TubbBlog

Since the first day I opened the virtual doors for business here at Netlink IT, we’ve always looked to partnerships with fellow technology companies to enable us to provide greater value to our clients. Partnering and collaborating with peers and other like-minded businesses has always felt natural to me, and I’ve never cared for the old school attitude of keeping so-called competitors as far away from your own business as possible. I’ve always believed there is enough clients for everyone!

In the early days of the business and being a typical “one man band”, collaboration meant actively involving myself within the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Community – writing a blog, attending user group meetings, building relationships with other Small Business IT providers, and offering advice from my limited experiences where possible, but mostly keeping my ears open and listening to experienced individuals within our Community who had faced the same challenges I was about to deal with. Acting upon their generous advice made growing a business just that little bit easier!

It also meant looking for Strategic Alliances – keeping eyes and ears open for opportunities within our client base wherein the client might need a service or product that we didn’t offer, but who we had a technology partner we could confidently refer them on to. Before long, those Strategic Alliance partners were doing the same thing at their clients and referring work back our way too.

As the business grew and I started to face up to the reality that Richard Tubb alone couldn’t work 24x7x365, I turned to some of these trusted partnerships I’d built and we worked together to solve mutual problems – issues such as sickness and holidays started becoming manageable instead of impossible, working with clients in geographical areas outside the standard became logistically possible, and those larger projects we’d previously shied away from as being “too big” started to look possible to tackle. As well as growth through taking on staff, our business naturally evolved to the stage where we treat our trusted partners very much like we would an employee – with induction programs, training plans and shared opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Peer partnership was taken to the next level last year when Netlink IT became a part of HTG – the Heartlands Technology Group. HTG is an organisation built on collaboration between trusted partners, and has both accelerated our own growth and helped us build new and valuable relationships with others.

I was reminded of just how far we’d come along thanks to the partnerships we’ve nurtured during a recent large project we collaborated on with Aparion IT, an fellow IT Consultancy based in Nottingham run by my old friend and colleague, Neil Wykes. Aparion are an experienced IT provider with a number of members of staff. They had recently won a large project based overseas that was keeping them very busy, but had come across another equally large opportunity within a large multi-national Transport company operating within the UK that they were under-resourced to tackle immediately, but loathe to pass up on as an opportunity. Neil got on the ‘phone to us and asked if we’d be interested in partnering up to help deliver a solution. Partnering up in this way is always a big step, as you’re basically asking someone else to represent you to your client, and I’m grateful Neil had enough trust in Netlink IT to place his trust in us that way.

The project was a large IT Infrastructure refresh, and involved re-locating a number of servers and network equipment from a Data centre near London to a new location in Birmingham, the replacement and refresh of a number of services such as e-mail, firewall, Citrix services, VPN and remote connectivity, and biggest of all, the refresh of Desktop Operating Systems on nearly 200 PC’s and delivery of new servers at approximately 13 locations around the UK. Oh yes, and there was a strict 30-day deadline for the work to be completed…

As well as offering our own members of staff time and energy to the project, it became quickly obvious that we needed more resource and expertise to complete the task, and so we specifically utilised the relationships we’d built up over the years at Netlink IT to enable us to call in the right people. In every case, whether we needed a resource based on expertise, location, or both, we knew exactly who to call and had no hesitation in picking up the ‘phone to the best people – and to me that shows just how important and rewarding having strong ongoing relationships with trusted partners are to us at Netlink IT.

The first place we turned for assistance was to Rob Savage of RobSavage.com – one of those very trusted partners I’ve already spoken about. Rob is a Business Consultant with lots of experience within Project Management and Citrix deployment, and we already treat him like “one of the team” here at Netlink IT. Rob began to tackle the mountain of planning required and was the definite “Man of the Match” of this large project!

We also needed more on-the-ground staff for those various UK site visits, and so we brought on-board Mick Davies of MAD Computer Solutions, another of those partners we have a long term relationship with and who, like Rob, is simply “one of the team” here at Netlink IT. Additionally, we turned to fellow Microsoft SBSC Paul Dadge of Stafford based PC Paramedic Solutions for some hard work and very very long hours from Paul and his colleagues, and we also had support from Tim Long of Tigra Networks, a Microsoft SBSC based in Wales – a part of the world where we needed experienced cover such as the type Microsoft MVP Tim is able to offer!

