Next week (Thursday, May 13th), Pacific Business News will host a breakfast tech seminar for managers, executives and business owners.  I will be one of the panelists and we will discuss how your business can leverage technology to stay competitive.

As part of my presentation, I will explain a checklist of items every business can adopt and implement right away with little or no upfront cost.  The point is to get-going on the latest market trends to ensure your company’s mid to longterm viability.

By the way, it’s not too late to join the event.  I am confident you’ll find it relevant and useful.  For more info: http://bit.ly/bdM9Rv

Here’s my checklist for making your business tech-ready:

• Nuke your website. If you’re like most businesses, you spent a good chunk of money on a nice website…a few years ago.  Well, times have changed and as a result the site is probably dated in terms of design and features.  Your website is your most important face to the world.  It should also be your best salesperson.  Enhance your site using WordPress, which is a free, open source, content management system.  WordPress is easy to use, fully featured and search engine friendly.  It will also give you everything you need to start blogging.

• Use analytics for everything. Knowledge is power.  You need to know how many people are visiting your website.  You need to know what interests them.  The more you mine  the data, the better you can serve your clients.  Add Google Analytics to your site.  It takes just a few minutes.  I will gladly do it for you free of charge.  Also, go to bit.ly and create an account.  It costs nothing.  You can use bit.ly to create smart URLs, so you can measure what’s popular and what’s not.  The link in the third paragraph of this column in one of those smart links.  It will tell me how many people clicked on it and from where.

• Poll your customers, employees and vendors. I wish I had learned this one in high school.  If you want to know something, just ask!  Too often we business owners feel we must operate on instinct when the truth could be just a click away.  Go to SurveyMonkey.com, create an internal survey, and ask your employees what they think about you.  The survey is anonymous, so fasten your seatbelt!  Equally important, solicit feedback from your clients.  You can automate the whole process so every customer receives a thank you note and has the opportunity to give feedback. The info is gold.

• Use Google Alerts. Google offers a free service called Google Alerts.  You tell Google which keywords or key phrases interest you, and Google will email you a report every day summarizing where those keywords and phrases hit the internet.  Use Google Alerts to monitor your brand, market trends, your competition, and new opportunities.  Brilliant.

• Socialize your business. This is the boat you don’t want to miss.  Social media is here to stay.  Create accounts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.  Use TweetDeck.com, HootSuite.com and Ping.fm to help you manage all those accounts.  You don’t have to understand social media, you just have to start using it.  You’ll ‘get’ it soon enough.  Don’t let your competitor eat your lunch.

• Use a reader. In the old days, newspapers printed what they considered news and we took what they gave us.  Now, you can create your own ‘channel’ of news and selected topics of interest.  Using Google Reader, you choose the content you want to read everyday and Google Reader will pull it all together for you into one convenient stream of info.  You are in the driver’s seat.  Google does all the work for you.  Free. You will need to stay on top of market trends so you can make blog posts and interact with others.

• Do webinars. I absolutely love GoToWebinar.com.  From the convenience of my home,  in my pajamas (!), I can give timely, relevant online presentations to my staff, to my clients, and to potential customers.  It’s a terrific way to keep your base informed and it’s a very effective sales tool: http://bit.ly/bcc35I

• Start a Wiki. Our mission in business is to make a difference, to make the world a better place.  This is what drives us.  Ultimately, though, we also want quality of life.  We can work hard when we’re in our twenties and thirties, but at some point we value freedom from schedule, the ability to affect change through philanthropy, etc.  If you run an organization, your most important tasks is to capture on paper your wisdom and knowledge.  In other words, you want to map out critical operational issues like policies, proceedures, and expectation, so in the event you get hit by the proverbial bus, your business has a playbook to use a guide to keep things going.  I highly recommend Zoho Wiki.

