Understanding Workable vs. Sustainable IT Solutions

You might think that there are only two types of answers when it comes to solutions to IT problems- solutions that work, and solutions that don't work. Because technology can sometimes seem so black and white to the uninitiated, I often see business owners approaching proposed solutions from the standpoint of "Will it work, or won't it?", and, "Isn't there another way to make this work that's easier?" (see also: faster/cheaper) Yes and yes. But alas, IT solutions aren't black and white. Technology has shades of gray too- the same way that solutions from your CPA, lawyer, or graphic designer are not an exact science, solutions from IT professionals reflect only one of many solutions that will work, more or less, from a technical standpoint. Good IT professionals realize that there are a plethora of ways to solve a single problem, and know how to identify and present the options to a business owner. The truly great IT pros go beyond "what works" or "what's cheapest/fastest/easiest". The real question we should be asking ourselves is "what fits?" and just as importantly "what's sustainable?"

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HWAS Featured in Prominent Bank of America Ad Campaign

Help with a Smile is thrilled to be prominently featured this week in a major Bank of America ad campaign.  The ad will appear full-page in the New York Times as well as the Daily News, among other publications.

The piece focuses on Help with a Smile as a small business whose early growth and success has been accelerated by receiving funding from CDFI's like Accion USA.

IT Myths: What Button Did I Push?

You might find you have an acute case of the "What button did I push?" syndrome. When something goes wrong with technology, whether it's something as simple as your laptop suddenly bursting into a ball of fire, or as complex as not being able to get your sales projections spreadsheet to sync with your DropBox account, the first impulse is usually to ask yourself "what did I do wrong?". The implication is that since you're the only one using the system, and it was working at some point previously, something you did wrong must have caused the problem.

This reasoning works for simpler devices- like your dishwasher, for example. When your dishwasher breaks, it's usually something mechanical and therefore easier to visualize and grasp, even if you're not a dishwasher repair man. The guy fixing your dishwasher can take out the burnt out motor or the bent up spoon that got stuck and show you exactly what went wrong and who's to blame.

I wish I could reach inside your iMac and pull out the dried clump of oatmeal your toddler shoved in the DVD drive, but most technology problems aren't that simple, regretfully. Technology is more similar to the living fuzz on the unwashed plates inside your broken dishwasher than it is to the dishwasher itself. Always updating, installing, maintaining- your gadgets are going through massive changes on a frequent basis, even when you feel like you're barely using them or doing anything different. The sheer amount of parties involved make it almost impossible to assign blame.

As IT professionals, we don't always have the luxury of asking what button was pushed or who pushed it to cause such a catastrophic failure. Most tech problems are a cocktail mixed from so many moving parts that spending the time to untangle the who/what/when/where/why is too costly, and often an irrelevant question. It's more important to ask questions like: "What measures can we take to solve the problem quickly and efficiently", "Is this problem likely to occur again in the future?", and "Does it make financial sense to do further research and take preventative measures?", rather than "What button did I push?".

Create Better PowerPoint Presentations

We've all sat through excruciating PowerPoint presentations. Don't let yours be one of them: follow the sage advice of these PowerPoint experts:

1. According to Seth Godin

"make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you're saying is true not just accurate"

2. According to Guy Kawasaki

"a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points"

3. According to Lifehacker

"As a general rule, one should not use PowerPoint as a teleprompter. If an image is worth a thousand words, show the audience that one image, and speak the thousand words if you must, but please do not display and speak the thousand words."

4. According to @JESSEEDEE of Slide Share

"Most presentations suck because not enough time went into making them. You need to gather your content, create beautiful looking slides and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse... and not the night before."

5. According to Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

"The slides themselves were never meant to be the "star of the show" (the star, of course, is your audience). People came to hear you and be moved or informed (or both) by you and your message."

The Importance of E-mail Archiving and Retention

Over the past years, email has become a primary channel of business communication. It provides organizations with a fast medium of conveying business correspondence such as purchase orders, quotations and sales transactions, in virtually any geographical area with the least physical effort possible. Email has become the electronic substitute for legal business documentation, as a result. Consequently, businesses must retain their correspondence for a mandated period of time This is especially true in government-regulated industries like, for example, finance, healthcare, and law.

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