Small Business IT mistake 1: Torturing the office guru.

This is the first of our top ten small business mistakes. As part of the 2007 NSW Small Business Week I'll be posting these mistakes over the next few days.

None of the ten are in any particular order; every business is different so these mistakes affect businesses in different ways. The first we look at is putting too much on the office guru.
a. The mainstay of small business computing is the office guru. It’s rare to find an office that doesn’t have one. To a point, this is good for the business as there's always someone who can fix a password problem or clear a printer jam.

The guru’s usually the ideal employee; they are industrious, take initiative and get irritated when they can’t do their job. Usually they've become the guru because the computer systems got in their way.

So the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary becomes the designated guru. Now everyone in the office comes to them to fix paper jams, recover lost files and figure out how to insert pictures into powerpoint documents.

Your business will come to depend upon them. They are cheap, reliable and often your best employees. They are also the only one that knows how to avoid paper jams on the cranky Laserjet 4L you bought in 1996.

But they are still the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary. They have to do their main job as well as the IT.

Eventually the guru gets fed up. They are doing two jobs and only being paid for one. What's more, the IT support role is a demanding, time consuming and often thankless.

While most gurus become disaffected others become protective; the system is their baby. They’ve had to care for it, nurture it and sometimes resuscitate it. They've raised it from a tantrum throwing toddler to somewhat stable adulthood, although prone to strange episodes.

For the small business owner, it's usually a losing proposition; you end up losing good staff and you have a computer network that doesn't work well.

The smaller the business is, the worse the problem becomes. In the worst case, when the owner is the guru, the entire business suffers as the owner is fluffing around with the computers while the business drifts.

The solution for the business is to respect your employees and your IT investment. Get a proper tech to look after the system.

Usually when the tech arrives, they find the biggest problem is old equipment. Most guru run networks are lumbered with ancient systems. That's the topic of our next post.

The top ten small business IT mistakes

As part of NSW Small Business Week I'll be giving a talk in Parramatta and another in the Sydney CBD on how businesses can make more from their IT investment.

Over the next week, I'll be putting the top ten mistakes here and on the PC Rescue website.

Top ten mistakes of small business owners

False bargains on the net

In the days before eBay took off I used to go to computer auctions looking for bargains. I quickly learned that the combination of technology and auctions is pretty dangerous for most bidders; they are first dazzled by the tech and then caught up in the excitement of bidding.

The worst example I came across was a room full of 386 laptops (this was 1998). I wasn't going to bid for those things, but I mentioned to the other computer tech I was there with that I'd be surprised if they sold for ten bucks. He made a bet they would sell for fifty.

He won. The things sold for $150 a piece. I'm sure the mugs thought they were getting a good deal.

Another auction I went to was a for a shop clearing excess stock. While talking to a mate, a lady interrupted and asked "what would be a good price for these systems?"

My response was if you don't know what these are worth you shouldn't be here.

At least back then people had to make the effort to get to an auction. These days of eBay and Grays Online mean that anyone with an Internet connection can make a bid. Which increases the ratio of dills prepared to overbid on junk dramatically.

The Bleeding Edge blog has a description of how people get themselves caught. Today the Sydney Morning Herald reports on 1500 complaints the state government has received from upset online buyers.

I've no doubt a lot of those 1500 are legitimate ripoffs, but I'll bet there's a large proportion where the buyers didn't read the description like the example in the Bleeding Edge article or were just looking for the cheapest deal.

Searching for the cheapest deal is where people get stung. The days of exceptions bargains falling off virtual trees online ceased years ago.

The old saying "if something seems too good to be true then it probably is" applies just as much to the net as anywhere else.