The difficulty with writing any book about computer technology is that it very quickly becomes obsolete. In order to produce a publication worthy of readers, I wanted to make the book deal with the broad principles of the technology, rather than why my whatsis is better than your whatsis. This has meant that, for every piece of technology that hits the market, I needed to understand what principles were designed into it, and then to describe those underlying principles. In this way, the technology concerned may be superseded, but the principles won't. A simple example of this is the Internal Combustion engine. Every engine made by a manufacturer is different, but the fundamental principles are all the same.

However, just understanding the concepts of technology does not mean that it is useful or easy to use. Understanding what a semi-trailer is doesn't mean that every person can drive one. In addition, just because you know how to drive a semi-trailer doesn't make you a mechanic. So over a number of years, I started finding fundamental concepts in the design, implementation and use of computer technology. Because my specialty was always networks for small business, many times I found computer products that were brilliant, if only you were a large company with in-house technical support.

So, the notes that follow are a gleaning of ideas relating to the small business management of technology. As  time permits, I'll add further topics to broaden out the whole subject.  Please enjoy.

More than 80 percent of users cannot understand basic functions of mainstream applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets, say industry analysts. Of the 80 percent, only 15 percent received formal training for the applications. The result is that LAN (Local Area Network) support costs are being pushed beyond the purchase price of a LAN for an average size business. LAN support can outweigh the initial purchase equipment price by three to one.

In the same way that a stethoscope is an invaluable tool for doctors, but useless for the untrained, a network and its applications can increase productivity only if users have confidence and familiarity with its operation. With sixty per cent of support costs being absorbed by simple LAN administration duties such as resetting printer queues, it is readily apparent that businesses need to invest in more than just the equipment and software.

Costs can vary for all sorts of reasons, but companies with effective networks are investing in their structure rather than equipment. A genuinely cost-effective network is made up of a number of key components, including hierarchical support and network management.
The Australian

The total cost of a business network consists of a large number of components. As outlined above, the network hardware may represent only a third of the total costs. The hidden majority tend to be items that are lumped under general office expenses or more likely ignored, such as in-house training for new recruits or lost customers through bungled order processing. These costs are real, though not always immediately tangible.

Likewise, benefits from the use of network technology can be assessed in such terms as reduced stock requirements or orders processed per day. But what about increased customer satisfaction from more timely telephone sales or better back order processing.

Network technology is an integrating technology.

There are very few areas of the modern business that will not be affected by it. Traditional management techniques relied upon an effective manager to tie all aspects of an organisation together. We are now replacing those managers with a complex structure of electronics and (often unpredictable) software, the complexity of which very few people understand. In attempting to increase our office productivity with more intelligent machinery, we have abdicated company control of our office systems to the unknown faces and agenda of outside contractors or worse still, ignored the staff complaints and muddled through.

Consistently, there are recurring horror stories of companies who have elected to ignore some of the simpler truths and housekeeping functions of computers and have paid dearly for "experts" to set the systems straight.

This treatise is not meant to be all doom and gloom, nor a panacea for all computing ills. Only your staff (and maybe a competent contractor) can hope to achieve that.

Importantly though, a few summary facts need to be considered:

There are three main groupings that need to be considered - administration, technical support and end-user operations. Administration consists of the management of all aspects of the network, without actually doing any work with the computers: i.e.. what needs to be done before we even get to do any work. Technical support is that aspect of the hardware and software, how it is set up to produce the results for your company and what actions are needed when things do go wrong.

End-user operations are the people side of networks, how users interact with the system and apply their jobs with the use of the technology.

Administration

Asset management (procurement, deployment, upgrade, and disposition cycle)

Purchasing computer equipment is not a job for non-technical people. Buying the biggest and the best is like buying a Ferrari to go shopping each day. It may look great but it is a waste of money and how much to keep it going?

Computer technology is obsolete every two years. So buying more than you need is false economy. Budget for computer replacements every three to four years. A machine with two or three years warranty means hardware repair costs can become almost negligible.

Where to put the next computer? Most networks grow only slowly, unless you plan to merge or sell your company. There will be mission critical machines such as servers which need to be functional at all times. Plan for new machines to replace these first. Downgrade these slightly older machines to staff whose functions require more horsepower. This is especially true of staff who have a fair degree of autonomy and will probably want to experiment with alternate hardware/software functionality.

