MSFT Dynamics CRM–Forrester Research says it delivers a 243% ROI and a Payback period of 4 months…..yeah right…but read on?
Filed under: Company News, Dynamics CRM | Tags: Company Net
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We were preparing a client presentation this week and one of the slides included a reference to last year’s Forrester report on Dynamics CRM 2011 and quoted a 243% ROI. Now, having a past life as an FD, I was suddenly sceptical that any ROI calculation had to be flawed or at very best subject to scrutiny, so off I went and had a thorough read through the report.
Now, Forrester Research have created an enviable reputation since 1983 in the IT industry for their reports into every aspect of modern IT solutions and go to great length to maintain editorial ownership of their reports so delivering objective and dispassionate results. We at Company Net certainly have used their research to better understand the marketplace for our products and services and have learnt a great deal in the past.
When I read through this report rather than the more usual skim reading, I was taken aback by the sheer force of the message coming from the Dynamics CRM customers interviewed in the process. Feeding my FD instincts, there also is a very detailed breakdown of how the figures are calculated including crucially, a proper risk correction using Forrester’s own Total Economic Impact methodology.
Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) is a standard methodology developed by Forrester Research that captures and quantifies the voice of the customer relative to technology investments. In this study, we interviewed nine Microsoft customers in one-on-one discussions about each organization’s experience in implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
Forrester’s interviews and subsequent financial analysis determined that a composite organization, based on the organizations we interviewed, would expect to experience the risk-adjusted ROI, costs, and benefits summarized in Table 1.
Summary. Overall this study concludes that the composite organization achieved a three-year NPV of U.S. $471,218 (risk-adjusted net benefits) as a result of deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for an initial team of 50 users. The payback period was over four months with an average NPV per user of $9,424 over three years.
Factors Affecting Benefits And Costs
Table 1 illustrates the risk-adjusted financial results that would be expected by the composite organization The risk-adjusted values take into account potential uncertainty or variance that exists in estimating the costs and benefits, which produces more conservative estimates. The following factors may affect the financial results that an organisation may experience:
The pre-Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 environment (whether there was no pre-existing CRM application or
whether another CRM tool was being used).
Level of deployment of CRM tools within the organization and integration with other business processes.
Customization required for CRM deployment and other implementation risks.
OK so having passed a test of financial probity, we can read on. The report has some fascinating insights into the decision making process and evaluation that the respondents shared during the research.
(Interviews conducted with 9 specific)… companies uncovered a number of important insights about customer organizations’ experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:
The majority of the organisations interviewed either did not have a CRM system in place or were using “home-grown” legacy software before turning to Microsoft. A number of the organizations had been using other packaged software CRM solutions in a limited capacity and decided to consolidate around Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
All the organisations were experiencing rapid growth and had departmental collaboration barriers that were hampering their sales processes. They needed more collaboration among sales, marketing, customer service, and delivery to get to the next level of customer engagement.
For most of the companies interviewed, familiarity and integration with Microsoft Outlook were fundamental to their choice of a CRM solution. One organization even had representatives from its sales team going into the evaluation process preferring different CRM software, but after the evaluation, the team was unanimous in choosing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
These organisations’ deployment choices ranged across all options, including: on-premises, online, and partner hosted. Organizations with 10 to 100 initial users typically had an online implementation while those with 200 users or more implemented an on-premises CRM solution.
Interviewees also highlighted the cost effectiveness of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and the ease of implementation. Rollout to users was also characterized as “smooth” and “seamless,” because users were already familiar with the UI and the CRM solution was integrated with Outlook. Users on average had five hours of training although one organization recommended at least a full day of user training.
All the companies interviewed worked extensively with Microsoft partners to configure processes and roll out the project. As one customer stated, “A partner’s value shouldn’t be underestimated. They gave us a reality check on what was needed. With our experience, you should trust them [Microsoft certified partners], and you should set up your goals together.”
The organizations interviewed also noted the cost savings they would experience during each extension or customization. For instance, one organization liked that it could easily change the CRM screens using internal IT resources, avoiding the cost of outside consulting fees. Another company that had integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with its front-end website noted that with its initial investment, it could now scale its business internationally without a commensurate scale in its costs.
While the integration with Outlook enabled faster user adoption, these organizations also set up policies and other incentives to reinforce use of the solution for customer management with their account teams.
Improved Sales Productivity
The customers interviewed talked about the challenges of implementing any new technology with sales teams who usually do not have a technical background, have multiple demands on their time, and have extensive mobility requirements. They noted that these concerns were less of an issue with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 due to their sales teams’ familiarity with the software, the software’s integration with Outlook, and easy navigation. Users did not have to extensively change their processes as CRM workflows were integrated into the business productivity software (such as Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint) that they were already using. Customers who had implemented other CRM tools before shifting to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 reported higher adoption rates. One customer’s contacts database grew by 733 percent in its first year of adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Another characterized its user adoption as “phenomenal.” At the same time, these organizations also set up communication and policies with the deployment to incentivize their employees to use the CRM software.
“Salespeople and account managers want to do things as rapidly and as flexibly as they can. Adopting [Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011] was easy from their perspective — they embraced it because of their familiarity with Outlook.” (Operations director, IT solutions service provider)
“The key on the sales team side was integration with Outlook. It was why we got such high user adoption. It’s easy. There’s integration and there’s integration, and this is really integrated.” (CEO, financial and accounting solutions firm)
Customers also noted that the benefit of the “true integration” of Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionality with their Outlook and Microsoft Office software on the desktop and on mobile devices enabled their sales teams to be more productive. Data entered in Outlook and Office was automatically captured in the CRM system, making it very easy to use. “Even if they didn’t try to use it, it would still go,” one customer observed. “The single most important feature for us was integration with Outlook,” another confirmed. One customer with a mobile workforce based on customer sites outside the company’s firewall said the ability to update data directly into Outlook improved their organization’s sales efficiency. The interviewed companies estimated sales productivity improvements from 5 percent to 20 percent.
This productivity improvement was experienced by the sales teams of the interviewed companies through improved sales reporting and better management of their customer database leading to faster and more efficient processes for sales forecasting. These companies now had a more accurate picture of their sales pipeline. With all the data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, their sales teams could now, as one customer said, “walk in the door with real-time information on clients and better manage the relationship.” Customers also noted that their sales teams were spending less time in internal meetings and more time with their customers in the field.
Benefits.
In interviews with Microsoft customers, Forrester also identified several benefits of implementing Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 2011 in the areas of personal and process productivity. These quantified benefits include:
1) improved sales productivity because of the ease of use of the CRM software and improved opportunity/deal tracking and routing through integration with Outlook;
2) customer service productivity savings from a better UI, documented processes, a holistic view of the customer, and faster case resolution;
3) streamlined processes and operations leading to lower cost of sales;
4) shortened sales and conversion cycle and corresponding revenue gain as teams improved their collaboration
and were better connected across systems;5) marketing cost savings due to more real-time insights from better analytics; and 6) productivity savings due to better reporting tools.
