What does IT have in common with urban design?

Australia has some of the most beautiful, liveable cities in the world, but it wasn't by chance that they ended up like this.

Why? Because we're a relatively modern civilisation where urban planning is a prerequisite.

We utilised the knowledge from the creation of other cities and as a result our cities flow well and are visually attractive.

They're not without problems of course but Australian cities compared to the sprawling shanty towns of South America or India provide comfortable living with good sanitation and transport options.

It's because we have good policies and strict guidelines (I can hear developers crying) on future development that Australia continues to build structured urban environments.

We have review boards that apply those principles to proposed developments and hold the construction industry accountable to the standards in place.

So how does that relate to IT systems?

Too often we see small businesses letting their IT systems grow without forethought or design and they expect them to compete with systems designed by experts in large organisations.

Today there are technologies that scale to suit SME environments where good design of the IT landscape can make a huge difference as the business grows.

It is best to unwind shoddily-built IT systems early in the business's growth cycle in order to reduce the impediments that bad design will create.

Ultimately the benefits of well designed IT systems are reduced total cost of ownership and better productivity of your computer-using staff.

So what are the elements of design that should go into this work?

1. Understand which systems will be required to be in place for all elements of your business – from finance to marketing.
2. Once you know which systems will be required match your IT to them, allowing for planned direction and growth.
3. Identify risks to your data, such as security breaches causing exposure or loss.
4. Design the protection, redundancy and recovery systems your business needs.
5. Design the networks to be robust.
6. Design the end points of PCs and mobile devices.
7. Design the maintenance plan to ensure the environment is monitored and managed proactively to avoid down time.

Do you want to run the risk of letting your IT systems grow into a shambles? Make no mistake, companies that invest at the beginning of growth and get their systems right are competitively placed to communicate, share information, start new ventures and expand without restrictions.

It's the small decisions we make along the way that determine the outcome.

You can decide to cost cut or invest in a planned strategic approach to build a better future. So are your IT decisions aligned to your business vision?

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT service company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so If your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.

How big is the computer waste problem and what can we do about it?

While many businesses make efforts to reduce paper usage, recycle kitchen products and encourage their workers to cycle to work, how many are thinking about their computers?

We may not think much about throwing out a computer every few years as it becomes obsolete, but we really should be encouraging businesses to buy PCs that last five to six years, as opposed to three to four.

Recent numbers published by IDC indicate that the Chinese market is about to exceed the US market with sales figures for PCs for this year coming in at US73.6 million units to China’s 72.4 million. This represents just 43% of the global demand, as global annual sales are in the range of 340 million units. As these devices all have a limited life cycle, we can see that in a few years there will be 340 million PCs going to scrap.

It becomes clear that if we all spend a little more at the point of purchase to extend the life expectancy by just 12 months, there could be as many as 100 million less PCs being scrapped, recycled or going into landfill every year.

Of course, from a productivity point of view, I would never ask people to work on old, slow computers as this leads to wastages of a different kind – businesses costs. Issues with poorly running PCs include:

• More expensive technology services.
• Disruption to workflow.
• Training and familiarity issues as software and systems get changed over time.

We encourage businesses to plan their IT strategy in a way that allows them to maximise the productivity benefits of buying a better PC in the first place. Ensuring they make the right decisions at the point of purchase allows them maximum ROI both financially and environmentally.

I am pleased to say we are now seeing the world’s largest manufacturer of PCs, HP, offering four and five year warranty extensions. This should give businesses the confidence to select a slightly higher performance model and anticipate the additional useful life of the device.

So, do you have the right strategy to maximise your businesses productivity and minimise damage to the environment at the same time? Having that strategy align to your businesses plan will ensure IT is not impeding your growth.

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT service company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so If your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.

Are your IT systems ready for growth?

It’s becoming more and more common to see SMEs impeded by their outdated IT systems. Many view IT as a necessary, but not important, service – and this view can seriously hinder their growth.

Is this playing out in your business?

I’m looking forward to headlining SmartCompany’s upcoming webinar on September 27, during which I’ll tackle a number of the IT issues faced by Australian SMEs.

Topics to be covered will include:

• Scalable technologies – such as cloud computing – that help level the playing field for SMEs.
• Why IT planning is crucial.
• The outsourced approach versus the in-house model.

The main focus of this webinar will be analysing the very real problems facing businesses and how cloud computing can provide a solution. We all hear about IT driving productivity and the cloud being the next big thing, but we’re not sure whether to take the leap. We certainly don’t want additional costs in our skinny businesses right now.

All businesses need to centralise their systems to make their office efficient and cost-effective, and this traditionally was solved by buying servers. You used to have no choice – you simply had to install something in-house if you wanted your people to have access to information and communication.

Now it is possible to shift all this to the cloud, but how do you know if this is right for your business? Will it allow you to maintain a competitive edge and help you keep up with the biggest players in your industry?