When a machine is three to four years old, sell it to one of the staff. They will appreciate it, they know its history and especially if you leave some software on it, will experiment with ideas that may be of benefit to the company.

Try not to get caught in the upgrade path. Computers are complex electronics. Every PC designer makes compromises which suits a particular configuration of electronics. With the continuing downward spiral on price/performance ratios, upgrading a particular computer rarely makes economic or performance sense.
 

Security (physical and intellectual property protection)

The major single reason for business to install network technology is to harness the integration of disparate machines within the company. Two major concerns occur with this notion. How do we design the network so that every person has access to the resources they need? Only an analysis of individual people's job functions can give you this answer. If job functions are not defined, then your network can never be optimally designed or kept secure.

Secondly, once a network is in operation, how do we stop people accessing areas they shouldn't. Again, only job definitions allow this problem to be solved. Of course, you may be only a small company and all your employees are totally trustworthy - and I'm the King of England. No company owner is naive enough to believe that all of his or her personal information can be left on computers in a business environment. Hence, physical security of important machines needs also to be considered.

Certainly, network servers need security to stop people inadvertently changing settings or crashing networks. How do we also stop people from borrowing software for other purposes.

Pirated software can fetch company fines of up to $250,000. This means software that employees place on your system, without your knowledge as well as software that employees have borrowed from your network can place your company at risk. Control of software acquisition needs to be part of your asset management procedures. If yours is one of those companies that generate software for your own products, consider the intellectual property dilemma.

Consider contracts with those development staff so that both parties are aware of their legal obligations.

Legal (service contracts, license agreements, and other contracts)

Unless your business employs motor mechanics, you wouldn't want to service your own vehicles. Likewise, unless you have staff whose speciality is network technology, don't service your own networks (and electronic engineers often make the worst network supervisors). Do attempt to get fixed-price performance-based service contracts.

These can be a can of worms unless you are careful. Some contractors insist upon combining hardware maintenance with network maintenance. This poses a conflict of interest. The contractor tells you that a particular machine needs upgrading, or fixing, or replacing. He can supply at a very special price. How do you know whether you are getting the product with the correct specifications at an appropriate current price or if the product is even necessary?

Try to outsource your hardware separate from your network contractor, at least until you know his integrity. In this way, if he claims hardware is faulty, you have leverage with a different supplier. (Don't however, go for the cheapest, or the latest specials. Choose a supplier who is probably middle of-the-road in pricing and stick with him. Remember, you will probably be dealing with him for at least the period of a machine's warranty).

If the hardware checks out, then his responsibility is defined, especially if your contract with him includes reporting to you on the status of faulty equipment. In other words, your network contract includes not only fault finding, but also reporting, as well as call out times, network configuration changes, network performance, staff training, etc.

Don't lock yourself into year long contracts. A contractor who claims to be worth the money you pay him, won't be phased by a three month withdrawal clause. It will probably take up to three months to sort out your problems in the first place, especially if you already have a network in operation.

Remember, his job is to make sure you have as few problems as possible. If your system stays stable for days or weeks on end, you have spent your money wisely and the contractor is worth every cent.

Don't forget, a downed network that loses even a day of work is costing you a lot of money. Your contractor needs to give you some sort of indication of how to ensure such things don't happen.

This may be achieved either through a contract stipulation or by defined staff training procedures.

Formal audit

How do you know what hardware and software you have? Keep track of all purchases of hardware, software and relevant serial numbers and configurations. Sooner or later, you will face the dilemma of needing to chose a particular machine for a special job. It's easier to start with a current machine to play with a new idea. Once you have proved its worth, you will then have a much better idea of what you really need in terms of hardware and software. This also allows you a better mechanism for deciding on upgrades or replacements of current machines.

After a network has been in action for a period of time, its initial configuration is likely to be quite different in terms of hardware, software and network resources. Part of the difficulty of maintaining a network is the necessity to change its configuration on a regular basis. Companies do change. People and their talents also change. In attempting to improve company productivity and simplify processes, part of the change mechanism will involve the network.

If you haven't documented your network, how can you be sure that when you change it, the network will continue to work. This process of conducting audits may only be necessary a few times a year but will timing and complexity varies from company to company..