• Use Google Docs. This one is a no-brainer.  Microsoft Office is expensive; Google Docs is free.  using Google Docs, you can do Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. You can import ‘old school’ files from colleagues who haven’t yet migrated to Google Docs, you can work off-line, you can store everything online, you can share the same doc with others so it becomes a dynamic file, always getting updated, always current, etc. The sooner you move to Google Docs, the better.

• Do targeted advertising. There’s been a neat shift in the way we capture leads and convert prospects.  Conventional advertising like display ads and direct mail, for example, is alive and well. We do it religiously at SuperGeeks.  But we also use new weapons, like click-thru online advertising.  What’s really powerful about new media is I can target a very specific demographic, say engaged, college educated women living in Hawaii who speak Spanish, and I can present that well-defined group with a very specific advertising message.  Moreover, I can send that click-thru prospect to a custom-tailored webpage, full of analytics, so I can measure how many people actually purchase or take some kind of action, like request a free consultation.  This has completely reinvented the way we advertise and has given us extremely valuable metrics on what works and what doesn’t.  It’s both effective and a lot of fun!

To learn more about these and other tech tips, join us on the 13th: http://bit.ly/bdM9Rv

We recently brought one of our beloved Minis to the repair shop after a warning light lit up.  The repair shop was able to fix the problem, but we were gently chastised by the mechanic for not properly maintaining the car.

Periodically checking things like oil levels and tire pressure is not enough.  Because the Mini is really a little computer on wheels, it needs consistent preventive care to keep it happy and healthy.

Unless the car tells us that something is wrong, we wouldn’t think to check for any vital signs on a regular basis.  And that’s a mistake.  Cars – like people - need proper care and feeding.
Your office network is the same. Sometimes it’s difficult to know when problems are brewing.  Usually, we don’t realize we have problems until something doesn’t work, like you can’t log onto the network, can’t print, or can’t get your emails.

How would you know your network is in trouble?

There are a few signs that indicate potential problems.  And if you catch those issues sooner rather than later, you can prevent expensive downtime and repair costs:

Persistent viruses

Do you get those annoying pop-ups?  Are your computers slow?  Are they locking up or freezing?  Are you getting warning messages?  These are good indicators of deeper problems and your network not being properly maintained.

Granted, no network is completely immune from viruses and spyware. However, if the problems are regular and persistent, something is amiss and it needs to get fixed asap.

Multiple and ongoing complaints

If several employees complain of computer issues and their productivity is legitimately affected by those issues, then you need to pay closer attention. Multiple complaints are a good indicator your network is in trouble.
Imagine you are sailing a ship and your crew members are reporting leaks from different spots on the ship. It’s probably time to dock and do some maintenance and repairs.

Sluggishness

If it takes forever to log into Windows, to open a program or to copy a file -
it’s a symptom of network trouble.

Remember, the original purpose of computing is to boost productivity, save money, and increase earnings. If you have to wait for several minutes to open a document, you are wasting your time and money.  The more employees you have who are affected by slow speeds, the more money your business is wasting.

Expired Updates

Do any of your computers have a little yellow shield with an exclamation point on it?  Typically you will find it in the lower right hand corner of your computer screen.
That shield is a warning message from Microsoft.  It means you’re missing important software updates.  It’s critical to update your software regularly to make sure you have adequate protection against viruses.

Likewise, if you’re logged into Windows and you are prompted to update Adobe, Java, or another application, it’s a clear sign the network is not being properly maintained.

No one knows

Does your office suffer from “no-one-know-itis”?  For example, no one knows where the important documentation is located, no one knows whether the backup works, and no one knows when the passwords were last changed?

If you were in a hospital and discovered your patient history is missing, no one remembers your name or that you are allergic to a certain antibiotic, you get out of that hospital as soon as possible.

As for your network’s health, it’s critical your important information, such as passwords and network map, is securely stored.  You also want to be sure there is a designated person responsible for managing that information.

You should be able to ask that person whether the backup was actually tested, when it was last tested, and whether there’s a recent backup offsite.

