Recording Date: November 13, 2024
Topic: Budgeting in IT
Host: Steve Stedman, Shannon Lindsay with guest Brandie Kayser

Stedman SQL Podcast Episode 7

Stedman SQL Server Podcast Ep. 7

Steve Stedman hosts the seventh episode of his podcast, discussing the importance of IT budgeting with Brandie Kaiser from ROC-IT. Brandy emphasizes the need for regular IT assessments and budgeting to avoid unexpected expenses. She highlights the significance of aligning IT goals with business objectives and the importance of cybersecurity. Brandie shares a case study of a medical practice with IT issues due to poor initial setup, stressing the value of proactive planning. The conversation also covers the challenges of upgrading systems and the benefits of partnering with experts like Stedman Solutions. An eBook on tech budgeting strategies is available for download.

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Podcast Transcript

Steve Stedman 0:15 Hey everyone, and welcome to this week’s Stedman sequel podcast. This is episode number seven, and I’m your host, Steve Stedman. Just some news. We started publishing the podcast on Spotify, and we’re working out the details now. We’ve got the first episode up at Spotify. The others will be on Spotify soon, but they’re all available to watch on the YouTube Steve Stedman or at Steve Stedman channel. For the full video, I hope everybody enjoyed last week’s episode with Shannon George and Mitchell talking about database health monitor. I was out on vacation, and I think they did a great job filling in with some of the latest updates from the database health monitor application and some cool new features coming out in the next version. Some news as we jump in here for Stedman solutions for the whole month of November, we have our crazy class promotions at Stedman sequel school. All of our classes are on sale at some point this month. Visit Steve stedman.com to see some of the latest class promotions, 50 to 60% off some of the classes, and even bigger discounts coming on Black Friday and Cyber Monday each day and each week of the month, we have different deals, so check back frequently to see which class you can get a deal on today. During the live stream, feel free to ask questions, and at the end of the session, we’ll do our best to answer them. Just put your questions into the YouTube chat. We’ll be able to see those. For those who have questions after the live stream is is over, you can reach out to us at Stedman solutions, and we can help you there, or you can post them in once it’s published on YouTube, you can post them in there, and we’ll try and do our best to answer them. And if you want to be a guest on our podcast, if you have some SQL Server topic or something you want to share with our listeners, please reach out to Shannon at Stedman solutions.com, to schedule, and now on to this week’s podcast. Our guest this week is Brandy Kaiser from Rochester. IT and business solutions. Brandy and her company are one of the Stedman solutions partners, and let’s bring brandy as well as Shannon on Brandie Kayser 2:24 Hello. I’m so happy to be here. Steve Stedman 2:27 Yeah, thanks for thanks for joining us. And I know you said Rochester it, and Business Solutions is a bit of a mouthful, so you like to call it Rock it. Rock it. Yeah, we’ll be referring to you as rock it, Brandie Kayser 2:42 yes please, because who has the time? It’s a very long name, but you know how it goes. Steve Stedman 2:49 Alright? So can you tell me about rock it and when you started it, and what you do and those kind of Brandie Kayser 2:55 things? Sure, I’d love to. So my partner in all things, and now husband, Keith and I formed the business a couple of years ago. We collectively have 35 years in various aspects of it. So Keith ran a very successful break fix. We call it business on Long Island, prior to COVID. So I’ll leave you all to fill in the blanks there. And we started rock it when we moved to Rochester. My background is in digital transformation and medical technology implementation, so I worked for IBM’s healthcare division before starting rock it. So today, we are a it generalist and consulting firm that does everything from cyber security Well, to be honest, everything we do is through a cyber security lens, but we also help our clients with their networking and digital transformations, as well as just the general things that might come up. We administrate Microsoft licenses, for example, too, and so pretty much whatever small to medium sized business needs from the IT realm we are there to provide for them. Steve Stedman 4:23 That’s great. And one of the reasons we’ve brought you on the show is because you’re a partner of Stedman solutions, one of our partners in the partner program, and through that, we do our best to do what we can to help each other out. And I know you mentioned you do Microsoft licensing, and that’s one of those things that we don’t do. Brandie Kayser 4:47 And that’s honestly one of the things that as far as like tickets and support, that’s one of the things that comes up probably the most often, password resets and onboarding and off boarding. I. That kind of thing, kind of our bread and