If you want to find out how cloud computing can help your business grow, and hear about the benefits experienced by our clients who have already taken the leap, then this 45-minute webinar is for you.

Prepare your business foundation for growth by registering here.

Please also feel free to invite your colleagues and friends!

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so if your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.

What role does IT play in induction?

If you run a small-to-medium business, you probably know that you need to have an induction process to ensure your new staff have a positive experience on their first day.

A good induction process will span the first few months of employee engagement, and will ensure they become productive quickly and feel valuable.

The HR experts are telling us that new employees are more likely to form a positive attitude towards the company based on the induction experience, and are likely to stay with the business longer if that experience is positive.

So, clearly, there is value in creating an induction program and a business process around it. In this article, I want to explore how IT can play a role in this…

The first thing is to create some digital assets. By this, I mean written instructions, advisories and possibly an induction manual that can be modified for each new starter or standardised for specific repeatable roles. These should be stored electronically so they can be centrally accessed, reproduced, modified, and kept up-to-date.

A great place to store such documents is an intranet, which can be run on a server or in the cloud. SharePoint offers some good options for this sort of information management. This is also a great place to store company policy documents and work procedures that can be linked to from the induction manual to ensure new employees – as well as current staff – always see the most up-to-date versions of your advisory documents. This also has positive legal implications should there ever be a breach of company policy requiring action to be taken against an employee.

More specifically to the IT department, each new starter needs to have digital tools and a digital profile. Put simply, they need stuff like a phone, PC, tablet, and they need login accounts set up so they can start working. It pays to have checklists of your standard equipment and security groups so you can quickly select without omissions.

Having a staff member turn up to a pile of the last staff member’s paperwork, and a desk with no digital tools or profile, is going to leave the new staff member feeling transient, unappreciated and under-valued. Essentially, it’s the equivalent of hiring a new chef before you build the kitchen. Yet, we do it all the time because we forget how complex it really is to pull all the information and systems together, meaning we just have to muddle through.

Clearly, the cost of not getting the IT department involved early enough is measurable in dollars per day of wasted salary, but it is also costing us in terms of having employees who are disenfranchised from the very beginning. Having a good process and structured workflow created on computers and managed by people with realistic timeframes will help you to manage this process smoothly each time you hire a new recruit.

No matter what size your business is, you need to have an administrative process backed up by good in-house or external IT people to make your induction process work. If you’re not large enough to have spare computers in stock, you either need to partner with someone who is or you need to allow days to get the right equipment in place and properly configured. This planning will help you keep your equipment consistent, and reduce the total cost of ownership in many ways.

Clearly, if your business is growing – finding, keeping and motivating the best people will be part of your value creation process. So, plan ahead, and make sure that your IT is not impeding that growth.

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so if your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.

Vlog: Backup - don't be the next victim

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so if your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.

Do the clouds have holes?

There is new technology on the scene, and – as I write this – I’m at the Australian Partner Conference for Microsoft on the Gold Coast in Queensland, hearing the concerns of the drivers of technology in our local business community.

By “drivers” I mean the IT people who partner with Microsoft to bring new technology to market. Interestingly, the question I’m hearing most from these tech gurus is, “Will our data be safe in the cloud?”

So, are the cloud services secure or are there holes?

My answer to this is to look at what we have today, and to compare the security levels. I say this because there is no such thing as a perfectly secure system. Ultimately, security comes from live monitoring and dynamic response to threats. The security is only as good as the reaction to each threat.

In small business, we don’t have the resources to provide dynamic response and so security is a flawed area in our businesses. We have our data on in-house servers that sit in physically accessible places behind firewalls that are lucky to get a patch update, let alone ongoing management or monitoring. This places our data at risk immediately.

By comparison, a quality provider of cloud-based applications such as Microsoft has global systems secured by teams of security experts on a dynamic basis. There is no physical access to the server, and the server sits behind an array of firewalls that are dynamically managed.

The cloud-based offering also has built-in redundancy with synchronisation between multiple data centers. This removes the risk we all take in small business of having our local servers fail, which then puts us out of action. By physically removing the infrastructure to the cloud servers we remove these risk factors.

Despite this, there are still holes, and the following risks need to be considered:

• How big is the cloud provider and how robust are their services?
• What happens when your internet connection fails?
• Can you manage your accounts and services?
• What will it cost over the long-term? Will in-house be cheaper?

My response is that you need to select your suppliers carefully, and make sure you’re using the right tools. You can fortify your connections with low-cost solutions. Make sure you or your support team can use portals to manage your accounts and services.

The solutions are now reaching a price point where there are real savings moving costs from capital expenditure to operational expenditure, which is an added bonus.

So, in short, it’s time to reduce risks by moving to cloud solutions, but sticking to large-scale providers. Do ask for trials, and do select business partners who have worked with the technology for awhile. Read their case studies.

This technology is ready to remove impediments to growth in your business. Regardless of whether you have two or 2,000 staff, some of these solutions will work for you. So, start asking questions now!

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so if your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.