New Contest for 2010

I’m offering prizes and rewards for the best business technology horror stories.

• Did you buy an off-the-shelf software application for your business that didn’t do precisely what you expected and ended up costing you time and money?
• Did you pay for a technology project (like a website, custom software, network server), and the vendor didn’t deliver exactly what you wanted?
• Did you buy an off-the-shelf program or custom-designed application that did what you thought you wanted it to do, but you ended up being its slave instead of making your company more efficient?

These are just a few of the scenarios that can lead to technology horror stories. I’m interested in all of them, and I’m particularly interested in writing about how to avoid them so that other businesses don’t have to keep making the same mistakes.

Here’s the deal. I’m planning a whole series of syndicated articles and blog posts on these topics. For each story I select to write about, I’ll include a link to your website (“dofollow” of course) and your name or company name. Eventually I’ll compile the articles and expand them into an ebook. Your links will be included in the book as well.

And for the very best story (in my judgment) there’s going to be a grand prize (drumroll, please) – three years of web hosting on a shared server with complete cPanel access, approximate value $240.00. Three second prize winners will each receive one year of hosting valued at $80.00.

Please understand that this is not a fiction writing contest. I’m interested in true stories about you, your business, or your employer’s business. You can change the names to protect the innocent (or guilty), but I’ll need your real contact information, not just for the link but also so I can verify that you’re an actual person and not making this up. Entertaining and humorous writing is appreciated but not mandatory.

That’s it. The contest is ongoing. I’ll be writing about your stories as they come in. The grand prize and second prizes will be awarded after the end of the year, in January, 2011.

To recap, here are the prizes:

• One grand prize, three years of web hosting valued at $240.00.
• Three second prizes, one year of web hosting valued at $80.00.
• Mention in this blog and in syndicated articles, including dofollow links, for each and every story that effectively illustrates the theme of “business technology horror story.”

Use this form to submit your business technology horror stories. Fields marked with * are required.

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If you were watching Saturday Night Live during the 1990s, you remember Jimmy Fallon’s hilarious sketches as “Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy.” If you weren’t watching or if you’d like a refresher, scroll down to where I’ve embedded an example from YouTube.

Nick Burns was the help desk guy from hell. He could help with your computer problems, but you had to pay the price of being insulted and made to feel stupid. After taking care of your difficulty, Nick would always finish by asking “Was that so hard?”

So why am I writing about Nick Burns today? Here’s why. I’m trying to differentiate what I do for my clients from what Nick does. Most people see the phrase “computer consultant” or “technology consultant” and they think of Nick, the guy from the help desk, the only one who knows how to keep the computers and the networks running smoothly. Maybe they think of someone with a kinder, gentler attitude than Nick’s, but they do think of someone who performs Nick’s role.

Well, that’s not me. Not only do I have a better attitude than Nick’s, I actually do something entirely different. I don’t man the help desk. I don’t configure the servers or run network cable. I don’t install Outlook and connect it to your email account. No, that’s not me.

What I do is to supply a role that’s missing in many small and medium businesses – informed executive oversight for the use and management of information technology. This is the CIO (Chief Information Officer) role or the I.T. Director role, and many smaller companies don’t have such a person in their executive line-up.

In fact, most smaller businesses have little in-house expertise in I.T. There’s no expert oversight, no viable process for defining requirements, and in the end no way for the company to know whether or not a software or hardware vendor has really delivered the best solution for the business.

Yet they’re probably right not to have that expertise in house. They don’t have enough need for a full-time executive devoted that. But that doesn’t mean that they have no need for the role to be performed occasionally. They do. So what usually happens is that it gets shunted off in a direction that’s not optimal for the company.

Here’s how it often unfolds. The company’s executives realize that they have a need. They think it’s for some software and/or hardware to help automate their business processes. They decide to find a vendor or vendors to fill the need.

To make the decision, the company turns to someone they trust but who isn’t really qualified. This is often their accountant (how do you think the original Big 8 accounting firms managed to grow and spin off consulting divisions?) or their computer guy. The accountant typically knows little about the field, and the computer guy, paradoxically, may know even less. Adept at the nuts and bolts operations, the computer guy usually has no experience in optimizing business processes and their automation or in managing relationships with large vendors. Or the company may appoint an executive or committee to choose a vendor to meet a particular technology need. In any case the choice is made somehow, and then they turn the entire project over to the vendor.

This approach is gambling pure and simple. Sometimes the vendor will be willing and able to devote enough resources to find out exactly what the company really needs and to provide it. In other cases (and I’ve seen them, believe me) the vendor just puts in their standard product, assumes it’s going to do the right job, provides a little training, and walks out the door.

What’s missing is informed executive oversight, oversight of the requirements definition process, oversight of the vendor selection process, oversight of the project itself to make sure that the vendor delivers. This is the CIO role, and it can only be provided by someone who understands both the business and the technology. You can’t have one and not the other.

I supply that missing link. As a part-time, consulting CIO, I manage the requirements gathering, vendor selection, and vendor relationship processes. I also give advice on effective use of technology like accounting systems, marketing systems, online marketing campaigns, online customer relationship management, website utilization, and related fields.

And that’s why I am not your company’s computer guy. But I may be its part-time CIO.

As promised, here’s Jimmy Fallon as “Nick Burns, Your Company’s Computer Guy”:

Part One

Part Two