“If you can scale a company up to 35% year over year and utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to provide a common thread between your company and your customer, it truly is priceless.” (VP of marketing, healthcare IT company)
Other benefits noted by the customers but not quantified in the study include:
1) improved collaboration;
2) lower cost and effort to customize the solution for unique requirements, including extended CRM scenarios; and 3) compatibility and ease of integrations with other systems improving process efficiencies.
Forester also reported the following benefits that represent those experienced by the interviewed companies:
o Increased sales productivity of 5 percent with the ease of use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM software and integration with Outlook leading to higher adoption, improved opportunity and lead tracking and routing, and a more accurate picture of its sales pipeline. The interviewed companies improved their sales reporting and better managed their customer database and achieved faster and more efficient processes for sales forecasting.
o Customer service productivity savings from a better UI and documented processes. The composite organization avoided hiring 1.5 full time equivalents (FTE) for its 10-person customer service team even as its division grew. Customer service agents improved issue resolution as new processes were implemented, and agents had access to all the customer information they needed to resolve cases quickly and with precision.
o Streamlined processes and operations leading to lower cost of sales as Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled the composite organization’s technical consultants to shorten time spent on the proposal process by 10 percent. The interviewed organizations saw process improvements for their account management, engineering, order taking, and project delivery teams, which led to lower operational costs and improved customer responsiveness.
o Acceleration of sales conversion cycle by 50 percent and corresponding revenue gain as teams worked better together across different business systems, processes, and geographies.
o Marketing cost savings of more than $200,000 (risk-adjusted over three years) due to more real-time insights and improved campaign management from better analytics.
o Productivity savings of 16 man-hours per month due to the better reporting tools in Microsoft Dynamics CRM with data consolidation, reporting automation, and richer dashboard capabilities. o Improved customer service delivery with quicker response times, dialog boxes, and segmented levels of customer service through insights from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
o Improved cross-sell collaboration within sales and customer service teams by providing access to reporting tools and other collaboration software such as Microsoft SharePoint® Server 2010.
o Lower costs and effort to customize the solution to unique requirements, including extended CRM scenarios. o Ease of integration with other business technology systems, improving process efficiencies.
Costs.
The organisations we interviewed incurred the following costs
o Vendor software license fees or subscription fees.
o Professional fees paid to a Microsoft partner for implementation.
o Internal labour costs for planning, design, and implementation. o User training costs.
o On-going administrative support costs.
Summary
We can always be sceptical about statistics, especially proposed financial returns, but I would suggest that this feedback from actual customers using and benefiting from the high impact of Dynamics CRM adds a worthwhile insight, which supports and reinforces the financial analysis that Forrester have discovered.
The full report is attached for free download below and I would thoroughly recommend reading it in full if you are contemplating a new CRM system and would like clear insight into how others have successfully adopted and benefited from Dynamics CRM.
Dowload the Full Forrester Report here.. TEI of MSFT Dynamics CRM 2011
source : Forrester Consulting The Total Economic Impact Of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Published May 2011
We at Company Net are regularly deploying Dynamics CRM and SharePoint business solutions and .net applications for a wide range of customers and would be delighted to hear from you contactus@company-net.com if we can help you in any way.
Andy Hamilton
MD Company Net February 2012
NEW…..Dynamics CRM 2011 for Mobile & iPad
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM | Tags: Company Net, Company News
Leave a Comment The Microsoft Dynamics Development team constantly live up to their promise to release significant updates of the Dynamics CRM 2011 product and have recently announced the latest Q2 2012 update pack.
There are 10 key updates available as follows:
1. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile” (New Cloud Based Mobile CRM Service Subscription)
2. Cross Browser Support (IE, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome)
3. Rapid View Forms (Load forms quickly)
4. Enhanced Activity Feed (“like”, “unlike”, improved filtering)
5. Industry Solution Templates (Vertical solutions)
6. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (Improved Performance)
7. Business Intelligence (BI) Insights with Power View (Excel workbooks)
8. Certifications (Industry Compliancy)
9. Portal Framework Enhancements (Enhanced Customer and Partner Portal)
10. Custom Workflow Activities in CRM Online (Custom Workflow: .NET Development)
Dynamics CRM Mobile
Today we want to surface the exciting new mobile CRM service which includes direct support for iOS5 on the iPad, thereby extending rich access to your Dynamics CRM system on the world’s most popular tablet.
Along with the new cross browser support also announced for the Q2 2012 update, we think this new mobile service will be a very popular addition to the Dynamics CRM system.
It is common for sales, service and marketing professionals to use a variety of devices e.g. a sales person might have both a phone and a tablet device from which they need to access their CRM data and processes. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile, each licensed mobile user can access Microsoft Dynamics CRM from up to three different mobile devices. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile will also offer an offline mode on most devices* so that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be accessed even when there is lack of Internet connectivity.
But its not just for sales & Marketing, through the power of xRM, the flexible application development framework of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, customers will also be able to easily mobilize their extended CRM applications by having seamless integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile and their existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment.
And it’s not just for iPad either, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile offers the user the full breadth of Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionality, including the dashboard capabilities, on the mobile device of their choice. There is no need to load multiple apps onto their device; Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile provides a single consistent application experience.
And for IS department ease of deployment and Data Security policy adherence Microsoft have ensured that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile is centrally managed; administrators can configure the record types, forms, views, offline synchronization rules and navigation structure for the mobile application. These configurations are published only once, regardless of the range of devices that the users employ. This simplifies and streamlines the management of mobile CRM for your organization. To cater for the differing needs of functional groups within your organization, administrators can set up multiple profiles which expose role-specific data and functionality – the result is a mobile experience which is tailored and optimized for each user. Administrators also have the ability to remotely wipe devices of CRM data should a device be lost or stolen or the employee moves to a different organization.
BROWSER FLEXIBILITY
In addition to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q2 2012 service update provides the ability for end users to access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web Client across all modern Internet browsers on various platforms. This includes browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari running on PC, Apple Macintosh or iPad. The list of devices and specific browser versions that will be supported is as follows:
This extends the reach of Dynamics CRM 2011 onto multiple mew browser platforms and opens the way for many organisations to seriously consider accessing the benefits of using Dynamics CRM 2011 for significantly less investment cost than competitor systems.
Sources used:
MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM
Roadmap
Release Preview Guide
Q2 2012 Service Update
At Company Net we are a Dynamics CRM Gold certified specialist and love working with CRM and xRM applications which are rapidly replacing legacy, expensive to maintain systems with the flexible and usable power of business solutions that are a joy to use. Join with us today contactus@company-net.com
Doing my homework on remote working
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News, Lync, Microsoft Office 365, remote working
Comments (3) This week in the Company Net office we’ve all been talking about a news article that caught our eye – “O2′s UK head office in temporary shut-down as 3,000 staff pilot remore working“.
Last Wednesday, O2 launched a huge flexible working initiative, closing the doors to their head office and enabling one quarter of their staff to work remotely for the day and continue business as usual. This bold move was designed to test the organisation’s contingency plans for managing the anticipated disruption around this summer’s Olympics, in addition to acting as the next phase in O2′s flexible working strategy. The article suggests that one third of UK businesses are expected to encourage their staff to work flexibly this summer, so O2′s initiative will also act as a pilot for other organisations.
