Similarly to 'Location, Location, Location' to Realtors, we as SBSC'ers find more value in selling community, community, community. Unlike the big boys of Partnering with Microsoft, we don't carry a stable of techs and programmers. We don't, each of us have a marketing and sales team devoted to generating more leads, making more sales, etc. We have to do it all, and well, in order to survive. SBSC'ers are by their very nature generalists. We are not Gastro-Intesitinal Specialists. We are not Chiropractors. We are not Brain Surgeons, contrary to some opinions. We have to be generalists. A customer may come to us with a problem with ACT! or a problem with their POP3 account, or a hard-drive that's clicking. We have to know all about it and get it fixed in an hour or less...or that's what the client thinks, huh? We how can we combat this, and follow Microsofts Instructions, find what you do and do it well? The answer, partner-up. Link into the community. Whether it's Swing Migrations or Hosted SBS, I can find the right solution for my customers, simply by plugging into the community.
For those that don't know it D-FW covers 4 counties in Texas. The North Central Texas Council of Governments counts 15 counties. From Commerce in the Northeast to Corsicana in the Southest to Stephenville in the Southwest and Bridgeport in the Northwest. that's about 19,600 Sq. Miles. for most though that's really about a 50x100 mile area (5000 Sq. Miles). That's still alot of ground to cover and according to the 2000 Census a population of 5.1 million people. OK so you get the point. It's alot for any one man shop to try to cover...(did i beat that one to death?)
Here's one of the benifits of Community. In my client list I count customers in (No particular order) McKinney, Heath, Richardson, Dallas, Plano, Addison, Carrollton, Lewisville, Denton, Forth Worth, Arlington, Desoto, Garland, Irving, Coppell and the Colony. Sure I use the tried and true SBSC'er tools to support them. A solid SBS server, secured and up to date. Remote Desktop, Remote Web workplace, yea yea yea...but what about getting out there when they need me? I call upon partners, people I CAN TRUST, who will a) get the job done and b) won't rustle my cattle. For me DFW-SBS has been a life-saver. We get great technical content. But we also get to network with people just like us. People who are technically savvy. People who are not selfish. Most importantly people who are just like us.
I'll take a step back though and say...we do specialize, in Small Business. we don't work the enterprise space. We don't work the Multi-Nationals. We leave that to other people. Some of us are Break-fix, that's who we are, that's what we do. Some of us are Office Guru's that's who we are, that's what we do. Some of us are programmers, be it web or perl, that's who we are that's what we do.
So when I go into a client to do an assessment, and I make recommendations. I know that we can get that Small Business into the 21st century. We can fix their business issues and work with their business processes, because i have more than 3 or 4 techs waiting to work at the shop, I have more than that, I have ALL possiblities, ALL solutions at my disposal, through the community, community, community
Abbie and I have been called into service leading a Disciple I Class. Abbie has been leading Disciple classes for a couple of years now, and I took a Disciple I class with my wife a couple of years ago. We are adding some technology to the gig though.
First off we've established a site using Windows Sharepoint Services. After toying with a variety of templates we finally decided on a meeting site. After some content development, we did some minor customization of the site. Normally customizing web sites involves FrontPage, a Web Developer and more. We found, after an afternoon of online chat and tweaking that the site had come together with little effort, and no customized code.
I had noticed when I took a class a couple of years ago that was missing was the opportunity to review content or have discussions during the week between Tuesday night classes. This is where WSS really excels!!! It is built with exactly this type of situation. Abbie can share her notes (as the leader of the class) we can have discussions online, We can post documents and links so that the value of the class is not left there in the classroom.
So to make it more productive, Abbie's Sprinmt card will get a workout in the classroom. Part of what we'll be doing is running some of the content up to the site online as we work and learn. Our church has the tools onsite, however we have not even begun to touch the capablities of our systems. Hopefully through our industriousness, we'll be able to pry open some of that toolkit for more of the congregation. The church operates like most medium sized businesses. Wntire groups doing their own thing sometimes within an IT framework, othertimes, not so much. Exploiting Sharepoint as a content portal for staff as well as congregants is such an obvious choice, it's frustrating that, as an organization, we have not done more with it.
Here's to the future, here's to sharing. And that's my point...