I posted that I’d be trying out the new Lotus Symphony suite of office productivity tools.  Well that didn’t take.  I probably should have changed over the file properties for xls, doc, and ppt files to open with Symphony.  Since I didn’t, I hardly used the tools at all.

Here’s the rub with Symphony and the other MS Office alternatives.  Microsoft Office reached dominance not because of the functions that your average user cares about and that every basic office suite does well.  The tools were widely adopted because introductory level developers (like me) were able to quickly build department level applications that helped improve staff productivity.  In the absence of any real developer tools, I don’t believe Lotus Symphony or any other MS Office alternative has a shot at being anything more than a niche product.

I hate that I didn’t do a decent evaluation of the Lotus tools.  But the reality is that I spend my time working with tools that fit the environments my clients have in place.  As long as organizations have one person who has gone past the basic data entry functions of Excel, I will never convince them that an Office alternative will work for them.  And if they’re so small that they don’t have a serious investment in MS Office, why would I ever recommend they start out using tools that can’t be extended as their needs grow?

As today is Blog Action Day, I thought I’d write about a simple environmental action that every SMB can take.  Here in Billings, the local government finds it perfectly acceptable to throw your old PCs, monitors and other electronic equipment in the dumpster.  Trash collection here will take just about anything.  But the fact is that old PCs, monitors, printers, cell phones, PDAs and other electronic equipment contain many materials that are harmful to the environment or to humans.  The EPA estimates 1-4% of all municipal waste is due to old electronic equipment.  So do us all a favor and recycle that old junk!

There are plenty of ways to dispose of your old equipment in a safe, inexpensive and responsible manner.  Here are just a few:

• Donate old PCs to local non-profits.  Computer4Kids is a great cause in the Billings, MT.  They refurbish your old equipment and give them to at-risk youth in our area.  Any equipment that can’t be used is broken down for parts and recycled.
• Pay someone to recycle electronic equipment for you.  Just check the Yellow Pages for lots of options.
• Tap into a PC manufacturer’s recycling program.  Dell has a great program where they will recycle your old equipment for free when you purchase a system from them.

One final note, if you store sensitive information on your PC, make sure you at least format your hard drive before passing it on.  If you’ve got really sensitive information on there, you might actually want to remove the hard drive altogether.  A hammer or mallet will make quick work of making sure nobody can ever get that data!

I’m an avid reader of Seth Godin’s blog.  His latest post states that companies waste too much time on original web design.  Your web site isn’t supposed to be a work of art.  It’s supposed to be a window into your business for your customers.  If you sell, then make it easy to buy.  If you provide services, make it easy to understand what you do and how those services can be procured.  Start with a site that you like, and have your designer build from there.

The only thing I’d add to his post is that you don’t have to limit your up front research to looking at existing sites.  There are thousands of free or very inexpensive site templates that can be modified to fit your tastes.  Look on oswd.org or Google "website templates" for tons of resources.  Don’t spend time or money reinventing the wheel.

This is a blog about technology for the small and mid-sized business. So when I read a recent Harvard Business Review article about decisions IT executives should not be making, I had to comment. The article intends to say that well-meaning IT executives can’t possibly be responsible for the business impacts of their decisions. So they should stick to the technical details and let the rest of the executive suite worry about the success of the business.

I’m no Harvard MBA, but Ms. Ross and Mr. Weill have it all wrong. Companies that follow their advice are doomed to mediocre IT performance. Here are the six decisions they say are best left to non-IT execs, and why I think they’re off-base.

HBR: “How much should we spend on IT?”

Reality: Does the head of marketing decide how much to spend on accounting staff or tools? No. If your CIO or head of IT is not capable of understanding your business goals and planning a budget to meet those needs, then you’ve got the wrong person in that position.

HBR: “Which business processes should receive our IT dollars?”

Reality: It’s smart to selectively approve IT projects. But don’t forget that most IT funds are spent maintaining existing systems or on infrastructure requirements. Business executives forget about last year’s projects much less that project from 5 years ago.

HBR: “Which IT capabilities should be firmwide?”

Reality: This statement blatantly contradicts the author’s assertion that technical implementation details should be left to the IT execs. Again, if your CIO is not capable of understanding your business enough to develop an operational model that supports it, you need a new CIO.

HBR: “How good do our IT services need to be?”

Reality: The authors suggest to not let IT execs push for the “Cadillac” when a “Buick” is all that’s needed. Are you kidding me? Certainly all executives like to provide the best tools possible to their teams. But just try to imagine the CFO allowing the CIO or head of marketing to state how good the accounting services need to be!

HBR: “What security and privacy risks will we accept?”

Reality: Of the 6 points, this one is actually the most reasonable. The business needs to understand and accept the tradeoffs between convenience and security. But it’s the CIO’s responsibility to educate the business and help them find that balance. After all, the CIO is likely to be named in any HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley lawsuit!

HBR: “Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails?”

Reality: If you’re thinking this way, it’s a bad sign for your business. Change your mindset now. You should be thinking, “How can I help ensure that IT initiatives helping me achieve my goals are a success.”

In the end, the HBR article fails to comprehend the true nature of IT’s role in the enterprise today. To be sure, there are companies who run their IT departments this way. But we know that companies that use IT strategically grow faster and are more profitable than those who don’t. Viewing the IT department as a cost center that needs to be tightly controlled by non-IT executives is certainly not a strategic way to do business.

One of the greatest developments in office software suites has been the desktop database.  People have done some pretty complex things with relative ease using tools like Microsoft Access.  Now, online databases such as DabbleDB and ZohoDB are advancing the tool and allowing companies to collaborate outside their own borders using secure databases.

I have a love/hate relationship with MS Access.  Way back when, I spent a lot of time doing Microsoft Office development and Access was a favorite tool of mine.  I liked that I could easily hook up to the enterprise databases, pull the information I needed and integrate it with any other application I happened to build. 

But people who do Access development full time tend to get trapped into that box.  When the task becomes greater than the tool, they simply find ways to make it work.  And that leads to problems.

Nowadays I spend a lot of time supporting an Access database that has outgrown its skin.  I’m rebuilding the application with a SQL Server back end, and ASP.NET and Sharepoint on the front end.  But it’s a really slow process because there are so many business rules hard coded into the VBA.  Identifying the code that has to be there versus what was done inefficiently is a real chore.  And all the while I spend time helping users through crashes, data corruption, and reports that aren’t tying out.

So, here’s my advice of the day.  Use Access.  Or Dabble or Zoho.  They’re great tools and fill a need.  But when you need more than a couple users, have rigorous security requirements, need sophisticated data entry forms, or have complex reporting needs, it’s time for a different tool.  Don’t put this off.  Your application will only become more complex over time.  And you’ll end up spending a lot of time and money supporting the application instead of improving your business.