It’s great to see a one-day event like this grabbing the headlines and getting people talking about the benefits of remote working, with reduced carbon emissions and rush hour congestion, improved staff engagement and productivity, and opportunities to access vital talent for your business without the constraints of geography - regular readers of this blog will know that here at Company Net we love to talk about the benefits of remote working as part of our 2020 Vision. We use Microsoft’s Office 365 to ensure that we can all securely access all of our documents and tools and communicate with one another whenever we need to and from wherever we are, and it has changed the way we work and collaborate for the better. So now that we, like many other businesses, have enabled our staff to work remotely, perhaps now is the time to start actively encouraging it?
Perhaps I’ve been jogged into thinking more about this personally this week because on Tuesday I did actually work from home – the usual kind of story, car being serviced and an appointment in town in the late afternoon that would’ve been hard to make if I’d been going there straight from the office. But even before I read the O2 article, I was thinking about how much I’d achieved that day and how much more productive than usual I’d felt.
I got up at the same time as usual, but without the half hour early morning drive in to the office, I sat down and started going through my email. Ching! I immediately gained an extra half hour on my day. Assuming a conservative 8 hour working day, that’s an extra 6% of productive time just by removing half of a two-way commute, which really adds up (in terms of both productivity and carbon emissions/fuel costs saved) to a tangible benefit.
- Tram chaos in Edinburgh
I went through the working day, accessing and collaborating in secure documents with colleagues. I was able to communicate instantly with anyone I needed to speak to in the office using Lync, without even having to pick up the phone. Lync carries presence information, allowing me to easily see which of my co-workers were at their desks and could immediately respond to a query, who was in a meeting and at what time it would end. I never felt disconnected from being part of the “team” and was even able to share jokes and participate in the usual ’round the coffee machine’ chat, so I didn’t feel distanced from my colleagues at all.
I made all of the usual calls I would make to clients and partners, accessing our CRM system through Outlook to allow me to record actions and any important information so that my colleagues in the office could be updated and see the status of any leads or accounts instantly. I dialed in to a meeting. Even though I was in the middle of a large organisational task, preparing for our SharePoint event with AvePoint on Monday, I never once felt that I was missing a piece of paper that I’d left on my desk or didn’t have contact details to hand.
But what surprised me most by the end of the day was just how much I’d achieved. Perhaps it was the lack of distraction from ringing phones, other conversations in the office, involving myself in less relevant tasks, seeing someone else getting up for a fresh coffee and going to make one for myself… who knows? But I certainly felt more focused.
Now I’m not suggesting that working remotely is something I’d want to do every day – I enjoy spending time with my colleagues and I’d miss the social side of work if I did that all the time. But perhaps it is something that both I and the business would benefit from doing more often. And now that our staff have the provision to do so, perhaps it is time for us to start looking at what that might mean for the business on a larger scale? What if everyone worked from home on one day a week and what are the positives and negatives that might impact our productivity?
So now I’m interested to know, is this something you would consider for your business? Are your employees ready to work remotely in the event of major disruption, such as the Olympics, Glasgow 2014, or even just a bout of bad weather? How would you feel if each of your staff worked from home on one day a week? Does your organisation recognise results over “face-time”, or would a cultural shift be required?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the whole topic of remote working and the technologies that support it. Just like O2, if we all share the knowledge gained from our individual experiments, positive and negative, then our collective learnings can make a huge difference to the way we all work on a daily basis.
So what do you think?
“A cup of kindness…”
Filed under: Company News, Microsoft | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News
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On Thursday evening, we at Company Net were delighted to host some of our clients at a table with our partners AvePoint, at the 12th Microsoft Burns Supper at the EICC. This fantastic event was a night of great food, music and entertainment, and the perfect excuse to get dressed up and leave the house on a bitterly cold Thursday evening!
We were regaled with some great anecdotes about the tribulations of working with Sir Alan by The Apprentice’s Nick Hewer, giving the Toast to the Lassies, and were entertained by the fantastic Sandy Strang. But more importantly, the Supper raised an amazing £36,000 for two brilliant charities, Aberlour Child Care Trust and Specialisterne.
Aberlour Child Care Trust is the largest solely Scottish children’s charity, providing help to over 6,000 of Scotland’s most vulnerable children, young people and their families each year. ACCT’s focus is on working with young people at risk, and with children and families affected by disability or by drug and alcohol abuse. This is a really fantastic charity, with plenty of opportunities for us all to get involved at a corporate or personal level, and you can find out more information about how you can help here.
Specialisterne is a software testing and web development company which employs staff with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, enabling them to find employment within the IT Industry. Their specialist skills include a passion for detail, something which is absolutely vital in the testing and development process. Specialisterne’s commitment to promoting the employment of people with disabilities is award-winning and their growing client list indicates that their supporters are feeling the benefit.
£36,000 was raised for the two charities on the night and we were proud and honoured to be able to support Microsoft and be part of such a fantastic event.
Roll on next year!
Beyond the Buzzwords!
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: AvePoint, Company Net, Company Net News
Comments (1) Company Net are excited to be able to announce our first event in conjunction with our partners at AvePoint!
As AvePoint’s only Scottish Partner, we’re thrilled to be able to invite you to attend our half-day workshop together “SharePoint Governance and Management: Beyond the Buzzwords”.
AvePoint is the world’s largest provider of infrastructure management software solutions for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, so we are really pleased to be partnering with them. Propelled by the world’s largest SharePoint-exclusive research & development team, AvePoint is the premier provider for EPG, SMB, Mid-Market and Government organizations demanding the most powerful and flexible infrastructure management solutions for their SharePoint environments and assets. AvePoint’s award-winning DocAve Software Platform is recognized as the industry standard for comprehensive, scalable, and truly integrated solutions for SharePoint backup and recovery, administration, replication, migration, archiving, deployment management, reporting, storage optimization, and content lifecycle management.
This brilliant event will be held on Monday 13th February at Microsoft’s Edinburgh offices at Waverley Gate and will be a fantastic opportunity for you to meet the experts and hear their thoughts making a success of your SharePoint environment.
Working for Gold!
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Microsoft
Leave a Comment Leena Drummond, our Business Planning Director was in fine form on Friday as she communicated the following to our staff:
“Today at Company Net, we’re over the moon! Not only did we start the day with bacon rolls (well, it is Friday), but even better we’ve just renewed our Microsoft competencies for another year!
This means that we retain our Gold status in both Customer Relationship Management and Portals & Collaboration – in fact we continue to be the only Gold CRM Partner in Scotland, and one of only handful of partners in the UK with Gold in both of these competencies. We have also retained our 3 Silver competencies in Digital Marketing, Web Development and Software Development. Having just one gold competency puts us in the top 1% of Microsoft Partners globally, ensuring that our clients know that they can always expect the very best from Company Net.
These competencies are a massive testament to the work done by everyone here and it is indeed a team effort that allows us to achieve them. In order to get the competencies, there are a number of criteria we need to meet, including having people with relevant qualifying exams, not just from a technical perspective but also in project management and sales & marketing, feedback from customers in the form of references, and achieving minimum licence and sales targets.
So, we’d would like to thank every person here for all your continued hard work.
And I think I’ll be heading off early today to celebrate with a glass of something fizzy!”
