IT management tips

This Sector of IT will remain strong

With layoffs affecting each industry, IT is no exception. IT had its share of layoffs, but one sector in IT remains strong. IT services which are directly related to the modern office functionality. Services such as (network setup, hardware repair and setup, phone systems setup, office application support, on-line or on the phone support, etc.)

These types of services are an integral part of any modern office setup; in fact they are part of many home offices setup. Imagine a day of your life where you can not have access to your e-mail or your LAN connection is not giving you access to the internet or to the rest of your office network, can you, as a business, afford it?

Big part of IT services became an integral part of our lives, they became a necessity, just like transportations or health care, we can’t afford a day without them.

I strongly believe that a need for a good technician will remain strong despite the economic ups and downs.

What is COBIT?

1. What is the purpose of COBIT?
The purpose of COBIT is to provide management and business process owners with an information technology (IT) governance model that helps in delivering value from IT and understanding and managing the risks associated with IT. COBIT helps bridge the gaps amongst business requirements, control needs and technical issues. It is a control model to meet the needs of IT governance and ensure the integrity of information and information systems.
2. Who is using COBIT?
COBIT is used globally by those who have the primary responsibilities for business processes and technology, those who depend on technology for relevant and reliable information, and those providing quality, reliability and control of information technology.

Can I use COBIT as a statement of criteria for specific audit conclusions?
Yes, basing the IT Assurance Guide firmly on the control objectives takes the auditor’s opinion out of the audit conclusion, replacing it with authoritative criteria. COBIT is based on more than 40 standards and best practices documents for information technology from standards-setting bodies (public and private) worldwide. These include documents from Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the United States. Because COBIT contains all pertinent worldwide standards identifiable at the time of publication, it is all-inclusive with respect to IT controls standards. As a result, COBIT can be used as an authoritative source reference document, providing IT controls criteria on audits.

The above information and more FAQ about COBIT can be found at:

 http://www.isaca.org/Content/NavigationM…

Batch processing and ActiveBatch 7.0

If you are a business manager or IT consultant, you know that there is not enough time, time is your biggest killer, so many tasks that need to be executed in the shortest possible time.

The concept of batch processing (in its simplest form) is to have a software program (script) run a task for you. For example: each morning you launch your web browser and navigate your way to your chosen financial broker website to get the latest activities on a stock, with batch processing, you can automate this daily activity so at certain hour of the day, you will have the stock(s) activities displayed on your screen or even e-mailed to you.

Batch processing is to automate repetitive tasks by writing scripts (codes.) In my early programming days, I had to write scripts to run tests on website, they idea was to have the script send thothands of page requests to a particular website, to simulate the actual users. Writing the script was time consuming and error prone.

Since that time, lots of improvement is being made in the automation of batch processing. Several software vendors are offering solutions to ease task creation under batch processing. One the vendors’ solutions that I had the privilege to review was Activebatch 7.0 by Advanced Systems Concepts. Using tele-conferning and web conferencing, Jim Manias from Advanced Systems Concepts, gave me a great overview of the new ActiveBatch 7.0 release.

On of the main features of ActiveBatch 7.0 (which I try to discuss more in the coming posts), is significantly reducing the need to write scripts, most of scripts writing is already done for you, you only have to chose the task and click.

In the next several posts, I will try to get into more details of ActiveBatch 7.0 features.

Do you need more certifications?

During economic slow down and uncertain job markets, many people try to go back to school to get more education or more certificates, its natural human reaction, people think if they are more qualified, they will have a better chance on securing jobs.

But during economic slow downs most companies are trying to cut costs, the problem is not that they have not-qualified labor force, the problem is that they cannot afford a big payroll.

Naturally, if you are better educated or hold more certificates, you will demand higher salary and that is exactly what the hiring managers don’t want to do during slow times. So the best strategy to follow during slow times is to lower your expectations, think of ways to be more creative and be flexible with your company.

Will you give up 10 percent of your pay to telecommute?

As gas prices and energy cost keep going up and as technology makes is possible to work from remote locations, will you be ready to give up portion of your pay if you can work from home?

Back in 1999, I had a job as web application tester, I had to commute about 45 min to work on each direction, besides the weekly meeting with software developers, my job was to sit in front of a computer all day long trying to crash the web applications our company was developing, there was no need for me to be in my office, I could take my work home and work from there, and only come to the office when there is a meeting. I asked my boss if it was ok for me to work from home and save me the daily trip I make to work, the idea seemed foreign to him and he said “no.”

Since than, I left my full time job and I started to work on contracts, my company office was my home office, I would conduct my business from home and from my cell phone, and only go to the client site only when needed. Working this way lowered my total take home pay each month, but it:

1- Made me feel more relaxed, I forgot when was the last time I had to drive through morning rush hour
2- Gave me a lot of time to do more social activities that many IT professionals only dream of
3- Made me love my job as IT consultant, when I had corporate job, I would count the minutes till is time to go home
4- Made me make better use of the current technology which makes working remotely possible

So what would you say, take a lower pay for more relaxed life-style?

