Wow! What a phenomenal year it has been. I’d like to thank our readers for your support of the Last Known Issue and of I Know IT in 2010. Many of you have written to me (very thoughtfully I might add) to provide feedback about the newsletter and about our team and that has been a huge motivator. Thank you!
So what’s in store for 2011? Analysts suggest that technology is moving at such a rate now that we’re about to see yet another explosion – or revolution if you will – of new technology surpassing what already seems like a ‘futuristic’ time in technology.
Back on earth though, this is really good news and I’d like to dedicate this weeks Last Known Issue to 3 critical things you could do in your business today, but will be forgiven if you take a few days off over Christmas and get stuck into it next year:
Automate, Automate, Automate Your business is uniquely yours. The systems and processes you follow were probably built upon by a standard in your industry but to a larger extent, developed in such a way that suits you, your people and your customers.
Right.. now lets automate them! You do this by looking at functions that you do every day such as sending an invoice, running a specific report from MYOB, sending an email to let someone know their package is being shipped. and you get your computers to do it for you.
Sound overwhelming? It doesn’t need to be. Big companies have done the hard work and made the big investments and those benefits have well and truly trickled down to the smaller enterprise. Look at products such as Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM or even have some customisations done to your existing software.
While you’re at it, lets not forget that your IT support company can automate and prevent common problems with your IT from making sure antivirus is up to date, triggering important backups and alerting you to issues before they become expensive, costly repair jobs.
Assess the Cloud You’ve possibly read about it in Last Known Issue (if not you can follow this link or even this one ) or vist jamesvickery.com.au or perhaps you’ve read about it in other publications. If you haven’t heard the C word you’re bound to be bombarded in 2011 from marketing through companies such as Microsoft who have made it clear that their continued business strategy is to have a subscriber based model for all of their software. Cloud will be a dominant topic for many businesses in 2011.
Cloud gives businesses the potential to leverage technologies they otherwise might not afford if they had to purchase a piece of software or hardware outright. I Know IT for example, offers cloud based Exchange (a type of email service), cloud based remote backup and cloud based servers for companies who choose not to buy hardware and run technology on their premises.
You probably don’t need to worry about cloud until your next big capital purchase or until you want to take advantage of additional IT services that you need to grow your business. Once you get there, you’ll be met with choice about what you keep and what you outsource and having an IT partner that offers those services is an important step – after all, hosting your entire business with companies who aren’t world renowned for customer service (ahem.. a certain telco comes to mind) might not be a great idea unless there is a support team who can make it fit your business.
Touchscreens Beyond the norm today is the use of touch screens. I can remember going to World Expo in 1988 where I saw my very first touch screen. Amazingly, it has really taken until now for the technology to trickle through from large enterprise and government bodies to being readily available to small business.
Now with new PC’s shipping with Windows 7 and Touchscreen capability like the HP Touch Smart alongside Android and iPad, businesses can now start to think 4th dimensionally about how their people and their customers interact with them.
In talking with executives I often hear “how can we reduce the number of keystrokes for our staff?” – in other words.. how can we have less data entry and more face time with customers or other productive activities for our people?
How about eliminate the keyboard altogether? While we’re at it.. how about we eliminate the front counter or reception desk as well so that we’re engaging with our customers and suppliers and not obstructing them from doing business with us? I’m not suggesting we eliminate the front desk staff and the receptionist as well. far from it! I’m talking removing the barriers of communication and utilising handhelds and touch technology to place orders, enter customer information, take photos and video and reduce or eliminate keystrokes. This puts your people in front of your customers more and if you take a look at two very current examples of this you only need to look at Self Scan Registers at Woolworths and Coles or the lack of traditional sales counters in the Apple Store. There aren’t less people, they’re just doing other novel stuff like spending more time with the people who buy from them. Could your business do this too?
Whatever your business plans and goals are in 2011, they are underpinned by IT. Your competitive advantage is how little time you spend dealing with IT problems, typing when you could be shaking hands with new customers or picking up the phone (or your Skype headset) to win new business, renting services instead of using precious capital. Free yourself from convention and stand out from the crowd next year.
On behalf of myself and I Know IT I wish you a very Merry Christmas and an exceptional new year.
