Computer Skills: Which Ones Your Staff Needs

Computer skills, especially more advanced ones, can be easily self-taught and shared among your staff. This article shows you what your clients are looking for in technical computer skills.
Don't worry too much if you lack advanced technical computer skills.  A lot of that can be remedied by just putting in a little bit of time each week in doing some self-study. In this article, you'll learn which computer skills are necessary to serve your sweet spot small business clients.

If It Works, Break It
You can do something as simple as getting a not-for-resale (NFR) copy of a product that you want to sell, install, and support and then working with the product in your lab. When you or one of your lead technicians or engineers has a spare half-hour to an hour, you can walk through the basic installations. Then, deliberately break the lab installations. Next, reinstall the software until you get more comfortable with the package.

Most of these products that you'll be installing for small businesses are very mature technologies. They're very wizard-driven, and at least for plain-vanilla configurations, they don't require tremendous levels of computer skills.

Installations Are Easier Now
Years ago, it was much more difficult to install the Novell small business suite or IBM equivalent, or the original 1997 Microsoft Small Business Server. But all of these companies, especially Microsoft, put a lot of money into making it easier for people who don't have advanced IT backgrounds and networking computer skills to install their small business server application suites. 

In terms of your technical computer skills to service sweet spot clients, your staff needs to:
1.    have good strong PC hardware skills
2.    be able to handle a peer-to-peer setup
3.    understand what TCP/IP is all about
4.    know what POP3 and SMTP are
5.    know how to work with basic SOHO routers

If your staff possesses the above skills, you're definitely at a good starting point to get started with at least the smaller sweet spot small businesses (10-20 PCs).

Share the knowledge among your employees
Make sure your staff members cross-train each other and you. This way, no one's ever “too knowledgeable” to the point where they can blackmail you, extract huge raises or huge bonuses, or walk away with your client base. You have to make sure your company's internal know-how or intellectual capital can't just get up and walk out the door to your biggest competitor.

The Bottom Line about Computer Skills
In this article you've learned about which technical computer skills are necessary to service your sweet spot clients.

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Remote IT Support Services - The Key To Growing Your Business!

Is your business wasting valuable time due to computer network issues? Do you need to know how leverage technology to increase your network performance and improve your bottom line? This article cuts to the chase to show you how remote IT support services can increase the efficiency and profitability of your business!

These days, nearly every company, both on and offline has a computer system of some type. It is nearly impossible to run an effective, successful business without one. But what do you do if your computer network isn't running properly, needs software installed, or simply crashes? We all know that time is money. If your network goes down, you can measure lost time in terms of $$. This is why every company needs to have access to Remote IT Support Services.

Remote IT support services is a custom made and effective solution for all types of firms, both-on-and-offline. It is a very efficient and cost effective way to get your computer network, or an individual desktop PC, up and running if there is ever a problem.

In today's wired world, remote support services are no longer an option. They are absolutely essential!

Remote IT Support Services: Key Offerings

With core remote support services, you can basically get two key offerings. they are:

1. Remote support Help Desk services

Rapid response remote help desk services ensures increased company production and effectiveness. Remote help desk services offer you one point of contact and can help reduce technology costs, which are often up to 50% of company overhead!

Help desk service specialists remotely diagnose IT problems in real time with the user, utilizing modern remote management facilities. They walk the user through basic troubleshooting techniques - often the problem can be fixed on the spot.

2. Remote Infrastructure Managed Services

Another aspect of remote IT support services is IT infrastructure and application services management. These services are performed by a skilled team with the use of advanced system, network monitoring and management tools.

You can get Remote IT infrastructure support from an experienced, trained, dedicated staff who monitor your IT infrastructure constantly and effectively. You must take care in selecting a service provider in order to get the most for your money in this area.

Benefits of Remote IT Support Services

With remote IT support services, you can expect to increase your productivity and efficiency. Instead of waiting for a service technician to come to your business location, your IT support company simply accesses your server by dialing in and then can either take control of your system, or navigate through it to accurately diagnose problems.

In most cases, software/hardware fixes and patches can be sent to your computer network remotely. For small businesses, many IT support firms offer a basic performance and monitoring package for network servers.

Remote IT support services offer you cost effectiveness and help you to focus on your core business, which is serving your customers. You can't do that if you are waiting for the IT guy to show up all the time.

Fast and accurate problem resolution augments customer satisfaction; that in turn increases customer loyalty, which ultimately impacts your company's bottom line.

Chris Meacham is an MCSE and Novell certified IT professional, with over 10 years’ experience. His company helps small businesses implement innovative IT solutions to increase network performance and efficiency. For immediate information on how to make your business more profitable through technology, visit:

http://www.nowitworks.com

IT Support: Where Do Larger Small and Medium Sized Businesses Get It?

IT Support in businesses larger than those in the Sweet Spot are provided by IT managers or small IT departments. Plan on becoming deeply niched to provide these size businesses IT support.

