Eating your own dog food

I've always liked the term "eating your own dog food". While it's a computer industry term for using your own software on yourself it could apply to any to any industry. There's a few executives at Telstra, Coles Myer and Hewlett Packard I'd love to see with a face full of Pal.

A good example of what happens when you don't try your own product is when you launch a crook website. I had just such an experience today.

As part of our new IT Queries website, I've been exploring advertising options. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes filling in a sign up form for a division of a multinational. So imagine my irritation when I receive a confirmation email telling me to click on a non-existent hyperlink to proceed with my application.

At least they have a phone number, unlike many others these days. So I call them first thing this morning to see if it has been processed.

The girl that answered the phone was charming and delightful, except she didn't speak English very well and had trouble even taking my name, let alone figuring out my problem. She transferred me to the webmaster.

Again he was very helpful and friendly. The website's under construction he said so there might be a few hiccups.

That's nice, but I really didn't feel like waiting a fortnight and then spending another 45 minutes so I explain this and ask to speak to someone who can confirm my application for the privilege of becoming one of their partners has been approved.

"Oh you'll have to speak the general manager for that"

Huh! WTF?!? "Okay, can you put me through?"

"Oh no, he's not in at the moment. I'll take your details and get him to call you back."

Now, as a small business owner I respect and admire other businesses that keep their management structures flat, but the GM of a division of a multinational dealing with a straightforward issue like this is a bit strange.

The real lessons here are that if you are going to automate your processes, make them simple and concise: Someone more pig headed and stubborn than me would have given up well before 45 minutes.

The other lesson is not to launch a product when the website isn't ready. This post is being written at the beginning of July 2007, the product was launched in October 2006. The website should have been tested and ready a year ago.

Another lesson is to test your systems. Sending a confirmation email with a missing or inoperative link is sloppy to say the least.

I believe every manager of every organisation should have to eat their own dog food. In this case it would have saved me a lot of wasted time. I wonder how many potentially profitable "partners" these guys have lost.

No advantage to Vista

Computerworld reports Gartner Research is finding there is no "real competitive advantage" in upgrading to Vista.

Unlike Gartner research director, Martin Gilliland, we don't find this surprising at all. No business, big or small, should be plunging into a new operating system without doing their homework first. For a large company, that's a lot of homework.

Our experience with Vista has been largely positive apart from some really irritating UAC issues and so far we've seen few issues with spyware.

For an upgrade to Vista, we'd be suggesting a new machine is the way to go. This means at least $1,500 when you include the machine, Office 2007 and Vista Business. That's not a minor investment across a dozen machines, let alone ten thousand and we're not including the migration costs.

While Vista will become common in small business over the next year, there's no real reason to junk your existing XP machines.