Our new site is finally ‘Live’

This stands as a major milestone for us as the design is radically different from what we usually go with – Personally I really like it, it shows a professional ‘clean’ image.

The content is as you’d expect from us here – a mixture of advertising what we do and informing the masses as to how to help yourselves.

I must however, take this opportunity to apologise for the length of time it has taken to deliver.

Avid readers will recall that recently I posted about our foray in to the mystical realms of ‘Marketing’ ~ well, I’m glad to say that my cynicism has been proved soundly wrong and we are busier than ever!

This is a great thing, but something has to give, in this case getting the new website online took a back seat in preference to serving our clients (much as you’d hopefully expect :) )
One of the painful problems with running a small business is you have to wear many ‘hats’ ~ that is you have to take on many differing roles within the company, this is where things can slide.

Anyhow – we hope you like the new looks and we’ll look forward to working with you all in the future

 

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From time to time it has come to light that I have – well – let’s just say I’m a little on the cynical side (please try to curtail your laughter at the ‘little’ bit of that sentence).

It has been know for me to look for the potential problems and issues before anything gets set in stone ~ I like to think of it as attempting to be prepared.

Hmm…

Still – I have to take off my proverbial hat and doff it in the direction of Tor ~ She has (quite regularly) proved me wrong; I hate to say…

Traditionally we have never entered in to the realms of marketing ourselves ~ the bottom line is that neither Tor or myself are ‘sales’ type people. So you can understand my scepticism when we decided to embark on this process with some major time put aside for this very exercise.

We even popped over to see a ‘guru’ on these things – If you are reading Hi Pete!

So it is also understandable that when the results of said project started rolling in we (well, more I really) was a little surprised at the results!

Now I realise that some of you dear readers will be rolling eyes and spamming the old forehead with the palms of your hands at this revelation ~ but it’s a big thing for me to see happening.
We are getting a  great response to our ‘blowing of trumpet’ and are actively working the leads and interest we are gaining.

It’s looking very bright out there for us at the moment ~ we are looking forward to working with a whole new group of clients who need our help and will soon be without the usual IT woes that most businesses have.

Smiley happy engineer..! 

 

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After our recent employee left the company, we were left with a couple of difficult projects that were running badly, mainly through poor management and communication.

Two of these we’ve completed already – a 3^rd completed today.

In our line of work it’s a necessity to keep all parties in the loop to maintain the project integrity – there’s too much ‘one upmanship’ between the egos of some of the protagonists and so things can go south rather quickly.

It’s imperative that all interested parties know who is doing what and the point at which they are at doing it.

In this case though, the problems stemmed from two major issues:

1. Lack of communication (within R&A and with the client)
2. Lack of documentation

In the first instance the client communicated his ideas, preferences and needs to us via our previous employee, who neglected to communicate that to the rest of the team.

This was compounded by the second instance as there was no record of any of these being discussed or planned beforehand.

Marking a huge deviation in the processes we have developed over the years for managing exactly the issues raised above, I am still at a loss as to why these procedures were not followed!

This resulted in much unhappiness all round ~ both we, and the client were not happy.
Furthermore this almost began the first salvos of a legal case!

Not good…

Well, today we finally completed the project

After long discussions (and the patience of the client who took the time to explain things a second time – and I duly documented them!), things were finally put to bed.

The end result was a happy client (eventually) – a reduced bill from us (we took responsibility for some of the problems) and a much reduced stress level!

Just a couple of minor bugs and we are home and dry!

YEAH!!!!!! 

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My life, in general, is dealing with everyone else’s problems ~ if it’s not an issue with some tech somewhere, it’s an issue with a website or a purchase etc.

Now I’d like to think that I am a positive type person ~ I am predominately a ‘Glass is half full’ type, with minor negative expectations.

Call me am optimistic pessimist if you will: I believe that it will be fabulous, but experience tells me otherwise

Having said this, something I, and other small business owners, suffer from, from time to time, is a feeling of despondency - that feeling of “Why the **** am I doing this??!”

Well, today was one of those days…

I had some driving to do today: a special pick up from the suppliers then a brief sojourn down to a client near the Drax power station, after which I zoomed across to sunny Scarborough (amusingly renamed ‘Scarbados’ by the clients).

Usually I love these times, as it give time to think – get in car – apply liberal amounts of music and goooooooo!
On this occasion though, the doomsayers got there first, and the “what’s the point” message was coming through ‘loud and clear’.

BUT…

I had a client call (out of the blue) to say that he’d been to a networking session, where someone said they would review the other participants websites. One of these I had designed.
The review came back as extremely positive, and that the clients website was ‘One of the more pleasing designs’

That cheered me up no end!

I went on to have a great day – making several peoples lives easier and happier (I was delivering a new PC ~ it was like Christmas all over again!)

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I had the pleasure of flexing my technical muscles today – with the development of an issue with the Apple iPad2.

Now this is an impressive piece of kit to say the least – the feel alone is of a polished product, and in general it’s a nice experience to use…

…BUT

As is usual with most of the tech from Apple I have had to fix, once there is an issue it’s a right  to fix.

In this case the client had synchronised the email accounts and settings from his Mac to his iPad – a process that should have duplicated the details. In this case the iPad didn’t like the stuff it had duplicated and refused to ‘do’ email.

I came to this after the client had had a 1½ hour support call to Apple!
This was not something I knew before I got there!!
Fear was mounting, as was the pressure after this little gem was dropped into the conversation…

Long story short – I fixed it!
Not only that, there was an issue with the connectivity with the 3G mobile network which I also solved!!

Boy was I impressed with myself..!

 

 

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