- Company Net Core Drinking Team – Christmas 2011
Andy Hamilton, MD of Company Net said:
“As you can see for yourself we get very excited by this internally because we know that we can deliver better results to our customers by being right up to date with Microsoft technology and have great Customer feedback from our past projects that confirms our hard work is worthwhile and rewarding. The real buzz we get is by putting our skills and experience into practice and delivering the best projects to our customers. Its fair to say that we don’t ever stop seeking to improve and the Microsoft Partner Network Gold Competency programme provides the best framework for us to ensure that we are right on track.
If you already have a top track record of achieving great things with Microsoft technologies such as .net, SharePoint 2010 or Dynamics CRM 2011 (or all 3 together !!) then get in touch with Leena, I promise she will be excited to talk to you. We want you to be part of our Gold team as we push our boundaries ever higher.
Microsoft said:
“Gold competencies demonstrate your best-in-class expertise within Microsoft’s marketplace. Earning a gold competency is evidence of the deepest, most consistent commitment to a specific, in-demand, business solution area, along with the distinction of being among only 1 per cent of Microsoft partners worldwide that have attained this outstanding degree of proficiency.”
Pyjamas and work… does not compute?
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News
Comments (1) We’ve been talking a lot in this blog about our 2020 Vision; that is, how we think the workplace of the future will function. At Company Net, we find the technology behind this fascinating and inspiring, but how will these changes impact your employees?
Today’s blog is a guest post from Amie Stevense here at Company Net, who is interested in looking at the implications of our 2020 Vision for your workforce:
I read a comment on LinkedIn recently which prompted me to participate in the discussion, something I haven’t often done. Later, I found I was still pondering the ideas behind it and so decided to write a blog post in response. Let me explain. The original comment was someone displaying frustration that companies are still not endorsing flexible working despite the fact we have some fantastic technology to allow us to do this easily. As someone working in the HR department of an IT company, you can imagine my dismay at reading this! I responded as you might expect someone in my position employed in a flexible working environment. I won’t bore you with the details, they’re not relevant here. The thing that really surprised me was the next comment to follow; someone who seemed truly upset and indeed, discouraged by the idea of flexible working.
The arguments against it were thought provoking and had some value, and for me highlighted something much bigger: that flexible working is a fantastic thing if it’s used correctly. I could talk to you for hours on the benefits this company sees by endorsing flexible working, made possible through mobile phones, laptops and tablets. Like making a cake, when you combine these things with Microsoft’s Office 365, Lync and the Cloud, you have the perfect environment to promote flexible working for your organisation. So why the grunts of dismay? The comment stated that it’s not possible for every person to work flexible hours; that there is no line between work and personal life; that not everyone can have a task orientated day, and what about if you have to be in the office for a meeting?!
Good points, right?
Wrong.
They are valid points, but only in organisations that endorse flexible working, but don’t handle it in the right way. Flexible working is about being flexible - not home all the time or in the office all the time, but a mixture of the two. It’s about being able to take a day off when your kids are sick but still being able to get important work done. For me, there should be no question of the fact that if you have a meeting you need to be in the office, surely that’s obvious. But, in the same vein, if you need to be at home to let the plumber in it shouldn’t mean you have to take a day’s holiday. Just log in to Office 365 to access all your emails and work, sign into Lync to communicate easily with all your colleagues and, theoretically speaking, you are in the office. I appreciate that there will always be some work places that would struggle to promote flexible working, but I don’t believe that just because some people can’t partake in it, everyone should dismiss it. With a huge percentage of the population based in offices, these negative thoughts need to be addressed. If one person has voiced concerns, others will be thinking them too.
It has to be about give and take. Flexible working should never, ever mean ‘never leaving work’ or ‘only task orientated work can be done if working for home’. It saddens me to see people worry about that, or indeed experience that. Here at Company Net we want to lead by example. Not only do we promote flexible working, and experience a huge success rate with it, but we can also help other organisations implement it successfully. From supporting you with the technologies to advising you on the best methods of implementation, we’ve got it covered. Don’t let something with the potential to be absolutely brilliant end in disaster because the correct policies and technologies haven’t been put in place to protect both the organisation and your staff! Begin something on the right foot, and chances are your journey to a flexible working organisation will be a smooth one.
Now, I’ve been working from home this morning on this, so I guess it’s time to change out the PJ’s and make my way into the office…sounds nice? It could be you!
Cookie?
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, cookies
Leave a Comment Today I thought I’d blog about something that I’ve been thinking a bit about over the past couple of weeks.
At Company Net we are currently performing an audit and giving advice on all of the websites we have developed for our clients, in preparation for the changes in the EU Cookie Law which will soon come into effect.
In case you’re not familiar with the directive, new privacy laws require that companies obtain their customers’ consent before using cookies – the text files that help organise and store browsing information – to track how they browse a website. This has big implications on the way companies get their brand and message out to the consumer and there have been a number of discussions attempting to clarify what exactly constitutes ‘consumer consent’.
While this change in the law is clearly designed to protect consumer privacy, cookies also play an important role in the smooth running of the internet (including session management, personalisation and tracking), and so the ICO granted a year for websites to comply with the directive. But now the time is almost up!
I’ve been doing my own research and I’ve discovered that cookies come in more shapes and sizes than just double chocolate chip… session cookies, persistent, secure, HttpOnly, third-party, supercookies and even zombie cookies!
So now is the time to get moving and make sure that your website complies with the directive.
Our friends at Civic have been thinking a lot about this and have come up with Cookie Control, a solution that may well be worth considering if you find that your website needs attention in order to comply.
But in the meantime…
Brave New Work
Filed under: Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News
Comments (1) A great article from CNN News on one of our favourite topics, the workplace of the future…
What’s your take on these technologies, and how do you think they will change the way we work?
I personally can’t wait for my hologram table!
Happy New Year!
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News
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We thought we’d use our first blog post of the year to tell you a little about what we’re looking forward to in 2012…
Here at Company Net, we’ve hit the ground running in 2012 and are already getting stuck into great new projects with fantastic clients. Nothing excites us more than the prospect of developing and delivering innovative and exciting solutions to address our customers’ business needs. And we’re committed to building on our excellent CSAT scores of the end of last year to continue providing the highest level s of service and satisfaction to our clients, at every stage of our engagement.
We’re going to continue using our weekly blog post to talk about our thoughts on the workplace of the future, our 2020 Vision, and we’d love to get some discussion going around the subject so please let us know your thoughts. How do you think the evolution of smart technology will influence the day-to-day landscape of our workplaces? Will a traditional “workplace” even exist?
To give you a flavour of what we’re planning, we’ll be reporting back from WPC in Toronto in July, keeping you up to date with all our news and articles we find that we think may be of interest, and we hope to unveil our own new website soon.
It’s going to be another busy year! Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year, from all at Company Net.
Office 365 leads the way!
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Gartner, Lync, Microsoft Office 365
Leave a Comment Fantastic news about Office 365 has been fairly flowing from Microsoft over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, Office 365 topped the latest Gartner Unified Communications as a Service report, then we heard that Lync is now available for Windows Phone (big thumbs up from our MD Andy!), and then the icing on the cake was the news that O365 is now the first cloud-based platform that complies with both US and EU data protection and privacy laws. That’s some fortnight!