Then we highlighted the requirement for an unflappable cool head to look after things in the East Midlands, and Rob Franklin of JPT Solutions excelled our clients expectations with his quality service delivery in that part of the country.

Finally, we had a special requirement for some high calibre service delivery in the centre of London, and so turned to fellow Heartlands Technology Group member Raja Pagadala of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, The Final Step. Raja’s staff have a reputation as the best in the business when it comes to exceeding client expectations in the bustling English capital, and they certainly deserve that reputation based on our experiences of working with them.

I can’t thank the guys involved enough for their efforts – they worked exceptionally long hours over many days, including one particular bank holiday weekend when I’m sure they’d all have preferred to be in a beer garden somewhere relaxing. However through persistence and professionalism, the work got done and the client was ecstatic with the results.

So that’s a complete IT Infrastructure refresh, include a dozen or more new servers and 200+ desktop PC’s, at 13+ sites across the UK – all work completed within 30 days. I’m guessing even one of the massive worldwide IT Consultancies that are out there would think twice about that sort of job!

Aparion IT now have a client who have huge faith in them to deliver, whatever the size of the project, and all the partners involved in delivering this project, including Netlink IT, have a very strong relationship built on trust and experience working together that they can leverage for future opportunities between them all.

All of this work was delivered on the back of partnerships built between companies delivering similar services that many would traditionally look upon as competitors who shouldn’t, or couldn’t, work together.

I personally think it’s the perfect example of how partnerships and collaboration can work at the SMB level and I’m pleased to have been a big part of it!

As I’ve mentioned before, Netlink IT have been fortunate enough to be selected to be a part of the Microsoft Windows 7 Ignite program, wherein we have partnered with Microsoft to deliver their latest operating system, Windows 7, both internally to our own staff and also to a number of our clients, additionally providing support and guidance to all involved in the run up to Octobers Windows 7 final release.

On Monday some staff and a video production team from Microsoft in Seattle visited our offices in Weoley Castle, Birmingham to film a number of video Case Studies around our experiences with Windows 7. We were asked to share thoughts on the impact Windows 7 has had on our productivity, our ability to do business efficiently, and the partnerships within our business. On Tuesday the crew visited two of our clients in the Birmingham area to ask similar questions and record footage, and to speak to our staff who weren’t available on the first day (we still had a business to run whilst we were being filmed!).

We’re now running 100% Windows 7 internally here at Netlink IT, and are real fans of the new Operating System, so talking about how positive our experience with Windows 7 has been felt natural as we’re really sold on it internally. As I’ve said to anyone who has asked about Windows 7, simply “It just works”.

As for the filming process - all I’ve got to say is… wow! I’m glad I work in IT and not video production! The amount of equipment involved in shooting an hour or so worth of video footage is simply amazing (our office manager Sharon looked more than a little upset when our desks started getting moved around and equipment tossed to one side to make way for cameras, lights and other equipment) and the patience of the production staff is second to none. Filming our individual videos was both nerve-wracking and tiring – those lights are really hot, and after a while you simply start to lose concentration and begin to mumble and bumble – but bless the Director and Camera Engineers, they don’t laugh, they don’t tease, they just help you to record the piece again properly. It really didn’t help that I developed man-flu over the weekend so was coughing and spluttering under the hot lights throughout filming (I got my excuses in earlier you see) – Sharon later told me she knew I wasn’t myself because I was talking more rubbish than normal. Thanks Sharon.

The first part of the shoot was at our small offices, a converted residential flat where the production team struggled to fit in equipment but where we eventually recorded stock footage (which I understand is called B-Roll) of us typing, making phone-calls and going about “daily office life”, all of which will be used in post-production.  We then moved on to The Hyatt hotel in Birmingham in the afternoon to record individual video Case Studies overlooking Birmingham City Centre.

Throughout the first day we recorded snippets of footage using a Flip-HD handheld digital camcorder. Here’s a few short clips of what we recorded (I offer no guarantees of how interesting these clips will be, or not!)