The audit process is not limited to hardware and network resources. Remember, you have spent a lot of money buying this fabulous technology. How do you know if you are getting value for money. Conduct a base-line audit before you install your system. Define parameters that tell you how your company is performing.

Sure, dollars and cents on a balance sheet are handy, but they don't give you any detail of how individuals are performing, or how different departments or groups within your company are performing. What about customer satisfaction? How about sales people's morale? These intangibles will make or break your system. With traditional office systems, people devise techniques and schemes to surmount obstacles, whether the obstacles be people, resources or constraints.

When you have a computer system through which everything must pass, frustration levels rise very quickly, unless you are aware of the level of competency of staff and systems. These audits need to carried out as early as possible before computers are installed and again before any major changes are made to systems.

Installation, moves, and changes

When a person buys a motor vehicle, he presumably has a specific use in mind. Likewise, installing a computer network has to involve some preliminary planning. This can be placed under the categories of functions to be performed, people involved and the details of required technology. This planning process is not easy and rarely can be achieved in a short period of time (i.e.. days or weeks).

Computers are general purpose tools that rely upon human design, planning and implementation to make fully functional. Just as replacing an ordinary sedan vehicle with a semi-trailer involves planning for such items as garaging, fuel supply, maintenance costs, driver qualifications, etc., the installation of a network involves many compromises which will impact on future activities. A car physically cannot be upgraded to a semi-trailer.

Many aspects of network technology suffer the same dilemma. Don't therefore, make the assumption that just a little change here or there will be a simple matter, unless you get independent opinions about it. Networks exist in a thousand different combinations.

Any particular installation will be a compromise amongst cost, performance, utility and ease of alteration. Above all, assess, plan, design, implement.

Policy and procedure enforcement

Any company will have policies about certain activities. With most office procedures, we document this through policy manuals, or pre-defined office documents. The electronic equivalent of this usually consists of those pre-existing documents converted to a favourite word processor.

However, who will know if a particular piece of computer software has been written to conform to those same policies. The computer industry is struggling with this new concept called work-flow management- i.e.. using the computer system to enforce desirable activities, characteristics, and time frames on the people aspect of companies.

Nearly all traditional software rely upon people having knowledge about a particular policy or process and through human initiated activity, the computer can then be used to perform the next step in a particular process.

Purchase orders are a simple example. The computer will detect when an inventory item drops below the minimum reorder level. Traditional software relies upon a person to initiate purchase order reports and then generate purchase orders. Workflow software would automatically generate a relevant purchase order on detection of a pre-set, configurable parameter.

The predefined person can be notified before, during or after the actioning of the event.

With or without such workflow software, a company must still have in place policies and procedures for staff to detect and action activities that are deemed important. The development of such policies relies heavily upon senior management having corporate visions and goals defined. Staff then need to be advised and trained in those policies, goals, procedures, etc. in order to understand the implications on their job functions.

Without these background requirements, the implementation of computer systems will result in ad-hocary and ultimately chaos.

Nothing guarantees a botch-up faster than taken an ill-defined organisation and computerising it.

Technical Support

Application help - help desk

The complexity of today's computer software means that it is almost impossible for any person to know all aspects of more than a single version of computer software. Not only does most software cut across differing departments and functions in companies (especially accounting systems) but software developers are always releasing new versions which usually enhance functions and sometimes correct undocumented features (also known as bugs).

The help desk function is to have a person or persons responsible to support users to work around problems which arise in normal activity. One of their jobs is not to find better or easier ways to undertake a particular task, though sometimes an individual person may have a bent towards a particular activity. This is because, to assume that the help-desk person knows anything about the particular business function is usually not practicable.

Their job is to explore the depths of functionality of a particular software program.

This is an enormous undertaking in its own right. In small businesses, the help-desk function is usually covered by the network contractor who at least can determine if it is a network fault or not. He can interact then with the software supplier for further support. (Assuming that the software involved is legal).

Documentation (including policies and practices, on paper or in electronic data format)

The documentation of the network and its resources form a major portion of the technical support supplied by a network contractor. Not only is it important to have defined and documented the security and available resources of the network, but in the event of major disasters (storm, server malfunction, software corruption, fire, etc.), such details which area also kept, as a precaution, off-site allow for simpler and less costly system restoration.

