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!