Six business technologies that don’t work
Decades since the introduction of personal computing, there are still too many business technologies that don’t work. Oh, hardware and software firms will tell you yes. But they still don’t get it. For example, go to the Microsoft support site and type “Microsoft Word Error” (omit the quotes). I did this and got 2,380,000 results. Is this indicative that something works?
Of course I’m not being entirely fair. Many of these results go back in time. Most are minor issues or may be due to my search keyword combination. And with the exception of Windows Vista, Microsoft is a good company that makes good products. All I know is thank God they don’t build planes.
The problem is that people in the technology business seem to have a different definition of when something “works.” For me, when something works, it works every time.
For example, we are probably the only family in my county that does not own a digital television. We have a large Zenith in the living room that I bought over ten years ago and it’s… good. Yes, I am a stingy. But the thing works! And honestly, do I really need to see a close up of Kirstie Alley doing a flamenco? The same goes for my refrigerator. It has never failed me. He doesn’t have any of the lamps in my house either. Or my indoor plumbing. Or the phone. Or an episode of Seinfeld. Gold a Whopper from Burger King. These things can be counted on to work for me whenever I need them.
I wish I could say the same for my Tivo, which still can’t seem to record the correct channel every time. Or my Sirius satellite service, which always seems to go blank at the exact moment Howard is about to say something funny. But these are nuisances. What’s more of a hassle is when the technology I’m using to run my business isn’t reliable or consistent. In other words: when it doesn’t work. And, in at least six cases, this happens all too often.
Cloud. For example, cloud applications may be great, but the cloud is still not a work platform for many companies, both large and small. We have some customers who have outsourced their internal computers to companies that provide them with a cloud-based managed service. It’s “fine,” says a customer who didn’t want to be named in this column. Alright. That’s because performance is often slow. It depends on the internet speed where people are and what time of day they are trying to do something. App integration through permissions layers has been difficult. There have been a couple of cases where services went down. In all cases, these customers mistook the problem. But no one is working faster because of it.
Security and reliability in the cloud is still not working. Not when our largest and most “trusted” companies like Google, Sony, and Amazon lose millions upon thousands of emails, misplace sensitive security information, or shut down for hours on end. Why do you think most businesses, particularly in the financial services and healthcare industries, aren’t running on the cloud? It’s because they have extremely sensitive data and are required, by law, to keep it that way. Sure, cloud applications have a lot of potential. The future of this technology looks bright. My company sells some of these. And in certain cases, these solutions are a great option for many companies. But if you have a highly sensitive, mission-critical system that you trust to run your business, you’re not moving it to the cloud yet. That’s because the cloud doesn’t work yet.
IE9. I apologize if it sounds like I’m messing with Microsoft here. But Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t work either. I should know. I upgraded to the new Microsoft browser about three weeks ago. And two days after upgrading I had to download Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Why? Because many sites were not working properly with my new and improved IE9. For example, the same blog I’m writing now can no longer be loaded through the Forbes blogging tools like it could when using an older version of Internet Explorer. Is this Forbes fault? Is this some kind of configuration issue? I don’t know. Forbes uses WordPress, the popular blogging platform. Certain graphics on other sites don’t appear correctly, if at all. Does this happen all the time? Of course not. For the most part I’m browsing just fine using IE9. But I’m running into display and performance issues that I shouldn’t have to deal with in this late age of internet browsers.
Google apps. Does anyone have this? I use Google Voice and it seems that after about fifty voicemail messages I can no longer call and retrieve them in the order they were received. So that doesn’t work. Google Maps on my BlackBerry is slow as molasses and sometimes doesn’t give me the correct position I need, so I still need to print directions from MapQuest when I’m traveling. So that doesn’t work. Also, am I the only business owner who doesn’t know how to use AdWords effectively? I know I’m not the brightest bulb of the bunch, but I’ve tried every keyword combination in the world and I still can’t find my business anywhere when I search, even though my dollar balance inexplicably depletes. I have spent too much time and money trying to make this work for me and I have given up. Fail.
Skype video. Skype Video doesn’t work for me either. Have you ever seen how I look in my underwear? not pretty Ask any number of my kids’ friends who have seen this disturbing image of me in the background (and in crystal clear clarity) while video chatting on their MacBooks. My son also video chats on his iPhone. The quality is amazing. The performance is excellent. I’m a Windows guy and damn, I want to video chat with my clients too. So I try this using Skype. And the result is… meh. The image is grainy. The acting is terrible… forced, slow, choppy. I have tested this from many different places and with several different people. And the results are always the same. Skype video is inferior to Apple video chat. I may have to pay to use a better video service for my business. But why? Apple video chat is free.
Impression. Surprisingly, most office printers don’t work either. My clients complain about them all the time. Those new “wireless” printers mysteriously disappear from the network only to strangely reappear minutes later. Where are you going? Even printers that are connected to a server sometimes go AWOL for unknown reasons. Anyone who gets the “printer cannot be found” message knows what I’m talking about. We are all used to rebooting servers and printers to clear the print queue because, for inexplicable reasons, a million print jobs get queued and cannot be executed. The paper still gets stuck, like we’re still in an episode of Mad Men. And when these problems occur, the printers’ error handling procedures never seem to know how to handle the error, resulting in missing pages or incomplete jobs. We accept inferior printing technology as we accept rush hour traffic and Piers Morgan. A necessary evil.
Reports. After eighteen years of selling business software, do you know what problem is still the number one problem for most of my clients? Reports. Software vendors wrap themselves up in exciting new features and functions and hundreds of ways to do the exact same thing that seem to forget the most fundamental use of their products: Most enterprise software applications are systems built around databases. And the data is not yet fully accessible.
Sure, some vendors include a lot of reports with their products. But God forbid if a company wants to create its own report. Or customize an existing report. Or you want to access data remotely from your mobile device. Or they want to give their customers the ability to retrieve order information whenever they want. This can be done, but it almost always requires dark magic. And the use of external consultants. Perhaps the product’s internal reporting tools can be tampered with. Or perhaps a third-party reporting tool (such as SAP’s Crystal Reports) needs to be implemented. In any case, it is not easy. It is expensive. And the minute something changes, like an update or a new report demand, it all falls apart. Reporting technology remains a mystery to most small businesses. The basic data is recoverable. But important analysis, customized for the most productive use of the company, is not. This stuff still doesn’t work.
It’s 2011. Software and hardware have been around for many decades. Entrepreneurs, particularly those in small businesses, don’t need a lot of new features in the products they buy. They need products that accelerate and improve the profitable management of their businesses. All time. Surely. Consequently. No failure. In other words, we just need technology that works. And I definitely need to start wearing a robe when I walk around my house at night!