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!

Printing with Annotations in Acrobat with Electronic Filing System (EFS) resulted in weird upside down behaviour

Client from a law firm called and my tech guys has troubleshoot this issue for 1-hr but they can't figure a resolution. As such, it's transferred to me, and after my 30-min diagnosis, I realized the problem has to do with the PDF version on the document!

After 2-hrs of troubleshooting, I can only offer a work-around.

The issue is that EFS annotation tool supports only PDF version 1.5 (for acrobat 7.0 and above). It does not support Adobe PDF version 1.3 (for acrobat 5.0). 

As such, when the user tries to annotate on a scanned document, which Fuji Xerox [Apeosport iv - c3300] uses PDF version 1.3, it will give an upside down or weird issue where the document gets upside down, while the stamp or annotated words stays upright.

after scanning from copier-scanner

the problem with the annotation, it's upright
while the document is upside down

There is no fix to this as the copier can only generate an older PDF version of the document. I spoke with the FX engineer and she advised that the only solution is to upgrade firmware of copier, which might not resolve the issue as it does not include upgrading the PDF version.

I taught the user to try using Docuworks, scan in document, then re-print to PDF. Too many steps and too lengthy of a process. In the end we just stick with re-saving the scanned PDF document to a ‘newer’ version of a PDF document, before annotating and then, re-saving it again with the annotations.

in the event where the scanned pdf is upgraded.

this is a working example.

Getting Fuji Xerox Centreware Internet Services to include new staff email address

A new staff just joined a client's firm, and while trying to add the new user's email address, I spent a good 10-mins trying to figure out where to get the address book entry changed.

As such, not to repeat this kind of problem, I am posting a guide for my own future reference.

The Steps:

1. login to centreware using IE. I tried using Chrome, sorry, just had no inspiration to locate it. Use IE.
2. login using administrator username and password, usually 11111 for username, and x-admin for password.
3. go to properties, look at services, go to email and find public address book.
4. unfortunately, you can't just change the addresses from here, you'll have to download the CSV file, edit it using excel, then save it, after which... you may import the file back to the copier.
5. should you encounter problem with the downloading or importing, please ensure that all services are exited from the copier, it's set to sleep mode and no one else is using the copier for scan/copy/fax/print.

Good Luck!

QNAP with OwnCloud 5.0 Installation and Configuration from SCRATCH!

A client recently purchased a QNAP from us, and he complained that the features aren't as 'dropbox' like. :( 
Well, let's then make the QNAP as DropboX like as possible! :)

After searching, I found the Wiki to install OwnCloud in a NAS - Wiki Here

However, this guide is applicable only to version 4 of the OwnCloud, and there seems to be some parts of it that is no longer required. 

Disclaimer:
I did notice some problems in the forum on Owncloud 5.0 on the QNAP. Some reverted back to 4.5.11 build for better stability. While the forum posts are dated in May-2013, if you're worried about the possibility of conflicts or problems, I'd suggest going through the new features of the 5.0 and verify that if you don't need any of them, then please use the stable-build of 4.5.11. 

Some of the forum entries are:

• Goodbye Owncloud
• Install OwnCloud on your NAS - seems easy...

I will create/generate my own set of documentation based on my own best practice, and once I see this as 'good-enough', I will post it in the QNAP Wiki to help others.

For a start, the list of things I have are:

1. QNAP TS-419PII
2. Update to the latest version of firmware, 3.8.3
3. 2x 320GB hard-disks with RAID-1
4. OwnCloud 5.0.6
5. OwnCloud Documentation (Here)

I followed the Wiki to do these first:

1. Enable the QNAP services for Telnet/SSH
2. Enable the QNAP services for Web Server
3. Install IPKG Optware in the QPKG Centre
4. I did not install PHP 5.3 as it's already on PHP 5.3
5. Download and unpack the latest version of OwnCloud and place it in the /web share
6. Set the permission using chmod command via putty into the NAS

Next, I proceed with doing my own thing:

1. Enable MySQL Server in QNAP Applications, but i did not want to tick the 'allow TCP connection' to prevent intrusion and hacking of the DB
2. Reset the root password
3. Install PhpMyAdmin in the QPKG Centre
4. Remove all other applications that I do not use like Video station, Music station, etc...

