Perhaps this scenario describes your desktop software situation: Half of your end users use Office 2007, and the rest are still running Office 2003. All you’ve heard from the former are “Where’s the file menu?” and “How do I save a document?” From the latter, you’ve likely listened to endless grumbling about their frustration with Office 2003-incompatible files created by colleagues.

Third in a four-part Office 2007 migration series.

It needs to be said: Finish what you started.

In part one of this series, I highlighted the reasons an estimated 50 percent of enterprise-sized IT departments are running mixed Microsoft Office end-user environments. Part two offered information on how to complete the migration with minimal downtime. This post lays out a project timeline and readiness checklist.

You want successful transition to Office 2007 and early ROI. In order to meet those goals, you need to keep your employees informed and trained before, during and after deployment. With a plan in place, you will minimize or eliminate dips in productivity and give your workers confidence to use the tools they rely on every day. This is what you should expect from a migration partner: Read more…

admin Finish What You Started, Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program Help Desk, learning curve, Office 2003, Office 2007, recession, shadow support, the Ribbon, Training

In a recent post, blogger Seth Godin throws out an interesting statistic: If you ask 100 people to do something, expect two of them to get it wrong.

Make it OK to not know something — allow your employees to get their work done with minimal downtime and frustration.

According to Godin, managers have two choices in dealing with this errant 2 percent:

“Design systems that have the good sense and gracefulness to permit the 2% to proceed; or annoy, demonize or lose these people.”

Unfortunately, most companies today opt for the latter. In a recession, quality desktop application support usually is the first to go when budgets are cut. It’s hard to quantify its return on investment, and the demand for such support is often hidden.

Companies annoy, demonize or lose employees by making them figure out software problems on their own, but hold them accountable if their workarounds fail. Figuring it out on their own can mean fruitlessly scouring Microsoft help files for solutions, asking for assistance from colleagues who know a little more about software, finding flawed workarounds, or doing nothing at all. That’s the hidden demand, and it wastes heaps of time and money. It also creates frustrated employees.

A smarter solution is to acknowledge that the 2 percent is inevitable and take steps to minimize the effect. Offer software support and training; make it OK to not know something; allow your employees to get their work done with minimal downtime and frustration.

Read Godin’s blog here.

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

admin Rants Seth Godin, software support, Training

More grim news from the land of statistics: The recession may be waning, but a recent survey reveals that its effects will be felt by employers (and their customers) long after it’s over.

To combat attrition, researchers suggest starting with the issue of employee engagement.

Researchers for nonprofit HR organization WorldAtWork and consulting firm Watson Wyatt found that employee engagement levels dropped 9 percent since 2008, and by almost 25 percent for top-performing workers.

It’s not a surprise that dissatisfaction is growing among those who still have jobs. They are now responsible for doing their own work, plus that of their sacked colleagues. What’s more, with salary and bonus freezes in effect, those employees aren’t being compensated for their extra efforts. (Granted, those pay freezes did save them their jobs.) A decline in productivity is inevitable.

And there’s one more factor: According to the same survey, 41 percent of employees believe that the cost-reduction measures that have been taken by their employers are adversely affecting quality and customer service. Read more…

admin Worker Productivity attrition, recession, Training, Watson Wyatt, WorldAtWork

It’s an unusual day around here if someone hasn’t called asking for help with a mailbox that has reached its size limit. Such calls are as common as the cold, but they’re hardly seasonal.

Try teaching organization tips when a deadline is looming or has passed. It’s futile.

And if there’s one thing that can arrest productivity, it’s a full mailbox. (For an interesting look at e-mail’s ill-effect on employee output, read “Avoiding Death by E-mail” written by Tom L. Barnett and published on Computerworld.com.)

Depending on your company’s policy, it can mean an inability to send mail at best, and loss of all e-mail functionality at worst.

Usually, the calls come from users who need to send an e-mail right now, and do not have time to properly free up space. Sometimes they have already begun mass-deleting and they still cannot send mail. Read more…

admin Worker Productivity Computerworld.com, e-mail, Outlook, support, Training

Recently, I was reading our customer comments and one in particular caused me to pause: The customer stated that he didn’t know Outlook personal folders could fill up.

I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

That was the bad-mannered former software consultant in me, and I quickly reminded myself everyone has their own areas of expertise — some technical, some not.

Case in point: I know someone who is a carpenter and general contractor. He had very little formal education; most of it has been on-the-job. If you need to know what kind of wood something is made of — whether it’s a common type like Spanish cedar or an exotic species such as Bubinga (African rosewood) — he’ll tell you in a second. That’s his specialty, and he knows it well.

But when he tries to work with document templates and database files for his business, he’s not so nimble. For that, he brings in help. Read more…

admin Rants Bubinga (African rosewood), carpentry, Outlook, software support, Spanish cedar, Training

After reading a recent rant on CIO.com, I’ve decided that Meredith Levinson is my new favorite blogger*. Her post, a response to Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT feature and accompanying sidebar 7 Tips for Keeping IT Employees Upbeat, was laced with vitriol, but it wasn’t wholly bitter. She included a speck of humor, and a heap of truth.

The Computerworld piece that raised her hackles included these suggestions for building employee morale: Read more…

admin Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, ROI CIO.com, computerworld, Meredith Levinson, software support, Training

PC Helps has partnered with CIO.com to communicate the myths and realities of an Office 2007 migration, and eight service levels needed to prove migration ROI. You cannot afford to approach an Office 2007 migration blindly. The user interface is radically different and guarantees that your employees will flounder just trying to perform basic tasks.

In this series, we separate the facts from the myths, and teach you how to get the most return on your investment.

Myth No. 1: You can make Office 2007 look and act like Office 2003.

One of the biggest gripes about Office 2007 is the interface. Read more…

admin Office 2007, Worker Productivity CIO.com, Office 2007, ROI, Training, Worker Productivity

Efficiency. It’s the unofficial buzzword of 2009. It may summon fear in corporate workers; after all, it’s often heard as justification for layoffs. But that unassuming little noun can also motivate your employees, and maybe even give them renewed interest in your company. It depends on how you package it.

In a recent post on TechRepublic, Calvin Sun offers 10 tips on the subject. Here are three that warrant elaboration:

Less Imaginary Widgets, More Genuine Examples

If one of your employees is fumbling with the Access sample database “Northwind,” it’s no wonder. Read more…

admin Excel, Office 2007, Worker Productivity American Airlines, Calvin Sun, cheese, efficiency, Excel, learning, Office 2007, TechRepublic, Training, Worker Productivity

A recent Ars Technica article profiled the Norwegian electricity company Lyse and its off-the-wall way of increasing sales and building brand loyalty – by giving a $400 discount to customers who dig their own fiber optic cable trench. It seems like a cockamamie marketing trick, one that was destined to fail. But the opposite happened. According to the article, Lyse increased its number of customers from 500 in 2002 to 130,000 today.

By having customers mine their own trenches, the article continues, Read more…

admin Office 2007, Worker Productivity Lyse, Norway, tech support, Training