Four IT Questions
Did you ask the THE FOUR IT QUESTIONS before opening your checkbook?
Before you tell an IT person, “Let’s do business,” stop and ask yourself, are you fully aware of the costs and benefits associated with the project? This can be a difficult question to answer unless it is broken it down. For difficult IT decisions, I recommend the following four question approach for non-IT business owners.
The Four P’s for IT Projects
1. Does it Improve Protection?
Before you invest a penny in any technology project, make sure that your protection will be up to date and scaled up to your new IT infrastructure. Not only should you protect your company from the external world with antivirus, firewalls and encryption technology, you must also ensure that the company is protected internally. Intentionally or unintentionally, an employee can cause severe harm by exposing confidential information. In a high number of cases, damages to the integrity of data and technology systems have roots within the company. Be sure to adapt your IT security to the needs of your business.
2. Are We Going to Increase Productivity?
My personal experience is that IT professionals were great at explaining how everything would be easier and faster, and how I would have more information at my fingertips whenever I wanted it; but they could not explain to me how the company was going to be more productive. To be fair, we must disclose that not all IT professionals are like those I’ve worked with, but it is important to be aware. For a business owner, I define productivity as doing more relevant operations with less money, thereby reducing operational costs and having the ability to sell more. Without such positive results, why incur such investment?
3. Are We going to Increase Profitability?
Your profitability should be a consequence of productivity improvements, but this is not always the case. A simple test that you can conduct is to ask the proponents of an IT investment to prove the profitability of their services. Ask, “What are the profits today and what will be the profits after the investment is made?” When considering the answer, it is important to make sure the profitability analysis uses the right assumptions and the right data (Hint: Enlist your accounting department to help the IT team prepare the Business Case.) This way, they will all work with the same numbers.
4. Will Systems Performance Improve?
Performance is not the same as productivity. A system or database could improve your productivity and still have a poor performance. It is important to consider the potential for collateral damages to clients, vendors, and employees; or, a domino effect where one piece of technology failure causes others to fail too. In most cases, issues with performance will be discovered during the productivity or profitability analysis; however, they are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, ask yourself: “Why invest?” and “Why not invest?” before opening your checkbook to new IT expenses. Most of the time, if the four questions are answered then you will have more than a good reason to give the project the green light.
The Value of a Post-System Implementation Review
After the dust has settled, do you wonder if you got the value expected from your last system implementation?
Have you recently performed a major IT systems upgrade, added to your current accounting system, or migrated to a completely new platform? Perhaps your business environment is changing and you have outgrown your current system. Your current system may not provide the functionality to effectively meet your current business requirements, either.
If any of these scenarios apply to you, consider the value of conducting a post-system implementation review. A major upgrade or system implementation is a significant expense to your company in terms of dollars and internal resources. A considerable amount of time is needed for planning, testing, verifying, and accepting information, data and related output, not to mention training users.
What happens after the implementation, though, is also crucial. The effectiveness of the implementation needs to be evaluated against the business specifications to ensure you realized the expected benefits. A post-system implementation review should cover at least five primary areas: implementation of project plans, deliverables of the business processes, hardware requirements, data conversion and integrity reporting, and training. You will already know if the project was on time or on budget, but you should objectively look at each aspect of the implementation to identify any unmet requirements or concerns that need to be addressed. Additionally, the evaluation will provide you with lessons learned that should be applied to future system planning.
In other words, the crucial question you need to answer is: Did you get what you paid for and is it functioning as you expected?
Every organization is unique and has specific IT system needs and requirements. Some businesses use off-the-shelf accounting software, while others require systems that need significant customization. Addressing the following areas in your post-system implementation review will help you determine whether or not you are getting the specific value you expect and need, and can assist in your future planning process.
Project Plan Review: The project plan should be reviewed to ensure that major milestones have been identified and accomplished as scheduled, and that no major omissions have occurred. The review should also assess if key project goals have been met, contingency plans were in place to sufficiently mitigate the risk of potential failure, quality control procedures were adequate, and your service provider(s) was responsive to resolve issues.
Business Process Review: Was an appropriate business-process review conducted to ensure that the overall process was appropriately defined? Was there a process for issue identification? Is related business process documentation accurate? Are any required customizations functioning as expected?