I understand that the Microsoft team had already recorded something similar with a US Partner based in New Jersey, USA and are travelling on to Prague, Lyon and Paris to record three other European partners after leaving England. Let’s hope as the only British partner filmed, we represented the UK admirably!

We didn’t get a lot of real-world Netlink IT work done between us all in the two days filming, but it was a great experience which we thoroughly enjoyed. The Microsoft film crew were a real pleasure to work with, and I’m sure they’ll edit the footage to make us rank amateurs look professional by the time the finished video’s are made available publically. I understand the videos themselves will be used in a variety of of areas, such as on the web, at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this year (which I’ve also been fortunate enough to be asked to speak at as part of a panel discussing the IT Community) and in other publicity elsewhere.

Fame at last! However, just remember (in my case – it strangely didn’t seem to affect the other people being filmed so badly) that the camera adds 100, no, 150lbs to every shot…

One of the accusations levelled at Symantec (ok, let’s totally ignore it’s Norton Anti-Virus range for a minute here…) from IT business owners within the SMB Community is that engaging with them as a supplier can be far more difficult than it really should be.

I’ve previously written about the very welcome steps James Baker at Symantec has made towards working with their SMB Partners, for which he should be applauded, but one of the suggestions I’ve put to James and his colleague Barnaby during beer fuelled geek discussions in the past is that unlike say, Microsoft, it’s fair to say that Symantec really don’t have too many of their staff blogging and engaging directly with partners.

Blogging is such a great way of opening up a means of conversation between partners and large vendors, that I always thought Symantec were missing out on a trick here.

So I was really pleased to hear through James and Barnaby that Gareth Fraser-King of the EMEA Product Marketing Team at Symantec is now writing a blog entitled “The BE-Line”, a blog about Backup Exec and Backup Exec System Recovery.

You can find “The BE-Line” at http://www.thebeline.eu/

Netlink IT uses both Backup Exec and BESR heavily both at our client sites and internally, so we’ll be following this blog with interest! Thanks to Gareth and his colleagues for making it happen!

Being a techie (which is more than likely if you’re reading this blog) do you ever overlook the simple solutions?

It occurred to me this morning that one very simple step that we took as a company a few months ago has made life much easier for both us and our clients.

Like many IT service companies, we prefer all requests for Support to come through a single point – in this case our free phone Helpdesk telephone number. Calls made this way can be prioritised, have triage run on them and get assigned to the best person to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We can resolve the most incoming support issues in the fastest possible time. We win, the clients win.

But no matter how many times you tell your client the benefits of this approach, more often than not (especially in the case of decision makers) they will simply take the route they find most familiar – that is to pick up their phone and dial the Mobile Phone number of the engineer they are most familiar with. One of two things then happens:-

1. The engineer involved gets interrupted from whatever job he’s currently working on, takes the call, tries to help the client on the ‘phone but is flustered because he’s already working on another clients job, and eventually ends up with two clients unhappy because they aren’t the focus of attention.

2. The engineer involved sends the call to voicemail, and vows to himself to pick the message up later. He is so engrossed in his work, he forgets to return that call, and the client who left the message gets irritated that they’ve not been responded to quickly enough. OR the engineer is simply off sick or on holiday, so the call goes to voicemail and gets ignored for a day or more. Same result but intensified – VERY irritated client!

If you’re a one-man-band, being both the business owner AND engineer, the above problem is probably very familiar to you!

We suffered with this problem at Netlink IT, and here’s how we resolved it.

• We turned off voicemail on our mobile phones, instead re-directing all busy/unavailable calls to the 24-hour Helpdesk number. Engineers are now told to send any calls from clients directly to busy and not be interrupted when working.
• We printed stickers advising clients of the Helpdesk number and stuck them at every client site on all PC’s, Laptop’s, Monitors, Printers – in fact, anything IT related at all.

Guess what? Nearly all calls now go through to the Helpdesk directly, and those few clients who still insist on calling engineers mobiles directly soon realise that it’s faster for them to simply call the Helpdesk directly too.

A simple solution!

What niggling issues have you experienced recently that were solved simply? Leave a comment with them, I’m sure there’s something to be learnt!

