Are you a Small Business Specialist, a SBS 2003 Specialist, a small business technology specialist or an IT Techy?

re: Are you a Small Business Specialist, a SBS 2003 Specialist, a small business technology specialist or an IT Techy?

Nigel Davey — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 10:07:41 GMT

We are a new member of SBSC and for Managed Networks, it is a case of being generalists through having a whole bunch of people, each with their own little bits of specialisation.

I am looking for the SBSC to help me learn a lot more about the small business community as my background before moving into IT was purely in the corporate world - and in no way a technical one.

Will hope to get on this site most days, so speak to you soon

Nigel

re: Are you a Small Business Specialist, a SBS 2003 Specialist, a small business technology specialist or an IT Techy?

David Overton — Wed, 31 May 2006 00:51:42 GMT

Guys,

great comments. I do appreciate that being a 1 man band makes life hard. The key to success for me, especially if you want to have some time left for your life is to focus. It is always hard, but if you can ignore the bits that might appeal to you, but not to your customers, then there is a chance you can get the balance right.

Just my $0.02. And, if you want to become more business savy, you have to work out what technical areas you want to ditch (or get even less sleep).

ttfn

David

re: Are you a Small Business Specialist, a SBS 2003 Specialist, a small business technology specialist or an IT Techy?

Tim Long — Tue, 30 May 2006 23:41:14 GMT

This encapsulates the difficulty for one-man-band outfits. I guess typically they come from a technical background (personally I was a firmaware engineer for almost 20 years so I am a developer at heart). For many in that position the world of business, sales and marketing is somewhat outside their comfort zone. To succeed in business, however, it is something that has to be embraced. For me, at least, SBSC is my stepping stone from technical to business. It is a difficult balance to achieve. If I'm to be successful as a one-man-band I do have to be able to measure up to other IT companies and I think really having an in-depth product knowledge is an important part of that. Knowing how IT can best serve a business surely needs both broad and deep product knowledge? At some point I may decide to specialise, but first I need to find out what businesses really need from me.

re: Are you a Small Business Specialist, a SBS 2003 Specialist, a small business technology specialist or an IT Techy?

tezfair — Tue, 30 May 2006 14:01:30 GMT

A lot of what you are depends on where you are. As I am in North Devon there's few companies that need a Server system, yet need lots of Windows support, whereas when I lived in the Midlands, it was all Servers.

You have to tailor your skills to the needs of the surrounding area.

While I am a generalist, I would like to take my knowledge on SBS much further, indeed the many competency awards that MS produce all look great, but at a cost. As I work for myself, I find that many of the courses are too expensive or simply have requirements that I am unable to cover due to lack of skills / money / staff.

But then who's going to pay for someone who's a whizz bang at SBS when the folks around here grumble at (and refuse to pay) £15/hr????

Interestingly, last time I heard the word Generalist coming from MS's way was when I was beta testing the Microsoft First Resouce. However it seems that MRF has faded away (or least is stopping me from accessing it)

I believe the one man bands of the IT world have to be a bit of everything, and while we can't be the master of everything, we know that there's always MS support or Google to fall back on to give us the assistance we need.

Where the specialist are needed are the top end-mega bucks solutions, such as Sharepoint systems, CRM solutions and WAN based offices (as examples). Its here that people will already have been taught / shown / demo'ed these things so its easy for them to impliment. I, on the other hand don't have clients that need these solutions so have no interest in learning or having a set of skills in these areas.