If your system required modules, were they set up appropriately? Were reporting requirements and measurement criteria specific and measurable? Were user issues identified and addressed in a timely manner?
Hardware Review: Were backup and recovery procedures, hardware, and network architecture adequately designed? If third parties were involved, do the agreements with those vendors include sufficient performance measurement criteria?
Data Conversion and Integration: Data conversion and integration is always of high concern during any system implementation. Was the adequacy of the data conversion and integration process appropriately designed and functioning as intended? Were procedures planned to verify data output? Can you access the historical data you need, and can you export and import information when necessary?
Training: A new system requires appropriate training of the system users, was a program in place to ensure that users were appropriately trained, especially for the program rollout? Did individuals participate appropriately in training opportunities, and was training sufficient and effective? Do you have a follow-up process to evaluate how much knowledge was retained from that training, and whether or not any follow-up or refresher efforts are needed?
The Lasting Value of a System Implementation Review
Your implementation may entail a complex project plan that takes months to complete, with many delays and unexpected changes. On the other hand, it may be a simple project plan that was started and completed in a short amount of time without any issues.
No matter what your particular circumstances may be, it is a good idea to conduct a post-system implementation review. That review enables you to determine whether or not you are getting the value you expected. If necessary, you can then take immediate steps to address any identified concerns, rather than just living with a system that does not meet expectations.
File organization tips:
9 ideas for managing files and folders
The tips in this article can help you master file management by supplying some tips to help you better manage and organize computer files. After you’ve decided on a strategy for organizing and managing files and folders, read on for 8 more favorite Reader’s Tips. We bet you’ll see improved time management skills and increased productivity.
For organizing your computer files:
1. Use Documents. For many reasons, it's smart to take advantage of the Documents feature, which is called Documents in Windows 7 and in Windows Vista and is called My Documents in Windows XP. To open Documents in Windows 7 and Vista, click Start, and then click Documents to discover an easy way to store your personal documents.
Starting with Windows 7, the Documents feature actually became a virtual library. By default, the Documents library includes your My Documents or Documents folder and the Public Documents folder. You can customize the Documents library (in addition to the Music, Pictures, and Videos libraries that are also included by default) in Windows 7 to group files and folders from any location on your computer—without actually moving them. Or you can build your own libraries to easily organize your files. Learn more about working with libraries.
Libraries are a flexible way to organize your files in Windows 7 without moving them into one location.
By using Libraries in Windows 7, Documents in Windows Vista, and My Documents in Windows XP, you can more easily:
- Find files. Windows provides easy access to the Documents folder (and its subfolders) in many places, including the Start menu, the task pane in Windows Explorer, and common File Open and File Save dialog boxes, among other places. Read about the search feature in Windows 7, or read these tips for finding files in Windows Vista and Windows XP.
- Back up files. You should back up files regularly. Documents and libraries can help make backups a snap.
- Keep files separate from programs. By separating document files and program files, you reduce the risk of accidentally deleting your documents when you install or upgrade programs. To move files or folders from one location to another, right-click the file or folder name in the existing location and then click Cut. Navigate to the new location, and then click Paste. You can also drag a file or folder from one location to another. To display two folder windows simultaneously in Windows 7, hold down the Shift key when you click to open the second window.
2. Adopt consistent methods for file and folder naming. When learning how to manage files and folders, it is important that you develop a naming scheme for the kinds of files you create most often and then stick to it. To change an existing file or folder name, right-click the name in the folder structure. Click Rename, and then type the new name.
3. Keep names short. Even though you can use long file names in Windows, you should not necessarily do so. Long file names can be harder to read.
Let your folder structure do some of the naming. For example, rather than creating a file called Great American Novel Chapter One First Effort, you can build a structure like this:
The folder structure can help you avoid using lengthy file names.
4. Separate ongoing and completed work. To keep the Documents folder from becoming too unwieldy, use it only for files you're actively working on. As a result, you can reduce the number of files you need to search through and the amount of data you need to back up. Every month or so, move the files you're no longer working on to a different folder or location, such as a folder on your desktop, a special archive folder, a flash drive, an external hard disk drive, or even a CD.