The Tweaks made are the following:

1. I will need to access mySQL database first to change the default password because root password as default is no good! (MySQL guide here)
2. I will need to access via phpmyadmin but i can't login via admin
3. I don't want to enable the TCP connection, so...
4. Open up Windows Explorer, go to the path: \\(your NAS IP)\Web\phpMyAdmin
5. Look for config.inc.php, change the value for 
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost'; 
6. Leave everything else the same. Note that the value was previously 127.0.0.1
7. Proceed with login to PhpMyADMIN web-console (https://(ip)/phpMyAdmin), with default username: root, password:admin
8. If you still can't login, just remember to reset the password from inside the QNAP Admin console.
9. Immediately change password for the root account to access the phpMyAdmin
10. Go to Privileges, create a new mysql account: owncloud1, set password accordingly.
11. Set the location to 'localhost' instead of '%'
12. Tick on the Create database with samename and grant all privilleges
13. Click on Check All for the privileges, then untick the SUPER under Administration

DB is now ready, let's go with the OwnCloud Config:

1. Login to web-console for owncloud (https://(ip)/owncloud)
2. Create an admin account, I'll use owncloudadmin, with a new password - different from mySQL pls...
3. Click Advanced
4. Set DB to MySQL
5. insert MySQL Details
• User: owncloud1
• Password: the password you've set for the user
• DB name: owncloud1
• Leave the localhost alone.
6. Completed!

Now that OwnCloud is set-up, let's proceed with administering to owncloud!
 

Manually Map Office 365 MX records in my own DNS servers

I like Office 365, the features are decent, pretty much complete, and support is 'okay', a little slow at times, but generally, people on it-like Google Apps, don't complain with email unavailability, and issues with missing mails or even too much spam.

It goes to say that my own email hosting services, as well as implementing an onsite-exchange with SBS-es, have much to improve to match up to Office 365 and Google Apps set-up and maintenance team.

Having said that, there are some things that are set in place as a standard practice for Office 365 users or subscribers, to minimize problems with connections and reduce the complication of set-up. Wizards rule the configuration and I believe that is the strategy to allow any tom-dick-harry to set-up their own Office 365 subscriptions.

While that may be a good thing for the mass majority, IT pros like me would still like the flexibility of having to ala-carte our own variety of services too. Therefore, though we might like the Office 365 mail offerings, we could possibly maintain our own web-servers, and DNS servers too!

I did a quick search on the web and couldn't find a guide to do this manual configuration. As such, here are steps below to ala-carte my hosting plan.

Scenario:

1. Client has a web-hosting, joomla site with Hostgator with ip 90.87.10.1
2. Client has an email-hosting, previously in Hostgator too, on the same server as the web.
3. Client has a domain name registered with ENOM named wecando.sg
4. Client has a DNS server subscription with NO-IP for dynamic IP mapping for as well as DNS manangement. Which means, the authoritative name servers are currently set as:
   • ns1.no-ip.com
   • ns2.no-ip.com
   • ns3.no-ip.com
   • ns4.no-ip.com
   • ns5.no-ip.com
5. Client would like Office 365 email only subscription, with a P1 or Small Business Standard Office 365. Having said that, it'll still work for other Office 365 set-ups.

I applied and configured for the set-up in Office 365. That has to be the first thing done properly.
Create all the accounts, register for the domain within office 365... (oh well, there's a whole bunch of other guides out there on the set-up... I won't cover it here.)

Now, for the CUT-OVER.

You might be familiar with the DNS changes for the first MX or TXT/SRV record changes to the domain name in the DNS server to allow the domain ownership verification process. If not, please follow the instructions from the Microsoft guide.

Once you are left with step-5 in the set-up process, the last step was to simply change the authoritative name server from my no-ip.com to ns1.microsoft name servers, which I really don't wish to.

As such, we'll then have to head to:

1. Login to Office 365 portal
2. Scroll down or on the left Nav, to look for Domains
3. You'll see a list of domain names
4. Select the domain name you'd like to find out more on the details, then click View DNS Settings
5. You'll see that the DNS configuration is in progress and 'some things' are not yet completed.
6. Look below, click on View DNS records.
7. You'll get to see the current MX records and what is the server to use...such as:
   wecando-sg.mail.protection.outlook.com
   autodiscover.outlook.com
8. To ensure that you'll have autodiscover ready for use, please insert the CNAME record for the domain in your DNS server, in my case, the No-IP server.
9. I also need to remove current MX records from my No-IP DNS Server for the domain, and place the Microsoft MX Record.
10. Note that each domains registered with Microsoft will have their MX servers named differently! You can't use this address above as a template, always check and verify the DNS settings.

That's it. Changes to the domain and MX, thought we all like to believe that it's 48-hr, should actually take no more than 2-hrs depending on the TTL settings. I'd advise not to terminate the old mail hosting plan for 1-2 days, then once 1-2-days are over, do give the old mail server a check to ensure that there are no 'trapped' emails... Once ready, delete all old mailboxes and disable the SMTP or email services in the previous hosting plan. (VERY IMPORTANT) 

Hope this guide helps people out there!