butter. And as you mentioned, we are partners, and very gladly so, because one of the things that we do not do is SQL database. That is a specialty that was not in our wheelhouse, but it’s very needed. So we’re grateful to have all your expertise for that so that we can super serve our client with an expert, Steve Stedman 5:26 and we appreciate that partner relationship. So the topic we wanted to talk about today was around budgeting and in the tech department. And I know that’s a topic you brought up. You want to jump into that and talk about that a bit, I Brandie Kayser 5:43 sure do. I thought given, yeah, I thought that given it’s November, how that happened, it is really a good time for any business to start doing their budgeting. And what I’ve learned from our myriad of small business clients, the IT aspect of their budget is often not set and overlooked. It’s kind of like a fingers crossed and pray budgeting aspect, usually. And then what we find is, you know, things inevitably need to be replaced, repaired, tweaked, improved, and then when that’s not in the budget, there’s a scramble to find the funds or then take them from other projects. So we always advocate for our clients that this is something that they normalize into their budgeting process, so that they’re setting themselves up for success in terms of their its for the year, because that’s something we can absolutely help with. But do have an MSP they you might want to reach out to them and suggest such a process, depending on the size of our client and the complexity of their environment, we meet anything from once or twice a year to quarterly to kind of level set and make sure that that those projects that they’ve got milestoned out are still being seen and worked on collectively. So I guess that’s my little PSA announcement to kick this off is when it comes to it, having an assessment of your infrastructure and your software on a regular basis is a great idea, because then you are prepared for optimizing it, versus getting a surprise and not a good one Down the road, because that’s where I would start with. As I said, my little PSA announcement, Steve Stedman 7:45 right? The infographic? Do I bring up the infographic and jump into that? Brandie Kayser 7:56 Yeah, yes. So, so these are pretty much encapsulating what I just outlined, which is where to even start with tech budgeting and part of it, you might be able to start prior to engaging your MSP or an MSP. Oh, and to back up, MSP is managed services provider. It’s the short hand for the an IT consulting firm. So most MSPs, as I said, can meet with you. They will know your infrastructure. Or if they’re new, you can walk them through it, and then you can set goals together. I have no clients that have unlimited resources and can just do every project that comes in their head, of course. So one of the things that we like to do is sit down with them and set goals. I have a client that new to me, as matter of fact, that has been meaning to do a newsletter hasn’t gotten to but because it’s hard to do the way she was trying to approach it. And then I told her about setting up a CRM and how we could build some automation around that. And this was this was not within her superpowers. She didn’t understand what a CRM can really do. So now we have a project. She didn’t have budget for it in 2024 because this is kind of a new thing, but now we’re building it into the 2025 budget and figuring out like doing a needs assessment and wrapping our heads around the need to haves, the nice to haves, and then I’m working with her to put out an RFP to select one. So that’s one example of how this process might work. But this digital transformation is not necessarily the only thing you want to look at. You should be aware of the age of every device. In your in your business, all the laptops, your phone system, if it’s if that’s applying a server that you might have firewalls, you know, routers, modems, all of this stuff. If you didn’t understand some of the words I said, proof positive, you need an MSP. But what we do then is check warranties and end of life of your operating system. So these things still going to be supported by Microsoft next year, these kind of software and hardware considerations can really eat a budget. Soft is end of life thing, their operating system, win 10 in October of 2025 which does not mean your computers are just going to shut off, not at all. But what it does mean is they’re going to stop introducing security patches after that, so that that the hackers are anxiously awaiting october 2025, I promise you that. And also, if you’re in a regulated environment, if you don’t upgrade within a certain grace period, then you are subject to fines. So these are all things that somebody has to be watching for you. And again, is, is job one, and that’s Steve Stedman 11:30 interesting, because we see that a lot, because we’re on the SQL side, and we see a lot of people where they’re running on an older OS or an older SQL Server, and they’re at end of life, or beyond end of life, and we have to have the conversation with them to say, you know, Microsoft is no longer supporting this version of SQL Server you’re