For all types of application software, it usually takes staff several months to become comfortable with the software. Documentation of such daily/weekly/monthly activities necessary to perform job tasks needs substantial time and effort. Very little software sold these days (at least not in the under $30,000) mark will include example business workflow/procedure documents.

Your staff will have to generate these documents themselves - and unless they understand the manual activities associated with their job functions, you have very little chance of training new staff and bringing them on line quickly. A rule of thumb, for example, in the accounting arena - for a person working full time on this job alone, allow 4-6 weeks per module before usable output can be expected.

The reason is simply that very few companies will have all the relevant financial, inventory or system data necessary to even start the implementation of a new computer system. Where such data is not yet available, this time can easily double.

Data extraction

The old saying of garbage-in/garbage-out has been applied to computers for decades. Not much has changed except that, now we are able to store so much more data into computer systems, we are having more trouble getting the garbage-out. Computers are replacing many forms of traditional data storage such as paper documents, microfilm, microfiche, etc. Remember, the tax department needs you to maintain some of your records for up to seven years.

You may have product information that needs to be stored for up to double this time. If all of your data is in electronic format, and you update your software, hardware, processes continually, somewhere along the line some of that valuable data is going to go missing. Only a few years ago, a large hard disk drive was 80MB. Now 1GB (1000MB) is considered normal for business.

Planning to keep data available for several years is part of a new concept called data warehousing. It is expensive, and as a management tool, is still in its infancy. Unlike traditional paper, storing several years of records can now be achieved very easily on just a few CD-ROMS but getting access to that data is an even worse problem.

This aspect of computers is still highly technical and largely has been ignored in the small business environment.

It is the nightmare yet to come

Configuration review (reality checks for new purchases)

As outlined in earlier paragraphs, we need to set base-line performances for our company before we consider installing computer networks. Reality checks are planned assessments of the now operational technology. This process is not easy and few small businesses even attempt such reviews.

Recent surveys indicate that fewer than 40% of organisations would pass any Return-On-Investment criteria in assessing ROI or productivity improvements where computer technology is concerned. For small business where capital is always at a premium, this is a disturbing trend. Plan for reviews.

At least you will know then where not to spend more money.

The choice of what application software to install on computer networks is a difficult decision for most small businesses. Typically, a small business is excellent in a particular niche market which usually does not lend itself to pre-packaged software. Alternately, in knowledge based industries, the total range of technical expertise in company staff may cut across many disciplines which creates software integration difficulties.

Typically, then, most businesses start their first major application software in the accounting arena, which is fairly well defined, in terms of accounting standards. This is actually a good starting point because most small businesses have poor accounting standards with little in-house accounting expertise or financial management.

With specialised technical knowledge companies, most software is very technical and expensive. However, considering the payroll cost of these typical staff, any increase in their productivity is desirable. Consulting support for these products is very expensive, because of the limited number of specialists who support a particular industry. Consideration then, needs to be given to on-going training for such company specialists.

In 1985, technical staff (engineers, etc.) needed about 5% of company time on formal professional development courses. This figure is estimated to have risen to 10% in 1995. So if your engineering, etc. staff are not receiving up to 5 weeks per year of formal professional development, your support costs for them will increase dramatically because of the need to buy specialist support.

Few network support consultants will have either sufficient qualifications or experience to provide this support and you will need to approach specialist companies.

Vendor liaison

As outlined above, deciding upon an equipment vendor is a long term decision. The quality of products and warranty service depends upon your relationship with this supplier.

Your network contractor, until you can assess his integrity, has a conflict of interest in providing you with hardware and software. There is certainly a trend back towards name-brand computers (IBM, etc.).

You will pay a premium for these machines but warranty support and service are guaranteed.

Standards development

A well disciplined office has two things going for it - procedures are well defined and new staff do not need to rely upon old-hands in order to learn. Hence, any document produced is either self-explanatory or contains information which details standards or defined procedures. Policy manuals are the typical manual mechanism.

With computers, we electronically define documents which cannot be changed except by authorised personnel and then make those documents available to all personnel across the network.

The development of any company standards depends entirely upon job definitions as mentioned before, so that only appropriately qualified people can create the required standards.

It also relies upon software standards being in place, and adequate access for all staff to the computer network.