Big small businesses get their IT support, from an internal IT person, or a small IT department. Remember, a big/small business typically has 50 to 100 PCs doing anywhere from 5 million to 20 million dollars in U.S. annual revenue.

IT Support Sources for Big/Small Businesses

That's also where you start to see a full-fledged IT manager or director providing IT support. You might even see a small IT department.

In a lot of cases, you may see slightly bigger versions of the same types of people that show up in sweet spots and small businesses. But you will find fewer soloists and more small firms. You’ll also start to find more deeply niched specialists,

How To Be Successful in Big/Small Businesses

If you want to be successful in big/small businesses and larger, you can’t be the generalist. You need to pick a few things and get really, really deep into them.

The Profile of Medium Sized Businesses

If you get into medium sized businesses with more than 100 PCs, doing more than 20 million dollars in U.S. annual revenue, you’re going to see more IT departments. You're going to have even bigger versions of those same IT sources you saw with the sweet spot businesses.

Where Medium Sized Businesses Get Their IT Support

You'll also see even deeper specialists, and, and in those cases, both the big/small businesses and medium sized businesses, and the range in which you can go opens up quite a bit more, because they are paying for a deeply niched specialty.

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IT support: Areas of Responsibility with your Clients

IT support must cover areas including: training, security, disaster recovery, software testing and proactive maintenance. Developing a comprehensive strategic plan for your clients is the key to providing successful IT support.
Many different responsibilities are included in providing IT support to your clients. In this article, you'll learn which areas need to be a part of your comprehensive services.

Coordinating Telecommunications Solutions

With sweet spot clients, you'll probably end up coordinating your IT support with the local telephone company, whether it's a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) or ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier), to get a leased line. You'll research what kinds of connections are needed and even basic dial-up networking recommendations. Most IT support departments also end up coordinating tech support with ISPs for Internet access.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Inevitably, your firm is going to get involved in vertical industry-niched applications, whether you bring the vertical applications in, or your clients ask you to test the application out before they make a major IT investment. Your client will want your IT support firm to evaluate how the vertical application fits into their network.

Training the Guru or the Masses

Like it or not, your firm will get involved in training. Sometimes that training may be more formal end-user training where you take small groups aside and show the users a new application. Other times the training may be more informal with the internal guru-the one that everyone comes to with questions. By training the “guru”, the guru will be able to “train” others on the more routine matters (such as how to recover a lost toolbar or taskbar).

Count on the Inevitable Disaster

Your firm will also need to get involved in disaster recovery planning, checking out the data backup system, the antivirus software, the power protection and the security. Also don't forget proactive maintenance.

The Bottom Line about IT support
Your biggest value to your customers is in your problem solving and the strategic planning. You must be able to take everything clients have that's IT-related, put it down on paper, get it organized, figure out what needs to be done immediately and what can wait, how the immediate IT needs fit into the budget and other needs of the business.

Computer skills: Which ones do your competitors have?

Computer skills need to exist at a basic level to gain sweet spot clients. Learn which ones your competition likely has and what you need to have the necessary level of computer skills.

Computer skills are important for your virtual IT business. But with so many possible skills, which ones do you really need in your business? In this article, we'll address which computer skills your competitors may have so you know what you're up against.

Necessary Networking Platforms

Most of your competitors who are doing well with sweet spot clients know the following networking platforms:
·    Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS)
·    Novell Small Business Suite or just Novell NetWare
·    Linux (generally RedHat)
·    Mac OS

Some of the larger integrators in your markets that have several employees may go towards the higher end of this market. They'll start at about 25 to 50 PCs, and take on some larger small businesses where there are 50 to 100 systems. They also may take on some small, mid-size companies where there may be a range from 100 to 500 systems. These larger competitors will need to get involved in more sophisticated solutions than what you need to provide.

What Else Do Your Larger Competitors Have? 

Your larger competitors will usually have some more advanced expertise on:

o    Network Attached Storage (NAS)
o    Storage Attached Networks (SANs)
o    Complex security solutions
o    CheckPoint firewalls
o    Citrix Terminal Solutions
o    Higher end Wi-Fi solutions
o    Managed hardware

Remember though, such high-level advanced certifications are not critical until you start selling to a real IT manager at a larger small business.

What Do You Really Need?

For the sweet spot small businesses with 10 to 50 PCs, employing virtual IT staff that has one or two entry-level certifications and are working towards something like an MCSE is sufficient.

Solving Problems Makes Your Clients Happy

Usually your clients put more of a premium on problem-solving computer skills. Those clients want your company to know about their particular business industry and how you can apply IT to their business problems. That's what sweet spot clients tend to value even more strongly than pure technical computer skills and certifications. 

The Bottom Line about Computer Skills

In this article, you've been introduced to which ones are the necessary computer skills in your computer consulting business. computer skills in your computer consulting business.

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