A quick note of congratulations to the two new Microsoft SBSC PAL’s (Partner Area Leads) for the UK for 2009/2010, Andy Trish of NCI Technologies, and AMITPRO’s very own Steve Wright of BMS. Great appointments from Microsoft to two noted Community figures – which can only mean good things for the UK SBSC Community in the year to come!

Andy (pictured right) is immediately making himself busy by hosting a Live Meeting on Windows Small Business Server 2008 Configuration this Thursday. Full details below:-

“Are you prepared for the SBS 2008 Configuration exam 70-653? If you haven’t already taken it and you are looking for study guidance then join your peers in the first of a series of Microsoft Live Meetings where SBS MVP Andy Trish will be giving an overview of the features you’ll need to learn and guidance on exam taking for those that haven’t yet experienced Microsoft testing before.

The live meetings will be intensive so be prepared to answer questions thrown at you and you’ll be given homework to prepare for the next one with the intention of all candidates being able to complete the live meetings and take their exams prior to the end of June.  The cost of attendance is free however if you don’t have a voucher the exam cost will need to be funded by yourself but as Andy says, this is a great investment you are making in your future both for you and your customers.

Exam 70-653 will be one of a choice of exams required to be SBSC in the upcoming changes Microsoft are making in the Partner Community so get out your notepads and join in. The first event is Thursday 28^th of May at 3:30 and is due to last 1.5 hours

The registration link is https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/0000000379_116/Registration.aspx?pageName=9jp66cq70v4t53q2”

Having come away from an SBS Migration training day held this past Saturday, led by Microsoft’s own Dave Overton (pictured right), and held exclusively for members of our local Microsoft Partner User Group, AMITPRO, I thought it would be a good time to briefly re-iterate three of the values we’ve found in engaging with our peers and becoming part of our local user group over the past two years or more:-

1. Why re-invent the wheel? Every problem you’ll face as a business owner or technician will likely have already been met and solved by one of your peers – doesn’t it make sense to learn from others rather than isolate yourself?
2. There are hundreds of vendors with thousands of products out there – you could spend all day, every day researching, via White Papers, reviews and magazine articles, their latest and greatest offerings. Or you could visit your local user group each month and hear directly from your peers about what works, what doesn’t, and most months actually meet the vendors directly to discuss their offerings.
3. Ever come across a project job you were under resourced to tackle alone? Are you a “one man band” or similar and can’t remember the last time you took a day off, or worry about what you’ll do if you’re off sick and unable to work? Wouldn’t it be nice to build relationships with your peers that would help you tackle this situation?

So if you’ve not visited your local user group recently, I’d encourage you to pop along and get involved. At worst you’ll have an evening spent talking shop with some fellow business owners and technicians over a pint! If you’re not sure where your local user group is based or who to ask for more details, drop me a note and I’ll hook you up with the right person, or check out Emily Lambert’s UK SBSC blog for more details.

My own local user group, AMITPRO, which covers the Midlands area and beyond, is meeting this coming Tuesday 12th May, 17:30 at our regular venue of the Arden Hotel, Solihull. The agenda (thanks to group lead, Steve Wright) is as follows:-“

“This month we have 2 sessions, first off we have Sally Ross who is SMB Channel Development Manager for Citrix. Sally will be presenting on how to Extend SBS with Citrix's SMB remote access offering including:

· No certification required

· Includes TS CALs

· Wizard Driven

Citrix isn’t just for the big boys and Sally is going to tell us why! Sally will be accompanied by Kathryn Whyte who is a Citrix and Microsoft Product Sales Specialist from Ingram Micro.

Second up is our very own Andy Parkes who is demoing Microsoft Infopath. For those that don’t know what Infopath is check out:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/infopath/HA101656341033.aspx

Looks like being an interesting and informative evening! See you all on the 12^th May, Arden Hotel. 5PM for a 5:30 kick off.”

If you’re interested in coming along for the first time, and I can tell you that there are at least a couple of other first-timers attending this month, then do feel free! If you’re like me and worry about not knowing anyone when you turn up, then just drop me an e-mail before hand and I’ll introduce you to the gang when you arrive. :-)

Look forward to seeing you there!