Training (costs for IT to learn and pass that knowledge on to users)

Networks are not set and forget technology (the computer industry wouldn't survive if it was). Daily, someone will need to be aware of the status of the network and have sufficient knowledge in order to do first level fault diagnosis and to know when to call in external help. Different network technologies require different levels of knowledge.

Some networks require as many as seven levels of training at an average cost of $1500 per level per person.

The training costs then are defined by the technology used, which in turn is decided by the applications desired, all of which is determined by the business goals and objectives. This multi level approach is rarely done in small business, consequently, the doom and gloom results in the above opening paragraphs.

It is important to create a hierarchical support structure in your organisation. On a daily basis, one person needs to be responsible for preliminary diagnosing of the small hiccups that will occur. They need to be adequately trained and, ideally, should be involved in a range of office activities. (i.e., technical support people who are specialised end-users do not make good help-desk support people).

Your second level of support is the network contractor who is no more than three to four hours away or has mobile support facilities. The third level of support are your business strategists who are aware of the goals of the organisation. Ideally, at least one of the strategy people should be Information Technology (IT) literate because of the major changes that are occurring in the business use of technology.

Occasionally, some network contract companies have such people on their staff as the awareness of the importance of IT strategy is growing.

Product introduction

Would you give a Ferrari to a 17 year old , who has just received his driver's licence? It depends. If you had time for him to learn on it, accident insurance was cheap, and you knew that he had been driving on the farm since he was 10 years old, then you probably would. In business, the newly trained office girl, fresh from business college, who has word processing skills but knows no accounting, is not the right choice to break in a new accounting module.

In all circumstances where time is a problem, chose the most experienced person for the job. They will know if a new hardware or software product has a problem. Don't allow the product to be used for real data until

1) you have verified that it is capable of providing the functions you desire and

2) at least a second person has been taught by the first.

The reason for item 2) is that not all experts will test the full functionality of a new product, but will make biased assumptions about a particular activity or function.

It is only when they have to teach a second person that they may achieve 100% product knowledge.

In the situation where time is not as pressing, experimentation along with formal training is usually adequate. However, the participant still needs to have knowledge of the underlying principles before attempting work with real data. Hence, for example, you would not buy desktop publishing software for a staff member who has no word-processing skills.

Product review (ongoing analysis of hardware and software)

Products don't always live up to customer expectations. This occurs because of 1) the computer industry needs to sell product to survive, and 2) most new customers to the computer industry have little experience or knowledge about the underlying principles of the products. (See page 1). So, the moral is, buy software sparingly.

Test a new product with experienced people before committing to a full system buy. Don't upgrade products until you have confirmed that staff need the extra functionality. With the continual pressure on hardware performance by bloated software products, the upgrade process may become extremely expensive for dubious return (e.g.. Windows ‘95). But on the other hand, do experiment with software.

Allocate budgets for departments for buying new software. Pin-point problem areas in any department or group and let people tinker with possible solutions. It is far cheaper to spend several hundred dollars on a product to experiment with than install a whole suite that creates much larger problems down the road.

Again, the whole process is a learning curve for staff. Until staff can understand the underlying principles of a particular piece of software, you have no way of knowing if a potential new package has the functionality required.

Planning, utilization review (IT organization budgeting, scheduling, capacity planning)

When the filing cabinets in your office are full, you quickly know about it. So, the immediate result is a culling of miscellaneous documents and archiving of old files. Computers need the same process, but unfortunately, the archiving of old documents remains an area of little planning by management.

Instead, we insist upon upgrading our technology, with larger hard drives, more complex directory structures and hence, more powerful computers which then need better software which produce larger files so we run out of hard drive space again, ad infinitum.

Yes, the cost of the technology is always becoming cheaper, but remember, the technology is a tool to produce products or services for your customers, the real money earner for your company.

So reviews of the operation of your computer technology are necessary, to

1) ensure that staff have adequate resources for their defined job functions,

2) that you are getting value for money from technology (i.e. ROI) and

3) that development and enhancement of the technology is in line with perceived company goals.

If you place money in the bank, you know what sort of return you want. Ensure you do the same thing with your technology.

Hardware repair and preventative maintenance

The quality of computer technology has been a difficult parameter to quantify over the years. This has occurred because of the huge range of third party suppliers, from garage-under-the-house to well known brand names. As well, the short life-cycle of computers has meant that comparisons have only been possible on a brand-name basis and not on an individual product basis.

