be sold in the part of the world.

10 Dollars laptop, can India do it?

On a news report by (AFP) on Feb 3-2009, India has unveiled plans to produce laptops costing only $10. Is it possible to build a reliable laptop for only $10? This initiative is taking by the Indian government to make higher education accessible to rural India.

It’s not clear from the report if the Indian government will financially back the project and absorbs the extra costs associated with making this laptop to make it available for the public for only $10.

If this laptop becomes reality, how it will affect the current computer industry? The prices of hardware are dropping rapidly but not to $10 per laptop. I tend to believe that this laptop will be produced by the Indian government for the sole purpose of making it available to the local students; it will not be produced as a competitive product to what is available in the market.

Regards of the outcome of this venture, it is certainly worth watching.