Services Provided

Need For Executive Support

Before we go further, are you the decision maker? Great, a documentation upgrade project is a highly rewarding yet significant undertaking. We need your unwavering support when implementing our solutions and by that, we need regular review meetings so that we can update you on what has occurred and what is still to occur. If you go MIA and we are unable to communicate for weeks or months at a time then you pop up and want to modify completed work then we can certainly undertake that but it will come off of the block time.

I mention this because early on, we would take the owner or senior managements word that his/her input was not required. It never works, you need to be an active participant or need to have a representative that speaks for you and is as enthusiastic as you about the improvements that are going to occur.

It is important to say this because things will always get worse before they get better and anyone who waivers and demonstrates a lack of trust at this point can damage and even destroy the chance of the project being successful.

The dynamics involved in any major change to the way your technical staff work will always need to be handled sensitively. Sometimes we are going to be replacing systems they invested time and effort putting in and quite likely they are quite proud of the system we will be replacing.

Any human being will be sensitive to that happening. The second point is that your employees are loyal to you, they do not know us from a bar of soap. 

If we do not have your full support to undertake the changes needed and that includes ensuring that your staff understand changes need to happen then the project will absolutely fail. That means not changing your mind 2 weeks into a project after previously coming to an agreement on how to proceed or allowing your own staff's worries and emotions to cause you to second guess the agreed upon course of action.

If we create training material and guides on how to enter documentation into the system along with multiple training sessions and meetings and we find that nobody is following them and nobody has taken the time to understand them or we have asked for both feedback and questions, received none from your staff only to find that you are inundated with complaints then our expectation is that you will have our back and point out when staff may behave in a disingenuous way.

I say this because it happens every project at some point and how leadership handles the behavior determines the level of success the new system will have. Only the company leadership has the ability to make the project a success, all we are is a tool that helps you achieve success, you guys are responsible for the actual outcome of a project.

Project Failure Example

A real world example I had a few years ago was an MSP owner of a small MSP that we had been working with. After we had continuously asked his staff for feedback on changes that were put in place as well as any questions they had, we received zero questions and zero feedback and mistakenly took that to mean everyone was happy.

The owner of the MSP contacted me and advised that none of his staff were happy and that things were better before the changes were made. He asked me if we could create some videos and user guides to help his staff adjust to the new system.

We invested around 20 hours creating custom videos and detailed instruction guides on the specific issues they had raised. Bear in mind that we had constant lines of communication with staff through Slack messaging and were available all the time. I made a point of contacting each staff member individually through Slack and encouraging them to ask questions as well.

The beauty of ITGlue and the video streaming application that comes with O365 is that it tracks the amount of people who view the media. A week or two went by and the owner contacted me again advising that the training material was not working and the staff found it way too complex.

I checked the training material to find that there had been zero views (other than me) on either and every single one of my slack messages as well as follow up emails had not been replied to. Expecting that this information would help me when advising the owner, I was sorely mistaken.

The owner advised me that his techs did not have time to reply to messages or watch the training material. At that point I knew we had done all we could and that the project was going to fail.

Now this owner had the ability to get this project back on track, I considered his response to fall under the heading of willful ignorance in that he knew his staff were the ones that were being unfair but because his loyalty was stronger with them, when his staff began to complain, he sided with them. I do not know about others however I have a built in detector on willful ignorance that works reasonably well. I come from a place of always trying to help and if someone appears to behave unreasonably, I assume it is because I initially have not communicated properly.

I think most of us know when someone is feeding us a line. The moral of this story is before taking on any documentation projects, ensure that you are fully committed to the cause and are willing to see it through to the end.

Pricing Documentation Services

We have found that by offering a 100 hour block agreement in advance, it cuts down on administration as well as demonstrating that both parties are committed to the successful outcome of the selected project.

It allows us the confidence to be able to provide a worthwhile review of your current documentation strategy encompassing all areas. It also allows time for us to undertake at least one task that will demonstrate a productivity improvement.

If your preference is to consume the 100 hours over say 3 months then we can adjust our work schedule to keep in with your budget over a given time frame. It is important to advise us of this prior to the start of any work. 

While we certainly have the capacity to consume that amount of time within a month, we have found that because documentation projects are often disruptive and need some acclimatization for everyone concerned, it is a good idea to pace yourselves. 

So in short, and if you are between 5 and 30 technical staff then you will receive a full and thorough review of your current system as well as at least one area that we can work on to improve the consistency and speed with which your staff are able to access the information they need to deliver the best outcomes for your own clients.

Above 30 staff and it is a little more difficult to estimate & while we have never been unable to complete a full review well within that time frame, even a password naming update project starts to stretch the limits of a block time of that size. 

This is mainly because with that number of staff, any change has significant impact and so generally it becomes far more formal, and the amount of communication required before implementing changes eats into the hours estimated. 

Larger companies do have the advantage of economies of scale however the initial tasks always seem to take longer.

Companies over 20 or 30 users can still start with a 100-hour block however there needs to be the understanding that to complete even a small project, it may require another block of hours.

The 100 hours can be used for anything up to and including backfilling your support desk with the understanding that if time is consumed on non-documentation specific tasks then it is likely the tank will need to be replenished to achieve the original agreed to tasks. 

A new 100 hour block will be sent when the previous block is down to 10 hours and will need attending to before reaching 0 hours.

We are happy to backfill support desk services as it helps build good relationships between your support desk staff and our staff. 

It also helps us highlight some of the areas they are having with documentation that we may otherwise miss. Our aim is always going to be improving documentation and we would recommend only using us when your own capacity is overwhelmed. 

There is no doubt that you can get good level 2+ technicians that are better value than our staff would be and so it would not make a lot of business sense to do this.

The new block will need to be paid in full before the previous block reaches zero. We provide a US$5 per hour discount on a 300-hour block & a US$10 per hour discount on a 500-hour block. There is no expiry date on block hours.

To explain the Direct access point listed below. With the 3 and 5 hundred hour blocks, any named internal staff member of your organization has 24 hour direct contact to our staff. 

It can be a great feature however it must be taken into account that the time working for anyone that contacts us will consume hours off of the block. Some organizations still prefer that we only engage with a single point of contact as they can then ensure the hours are consumed in a managed and methodical manner.