Most small businesses run their IT on a ‘fire and forget' basis. Unfortunately, the results at times can be roughly the same as if it was a Sidewinder missile that had been fired into their own businesses.

The story is depressingly familiar. PCs are ordered online, installed by the person who has a vague interest in IT, plugged into a broadband connection from an ISP found from an advert in a computer magazine and hey presto: IT sorted.

Unfortunately, like any other part of a business infrastructure, the better managed it is, the better it tends to work. Poorly performing IT can however have a devastating effect on your business.

Users with email full of spam will be frustrated and ineffective. PCs infected with a virus or spyware because anti-virus software is out of date,or definition files are not being downloaded can be a catastrophe.

Many companies don't have a data backup strategy, even though the implications of not doing so can result in literally days of downtime in the event of something as simple as a disk failing. Even if a company runs a tape backup service, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen the backup tape rotated each day, with the other tapes left lying in a cupboard next to the server they are supposed to be protecting. A small fire would make the whole process a little worthless, would it not?

I would suggest it is high time to consider putting that broadband connection to good use at night when you're at home enjoying a well-deserved glass of wine, and use an online backup solution from your friendly business ISP.

Good IT, however, can have a significant effect. Take the move towards hosted Voice over IP: in essence outsourcing your telephone system to a hosted model, where a platform is run in a resilient data centre. Why? Because instead of relying on a small single telephone system that needs upgrades and maintenance, new hosted applications and services running from a large scale platform can be rolled out at the click of a mouse on a web browser.

Not only does this kind of phone system scale up one user at a time, but as it isn't dependent on your office, you can use it from home and benefit from remote and flexible working patterns. This also offers a disaster recovery solution for free when used alongside VPN and use of hosted business applications. As Marc Benioff from salesforce.com says: ‘no more software'!

For more information please visit www.lumison.net

 

IT historically has always been viewed as a way of saving time and money, by doing repetitive things quickly. The clear four benefits are, an:

If one considers a customer relationship manager (CRM), whether it be Outlook, Goldmine or ACT, these tools have revolutionised the way businesses communicate and do business.

When used as part of an e-marketing campaigns and sales strategy, they can create great looking professional documents, at the fraction of the cost of conventional marketing media.

Business intelligence is another area, that can benefit small companies, as all the data and knowledge of the business performance is already stored within their sales and/or purchasing ledgers, which can be extracted to give a more realistic view of what is going on, and how to move the business onto the next level.

It is a known fact that whatever IT systems are placed within businesses only approximately 20% of the features are utilised, and possibly of that only 60% is used in the most effective way.

As an company that deals with both IT training and business intelligence reporting, we know that on average, on completion of a bespoke training course delivered in line with the company needs and objectives, with respect to employees we:

• Increase skills and knowledge by at least 25%
• Minimise the number of errors made
• Save at least an hour a day on their tasks

With regards to the BI reporting systems, typically it has been found that the data is extracted from the database, and then manipulated within a spreadsheet.

Using a management information system, such as crystal reports, all that extraction and manipulation would be done within the report, providing end-users with informative, professional, dynamic and interactive business decision-making reports.

In the case of a small business finance officer who would spend one day a month, collating and recalculating the monthly fees due, paid and arrears, with an MI report he would have that information within five minutes, with all the calculations and exceptions highlighted.

In another example we saved a small business operational director three days a month, with the design of highlighted exceptions service level agreements and key performance indicator reports, based on the company sales databases.

For more information please visit www.maximumimpactsolutions.co.uk

 

A key factor in the success of any company, team or individual is to focus on what they do best. You don't see football players negotiating their own contracts, music bands organising their own concerts or companies building their own desks. And the reason for this is simple: profit. The revenues earned from doing what they do best are greater if they focus on their core competencies and hire other people to take care of the supporting activities.

Outsourcing is a trend that has been growing since the mid-1990s and has been widely adopted by businesses who share this same philosophy of focussing on core competencies. ICT is one area that is ripe for outsourcing since it requires specialist skills and can be hugely expensive. Until now, only larger enterprises have been able to outsource their ICT function since outsourcing companies have not been able to effectively offer these services to smaller companies at a price that is affordable. This is now changing as ISPs, Telcos and VARs are realising they can address this need in the SME market by providing managed services through a combination of intelligent on-site equipment and remote management.

edgeBOX is a good example of such intelligent on-site equipment and fits into the new genre of "multi-service business gateways" that provide a whole range of data, IT and telecoms services out of a single device with the ability to be remotely managed by ICT experts.

The way it works is simple: the MSP (managed service provider) will perform a site survey to understand the ICT requirements of the business and will then install an edgeBOX, for example, which will be configured to match the customer's needs. The single device performs the same function as a legacy system consisting of components such as a router, a Windows server, a PBX, a WiFi access point, an email server and a security appliance, to name a few. Since all these functions are now performed by a single device, it is easy for the MSP to proactively monitor and manage them all remotely which they do for a fixed monthly fee.

This means small businesses don't have to buy and maintain multiple ICT devices and they don't need expensive in-house ICT personnel to support them. It also means they are using the latest technologies since the device is automatically upgraded whenever a new technology comes along. So they can use VoIP to save money on phone calls, VPNs to connect in their remote workers, unified communications to simplify information flow, mobile devices to enable workers to remain effective when on the road and so on.

So the most effective form of ICT management for an small firm in 2008 is one that is outsourced, allowing the company to focus on their core competencies while taking advantage of the latest technologies that can allow them work more efficiently, work in new ways, save time and, most importantly, save money.

For more information visit www.edgebox.com