Let’s have a closer look at the Gartner Report, it’s great news …
“Microsoft leads with its Office 365 offering, which consists of a broad suite of Microsoft business IT services, of which UCaaS is one”
Gartner note that, as businesses gradually move their IT functions to the cloud, so they become more comfortable with moving their unified communications similarly. UC allows organisations to enhance the way their employees interact and collaborate, helping to boost productivity and profitability. Microsoft’s Office 365 solution is a perfect example, and we’ve already discussed in this blog how it is helping us in all these ways here at Company Net.
In this 2011 quadrant, you’ll notice that Microsoft is shown to be the front of the pack, standing out in terms of “Ability to Execute”. This ability is measured using a number of key indicators, and includes the capabilities and pricing of the product/service, ability to respond to changes in the market, track record and customer experience. So investing in Office 365 is a great place to be!
We’d love to start a discussion around what you are doing to help your business move forward and prepare for the future. What are your thoughts on moving your office to the cloud? And how do you see cloud services as fitting in to your organisation’s long term plans?
And please remember that if you’d like any more information on Office 365, we’d love to talk to you. Get in touch!
Company Net Score Top Marks for Microsoft Customer Satisfaction
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Partners, SharePoint 2010 | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Microsoft
Comments (2) As we start the run up to Christmas, here at Company Net we’ve been reflecting on the year past and making lots of plans for the future. 2011 has been another year of delivering fabulous customer projects, and we’re really looking forward to keeping our momentum going in the New Year, working hard to maintain the great relationships we have with our existing customers and to engage new ones. So, it is with great timing that we have received our first CSAT scores for the year.
CSAT is Microsoft’s Customer Satisfaction Index, an independently-managed survey that our clients are invited to complete to give feedback on all aspects of their experience in working with Company Net. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we are required to participate in the CSAT annually, in order to remain within the Partner network.
Customer satisfaction is at the heart of our reputation and we believe it is directly linked to our passion and enjoyment for all our projects and our total focus on maximising the end user engagement and experience on each of them.
We therfore take these results very seriously and would like to say a particular thank you to all of our clients who have commented and participated in the survey.
You are In Great Company…..
The headline result is our outstanding NSAT (net satisfaction) score of 190, out of a possible 200. Our peer average within the Microsoft Partner Network is 163.82, so we are thrilled to be able to report such a great score.
We view the NSAT as a great measure to let us know how we’re performing for our clients in general, so this gives us an idea that we’re doing something right. We also know that it’s a reflection of working with great customers and nurturing great relationships, and it’s these relationships that we’re really proud of.
Setting the bar so high means that we work even harder to exceed your expectations in every engagement that we have with our customers.
We do all our work with a carefully selected, range of brilliant and creative partners who provide specialist knowledge and specific toolsets to add to our core expertise. Our partners are a vital part of our success and we thank them heartily for their contribution, support and great “craic”.
Here’s a screenshot from our CSAT report:
Microsoft Partner CSAT Index
https://mspp.tns-online.com/MSPortal/Home/Dashboard.aspx
Screen clipping taken: 09/12/2011 15:16
The CSATs also showed us that 90% of our clients surveyed awarded us the maximum possible overall satisfaction rating and 100% said that they would recommend us to a friend or colleague who was looking for technology products, services or support. All of our clients who completed the survey stated that they felt that using Company Net, as opposed to other companies offering similar solutions, provided their organisation with competitive advantage.
2011 has seen us working across a number of industries with a range of clients, both new and long-standing, and in the private and public sectors. New clients this year have included Cairn Energy and Howden Group, while we’ve continued existing work with companies such as Disney, Tesco Bank, Miller Homes and Coca-Cola Enterprises. In the public sector, we have recently begun an engagement with sportscotland and have been able to support HMIe through its transition into Education Scotland. We’ve also been able to utilise Microsoft’s Campus Agreement to unlock value for academic institutions, having begun an implementation for Heriot-Watt University and continued to work with and support the University of Aberdeen and Stevenson College
Andy Hamilton, MD of Company Net, commented…”Our CSAT results this year are very pleasing. I believe passionately in striving for excellence in our customer service delivery as our customers all face enough pressure in delivering their own products and services. When our customers deal with Company Net for a particular project, our staff is committed to making the engagement as creative, efficient and enticing as possible. That way we can deliver solutions which ease the pressure for our customers in such uncertain times. I would like to thank all my colleagues at Company Net and all of our partners for working together to achieve this brilliant milestone, but more importantly for ensuring that our customers have received such top quality service. This is something we will build on, never resting in our quest to marry the best technology with the best customer engagement, to deliver High Impact solutions that make a difference, thank you”
We’re ending 2011 on a high, but we won’t be resting on our laurels. Onwards and upwards in 2012!
We would love to talk to you and help you decide upon a perfect solution, please contact ContactUs@company-net.com if you have any requirements for Intranets, Document Management, Collaboration, ECM, Business Process Improvement based on Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, .net, Office 365 or CRM 2011 Online technologies.
Soup, anyone?
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Office 365
Leave a Comment Yesterday I posted a question on our Twitter feed:
What do Marie Claire magazine and Campbell’s soup have in common?
Something to do with nail varnish…? A joint love of tomatoes…? Not quite.
The answer is Office 365, Microsoft’s Office collaboration and productivity tools delivered through the Cloud.
You can click through to read the article, but the key benefits experienced by both companies were based around the mobile working and collaboration capabilities we’ve been talking about in this blog recently. At Company Net we’ve seen the same benefits and love running our office on O365, and it’s brilliant to hear that other organisations on all kinds of scales are having the same experience.
The post linked above from the Office 365 blog last week announced that, just 5 months following its launch, over 40% of the Top 100 Brands (listed by Interbrand) are using Office 365 or related Microsoft cloud productivity services. We’re in good company!
“Work is something you do, not something you travel to”
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft SharePoint
Comments (1) A vital consideration while painting our picture of the 2020 workplace is, of course, the location and needs of our future workforce. The Cisco Connected World Report 2010 found that employees expect greater mobility in the workplace. 3 in 5 employees believe they don’t have to be in the office to be productive and, despite the current downturn in the economy, they value flexibility over salary – all else being equal, 2 in 3 would accept a lower paying job with more work flexibility.
So how does this translate into the business landscape of the future? Firstly, it is a logical inference that removing the requirement for all staff to be physically present in the office massively opens up employability, allowing your business to really focus on capturing the very best skills available – on a talent, as opposed to geographical, basis. This has great implications for wider society, from increasing employability in remote areas such as parts of the Highlands, to increasing employment for the disabled or allowing parents full access to work without the burden of finding and paying for child care. Furthermore, with continually rising fuel costs your employees may be less likely to want to commute to the workplace fulltime. These factors may already be contributing to a rise in virtual offices and co-working spaces.
The implications of remote working on the environment are significant – imagine the impact fewer people working 9 to 5 could have in alleviating rush hour congestion, greatly reducing the number of cars on the road emitting greenhouse gases. And a study by Giritech and BT Conferencing found that the overall energy savings gained by working from home total approximately 20%. In addition to this, new technologies such as the Cloud, which allows remote access to data, promote cost savings for your business by reducing in-house storage and facility requirements, in addition to increasing workforce mobility and flexibility.