on. We need to work on that plan to get you upgraded, because there’s no more security patches available, and you know that someone’s going to try and exploit those, and we do everything we can to help move those customers forward. But you’re right. It is a big budgeting challenge around moving to those new versions of SQL Server, and although we can help them with the tech side, sometimes the budget side can even be a bigger concern, Brandie Kayser 12:09 exactly. So some proactivity around that goes a long way. I had plenty of clients when I was in my former position, which was a regulated environment, that were caught up short by their MSPs and not informed of this in time. And then there was a scramble for them to remain compliant, because you don’t want to fool around with HIPAA for sure. And even if you’re not in a regulated environment, lucrative, so you must do everything you can to protect it, and this is one of the easiest things. So we’ve already, for the last couple of months, been auditing all of our clients, laptops and servers and workstations, to see what operating system they’re on, and some can be upgraded and some cannot. So we’ve just been working through that process with them now for months so that we can do the plan replacement process for them. And that’s huge. Shannon Lindsay 13:15 How many times a year would you say somebody should really kind of take that step back and look into the time frame left on their not only their products, but like you said, their firewalls and stuff. So once Brandie Kayser 13:30 a year audit is enough. That is not to say that you only look at that audit once a year, but that that process of taking your inventory and tracking it, once you get that going, then it’s it becomes a lighter process going forward. So we use agents that little mini programs that we put on all of our clients, or managed service clients devices that gives us that information, and then we have automation around flagging it for our notice so that they can budget into it. So then when we do set our quarterly or annual meetings with them, we come prepared with the information, have those conversations with them constantly, once you’ve gone through the rigor the first time, which, depending on how many workstations and employees you have, that first time can be pretty, pretty rigorous, but then it gets easier. Steve Stedman 14:36 Do you ever run into a situation? Do you ever run into a situation with the clients there where they have the budget, they have the money to take care of the upgrade, but the upgrade is just too difficult, or too challenging, or too big of an impact on their business, that they’re stuck waiting for non monetary related issues, Brandie Kayser 14:57 not that we put around it? But Well, caveat that not since the supply chain, issues have started to level off after COVID. There were plenty of issues like that during COVID, when computer chip supplies and hardware supplies in general were kind of strained. There were some waiting lists around that, not from our end, but just procuring replacement devices. So I guess that leads to another reason for proactivity, because you can get you can get yourself in order prior to it becoming an issue. But typically, as I said, we’re pretty proactive about it, so our clients find something that say the warranty is expiring, or something we could just put it on the map. It doesn’t mean it all has to be addressed that moment. That’s that’s a big part of the conversation, because nobody’s budget is unlimited, so we are, we’re having a conversation about priorities, right? So maybe if they know a CRM program, for example, would really level up their marketing. But they also have a bunch of hardware that needs to be upgraded in order to comply with the the move to Windows 11. You know, we’re just going to have to make choices, but you really want to have an expert at your side when you’re making these choices, so that you’re getting, you know, a real good sense of the repercussions of each choice, and can make an informed decision thereof. So with our clients, they are the boss. They are the ones that know what their budget is. I’m just, you know, just consulting with them and helping them to make those informed decisions, versus doing a Google Fest and maybe getting it wrong, so that that’s the part of what we bring to that conversation as well. Steve Stedman 17:01 Alright, so we’ve got this infographic on the five tech budgeting strategies up here. Now we want to walk through kind of the steps here, or talk a little bit more Brandie Kayser 17:12 about so yeah. So the first step, as we said, is taking a real inventory, not just a physical inventory, but an inventory of your goals as well as your processes. So if you are many of our clients are in growth modes, which we love. So they are trying to either expand their client base, hiring more people, whatever those cases may be. So we’re going to look at how they’re doing things today that aren’t scalable as well. So when I say inventory, that is part of what I’m referring to, really sit down and look at where you’re at today, how you do things, what tools you use to do those things, what tools you have