So, ensuring that you have not bought a lemon is still very much a lucky dip. In the long term, stick with companies that you either personally know (preferably in your locality) or that have had a reasonable history of name presence.

Talk to people who have been around computer products for a period of time (at least five years). Don't accept the opinion of someone who wants to sell you their product. Check what a supplier's warranty means.

Return-to-base is fine if its only your home-play PC. For a business, having a few spare PC’s may be a more reliable form of guaranteeing continued access to a network when one or more machines go faulty.

Plan to replace your machines within a set period of them expiring their warranty. With laptop computers, replace every two years or immediately warranty expires - their technology is invariably proprietary, and spares usually cost double what the current state-of-the-art technology costs.

As well, improving technology standards are reaping enormous benefits in mobile-computing performance and retro-fitting is not practicable.

Repairs of computers becomes irrelevant if you continue to replace them once warranty expires.

Better still, sell your old machines to your staff at a bargain price. This gives them an incentive to learn about the technology, (and is free training) and helps promote some corporate good-will.

End-User Operations

File management (finding, copying, archiving, backing up, and recreating files) or Who's in Charge?

The control of files in a single PC situation is relatively simple, like driving down a deserted road. Start adding other cars, each with their own concept of driving on a road, and you have the carnage that regularly happens on our highways. Networks need the same concepts of road rules - who has access to what files, how do we access them (drive letters, directory and file naming conventions), who has the right to delete files, directories, etc.

From the outset, at least one person needs to be responsible for the day-to-day operation of a network. The title of network-supervisor also means person-with-big-stick. Every organisation needs a manager of some type, someone responsible for assessing the days activities, prioritising activity and scheduling the work load.

Networks, when initially installed, don't often require the same sense of daily urgency. But over a period of time, especially as more of the corporate activity is transferred to the electronic format, the rules-of-the-road become extremely important. Hence the daily responsibility for the network becomes in fact, by default, the position of office manager. So, the choice of a suitable person for this position has profound ramifications.

Experience shows that non-technical people are the best choice. They are mainly interested in getting a job done, with the minimum of fuss, rather than playing with the latest and greatest technology.

Training is crucial as an important part of their daily activity is front line fault diagnosis.

Applications development (macros, batch files, scripts, and programs)

The design of company letterheads seems a trivial task. Yet, in the all electronic environment, such a task takes on gargantuan proportions. For starters, what technology is available to all likely users? Some printers won't support all the fancy fonts and characters likely to be used.

What company policy is in place regarding authority for use of letterheads? Will everyone have access to the letterhead files for inclusion in any documents they are producing?

Whilst it may seem like a trivial example of organisation’s policy, it is becoming a major impediment to the productivity of staff who spend all of their day in front of computers. The items mentioned in the title above all represent company tools that, to reduce conflict, promote standardisation and create productive staff, need to be managed from the highest level of management.

There will always be tools needed by specialists in any organisation, but once there is more than one potential user of those tools, the need for standardisation and management of those tools become paramount.

Formal learning

As outlined above, the need for formal training in the modern business is affecting technology specialists. However, there has also been the realisation that front office workers, of all types, are also suffering from lack of suitable computer based skills. One factor that has been consistently ignored, is the realisation that the complexity of computer software, coupled with the hidden functionality of computer application software (e.g. accounting) means that few staff are capable of comprehending both the business principles behind the software as well as the necessary procedures for operating the software.

This means that employers have to be make a decision as to whether they desire staff who have business skills but no computer skills or vice-versa. This dilemma has been compounded by the education system which consistently has been pushing the high-tech route in education, exhorting young people to develop computer usage skills but at the expense of a solid business grounding.

Older generations of white-collar workers have few computer skills but lots of experience of basic business principles.

The dilemma is then, which type of worker is of advantage to your company. An example - you walk into an auto parts store looking for a part for your car, model ABC. The young assistant knows nothing about parts but is a computer whiz and quickly finds that there are 25 different parts that match that description.

Which is the right one? The older assistant, punching laboriously on the keyboard eventually gets the same detail, and tells you that the one you want is not in stock, but that three other types can be substituted.

Which assistant is of more value to that company and to you, the customer?