One of the big lessons I took from HTG Summit in Dallas, TX this week was that we, as IT providers, need to be stepping up our Sales and Marketing activities – more so given the current economic climate. Therefore I’ll be attending the following Microsoft Partner event when it comes to Birmingham.

Are you a Microsoft Partner? Is there a danger you have your nose too much into your current workload to be looking to the future (as I so very very often see) or are you actively taking advantage of these training opportunities through your biggest supplier partner in Microsoft?

If you’re attending the Birmingham event, drop me a note and I’ll see you there!

***

Free regional events focussing on how to make the most of every sale

Rev up your Revenue on the Road

Dear Partner,
Are you looking to maximise every deal that you work on?
Do you know how to increase your sales pipeline and close sales opportunities more quickly?

Microsoft invites you to a new sales opportunity training day for resellers that focuses on exactly these issues. The sales training will take you through the process of targeting the right prospects, opening up conversations with customers by matching customer pain points to your value, creating more opportunity from every deal, closing the deal more quickly and effectively and how to action this when back in the office with your sales people.

We appreciate that business opportunities don't just land on your plate. That's why we've developed this session specifically to help you get the most from every deal – providing you with the information you need to recommend or add to sales; speed up your ability to bring deals into your business; and ensure you always sell the right solutions to meet your customers' individual pain points.

Sales Directors and Sales Managers of resellers.

We have also launched our brand-new online sales training. This modular training delivery is designed to provide easy-to-consume sales training for your telesales and field sales teams – ensuring your entire business is ideally placed to capitalise fully on every opportunity.
Register today

Click on the following location and use your invitation code to secure your place:

Edinburgh: 14^th May                             Invitation Code: B94DA2

Phone Number: 0870 166 6680 ref: 3227

Birmingham: 19^th May                          Invitation Code: D962D2

Phone Number: 0870 166 6670 ref: 3639

London Victoria: 4^th June                      Invitation Code: 973ABF

Phone Number: 0870 166 6680 ref: 3226

Leeds: 16^th June  Invitation Code: 2B900A

Phone Number: 0870 166 6670 ref: 3683

9:15am
Registration and coffee

9:45am
Welcome

9:55am
Who survives an economic downturn?

10:15am
How to identify and attract your best customers, followed by coffee

11:20am
Accelerating your way off the grid

12:00pm
How does it stack up?

12:45pm
Q&A, followed by lunch

1:30pm
Driving your sales forward

1:55pm
Turning the budget conversation around

2:30pm
Tools to help you close deals, followed by coffee

3.30pm
Practical ways to deliver revenue growth

4:15pm
The next logical step

4:30pm – 5.00pm
Q&A, summary and close

So this is going to be my laziest blog post ever.

I’m currently in Dallas, TX for the latest Heartlands Technology Group (HTG) meeting – Netlink IT are a part of HTG11, the UK and Ireland group, and our group is meeting here along with all the other HTG Worldwide groups.

Since becoming a HTG member last year, HTG has a massive positive influence on both my business and me as an individual. Because of this, I mention HTG a lot during conversations with peers, suppliers and friends, and so I get asked “What is HTG?” and “What happens at HTG meetings?” a lot.

This blog post was going to explain what we do at a HTG meeting, but then my fellow HTG member, Karl Palachuk, went and wrote about exactly the same subject. Frankly, I couldn’t explain things any better than Karl – so if you want to know what HTG is or what happens at HTG Group meetings… go read Karl’s blog post.

There you go, laziest blog post I’ve ever written! :-)

At the start of last week, on my way to Houston, TX for some important business (ahem), I took the opportunity to stop off at and visit Washington, DC for a couple of days with the idea of visiting some folks I speak to frequently during the course of a regular business week – fellow HTG member and facilitator of HTG11, Dave Sobel of Evolvetech, and Naseem Saab, owner of Results Software. Both Dave and Naseem took time out of their busy schedules to show me around the sites of Washington, DC and introduce me to their teams, and I had a great time whilst in town. Thanks guys!