that are being used and those that are not. It’s very common to put in some wonderful digital transformation widget, only to find that maybe it isn’t highly adopted by your employees for whatever reason. So you want to have some really good and candid conversations about that. So when I see inventory, I’m speaking of your software, your processes and your hardware, and make a safe space for your employees to admit if a tool that is available currently isn’t hitting the mark, because we do see that sometimes. So that’s first step. And then, as I said, you have to prioritize. You’re probably not going to be able to do all of these things in a quarter or possibly even a year, so you want to have your priorities set out a year or two, because that’s optimally when it comes to budgeting, just kind of the the best practice there. So how many hardware devices will need to be replaced this year? Is this the year you’re finally going to put that CRM in so that you can level up your marketing? Is this the year that you want to change your accounting software, and therefore you’re going to need to have different specifications, possibly on your hardware, or build in migration costs make sure that you know that your MSP is aware of that project, because there might be some work on their side that you may or may not have realized you have to budget for so all of these things, once you know, like, kind of what everything is going to cost, then you can milestone these things out based on, as I said, I’m a cyber security first person, so that will inform to the priorities Bishop. Business efficiency, very important, but only if you still have data to run your business. So that being a secondary but also important concern. Then what I saw, especially with busier or clients with more employees, more complexity in their business, this step, taking employee feedback, is one that they often times overlook, and that’s why we see poor adoption sometimes with software thereafter. I don’t know where I heard it, but there’s the savage. If you want to know how something runs in a business, ask the admin. And I think that that is a real pearl, because they’re the ones ultimately that will be using this. You want to make sure that you’re putting in software that actually will improve their job and doing it in such a way that the training hits the mark. So bring them in as soon as possible, and continue to listen to their voices as you go along, not only for the needs, but then that road map, and then finally, you want to, as I said, I put cyber security first, but within that road map, that’s the lens we should always be applying to these things. Are our system secure? Are we using the right monitoring and the right antivirus, and are we doing Do we have a good backup solution in place? All of these things need to be front and center in that priority setting and then, therefore that road mapping. So it sounds like a very rigorous process, but in the actually, when you roll up your sleeves and do it, if you have a good team put together, then it can go pretty smoothly from there, just follow the Steve Stedman 21:59 steps. Okay. Yep, sounds great. Do you have any stories of maybe something that went horribly wrong somewhere when someone didn’t follow the steps? Brandie Kayser 22:09 Yes, I do, sad to say. So we just are still actually working on a project for a busy medical practice that wanted. So I hear this a lot. I’ve made a lot of money on clients who, well now clients that had their sisters, nephews, cousin who’s good at computers, just kind of set stuff up for them without going through this this step. So they were what my mom always calls penny wise and pound foolish, yup, and they cut some corners. So now, now they have a system that’s not at best, just not suiting them at worst does not work. And the client that we just took on a week or two ago is a case in point of this. So they have a they have an over engineered system that’s not quite set up right. So their internet keeps going up and down, and they have what’s called a voice over IP phone system. So their phones are actually connected to the internet, for those that don’t know voice over, IP or voice the terminology, so when their ISP, their internet service provider, goes down, they’re literally dead in the water until it comes back up. And they’re experiencing these hiccups multiple times a day, and when it does come back up, they have to reboot everything, including their phones, so it is very disruptive, and we’ve been working through we follow a pretty standard troubleshooting process to figure this out. ISP coming into the office was run over by a lawn mower, so that was problem, to say the least. But it turns out, there’s multiple points of failure in the system because we’ve addressed that one, but they’re still having disruption. Shoot again to find the next point of is that a you want to hire somebody that has credentials, references and experience, but the other is that now they’re hit with a big expense. They’ve paid others to not fix the problem, and now we’re trying to work with them and be, you know, as as helpful as we can, but you know, we still are having to build them, and so