Windows 8 - My experience

I wrote the other day saying I was going to give Windows 8 a try - Windows 8 is out!

So on Saturday, I decided to upgrade my laptop and give Windows 8 a run. I had played around with the early betas and release candidates by running them in a VM but this time I went all out. As I had only purchased my laptop in June this year, Microsoft gave me a cheap upgrade to Windows 8 - $14.99 to be exact. So I paid my money and started the download.

To install an upgrade, you download a small installer and let it take care of the rest. The process is pretty painless and took a little while to complete, mostly because of the download time. Once complete, the laptop rebooted a couple of times, then gave me my logon page. I logged on (with my existing domain credentials) and was prompted with the now familiar and divisive "Metro" interface (which Microsoft now calls the Windows 8 UI for legal reasons).

So far so good. I started setting up the tiles on my home screen and generally going about my business but just found it ... a little difficult to navigate. And then it started crashing, frequently. The whole computer would just freeze up solid and have to be power cycled. Not a good start. I wonder if a Windows Update installed in the background broke something? I'll never know because at that point I decided I needed a working computer, and therefore had to format it and start again. Lucky for me, I had taken a backup before I started. Never do any kind up upgrade like this without a backup!

So I went back to my download and realised that all I had downloaded was the magical installer. I followed the links to my account from the receipt and quickly realised that this installer was the only file Microsoft was going to give me. Hmm. Lucky for me I have access to other legitimate sources and downloaded a complete DVD ISO, so I could start again.

After formatting the laptop and starting again, everything seemed pretty smooth. I set up my home screen, started downloading my most important applications, configured power management, wifi and all manner of things. I used it like this for several hours, doing some work and play. I must admit, I was really getting into the new interface at this point. My one major gripe of the interface is that it is not really keyboard friendly, despite there being some shortcuts. I would take keyboard over mouse every time and love Windows 7 for the ability to hit the start key (on the keyboard) and just start typing to find an application or file. In 8, this isn't possible (or I just never found the right shortcut key combination).

Sunday morning I fired up the laptop again but now it started crashing again, just like the upgraded version did. After a few power-cycles I was getting pretty frustrated. I tried unplugging everything and trying different things but it kept locking up. Worse, there were no clues left in the event logs. At this point I was due to go out to a friend's place to help with her website (which was all stored on the laptop). So I took it with some trepidation. However, at her place and then later at my wife's work, it worked sweetly again - not a single hiccup. Then I brought it home and .... yep, you guessed it. Maybe it doesn't like my wifi?

I need my laptop for work (day job and sideline business) and play, so this wasn't acceptable. Sadly, I spent  Sunday afternoon formatting it again and reloading Windows 7, which I'll stick with for now thanks.

IT guys normally say wait until the first service pack before jumping into a new operating system - I normally say this myself! So that's what I'm going to do now. Something isn't quite right. It might be in the product, or Updates from the web, it might be in the drivers for my laptop (even though it is a current spec machine and there are official Windows 8 drivers available), or it might be a negative vibe coming from all my swearing. I don't know and I don't care. I will be steering clear of Windows 8 for the foreseeable future and I would probably suggest you do too, unless there is a really good reason not to. Let somebody else work out the kinks, then install it when Microsoft release the first big set of patches, or service pack 1.

Windows 8 is out!

Windows 8 was finally released yesterday. It seems to have been around for ever with the developer previews, betas and release candidates but now it is finally here officially.

I am downloading it now and will post back here once I have had chance to install and find my way around it. I will be doing an upgrade install on my just over a year old Lenovo L520, currently running Win7 Pro. So I'm a little nervous to say the least. I am doing backups while downloading Eight. Better safe than sorry.

Watch this space .....

Why CRM is a necessity for your organisation

I wrote recently about why you should have a CRM system in your organisation - Information is King. The post talked about using a CRM solution to better manage your sales leads and opportunities. There is a lot more to CRM that new prospects - what about managing your existing customers? Kamal Sharma, CIO of Mindlance goes into more detail on different purposes of CRM in his blog, Why CRM is a necessity for every growing enterprise.

In the piece, he is talking about knowing more about your existing customer - not just who they are and what they do but drilling down further into understanding the trends in their business or industry, and better understanding what they actually need. Overall, this will ultimately lead to a closer relationship with your customer, which we all know always leads to a longer relationship, involving more sales. What's not to like?

If you don't have a CRM solution in your business, you should be asking yourself 'why not?'

Shameless Plug - Waynessa Bags

I wouldn't normally do this but it is for a good cause - my wife!

My wife has started up an online store selling quality fashion handbags, purses, wallets and accessories, and we would love to be getting a bit more attention on the net. Please have a browse and let me know what you think of the site (I created it). And of course if some pretty item takes your fancy, please feel free to throw it in your cart and buy it!

