Microsoft Technology Assessment Toolkit
Vlad told me to blog more. Unfortunately I don’t have a need to post as much as I breathe but you’ll notice there has been a little more traffic on this site and that’s because I’m finding time (finally!) to post my thoughts.
Back in April, Mark Mulvany and I presented at SMB Nation in Amsterdam. Mark condensed his presentation and bolted it onto the back of mine. Unfortunately, this meant that Mark didn’t get more time to talk more about the Microsoft Technology Assessment Toolkit. Bloggers such as Eriq Neale posted briefly on it but I thought I’d take some time out here to go into it in more detail…
The Microsoft Technology Assessment Toolkit is a step-by-step guide to help you and your colleagues document the processes involved when approaching a prospect and converting them into client material.
Part of my job for Readycrest as Business Development Manager is to make sure that the procedures in place for identifying the good eggs from the bad are done properly. As we all know, we all run out of time by the end of the day and we’re normally running to stand still. The toolkit has been based on the best practices of some of Microsoft’s partners and it is quite comprehensive in terms of identifying both a prospect’s business and technical needs.
The files are downloadable (zipped) and I suggest doing something that I found pretty useful; save it to a sub-space on your SharePoint site. The home page is in .html format and creating a sub-site just for the toolkit will make it easier for users to locate and navigate around.
The content itself is in Word and Excel format which makes editing easy. I would suggest that a combination of this toolkit, the “Network Documentation Workbook” by Karl, AND by applying your knowledge, will give you a well documented system that you and any newcomer to your business can use.
What’s more, the toolkit from Microsoft is free. Not that you would expect otherwise, but if you think ‘if it’s free, that means everyone else is going to download it and cause my business a problem’ then you are in the wrong job. There have always been different versions of this in some shape or form and anyone with the time or inclination would have already done something like this and making a business out of it. But there is plenty of business in this world to share around - get real, if you think that this toolkit alone is going to earn you your future then you really won’t last the test of time.
This toolkit is simply another string to your bow. If you use it correctly then you’ll do well but in order to do so, you will need to take around an hour going through the documents (they aren’t short!) and working out which bits fit well with what you already do and don’t. You may find a few things that seem unnecessary but if you decided to take on a new guy who you left at the deep end, documentation like this would save you a lot of hassle.
There are even a few Visio diagrams to keep you busy and one thing I did was create a flow diagram of in what order the documents in the toolkit should be used. Each document is numbered so that I can number the client according to what stage they are at.
Of course you may already have your own system in place but it’s worth having a quick skim through so that you can refresh yourself on the basics you may have overlooked.