Consider also the potential financial savings to your organisation in scaling back business travel in favour of video conferencing and improved communication channels. Gone are the days of a single video conferencing screen in the boardroom, now technology such as Microsoft’s Lync allows us to conference from every connected PC or laptop, without having to worry about the cost of a third-party conference provider or long-distance charges. Using platforms such as SharePoint for collaboration and taking advantage of cloud-based tools like Office 365 could revolutionise the way you interact with colleagues and clients, be they working from home, in the next office or on the other side of the world.
The best way to get ready for tomorrow is to start today. Think about how you could help your staff to work more flexibly. Can they access documents securely from outside the office? What technologies can you put in place to allow for better communication and collaboration? And how might the wider use of video conferencing and reduction in business travel impact your organisation?
So with any luck, the next time you hear the infamous and inevitable phrase “ash cloud” when you’re planning a conference with faraway clients, it might strike a little less fear into your heart!
Microsoft has a dozen billion dollar businesses
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, SharePoint | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Microsoft
Leave a Comment 
Cloud computing and the “new” green IT
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: cloud, Company Net, Company Net News, Office 365, productivity
Leave a Comment Environmentally sustainable computing, or “Green IT”, is an idea that we are used to hearing about. This concept refers to the design, manufacture, use and disposal of computers and related hardware with minimal or no impact on the environment. The goals of green computing are the reduction in use of hazardous materials, increased energy efficiency and the promotion of recycling/biodegradability of components after use.
But the emphasis given in this field to the metrics and reduction of energy use ignores the fact that investment in ICT can save a great deal of energy and cost indirectly, by bringing greater efficiencies and new ways of working to your business. It’s this perspective that we are most intrigued by here at Company Net.
Bearing that in mind, perhaps the most obvious place to start is with cloud computing.
Cloud computing refers to the provision of computing as a service rather than a product, where shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over the Internet. On an environmental level, the cloud makes sense because it removes the need for on-site servers and data centres, the power they use and the associated requirement for cooling. But aside from energy cost savings, there are plenty of other benefits for business in joining the cloud – office tools and documents can be accessed anywhere from any device with an internet connection. Collaboration and productivity are boosted, and remote working is easy and natural.
At Company Net we’ve just completed the process of migrating to Office 365, Microsoft’s new service that takes all of our email, documents, contacts and calendars into the cloud, ensuring that they’re always up to date and with us wherever we go. We’re already seeing the benefit of the cloud – working together and collaborating on documents has been transformed. Groups of us can work simultaneously on Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and OneNote notebooks in real time, all the while seeing who else is viewing and editing along with us. Problems with version control are eliminated and we’ve discovered we can work much more efficiently, thereby increasing our productivity. We’re also integrating Office 365′s Lync technology to keep ourselves connected across all channels, from IM to web conferencing. So it seems obvious that working in the cloud like this will become a prominent feature of the 2020 office.
While much has been written about workplaces moving to the cloud and its day-to-day advantages, there are larger benefits to the agility that working in the cloud can bring to give your business the competitive edge. For example, we now routinely demonstrate solutions to our clients within the cloud, a powerful tool in allowing them to see their solution in action, without any impact on their systems. The cloud allows you to rapidly provision your business with storage and processing power as and when required, and this article from Forbes magazine considers how cloud computing may even act as a platform for innovation within your organisation.
So what can you do today to get ready for the office of the future? This is the time to start thinking about how the cloud can work for your organisation. Stay up-to-date with the Cloud Conversation here and let us know what you think!
Does your business have 2020 vision?
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News, sustainability
Comments (3) Here at Company Net we’ve been thinking a lot lately about 2020 Vision – that is, what we think the workplace might look like in ten years’ time and how we can start to prepare for that today.
What investment can and should I make today to ensure we are on the right path?
What will the cloud mean for me and my company?
There are so many exciting things happening in technology at the moment, from increasingly sophisticated smart devices and the explosion of the cloud, to the literal rise of “smart” buildings on the horizon. While the technology itself is fascinating, even more exciting is the way that all of this will affect our daily lives and the impact this could have for sustainability and responsible business.
The green economy is a priority in Scotland – the value of the renewables sector is expected to reach £3.2bn by 2013-2014, with the wider low carbon market expected to rise from £8.5bn in 2007-2008 to £12bn by 2015-2016, representing over 10% of the Scottish economy. There’s huge potential for us all to get involved and start thinking about how we can change our modes of working now to stay ahead of the curve, using technology to work more efficiently and more sustainably. Will we still need an office? What will our homes look like? And will the boundaries between social networking and business communication blur until they disappear?
Attracting the brightest talent to our future workforce requires us to start thinking now about how to make our companies fit places where employees will want to be in 2020. How can we offer the most creative ways of working, collaborating and communicating? Employees increasingly value flexibility and development opportunity against purely financial rewards, so is your business in a position to support remote working, for example? Are you looking at teleconferencing as an alternative to the rising costs of business travel? And how is your organisation dealing with the capture, integration and analysis of increasing volumes of data gathered from increasingly diverse sources?
There’s certainly a lot to think about and we think that these questions are worth asking. We’ll be posting regularly about our 2020 Vision, talking to people with interesting insight, and linking to videos and articles as we come across them. So please join in, we’d love to hear your thoughts and get some ideas flowing!
But before we delve into the world of the office, we’ll leave you with some thoughts even closer to home with this clip of Microsoft’s “Storyteller”, Steve Clayton, giving us a glimpse forward into the house of the future.
Getting ready for Winter
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Office 365, productivity, remote working
Comments (2) The clocks have gone back, the leaves have turned and there’s a chill in the air. It’s that time of year again, when we start digging out winter coats, gloves and hats, ready for the cold weather to come.
But perhaps we should take some time before it gets too late to think about getting our workplace ready for Winter. This doesn’t mean checking the heating and working out where to switch the water off – rather we should be thinking about how to limit the effect of extreme weather on the productivity of our businesses.
Following the past few particularly harsh winters, there’s no reason to expect that this year will be much different. I’m sure we remember all too well the problems we’ve all encountered over the past few years due to the impact of offices and schools closing early, staff unable to get to work because of impassable roads and chaotic public transport. In fact, last year, around 0.5% of the 0.6% fall in UK GDP was attributed to the severe weather. So this is the time to start making plans to ensure that your business can continue to run as smoothly as possible, whatever the weather.
An easy first step might be to ensure that contact details are up to date for all of your employees in case they need to be notified of office closure. From there, it’s easy to begin a conversation with staff around making business continuity plans . Could they work from home? If so, would they be able to access to all the resources they require to perform their daily tasks to minimise loss of productivity?
This is the time to start making sure that these resources are in place. If you want your staff to be able to work remotely, you will need to give them easy and secure access to your servers. And even if you already have this set up, now is the time to ensure that your staff are aware of how to use it!