Waynessa Bags - All your accessory needs.

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Who Owns Your Digital Life? Follow Up

Recently I wrote a piece about Who owns your digital life? I talked about how if you read the small print on your digital purchases (books, music, movies, etc) then you would see that you never actually owned it, you only purchased a licence to use it.

Wel it seems Amazon decided to prove me right recently when they deleted somebody's account and wiped their Kindle because they were apparently linked to an account that had been abusing the system - see
Amazon account ban reminds us DRM content is only rented | Digital Trends

I find this frankly staggering. Amazon just decided "we don't like you so we are going to delete everything you have purchased from us - thanks for your business". This should be a wake up call for us all. Not least by virtue of the fact that we keep having DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) imposed on us. All DRM does is takes all your rights away and gives them (leaves them?) with the company that 'sold' you the product. I believe that DRM makes content and products Defective by Design. I would urge you to take a look at this web site and learn more about your rights and how they are abused and more importantly, how to do something about it.

Customer Service - What do you see?

Everyone remembers a bad customer service experience. You could deal with the same company for years and maybe they provide fantastic service - they really go above and beyond. But what do you remember? If you said "the one time they screw up", you'd be right.

I came across this article - Your Customer Does Not See - and it really makes sense. It talks about doing all the right things but it doesn't get noticed by your customer. However, when you mess up once, they do notice that. How do you deal with that? Well part of that will be in being consistent. Have a set of policies and procedures that describe how you deal with each possible situation. That takes a bit of effort and certainly no small investment in time. But a happy customer is a customer for life, so in the end it has to be worth it.

Go the extra mile. Don't just flick off a quick email. Pick up the phone and talk to your customer. It is easy to miss the tone of an email and take it the wrong way but when you have someone on the phone, you can much easier deal with whatever the situation may be; put the fire out if you need to.

But probably above all else, make sure you listen to your customer. Ask them what they want, then shut up and let them tell you. If what they ask for isn't possible, it's OK to say so - you should never promise something you can't deliver, after all. In this case, explain what they want isn't possible and why. But really importantly, you then need to provide an alternative solution to the problem. Never just say no. Say not like that but this way will offer you some value.

I had a poor customer service experience recently with a web hosting provider. I had a technical issue that I understood and believed I knew the fix for. I logged a support case with the company and gave them all the relevant information so that they could come to the same conclusion. Instead, they answered some question that I didn't ask. I replied to them and got a response from a different agent. This guy also responded to some other question. I went through this several times, with several different agents over several days before I called and spoke to somebody who quickly escalated it to a more senior agent, Lo and behold, the problem was resolved almost immediately. The moral of this story? As the service provider, make sure you read and listen to what your customer is saying. Don't read the first line and assume you know the rest - or even assume you know more than the customer.

Information is King - where is your CRM?

In the digital age, digital information is king. Pretty obvious really. Or is it? Do business owners and managers realise this?

From some discussions I've had, it seems not. Some people just don't seem to 'get it'. They store email addresses and phone numbers into their contacts in Outlook, Gmail or on their phones but that's it. Opportunities are tracked via notes or tasks with no real structure and no game plan on how to close the deal. That may be all well and good if you have opportunities coming out the wazoo but in a tight market, you need to be smarter than that.

So what will a CRM solution give you that you can't just do in Outlook? Plenty is the answer. I'll elaborate.

1. The most obvious thing is that it will give you the ability to create, store, view and sort your opportunities in a consistent and structured manner. This will make them easy to search or browse and therefore easier to follow up on (and close). You will also keep all documentation relating to the opportunity in this single repository - quotes, build specs, etc. 
2. The ability to put a dollar figure on your potential future business. It's all well and good to think you have plenty of business in the pipeline but how can you measure it? Most CRM solutions will give you some kind of dashboard that will tell you exactly what is in the pipeline, and if you have it set up correctly in the first place, which opportunities have the highest probability of closing. The most likely opportunities will then float to the top and these are the ones you will want to concentrate on.
3. By having your opportunities in the one system - and again making sure that system is set up correctly - you can make sure that all the members of your sales team are following the same procedures when working a deal, by programmatically presenting the next step as the previous one is completed.
4. Following on from this, most CRMs will give you the ability to automate parts of the process. For example, if you have a process that says when you get a new lead, you send them a welcome pack on day one, a link to some relevant info on your web site on day two, then arrange a meeting on day three, you can often automate this whole process. That's a far more efficient way of managing leads, not to mention removing the possibility of a human forgetting a step.

CRM solutions need not be expensive these days, with many hosted in the cloud and available for a nominal monthly fee per user. That being the case, there is no real excuse not to have one. If you aren't using a CRM solution in your business, why not?