Practical Business Technology: 14th May 2008 @ Aston Science Park – Speaker Notes

Glen Barrowman, the Project Manager of the West Midlands ICT HUB, hosted the event. He described the ICT Hub as “the co-ordination rule of all ICT that exists in the region including I-Centrum, UKita and all other support organisations for and within ICT”.  Glen then went on to introduced the commercial perspective led speakers describing the event as ‘how IT can support your business’.  www.wmictcluster.org

1) BT Local Business M.D,  David Smallwood – main points
http://www.btlocalbusiness.co.uk/

• BT Local Business is a 5 year old Birmingham started local and reactive business within BT that helps local SME’s.
• 1980 saw the fax machine,  and the internet was launched in 2000
• ICT Suppliers and services are now looking forward to ‘unified communication’
• BT uses a ‘presence’ system where all communication tools and IT uses complete virtual access. This promotes the use of the ideas of one favoured communication channel, rather than duplications.
• Instant messaging is soon to be the key communication method and is predicted to replace emails by 2011.
• Recent reports have shown clear gains in profitability and productivity with remote working staff. This allows more staff to work and encourages production.
• Problems with technology include ‘human latency’ which slows down business processes.
• We now all have complex working environments and reactions to market change need to be instant.
• Important key factors are connectivity, dual investments and ‘people centric’ systems.
• It is 8 times harder to get a new customer than retain a present one!
• Collaboration = productivity and profitability.
• Unified Communications allow flexible, modern working and all of this helps to substantially reduce the carbon footprint (conference calls instead of meetings).

2) SunGard – Andrew Waterston   : Keeping Your Data Safe – Main Points
www.sungard.co.uk

 Disasters do happen. SME’s on record appear lousily unprepared for such occurrences. A disaster lasts an average of 22 days. It can be argued that it will be when not if and this relates to ‘critical’ data
 Outage Impact includes damage to your brand, market share, share prices, revenues, supplier chains, corporate exposure, cash flow (accounts and managing), contractual obligations and other areas such as audits (financial control).
 Data Recovery and data saving/storage faces problem factors of time, points, back up windows, other department equipment, tape issues and the manpower costs of maintaining all of this. 80% of online data saved is wasted and only 20-30% is useful.
 Tips include having a data profile (saving valuable data), test your systems, stick to mainstream libraries, test all changes and make plans.
 Recommendations include using an online ‘vaulted solution’
 50% of businesses have no Business Continuity plan. The industry is now launching a British Standard - B525999 – and this could be a certification route needed for future business supply (mainly medium and large business supply).
 Workplace hit outages are caused by power failures, terrorism/vandalism, communications failure and more recently floods/heavy rain.
 Of the surveyed 150 FS companies 86% of companies were shocked by their communication plan reviews and backup plan reviews. Telephony failures are the hardest and worst failing outages.
 In summary: Disasters happen, backup your data, test your backups and manage change.

 3) Julie Eyre of Bronte Business Networks (IT Support) – ‘Making IT work for you’ – Brief Points
www.brontebusinessnetworks.co.uk

o I.T is a critical tool. We only use 10-20% of all the equipment we have available to us.
o Microsoft has released a report recently (Digital Elite) that recognises the innovative changes employed by retail chains (like the big supermarkets). These systems (like online shopping) have created improved accuracy, speed, efficiency, payment processing and communication (i.e. market research).  The question is: Is ICT using such innovation?
o For the correct implementation of IT we must first: understand our information flow, realise our budget, work skill set and plan for growth. All of this should make and guides the design and selection process for any system.
o A virtual server for a company with numerous branches/offices allows for consistency (branding), information sharing, security, open accessibility and system storage.
o IT keeps moving. Microsoft SBS is launching a new server in late 2008. Virtual offices are now a reality and centralised data is becoming more and more popular. 48% of businesses claimed to have made extra business on the move.

4) Hugo Russell of I-Centrum
Slide presentation viewable is downloadable in PDF here

Key points:
• Most people have a laptop or handheld workable device (blackberry etc)
• Most people do have USB memory sticks, but few have them protected or encrypted
• On average 34% of any database suffers degradation annually due to constant business change
• Having a g mail e-mail account and using all the free tools by Google can be of real help and be a useful, informative tool.

    www.astonsciencepark.co.uk