Collaboration is an essential part of business, so you will also have to consider how this can be provisioned. At Company Net, we’ve recently made the move to Microsoft’s cloud-based solution Office 365, which is an ideal tool to allow us to work remotely, while also changing the way we work together in the office for the better (of which, more another time!).
Office 365 works with software your employees already use (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote), allowing anywhere access to email, documents, web conferencing and calendars. It offers business-class security and your employees can access their desktops as though they were in the office, collaborating with colleagues and clients in real time through online meetings and editing the same documents simultaneously. Office365 allows users access from almost any device, including PCs, Macs, notebooks and smartphones, making it easy to work from home or on the go, encouraging remote working and boosting productivity.
So taking the time to investigate Office 365 now could benefit your business all year round.
Company Net all set for Microsoft Partner Conference
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, Social Network, Tag, twitter, Windows Live | Tags: Company Net, Compliance, Creative Design, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint for internet, Technology, Website, windows phone 7, WPC 2011
Leave a Comment This week Andy Hamilton, Managing Director and Leena Drummond, Director of Business Planning will travel to Los Angeles to represent Company Net at the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. There they will be gaining insights into Microsoft’s business and technology roadmap for 2011, learning how to expand Company Net’s possibilities with Cloud services, Windows® 7, Windows Phone and experiencing the latest in solution innovations.
This year’s conference is taking place from 10th – 14th July at the Los Angeles Convention Center, one of the most technologically advanced, architecturally pleasing, and functionally superb venues in the world.
WPC’s 2011 keynote line up will include Steve Ballmer – CEO, Kevin Turner- COO, Jon Roskill – corporate VP of the Worldwide Partner Group and other key Microsoft Executives.
The Guest Speaker is Sir Richard Branson, the founder and president of Virgin Group. He will address an estimated 15,000 attendees on July 13th, at Staples Center.
One of the world’s most recognised and respected brands, Virgin has expanded into air and rail travel, hospitality and leisure, telecommunications, health and wellness, and clean energy through more than 300 companies in 30 countries. A leader in product innovation and customer service, he was knighted in 1998 for his “services to entrepreneurship.”
Company Net recently announced that it has been awarded the highest level of Microsoft Partner Network accreditation, the Gold Portals and Collaboration Competency, a reflection of the excellent work and expertise in SharePoint solutions.
For the last two years Microsoft has been revolutionising the Partner Network to make it easier for clients to identify partners with specialist skills. The new Microsoft Competencies replace the previous partner level accreditation with 29 individual accreditations aligned to specific Microsoft technologies. Each competency as a unique set of requirements, designed to accurately represent the specific, skills, services and experience that are required in that area, allowing clients to better differentiate individual Microsoft partners based on their actual solution requirements.
Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net commented:
“We are extremely proud to be one of the very first partners in Scotland, the UK and Globally to achieve the Gold Portals & Collaboration competency, under the new, more rigorous and testing requirements. By dedicating all our efforts to Microsoft technologies and platforms, Company Net has been able to invest in the on-going skills training, and work closely with Microsoft to allow us to offer highly functional and innovative solutions to our customers. Coming as it does with the release of SharePoint 2010, we can now offer our customers even more reassurance that our SharePoint Intranet, Portal and Application Solutions are backed up by the highest global standards that Microsoft have ever imposed.”
Company Net and Line Digital engage with Cairn Energy PLC on major SharePoint 2010 project
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, twitter | Tags: Cairn Energy, Company Net, Compliance, Creative, Creative Design, Digital, Line Digital, Microsoft, SharePoint 2010, ShasrePoint 2010, Technology
Leave a Comment Company Net, working in creative partnership with Line Digital, have begun working with Cairn Energy PLC on a major enterprise-level project on the SharePoint 2010 platform. This partnership follows the successful delivery of a SharePoint 2010 project for a joint client, a major supermarket bank.
Cairn explores for, discovers, develops and produces oil and gas assets globally. They have a proven track record of creating and delivering transformational value through focused exploration and development. Over the past 20 years Cairn has had a focus on South Asia. This has resulted in over 40 oil and gas discoveries and the development of major fields in India and Bangladesh. Cairn also has an early entry and strategic frontier exploration position in Greenland, a country recognised by the United States Geological Survey as having significant yet-to-find hydrocarbon potential.
Company Net recently announced that it has been awarded the highest level of Microsoft Partner Network accreditation, the Gold Portals and Collaboration Competency, a reflection of the excellent work and expertise in SharePoint solutions.
For the last two years Microsoft has been revolutionising the Partner Network to make it easier for clients to identify partners with specialist skills. The new Microsoft Competencies replace the previous partner level accreditation with 29 individual accreditations aligned to specific Microsoft technologies. Each competency as a unique set of requirements, designed to accurately represent the specific, skills, services and experience that are required in that area, allowing clients to better differentiate individual Microsoft partners based on their actual solution requirements.
“We are extremely proud to be one of the very first partners in Scotland, the UK and Globally to achieve the Gold Portals & Collaboration competency, under the new, more rigorous and testing requirements. By dedicating all our efforts to Microsoft technologies and platforms, Company Net has been able to invest in the on-going skills training, and work closely with Microsoft to allow us to offer highly functional and innovative solutions to our customers. Coming as it does with the release of SharePoint 2010, we can now offer our customers even more reassurance that our SharePoint Intranet, Portal and Application Solutions are backed up by the highest global standards that Microsoft have ever imposed.” said Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net.
This project win confirms Company Net’s investment of the value of technology working with creativity, which continues to be the foundation of a number of partnerships with leading creative agencies, both digital and integrated, most notably Line Digital, http://www.line.uk.com
Andy Hamilton added:
“We currently assist a wide range of creative agencies as technology providers or advisors for online applications, back office functions and brand implementation for Microsoft channels such as SharePoint. We understand their skills, language and requirements to provide a comprehensive value-added offering to their clients. This enables Company Net to tap into unexplored sectors and organisations and to work with some real creative talent. We are comfortable with collaboration and we are exploring partnership areas around social media and usability at present.”
Windows 8 has WP7 Look & Feel
Filed under: Case Study, Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, User interface, windows phone 7
Comments (2) 
Microsoft PR department is in overdrive just now with lots going on around WP7 Mango and now an early sneak look at the new Windows 8 user interface – watch the video here Here is the new “Alpha” of Windows 8 start screen which has a Metro Windows Phone inspired look, with slightly wider tiles “which are better than icons because they can show their personality”. The overall design of the operating system is colorful and clean and its apps are designed for the entire screen and really sensitive to touch. For example you only have to swipe from the left to switch between apps and then swipe from the right to access the Start button. The Snap mode has been redesigned and can now be used really easy and intuitive. The touchscreen keyboard has been replaced with a thumbs layout which is “more ergonomic” and lets you press all the letters without reaching towards the middle of the screen. 
The new platform will also integrate the apps that you already have on your PC and this user interface will make it even easier to use them daily. According to Microsoft, the new version of Windows “it’s going to run on laptops, on desktops, PCs, on touch slates, […] it’s gonna run on everything”. C See Jensen Harris from Microsoft launch the official version of the truth on Windows 8 here Check out the Windows 7 Mango WP7 Mango Advert here
Why starting a SharePoint Intranet needn’t be daunting with Company Net
Filed under: Company Net, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, Social Network, Tag, twitter | Tags: Company Net, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint for internet, SharePoint Intranet
Leave a Comment Starting a SharePoint intranet project, whether creating a new intranet or redeveloping an existing one, can be daunting. It needn’t be if you have Company Net alongside you.
