5 key characteristics of SME in Singapore for survivability

I was required to submit a document on my views of small-business success for my scholarship application. I gave it some thought to what I think all small businesses should practice, especially IT solution providers.

Do let me know your thoughts, if you have any!

I have been working in an SME environment for the past 13 years, serving mainly the small and medium organizations and business in the area of IT support and systems integration. Looking back the past years, what helped me stay in my current job, even with it’s ‘below-market’ salary, is the fulfilment, family oriented working environment and support, both in and outside of work. 

Every business is made up of people, young and old, everyone in the workforce desire in one way or another a desire to be recognized, appreciated and feel that their effort is worth something in the society or at least, the community they are in. As such, any businesses small or big, should put its value first and foremost in the people instead of profits and systems. With the right people, equipped with relevant skills and filled with great attitudes, any organizations will grow and flourish.

As such, the five important attributes that all SMBs should have are:

1)      Focus on building the relationship aspect in the business

Every business opportunity or employment opportunity should first and foremost be focused on building a human relationship above profitability. Every business deal should involve a certain amount of profit that can be used to grow a company, yet the more important part of the business is the continuity of future business by building great client relationships.
Every employment opportunity should benefit the company in building a suitable team to grow the business, yet every staff should be treated with respect, care and a desire to build a healthy ‘family-like’ working environment.

2)      Pace the growth of the team and fill positions with capable managers

Every business is either growing or failing. A stagnant business is always leading to its downfall. Personally, I feel that leaders within the organization will be required to raise leaders that can lead others before any headcount expansion. Great companies require great leaders to run the people within the organization. While many small businesses desire quick growth, the more important criteria is the longevity and ability to sustain during difficult times in the economy. The only way to do that is to ensure growth in a pace that is manageable by key leaders in the organization.

3)      Be willing to take feedback and change in accordance to the market

Any organization big and small need to respond and evolve to survive in the current economy. As a small organization, since there is less ‘red-tapes’, changes should be adopted fast and responding to a crisis, a snap. Embracing changes and maintaining flexibility, as well as creating a decentralized leadership structure, are keys to surviving in a market that is constantly overrun by large multinational corporations.

4)      Never lose sight of the goal, while constantly motivate the team

As a small business with a pool of talents, it’s often easy to deviate from the goal of the business. Every staff in the organization only has 24-hours of life in a day and to make each day count, priorities need to be defined, goals need to be set and measured periodically. Leaders are required to remind the team of the goal they are trying to reach. Encouragement, support and care should be given to each team members to know that despite of running towards the goal, everyone is needed to reach the goal of the organization.

5)      Share the joy and fruits of growth with the team

Remuneration in small businesses may not be large or regular as compared to large companies, but when it comes, it should be made known and shared with the key employees who believed and worked for the success that the organization reached. In times when monetary gifts are not available, the support to the family, care and concern for the well-being and development of staff can also be given as a substitute. At the end of the day, each staff ought to feel that the company makes an effort to appreciate every individual and everybody is valuable and indispensable to the well-being of the organization.

I believe there are many other important aspects and characteristics required to make a business successful. I am quoting the 5 that are dearest to me, and based on the experiences I had, which has passed the test of time.

 
Any thoughts? 
Agree or Disagree? :)

A Weird Occurence of DNS problem faced on an SBS-2008 with some Windows PCs

A weird occurrence of an SBS-2008 environment where locally connected users are unable to resolve DNS even though network services are working well on the server.

This user encountered a similar issue as mine:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/Windows_Server_2008/Q_26804178.html#a39516961

To those of you who has no Expert Exchange account, I have printed and saved this article here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/170510614/DNS-issue-faced-with-Windows-SBS-2008-in-the-Local-Area-Network

I am using SBS-2008, updated with the latest patches.

One fine day my clients in their office are unable to resolve DNS addresses. However, all incoming connections including VPN-PPTP were working well.

My usual solution was to restart the server, and that should fix it. Initially we thought it was due to the Antivirus software installed on the server.

We manage to figure another way out, disable network adapter, and re-enabling it will resolve the issue.However, we couldn't do that all the time, as it will disconnect our remote support session. Restarting the server was a better choice for us.

Observations:
We ran nslookup on the server, it showed an ip v6 NS. It can resolve names properly.
We ran nslookup on the workstations, it showed ip v4 NS, which is the correct and default NS, and we couldn't resolve the DNS. We could still maintain a connection via teamviewer, but simply not resolve any DNS when browsing sites.

Work-around solution:
After disabling IPv6 on the network adapter on the server, we were able to resolve DNS entries fine on the server and the clients.

In addition, we were also able to connect to the internet on both server and clients. I do realize that Exchange might encounter problems, so I turned IPv6 back on again in the server network adapter and problem was resolved.

I believe this will come back again.. and I don't think the above is a real-solution yet, but it's a good enough solution for now to resolve this issue quickly.

7-zip.. opening of zipped up attachments from email with a .msg

A client called, received an attachment from her boss, 10 over megabytes! Nice thing is that it's all zipped-up, but there seems to be a slight issue of not being able to open some of the content of the attachments.

Content of zipped up file comprises of PDF, XLS, DOCs and... MSG!

Can't seem to open the attachment properly due to the nature of 7-zip, it seems to be able to strip open the .msg file into it's HTML or RTF form. 

As such, right-click and you'll see OPEN OUTSIDE function.. that's weird! There's such a thing...
Open-Outside function calls the default program to open .MSG file, and problem was resolved.

On a separate note, I believe we can open a JPG file and view them using Windows Photo Viewer from 7-zip too! we faced a bug in recent years where an image being opened from 7-zip will not be viewable when using the default Windows Photo Viewer... We used Picasa as a work-around...

Having said that, I do believe this method above - open-outside - will work-out!