I also had opportunity to speak at length with the guys at Results Software about how Netlink IT and Results Software can create more opportunities within UK around the Results CRM product, which we’re a big fan of and have been reselling within the UK for the past 12 months or more. If you’ve not taken the opportunity to look at Results CRM, you’re missing out – feel free to drop me a line and I can give you a heads-up on how we’ve generated business using Results CRM, and how it might be a good fit for other markets too.

Now a while back Dave Sobel put me in touch with Jeremy Epstein, a former Microsoft employee who now runs “Never Stop Marketing”, helping clients utilise Community driven marketing. Jeremy writes a great blog that I’ve been following for a few weeks now. Dave mentioned that his wife, Sharon, was attending an event that Jeremy was putting on an event in DC on the Tuesday night I was in town, and so I dropped Jeremy an e-mail to see if a Brit would be welcome at his WOM Slam II event (WOM = Word of Mouth). Jeremy encouraged me to come along, and I in turn mentioned this to Naseem at Results Software, and he and his colleague Kevin also attended. An instant vindication of the power of Word of Mouth marketing that Jeremy mentioned to the folks who attended during the night!

WOM Slam II was held at Mie N Yu, a beautiful restaurant in Georgetown, and whilst I was initially stymied by the insane Washington, DC traffic (trust me, this place makes London look positively free-flowing) once I’d arrived I was made to feel really welcome by everyone else in attendance and had a great time!

The evening was based around the challenge of promoting JackBe, an Enterprise level Mash-up tool, using Word of Mouth marketing strategies. We were divided into six teams of four or five people, and over a lovely complimentary dinner we were given time to come up with a proposal that we had to pitch later on with the best idea, as decided by the guys at JackBe, being declared winner.

I was given the opportunity to deliver our teams pitch (as I told my fellow attendees at the time, at least if I made an arse of myself, they wouldn’t see me again!) and in my best Queens English suggested that people buy products or services based on specific pain they are experiencing. Based on that fact, JackBe should create a series of half a dozen or so mini Case-Studies showing how JackBe has solved some pains specific to certain targeted industry segments. These Case-Studies should be accessible via an easy to read URL that could be passed along via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and indeed, Word of Mouth! What’s more, the JackBe team should have business cards personalised with this specific industry info that they could use at Trade Shows and the like.

I’m pleased to say that our teams pitch won first prize, a $50 credit at Mie N Yu and the book “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” for each member of our team!

Now, attending Business Networking events is what I consider a necessary chore when you run a business. I’ll openly admit I don’t relish attending such events in the UK, and I find them a bit of a grind. However, the WOM Slam II event was something I thoroughly enjoyed, with some really great people who were warm, friendly and interesting. I wish I could attend more of the same! I think there’s an element of my opinion that  that Americans are generally warm people in my experience that contributed to my enjoyment of the event, plus the fact that the attendees of WOM Slam were just a great bunch of people. Perhaps I should move Netlink IT to the US to enjoy more of these events! :-)

If you’re a business within the Washington, DC area then I’d strongly encourage you to contact Jeremy and become a part of the next WOM Slam event. If, like me, you’re outside that region, then keep an eye on Jeremy’s blog and Twitter feed for some great info that is useful wherever you are in the world!

Courtesy of Dom Gill, here’s details of a Microsoft Partner Training Event taking place in Coventry next week. Places are still available at time of writing, but hurry, they’re going quickly!

To register or for more information, please go to https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/40088421 and then the EVENTS tab (bottom right hand of page).

How Microsoft Technologies can deliver ‘Simple Savvy Savings’

Date:     30^th March 2009

Venue:                 Trinity Expert Systems, The Oaks, Westwood Way, Westwood Business Park, Coventry CV4 8JB (http://www.tesl.com/TESL/About+us/Locations.htm)

Timings:               09:00 for 09:30 start to 12:30

Synopsis:             Aimed at Sales People, this session will equip Partners in demonstrating how a resource focused on specific projects, and in some cases select incremental investments in IT can help your customers drive business costs down and boost profitability, especially through the economic downturn.  We will cover three practice areas and several projects using Microsoft Technologies to yield the most tangible cost savings from the least amount of effort and investment. 

Please note: places are available on a first come, first served basis however if demand is high Microsoft might need to limit the number of places per organisation.  If this is the case they will look to run further sessions.