Another Technology Tool?

Every time I hear about a new upgrade to my PC, a new software package that I MUST learn about, or some new bell or whistle, I start making sure that my office door is locked, blinds shut and start mentally building the sand bags around the reasons why I am too busy to participate. I basically become “unavailable.” Our internal tech team usually huddles and whispers about how they are going to “take me down” on this new upgrade. I am the one that goes kicking and screaming into the future. I am the last one rolled out and configured. I simply shut down on it . . . everything works fine . . . leave it ALONE!!! I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING VERY, VERY IMPORTANT TO NATIONAL SECURITY. Of course they know that we don’t work on national security, but I think the impact of the statement works once in a while, especially to new employees. Oh yeah, I am also the CEO. Do they care? Heck no! They just plan away. I resist change in my own little world although I truly do appreciate how and why some people have to have the latest and greatest in technology. Well, there wouldn’t be a J4 Systems if they didn’t, right? I know how pathetic it is for me to resist change like this. Someday I am going to change that part of me without resistance.

So here I was about five or six years ago when I start feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I see the sly looks, the whispers. They quiet down as I walk by. John is typically at the center of this. His posture changes and he is covert. I feel like a Gazelle in Africa about to be pounced on by hungry lions. Sometimes Tiffany comes over and says something like “J, this is going to be so cool. I promise you that it is going to work great. No glitches, so easy. I will help you. Also, if we don’t do it, J4 Systems will catch on fire, burn to the ground, you will be penniless, homeless and catch a disease that will make you wish that you had gone through this simple little upgrade . . . .”(Okay, you get it right? She is very good at persuading you to seeing her way, because the picture she paints just gets worse with resistance).

So I sit in on the meetings, become a bobble head (see fire, disease, homeless above to understand my agreeing to this), and we install SharePoint. Everything looked normal. It powered up just fine — cool! Then I hit the “e” for Explorer and I see that Google has changed their landing page to a picture of my team. I knew that we were popular with Microsoft and all, but seriously? I stomp over to John’s office. We never agreed to get rid of the Internet; I am confused (imagine that!). Tiffany is sitting there and they have that “duck and cover” look on their faces. They have NOT tried to reinvent the Internet or get rid of it (thank goodness), but instead, SharePoint is our new landing page. I must have missed that little piece of info when they said that everything would stay EXACTLY THE SAME. Ugghhh! Having a landing page is sort of nice though. I act a little upset, but am thinking that this might be cool.

I could go on and on about those conversations, but the bottom line is this: from the very first day to today of using this tool, I have done an absolute 180 on SharePoint. SharePoint is the second best business tool that I use. Email is number one. SharePoint does everything but cook breakfast for us (who knows, maybe that is next). We can see the billings for the month for the company, we can collaborate on documents together in real time and see the changes as they are made, how many sales calls our Reps have made that day and the length of the calls, look up job aids for every important task in our company with screen shots, project details including proposals and which developers or engineers are working on them. We attach Visio diagrams to project plans and we have information about our clients’ networks on it so that we can quickly figure out what possible problems there may be when they call in. We lock down who has access to certain information so that it is also a management tool. All vendor contact information is on it. I am in SharePoint all day long.

Since we have started using SharePoint, I have demonstrated this business tool to at least 100 companies. At least 95 percent of those have moved forward with it, and the other 5 percent are planning to. Even though I am grateful to technology for providing me with so much, I believe that in the end it has to make sense as a business tool. Technology is not a hobby for me. It is a way to make us more efficient as a small business. A client of ours in the food industry once asked me how a certain hardware was going to help them make a better burrito. I have often thought about this question because I believe that it applies in a different form to every client that we work with. I did not have an answer for that then. With SharePoint, I believe that it truly can help all businesses make better products and services through tight communication, more efficiency, better organization and, in the end, more profit.

SharePoint is not a technology to me. It is a “no brainer” business tool. I wonder why my tech team didn’t install it sooner. I just walked by a group of engineers with John in the middle, and they are whispering and looking around. I am in my office with the blinds shut and lights off.