it’s very frustrating for them. We are feeling urgency on our side. So had had they budgeted for planned replacement? And they wouldn’t be in the situation, probably, because most of their equipment is on the older side and not supported anymore. So it’s it’s going to be a big deal that they were not expecting. So 10% Yeah, Steve Stedman 25:14 and that’s an interesting challenge that you brought up there, and we’ve seen this a few times, where a customer, or a new customer we start working with says, Well, we already spent all this money on this other vendor who said they were going to take care of this for us, but we’re out of budget now because all the money’s gone and we need your help to do this, and we have to explain, Well, yeah, we will take care of it. We will get it right for you. We won’t end up doing it the way they did it, but still going to cost money, and, yeah, the that mistake to use that other vendor might have been throw away. And I mean, we see that quite often, where we come in and get it right after someone else has made a mistake. And I think that part of that comes down to picking the right people and the right experience and the right background. And that’s where you have your specialties. We have our specialties, and I think that’s where the partner relationship works so well. We don’t try to take on something that’s not in our wheelhouse, and the same for you, and we get in a position where it’s just a good, mutual relationship there, Brandie Kayser 26:11 as a human being, person, I feel for them, and I would love to be able to say, oh, I’ll just jump in and help, because that’s who we are, but we have employees, and we have expenses, and we are very good at what we do, and, you know, we charge a fair rate for it. And so the reality is, I mean, that’s, that’s just the situation. So, you know, it’s not always avoidable, but in many circumstances, by doing that, that auditing process and your goal setting from not only an efficiency but a technology standpoint, you can be better prepared. I am not saying that something will then, but it’s much better to be prepared and say, say something does, and then you have, like, a number three prime, you know, with thought and intent, instead of now, do I pay my heat bill? Or do I pay my ransom from my data, like we don’t want to be there at all, or do I pay for my rent? Or do I replace my server? You know, like, those are not the choices that we want. Those aren’t the Crossroads we want to get to at all. So it does okay. And I think that the short thought here is, I’m thinking that many small, medium sized businesses don’t even have a tech budget at all, and if, if you fall into that category, dear audience, no shade thrown to you, but you probably do want to start thinking about that in your budgeting, even if it’s just a small budget for now with a few really strategic goals, you really do want to make sure that you have some funds allocated for those eventualities, and you and do A little homework, get a consult, and we don’t charge for initial consultations, and can, very often, will tell a prospective client, you know, these are kinds of costs that this, that or the other thing, would incur to allow them to budget for them, and almost invariably, they come back to us To do it when they’re ready, which is delightful, but now they know, and oftentimes they’re like, well, that is a spend, but I thought it would be worse so and it’s always cheaper to be proactive than reactive. I promise you that no matter what we’re if we’re talking about replacing your sofa or medical care or it, it’s always cheaper to plan ahead, Steve Stedman 29:04 absolutely alright. Well, that’s all good information. We want to take a minute to talk about this ebook that you that’s available for people who Brandie Kayser 29:11 want it. Yes, yes, we will have this available for download, and it goes more deeply into the things we have covered. So the infographic is the what, and this is the how. So it gives you, it’s only seven pages, and it’s, I promise you no geek talk is written for end users, and it’s just a nice guide on the things you want to start thinking about when you start building your budget if you are going to do this, or at least the initial stages of it, without an IT assistant. So it’s, I highly recommend it as a really good starting off point. Steve Stedman 29:57 Yep, you know, that’s great place to start. Sure. Oh, go ahead. Shannon, Shannon Lindsay 30:00 I think one of the the biggest points that I like that you’ve made is a lot of people plan for a budget, per se, but I like that you’re tying in the goals with it, because I think that that gets forgotten about a lot of the time. Of okay, what are they? They tend to separate them into instead of why, when you budget for your goals, you know, and I think that that’s been a very important, important point that you’ve made, is associating the two together. Yeah, Brandie Kayser 30:31 thank you for highlighting that. Because I totally agree. And everything I say, Well, I try to live because we’re a small business as well. So no one understands better than I do the choices that you have to make with your funds, they’re not