The overwhelming impression I got from yesterday's small business IT seminar it was the tech industry doesn't have the trust of small business; too often they've been burned by bad techs, bad software and bad hardware.
One lady told how she gets salespeople to write a personal guarantee before she buys anything, for big ticket items she sometimes gets three signatures on her piece of paper.
That's a pretty depressing state of affairs that our industry is in this and it's difficult to see how this is going to change.
Given our governments have a hands off policy on industry regulation, I can't see a mandatory licensing system being introduced as I suggested in my last post. So that means anyone who "knows something about computers" can hang out their shingle and claim to be a computer tech, web designer or programmer.
But just to blame the techs for this situation would be very unfair, the bigger players have allowed this situation to develop.
We really need software and hardware vendors to take responsibility for their products they release, we need them to take quality control seriously and to stop using paying customers as their crash test dummies.
Along with getting vendors to understand their moral and legal obligations, we need to get computer stores to understand their responsibilities. The bigger ones they are, the more it seems they try to wriggle around the law.
This "stuff the customer" mindset seems to run deep in the industry. I'm not sure if it's going to take governments to step in or the courts, but sooner or later someone is going to say "enough is enough".
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Technician qualifications
I had my first Top 10 IT Solutions for Small Business at Parramatta yesterday.
Given it was the first presentation I've done on the topic it went well, apart from the boring Powerpoint presentation.
During the Q&A one thing became very clear, a lot of small business owners are very frustrated with finding competent, reliable and trustworthy techs.
There's a lot of reasons for this, the main one is most computer techs are "technicians suffering a entrepreneurial spasm" as the E-myth writer Micheal Gerber puts it. When they find how tough this business can be their service, and possibly sanity, quickly suffers.
One area I think we have to look at is the licensing of computer techs. Just as motor mechanics, hair dressers and plumbers need to show they have a base level of skills, so to should computer technicians.
The base level should be the Certificate IV in IT Support. I'd like to see it coupled with a formal trainee or apprenticeship.
This won't get rid of all the dills and shonks, after all there are still some crook mechanics and plumbers out there, it will at least give some level of confidence among consumers and employers that a tech does have a base level of skills.
Given it was the first presentation I've done on the topic it went well, apart from the boring Powerpoint presentation.
During the Q&A one thing became very clear, a lot of small business owners are very frustrated with finding competent, reliable and trustworthy techs.
There's a lot of reasons for this, the main one is most computer techs are "technicians suffering a entrepreneurial spasm" as the E-myth writer Micheal Gerber puts it. When they find how tough this business can be their service, and possibly sanity, quickly suffers.
One area I think we have to look at is the licensing of computer techs. Just as motor mechanics, hair dressers and plumbers need to show they have a base level of skills, so to should computer technicians.
The base level should be the Certificate IV in IT Support. I'd like to see it coupled with a formal trainee or apprenticeship.
This won't get rid of all the dills and shonks, after all there are still some crook mechanics and plumbers out there, it will at least give some level of confidence among consumers and employers that a tech does have a base level of skills.
2Clix sues Whirlpool
The accounting software company 2Clix is suing Whirlpool, the Australian broadband forum, for malicious falsehood (the corporate equivalent of libel) over a couple of threads in the forum.
I'm sure the management of 2Clix have some very good legal advice that such an action will be successful, but from a business point of view this is a disaster.
Doing this draws more attention to the problems, real or otherwise, in their product.
I have a lot of sympathy for software developers writing product for the consumer market, a single Microsoft patch can bring their product crashing down. For accounting programs like 2Clix they are also at the mercy of whatever brain damaged ideas come out of the tax office or government.
There are almost 200,000 registered members of Whirlpool and probably that number again who read it without signing up. The vast majority of those had no idea what 2Clix was or that it had any problems until today.
If 2Clix really has suffered $150,000 in damages from a couple of obscure threads on Whirlpool, the mind boggles at what the damages they are going to suffer when the industry press will pick up on this story later today and the mainstream media run with it over the next few days.
I'm sure the management of 2Clix have some very good legal advice that such an action will be successful, but from a business point of view this is a disaster.
Doing this draws more attention to the problems, real or otherwise, in their product.
I have a lot of sympathy for software developers writing product for the consumer market, a single Microsoft patch can bring their product crashing down. For accounting programs like 2Clix they are also at the mercy of whatever brain damaged ideas come out of the tax office or government.
There are almost 200,000 registered members of Whirlpool and probably that number again who read it without signing up. The vast majority of those had no idea what 2Clix was or that it had any problems until today.
If 2Clix really has suffered $150,000 in damages from a couple of obscure threads on Whirlpool, the mind boggles at what the damages they are going to suffer when the industry press will pick up on this story later today and the mainstream media run with it over the next few days.
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