The bottom line is this:  If you feel something may be wrong with your network, or if your computers get in the way of your work, then your network probably has problems.

A healthy, happy network is critical to business.  Any downtime means high costs and missed opportunity.  Be sure to take care of the problems before they become expensive disasters.

Get FREE Network Assessment

James Kerr is Chief Geek of SuperGeeks.  You can also follow him on Twitter: Supergeeks.

8 tips to save your company both time and money

Your company’s computer network is like a racecar.  If the engine is well-tuned, the car will run fast.  If it’s poorly maintained, you may not even cross the finish line.

The key is a good return on your IT dollars.  Ultimately, you want your network to be transparent to your team.  The network, in other words, should facilitate your employees’ work – not impede it.

Here’s what you can do to get more horsepower from what you’ve got:

Nuke it. Spyware, viruses and all that other stuff that’s accumulated over the years (months?) will bog down your computers.  The good news is you don’t have the replace the old computers.  Many times just reinstalling the operating system will restore the computer to the speediness of a new one.  Nuking your PC will also remove any bugs on the hard drive. Note: Backup your data before reinstalling (reformatting) your machine.

Score it. Have a computer expert give your network a report card.  We offer this service for free.  We evaluate everything from network efficiency to data security.  By having this kind of comprehensive assessment done, you get a good snapshot of the overall health of your systems and as a result can make smarter decisions about upgrades.

Boost it. Networks are often buggy and sluggish because they were setup improperly.  For example, if data is being accessed inefficiently, everyone on the network will feel the impact.  Have your IT guru take a look at your infrastructure.  Ask her, “How would you setup this network if it were yours?”  You may gain some invaluable insight into how do things better.  Also, if your internet connections is slow as molasses, ask your high speed internet provider to bump up the bandwidth.  The next level up may offer terrific bang for the buck.

Break it. One of the services we provide is called ‘ping testing.’  Just like yor test your fire alarm system from time to time to ensure it’s working well, companies should test their network security to ensure the job is getting done. One story I love to tell is about a bank here in Honolulu.  They hired us to test their security measures.  We breached their network by sprinkling a few USB drives outside their door the following morning before work.  The first employee to arrive that morning did what most people would do:  He picked up the drive, walked over to his computer, and plugged it in.  Curiosity killed the cat.  We were inside their network within 15 minutes!  The message here is:  Train your employees. Turn them into a kind of neighborhood watch.  Unacceptable computer behavior can have some pretty significant fallout.

Dump it. Most companies do NOT have a computer-use policy.  Moreover, no planning is given to how resources should be allocated.  When you create a garden, you plant carrots here and cabbage there.  That’s good planning.  For networks, you should decide who can install what.  Don’t let your garden become a mishmash of stuff installed on whim. Unnecessary software on your computers can lead to hiccups, holdups, data loss and security breaches.

Secure it. Did you know you can block access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all those other distracting sites?  You can even decide who has the rights to install new software on a computer.  You may have adopted strong security measures and done a great job of tuning up your systems, but all it takes is one reckless person to ruin it all.  Educate your team on what’s acceptable behavior, establish policies and procedures, and use software to keep everything pointed in the right direction.

Map it. You can log into your bank accounts and see exactly how much money you have on hand.  In the same way, you should be able to look at a sheet of paper and see what systems you have in the office.  The network map should include a detailed list of hardware and software, a schematic diagram of the layout, and the critical passwords.  Keep this info confidential and store it in a fire retardant safe.  It will become very handy when tech needs to swoop in and fix a mission critical issue.  An updated network map means less downtime for you and your employees.

Outsource it. I am like you.  If something can be done in-house, I prefer to do it in-house.  At some point, the proper care and feeding of your computers requires a professional.  It’s true a good part of this care can be done by a tech-savvy employee on your team.  However, there are number of items that require real experience.  Outsource the more sophisticated stuff to qualified persons.  You want to be sure it gets done right the first time.