5. Store like with like. Restricting folders to a single document type (or predominantly one type) makes it easier for you to find files. For example, with all of your graphics in a single folder—or in a single library in Windows 7—it's easy to use the slide show feature in Windows Explorer to find the right picture for your newsletter. You can also use libraries in Windows 7 to group files together for easier searching without moving them into the same place or use the Arrange by command to sort files by criteria, such as author, date modified, and type. These criteria can change based on the file type (documents have different Arrange by criteria than photos, for example).
6. Avoid large folder structures. If you need to put so many subfolders in a folder that you can't see all of them at a glance, consider creating an alphabetic menu.
Alphabetized folders can help you stay organized.
7. Use shortcuts and shortcut links instead of multiple copies. If you need to get to the same file from multiple locations, don't create copies of the file. Create shortcuts to it instead. Shortcuts are links to files or programs and are represented by icons with an arrow in the lower-left corner. To create a shortcut, right-click the file and then click Create Shortcut. You can drag the shortcut to other locations. Microsoft Office 2010 includes some built-in shortcuts with the new Backstage view. To see Backstage view, open an Office file and then click the File tab. In Backstage view, click the Recent tab for a list of links to your recent documents. The Recent tab even includes a Recover Unsaved Documents option. In Backstage view, you can create, save, and send documents, inspect documents for hidden metadata or personal information, set options, and more.
8. Quickly get to the items you use every day. Jump Lists, a fun new feature in Windows 7, are lists of recently opened items, such as files, folders, or websites that are organized by the program that you use to open them. You can use a Jump List to open items, and you can even pin favorites to a Jump List. To see a Jump List for a particular program, just right-click the program button on the taskbar.
9. Consider storing documents online. You can also keep documents your company’s Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site or on Windows Live SkyDrive so that you can easily access them from outside the office, share them, and edit them online by using Office Web Apps.
Learn more about working with folders:
8 reader tips
Thanks to all the readers who left their own helpful tips and comments on this article. We’ve shared some of them here:
1. Use abbreviations. Keep file names short by using common abbreviations, such as "MTG" for meeting or "ACTG" for accounting. This makes the file names more descriptive, and you can more easily find files through the Search function, if necessary.
2. Use thumbnails or icons. Change the view to display the files as icons in Windows 7 or Windows Vista or search through folders in the Thumbnail view in Windows XP. To view icons in Windows 7 or Windows Vista, click the Change your view button (Windows 7) or the Views button (Windows Vista) in the toolbar, and then select the icons size you want to use. To view icons as thumbnails or icons in Windows XP, click the Views button in the toolbar, and then click Thumbnail or Icons.
Change your view list in Windows 7.
You can change the default appearance of your folders so that they always appear in the view you want them to. You can change other folder options, too:
3. Use common names. To make it easier to search for documents, name your files and folders with easily found names, such as model numbers, project names, or the project lead in the title.
4. Don't save unnecessary files. Be selective about the files you keep. You probably don't need to keep them all. With email, for example, you don’t need to keep everything you receive.
5. Use Recent Items. To find a file you just worked on, use Recent Items (called My Recent Documents in Windows XP) in the Start menu.
In previous versions of the Windows operating system, Recent Items showed a list of your recently used files on the right side of the Start menu. You could open a file from this list by clicking it. In Windows 7, Recent Items no longer appears on the Start menu by default, but you can add it. To add Recent Items to the Start menu:
- Right-click the taskbar, and then click Properties to open the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.
- Click the Start Menu tab. Under Privacy, select the Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar check box.
- Click Customize. In the Customize Start Menu dialog box, scroll through the list of options to find the Recent Items check box, select it, click OK, and then click OK again.
6. Put Documents on the desktop. Put a shortcut to Documents on the desktop: Right-click the Documents folder, and then click Create Shortcut. You can save several clicks of the mouse and get where you want to be sooner.
7. Organize files by dates. Use a date in the document name. For example, jeb051810 could mean Jeb’s file from May 18, 2010. If you want to be able to sort primarily by date, you could use the yyyymmdd format, for example, and name the file 20100518jeb.
8. Color-code your folders. Use a third-party program which allows you to "color" certain folders in Documents. This helps you find your documents even more quickly and is especially useful with folders that you use every day.
