The Savvy CIO

Bigger, better, faster.

That’s been the trend in all things Internet over the last ten years. Computers and connections are faster. Monitors have been growing bigger and bigger. Websites and web applications have been stretching into all of that new screen size and bandwidth to deliver big, fast, media-rich, interactive sites.

Now that’s starting to change.

Bigger, better and faster aren’t going away. But a rapidly increasing number of people using the Internet are trading some of that in for other values: mobile and accessible.

Tiny phone screens and modest tablet screens are going to represent a sizeable part of web traffic in the future. I have not always been a believer that the mighty PC and laptop would actually be supplanted for “serious” Internet use. But I believe now. It’s still early, but the trending is clear. read more »

The primary ways of accessing the Internet are changing. Now that large, wide-screen, flat panel, high resolution monitors are affordable and easily available, they’re being abandoned for tiny screens on mobile phones. Exactly why so many of us would choose to access a website on a screen the size of a playing card (while attempting to walk down a sidewalk at the same time, no less) can be bewildering, but there is no denying the “mobile revolution” has gained critical mass.

The stronger your online presence, the more people there are looking at your website or newsletter or blog on a mobile device. Do you have any idea how it looks?

If not, go ahead and try it out. It’s usually not very pretty.

The bad news is that all of the attention, effort and resources you’ve poured into your website, newsletter, blog, e-commerce site, etc. amounts to almost nothing on a mobile device. Load times are so long and screen sizes are so strange that only the most determined mobile browser will be able to find the information they’re looking for.

The solution? Start providing mobile alternatives. read more »

Some months ago we did a breakdown of the costs of Zimbra versus Microsoft Exchange. I’ve long been negative about the costs of Exchange. The price doesn’t scale down at all for small companies, and scales up far too quickly for larger ones. But the previous breakdown was a hypothetical scenario. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what we all do when making a purchasing decision. But now there’s some real life data to turn to.

The University of Pennsylvania runs both Exchange and Zimbra. They have nearly 1,000 users on Exchange and over 6,200 users on Zimbra, and the same technical support team takes care of both systems and their respective user bases.

My primary complaint with Exchange is how time-intensive and difficult it is to support and maintain. Support and maintenance are entirely hidden costs at the point of purchase, and many unsuspecting buyers have been lured in with steep license discounts only to discover the ongoing costs were far more than they bargained for.

The data from Penn agrees. For Penn, supporting an Exchange user is over 9 times more time consuming than supporting a Zimbra user.

For 1,000 users, Exchange requires 3.2 full-time equivalent staff members to support. With over 6,200 users, Zimbra requires 2.2 full-time staff members to report. That’s right, 33% less time spent on support for six times the users.

When Penn analyzed the total cost of ownership for Exchange and Zimbra (licensing, hardware, maintenance, support, etc.), Exchange came out at $7.50 per user. Zimbra was under half the cost at $3.00 per user.

Adam Preset, an IT technical director at Penn, discusses their deployment: read more »

It’s the classic CRM problem.

Management puts massive amounts of time, energy, money, resources and excitement into a new CRM system. They’re giddy with the possibilities of sales forecasting, reporting, customer satisfaction, and all sorts of information that will help marketing and sales to be more effective.

The big training and launch take place, there’s a flurry of activity…and a week later 20% of the sales reps aren’t even using the thing.

CRMs don’t work unless sales reps use them. And sales reps won’t use them unless there is something in it for them. Entering call reports at the end of each day doesn’t exactly get a sales rep fired up, and there’s no direct line between that thankless work and the next commission check.

When deploying a CRM, you need to keep your end users in mind.

The system has to be easy to use and valuable for reaching the goals of the reps (not just the goals of the company).

Here are some ways we’ve seen it done in our work with SugarCRM:

read more »

We’ve all done it. We’ve walked into a retail store and bought something. There’s a comfort in being able to examine the item, compare it to similar products nearby, and talk to a salesperson. Looking around the store, it’s easy to see sale and guarantee signs. When paying for the item, we don’t think twice about pulling out our cash, check or credit card. We leave the store knowing that if we are not happy with the purchase, we can return it.

Things are not always so cut-and-dried when shopping online.

According to a study done by McAfee, most online shoppers wait one to two days between visiting a site and completing a purchase. Armando Roggio at Practical eCommerce has an excellent article that explains many of the hesitations that consumers have and the reasons they abandon their shopping carts instead of making a purchase.

• Shipping charges that were too high
• Going to other sites to compare prices
• Looking for coupon codes
• Not finding their preferred method of payment
• Confusion about contacting customer service with questions
• Reluctance about providing their personal or credit card information

How can you decrease abandoned shopping carts?

read more »

I use local rail to travel in and out of Chicago every day. While waiting for the train to leave the Chicago station each evening, my laptop often reports two or three Free Public Wi-Fi connections eager to accommodate my web browsing needs.

I never connect.

Setting up bogus “Free Public Wi-Fi” connections in heavily traveled areas is a common trick of hackers and other folk with less than kind intentions.

By broadcasting a fake “Free Public Wi-Fi” connection with a packet sniffer enabled, an attacker can see everything that a person who connects to their broadcast can see, including passwords.

Here are a few security tips for travelers in need of Wi-Fi:

read more »

To balance out my previous post (perhaps rant is a bit more accurate) about Facebook and Twitter, here’s a fairly well-balanced overview of 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business.

My only beef? The author, while providing many good points, is in the hospitality industry. That’s business-to-consumer and somewhat of a lifestyle brand, exactly the two areas that have seen some social media success.

I still hold reservations for the near-term prospects of most social media for business-to-business industries. (Though we obviously blog and use some other targeted social media, so we’re in the pool, even if not wholeheartedly!)

Regardless, good tips for any type of business using or considering social media.

If you lend half an ear to “marketing experts”, “industry analysts” or “social media gurus”, you’ve probably heard your company should be using the social web for marketing, sales, customer support, brand awareness and about anything else you can think of. Now the “social web” can mean a lot of things of varying use, but the two tools that really get a lot of publicity are Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s my advice: Don’t believe the hype.

At least, most businesses shouldn’t.

I’m a technical consultant, so I’m sure I’m missing the marketing brilliance happening here. But the truth is, very few businesses are doing anything with tangible impact with Twitter and Facebook right now.

After watching social media and business with interest for a few years now, here’s my take: read more »

Every morning I walk about a mile from the train station to the office. This morning around 6:30am I was traversing the gray streets of Chicago when a guy I’d never met sidled up beside me.

He greeted me and I returned his greeting.

“Why’s everybody so wrapped up in themselves?” he asked.

I stopped. We talked for a little while. This fellow lived on the street. He had his own reasons for trying to get me to stop, of course. But his sense of isolation was palpable.

I’ve heard it said that one of the worst parts of poverty is being cut off from relationships. Everyone is “so wrapped up in themselves” because we don’t want to be taken advantage of, because we fear what a conversation might bring, because we believe our time is better spent at the place we’re headed to, whether work or home. It’s easier not to stop, not to listen, not to look others in the eye.

It’s hard to tend to and care for people.

At the risk of diminishing the importance of this man and the problems of poverty, can I suggest that this lesson applies in business too? read more »

Working at a tech firm, I’m surrounded by a lot of very technically savvy people.

I find, in general, very technically savvy people tend to be paranoid about privacy and security on the Internet.

This worries me.

What do they know that I don’t know?

So in a toast to technically savvy Internet paranoia, here’s a trio of Firefox browser add-ons designed with the security paranoid in mind. read more »