they’re not infinite, and I think that goal setting is an important litmus test to setting those priorities, because we can’t even if money were no object, which I’d love to live in that world, but do not time and other resources. So even if you have a lot of money to throw at something, that doesn’t mean you have employee resources to throw at it, or physical time, you know, an implementation of CRM can take months, and a lot of that is hands on stuff. So you want to, as you’re setting your road map, you want to keep that in mind too. So do I have the time and the money and the need and the resources and other aspects? So can I train my employees in time? You know, all of these things are are part of that process that really is important. So you want to, you want to know that all that’s going to be worth it and aligned to a goal. So you want to add 50 clients next year, and you need to level up your marketing. That’s a huge goal. CRM is one of the tools to do that, possibly hiring a marketing person, you know, whatever else might be part of that project. But as project manager, I was always taught to think of these things with all the various moving parts. Yup. Steve Stedman 32:21 Alright, well, we’ll get a link to the ebook posted once this is put on YouTube. In the meantime, can they just email info at Rock dash it.net to get to get a copy of it, www Brandie Kayser 32:31 dot rock dash it.net and fill out the contact form and let us know there. So either one of those ways is a perfectly good one to get the information from us. Steve Stedman 32:48 Great. And also keep in mind you can always reach out to Shannon at Stedman solutions com, and she can help track things down if you need it as well. So any last words before we wrap this up? Brandy, just Brandie Kayser 33:00 that I’m so pleased. This was a ton of fun, and it is a message I love shouting from the rooftops. So thank you for the soap box. And final thoughts are, don’t get analysis paralysis around this. Anything that you do to start a budgeting process for your it is better than not starting a budgeting process for your it so don’t allow it to overwhelm you, even if you just the best place to start, I would say, is look on the bottom of all your laptops to see what the model number is. Yeah, I saw that too. Sorry about that. My internet service provider is not fantastical either. Steve Stedman 33:46 All right. Well, thank you for your time today. I think that wraps this up, and hopefully our partner relationship here will lead to a lot of great stuff in the future. Brandie Kayser 33:56 Yes, it’s been a pleasure, and thank you so much. All Steve Stedman 34:01 right. On to our next session, which is about the ask Steve SQL Server questions that we cover on each podcast this week. The question that came in was, what is the async network? Io, weight, type? And this is one of those that every time we’re doing a performance assessment, it always comes up with async IO, and people get really confused on, sorry, async network IO, and people get really confused on what it is. And it can be a number of things from slow network, but typically it doesn’t imply that you’ve got a slow network. The async network IO, weight type usually implies that there’s some client side application that is slow on processing a result set, like if someone in their code wrote a loop that was going to iterate through a set of results and download it, and then the database ended up later providing like, 10,000 rows, and the application is just there sitting, looping and waiting. It usually means that an application is stuck or that something is slow. On the client side, we see this quite a bit, and it’s one of those things that we try and track down as part of our performance tuning. And although async network IO weight types can be associated with with your network probably 95% of the time that we see them, it’s not related to the network. To the network, it’s related to the client application or the desktop on the other end is too slow on consuming the data. So that’s one of those things sometimes changing the software or upgrading what you’re using. We know, like Microsoft Access is one of those applications. When it’s querying a SQL Server table, it can log a lot of network async network IO weight types, because it doesn’t do a real great job of getting all the data that it needs and the way that it handles it there. So anyway, that’s the ask Steve. SQL topics, we appreciate having brandy from rock it, business solutions on the call today, and like to ask you if you can join us next week, we plan to talk about business continuity plans for your SQL Server. And remember, you can watch this episode and other episodes on YouTube, and all of our episodes will soon be available on Spotify. That wraps it up for today. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for watching. Speaker 1 36:37 Thanks for watching our video. I’m Steve, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this, please click the thumbs up if you liked it. And if you want more information, more videos like this, click the subscribe button and hit the bell icon so that you can get notified of future videos that we create.