Your most valuable employee, your secretary

Can your business ever run smoothly without your hard working, know it all secretary? I don’t know when is secretary’s week, but I am sure I will take my secretary to lunch on that week to show her/him how much I appreciate what they do.

Our company’s secretary is out sick today, hope her the best, and we can not find certain files and certain phone numbers. Since I joined my current company and was giving the job to re-organize the company, I have stressed over and over the need for good back up plan in case of an emergency.

Here are few steps you can take to minimize productivity loss while your secretary is out of the office:

1- Have a reliable filing system; this system must guide you to the location of all company’s file. The guide should be easy to understand and follow.
2- A complete phone list of all company’s employees, clients, vendors, etc.
3- A reliable phone and answering system that you can switch to in case there is no one to answer the phones.
4- If you are a small business, make sure all your employees know how the filing system works, how to use the phone system and how to access the phone list.

Some of the above step my sound elementary and you may think every business would already have such plans, but believe me I have seen many many businesses that have no filing system of any type.

Your secretary will always be one of the most valuable employees, if only for the warm and friendly greeting your clients hear over the phone, but while he/she is out, have a plan to keep the office run smoothly.

Do you turn off your computer at night?

As in IT consultant, I am sure you were asked this question many times “Should I turn my computer off at night or when I am not suing it or should I leave it on?”

I think the world is divided on this issue, some tech would tell you to turn if off and other would say, including myself, if you are a heavy computer user, never turn it off.

Turning the computer on and off each time would wear out its components, just like a car, if you turn it off each time you stop at the red light, you would harm the engine and other components.

But now, there is the issue of reducing energy use and green IT, is it better to turn off the computer when is not in use, or is it better to put it on standby mood or sleep mood? What would consume less energy? And if we have hundreds of computers, how much energy we would save verses how much tear and wear these computers would suffer for each start up procedure?

I don’t know the right answer, but I leave my laptop on most of the time, I still believe that power on procedure or start up takes a lot of energy to complete.

Few bad habits that kill small business

After graduation from college, most of the jobs that I worked at were with small businesses. I believe I have learned most of my skills in management and organization form working with small businesses.

Almost at every small business I worked at, I noticed the following few bad habits, that in some instances led to the closing of the business:

1- To save money, most small businesses start with not well trained staff
2- Working at small business, some staff members don’t understand that the benefit system at the small business is not like the one they can find at large corporations and many small business owners fail to explain this to the new hires
3- Many small business owners based their business plans on hope more than on facts
4- In order for the small business to survive, each employee will have to do more than his/her share of work, sometimes employees have to go out of their way to make things happen, but some employees don’t understand that and only want to do what they were hired to do
5- Many small businesses were started by successful engineers, IT professionals, investors, etc, but these individuals were not successful at running a business and eventually the business went down

These are the few bad habits or bad signs that I have seen at few small businesses that I worked at.

Templates from Microsoft for your small business

I am not a big fan of Microsoft office, but Microsoft owns the world as my professor used to say. Microsoft website is full of productivity tools that are available for free.

There are plenty of templates ready for use by small business owners, below is only a small list of what you can find at Microsoft site:

Business plan for startup business
Bank loan request for small business
Projected balance sheet
Personal financial statement
Four-year profit projection
Start-up expenses
Opening day balance sheet
Financial history and ratios
12 month profit and loss projection
12 month sales forecast
Competitive analysis

You can download these templates and many more at:

 http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templa…

Smart management not cheap management

As business managers, we all care about reducing costs and maximizing profit, we look for ways to acquire assets at the lowest possible cost. One of my clients who I do consulting work for have the habit of buying used supplies including computers. He gives me a lot of work trying to fix his network that runs on old used computers. I asked him many times why he keeps buying old computers while by spending few hundreds extra dollars he can get himself new computers? He said “I run an insurance company and most of the time my staff uses the computers only to fill forms online, I don’t need new computers with extra features that I will never use.”

I understand his reasoning, but I also understand that old machines will keep breaking and his maintenance bill will keep going up.

This client has many offices that I do network and computer maintenance work for, so one day I told him “lets start buying new computers for one of your offices and see how this will reduce your maintenance cost”, he agreed and we got new computers for that particular office, and the results amazed him, his maintenance and network support calls for that office went to almost zero, and he was able to recover the cost of the new computers from the saving he made by not losing work hours due to network down time and not having to pay for network troubleshooting.

At my current consulting job, we have the same problem, some off brand computers that breaks every few days and not reliable web hosting company for our e-mail services. Now again, I am starting to clean up this company and show the management how they can save by investing in good equipment and reliable services, even if the cost is bit high, but it will pay-off later.