There has been a lot of inconclusive research into desirable learning processes using computer technology. The one conclusion that is apparent though is that younger people, using computers, are less constrained in their thought processes and in the creative industries, surpass experienced hands in terms of originality of thought and productivity.

In the more mundane and regimented activities such as traditional office workers, the fundamentals of business are more important than any amount of high-tech gadgetry. There is only a limited number of correct procedures for a particular task (especially accounting). Knowledge of these principles is more important that the latest technology skills.

So what type of training is preferable? Research shows that knowledge through listening is less effective than seeing and both of these are less effective than hands on experience with an instructor, i.e. a formal hands on laboratory approach is the best. The retention rates from this learning process is far in advance to standard chalk-and-talk seminars.

Futz factor  (reading manuals and books, accessing on-line help)

An experienced driver can drive a car whilst under the influence of alcohol. Likewise, the experienced bookkeeper can verify the balance of a ledger quickly and a competent word-processor operator knows what sequence of keystrokes are necessary to perform a given function. For the casual or beginning learner, any activity is difficult.

The need for formal training in fundamental skills is always preferable to ad-hoc training. The multi-skilling now required of staff in any small business means that formal training to cater for all those activities is financially not feasible for the business. Outside of formal training then, the only method of gaining such skills is to experiment, read manuals and practice. How much time can your business afford for people to do this activity?

More importantly, how much does it cost your business if they don't acquire these skills. Buy copies of manuals for all relevant people to have a copy on their desk. Buy further copies of the software so that people can practice on their home computer.

Reinforce this informal activity by either having experienced operators from within your company develop relevant short courses or plan and timetable for all staff to go on short one day courses on introductory skills in a particular software package.

Futz factor (obsessive formatting, computer games, non-job-related e-mail)

When you have a builder erecting a house for you, it becomes very obvious what his productivity is. A typist, composing a letter for you, can do so in a variety of different ways. How can you tell if the end result took ten minutes or an hour unless you either watch the typist, have done the job yourself and know what's involved or have some standard applied to that activity?

This is part of the new dilemma of office productivity. We have developed extremely powerful tools in the form of complex software with general purpose computers. The activities that can be accomplished vary from moment to moment. This freedom to alter job functions from moment to moment has a down-side, which is to trust the integrity of staff to perform job-related functions whilst at work.

A number of strategies have been adopted ranging from continuous monitoring (airline reservations) to standards based activity (number of telephone calls per hour) to doing nothing. For small business, we rely upon the versatility of staff to perform functions that, using any other resource external to the company, could be expensive.

Typically, in a network environment, standards are configured into the system, games software is not permitted on the system and limits are made on the range of software to which people have access. In this way, as peoples’ job functions are better defined, so resources appropriate to that function are made available.

Staff then learn the limits of their responsibilities as well as having defined the range of appropriate functions and activities.

Peer support (both the encouraged and discouraged, or informal, varieties)

Staff thrown in at the deep end of a job quickly develop defence mechanisms. Some people cope by quickly learning new skills, others by scrounging as much support as possible from other more knowledgeable staff.

Unfortunately, the old adage of the blind-leading-the-blind can produce undesirable results.

Formal training, as detailed above, is really the best way of ensuring people have sufficient background knowledge to tackle a task. However, not every person is a university graduate or has the necessary disposition to benefit from such training.

Peer support is a valuable resource, if correctly handled. Personnel files should make references to people with skills that can be used to help others. It is often to a company's advantage to develop a profile of skills necessary to perform required job functions..

Ultimately, people who have such valued skills need recognition, not just from fellow staff but also from management. Buying software for people to learn at their own pace at home is one way of recognising the value of staff skills.

Supplies (toner, diskettes, paper, and printer ribbons)

Consumables represent a large on-going expense with computer systems. Laser printers can easily account for several hundred dollars a year, even in small offices.

With network technology, the centralisation of large capital resources such as printers allows for better control of expenses.

Ultimately, it becomes important to develop mechanisms for controlling consumables. Floppy disks, for example, are almost totally unnecessary in a network environment, but tapes (or other mass storage consumables) become more critical, both in terms of cost and network security.

The consequence, then is that job functions, along with network design determine many of the factors relating to office consumables. Poor definitions of either, can result in higher than necessary office supply costs.