You may be overwhelmed with the thought that, alongside strategy and design questions are now a myriad of technology decisions, often exploring uncharted territory within your organisation.
At a basic level, intranets based on SharePoint are just like every other Intranet. The same questions of design, structure, management and governance arise, regardless of the technology used to publish the site. As has been discussed widely in forums, the intranet should be considered a service, underpinned by a technology product.
SharePoint does, however, introduce some new questions into the intranet planning process. The greatest strength of SharePoint is its breadth of functionality, from content publishing and collaboration, to CRM and application development. It is this wide range of capabilities that can be so daunting for many teams. Without a clear plan, the results can become a little bit of everything, but no one clear and compelling success.
At Company Net we advocate a best-practice methodology for planning SharePoint-based Intranet projects. Drawing on your Intranet, it provides a step-by-step approach that every team can take. The result is confidence from the outset that the project will deliver clear benefits, and an approach that brings together business needs and technology considerations.
Challenges and Opportunities
Intranet projects are not easy at the best of times. Often replacing sprawling legacy sites, they have to meet the needs of a diverse audience with a limited budget and constrained resources.
SharePoint intranets are just like any other technology platform in this respect. Independent of the underlying product, the new Intranet needs to be usable for staff, valuable for the business, and easy for the Intranet team to maintain.
SharePoint does introduce, however, some particular issues of its own, both positive and negative.
The opportunities presented by a SharePoint Intranet include:
- Valuable new functionality, especially in the areas of team-based collaboration and simple document management
- Wide capabilities that expand the Intranet beyond mere content publishing
- More opportunities for integration between business systems, in both the front and back ends
SharePoint projects are not, however, without their challenges, including:
- Comparatively complex platform that needs many technology decisions to be made up front
- Danger that projects become technology-driven, rather than business-focused
- Requirement for customisation and development, which can either deliver great benefits or waste money
- Breadth of functionality that can make it hard to determine a clear project scope
- Significant resource requirements
At Company Net, we have our own ‘recipe for success’ for SharePoint Intranets, that we are happy to share with interested prospects. Like every project, success is assured by having a strong plan from the outset. This is doubly true for a technology platform such as SharePoint, which offers such a daunting range of possibilities.
Our experience provides a firm foundation for this project planning, as it outlines all of the activities needed for a design or redesign project. A SharePoint Intranet is just a variation on the approach that works for every SharePoint project.
The key difference from a typical approach is that the technology platform is chosen at the outset of the project. This can be turned into an advantage, allowing the scope and design to be developed with a deep understanding of what the technology has to offer.
An effective project methodology then emerges as follows:
- Understand business and staff needs
- Confirm ownership and overall governance
- Determine strategy and scope
- Select functionality
- Design the Intranet
- Develop a technology specification
- Implement the intranet
- Migrate content
- Establish operational governance
1. Understand business and staff needs
An Intranet will be used if it’s useful. This seems a simple observation, but it can’t be taken for granted. The starting point for any Intranet project must therefore be to clearly understand business and staff needs. It is important not to fall into the trap of merely ‘asking staff what they want’. With SharePoint introducing new capabilities and functionality, staff will be unfamiliar with the possibilities on offer. This type of questioning also falls into the trap of focusing on the technology, instead of the business needs. The best approach is to explore how the business operates, and what problems staff encounter on a day-to-day basis.
At Company Net we use a range of techniques to uncover this information, including:
- one-on-one interviews
- focus groups
- workplace observation
We avoid broad-brush approaches such as surveys, as these won’t uncover the depth of information needed to make the many design and technology decisions that will arise during the project. By the end of this first phase of work, there will be a clear understanding of business and staff needs that will drive every aspect of the planning and implementation.
2. Confirm ownership and overall governance
SharePoint can easily start as technology projects within IT, and can even grow organically out of initial pilots.
Before progressing too far into the project, it is important to clarify the overall ownership and governance of both the project and the intranet as a whole. IT will almost always be a key player in a SharePoint Intranet project, due to the technology-heavy nature of the platform. In many cases, however, they won’t be the ‘business owners’. This ownership may be held by a single group, such as communications or knowledge management, or be shared within a committee or other similar governance group. Whatever the model, it must be clear how key strategic decisions are made, where the budget is being provided from, and where the Intranet sits in the organisation.
3. Determine strategy and scope
Going into an Intranet project, it is often unclear what role the Intranet should be playing within the organisation. Beyond ‘having an Intranet’, many organisations struggle to articulate overall Intranet strategy. While there needs to be clarity around intranet purpose and role in every situation, this is particularly vital for SharePoint Intranets. The breadth of SharePoint functionality opens the possibility for the Intranet to play a much more significant role within an organisation. It can also, however, make it hard to work out exactly which direction to take.
Questions often include:
- What collaboration features should we be using?
- Is SharePoint a publishing platform or a document management tool?
- Should the focus be on SharePoint as an application development platform?
- What third-party functionality should we be deploying?
To answer these questions, it can be useful to go back to the fundamental purposes of the intranet. These can be summarized as the five purposes:
- Content: a repository for both corporate and business unit information.
- Communication: a communications channel out to most or all staff.
- Collaboration: a range of collaboration and social features, for teams, projects and communities.
- Culture: a reflection of the current organisational culture, and a support for culture change.
- Activity: a ‘place for doing things’ rather than just reading things, focusing on business processes and task completion.
Collectively, these can be used as ‘sliders’ to help build consensus amongst stakeholders about the focus of the intranet. From this, the broad scope of the project can be determined. For example, the focus may be on improving content and communication, the fundamentals of most Intranets. Or perhaps content has already been well-addressed, and the goal is now to deliver rich collaboration and ‘enterprise 2.0′ functionality. What’s key is to ensure that both the strategy and scope for the intranet are aligned with the nature and activities of the organisation.
4. Select functionality
Once the overall strategy and scope for the Intranet is determined, the project can then start to look at the practical details of what will be delivered. SharePoint natively provides hundreds of different features and capabilities. Not all of these are appropriate or needed for a given organisation or project.
Beyond this, there is a growing ecosystem of third-party products and extensions that provide additional capabilities, or address out-of-the-box SharePoint weaknesses. Many other products ‘integrate’ with SharePoint in a range of ways, further blurring the line between the Intranet and other information and IT systems.
A hundred questions will need to be answered by the project team, such as:
- Will user-driven personalisation be implemented, and to what extent?
- Is there a need for multilingual content?
- What integration will be established to desktop tools, including Office?
- Which of the many collaboration features will be used?
- Will SharePoint replace network drives?
- What online forms will be automated?
These are just a few of the possible questions, and the IT team responsible for deploying SharePoint will want to know the answers as early as possible to help them scope their efforts.
To answer these questions, go back to the five purposes determined in the previous section, and use these to guide individual decisions. For example, if the focus is on content, then required features may include targeting information to specific business units, simple document management, and strong search. More complex features, such as full records management may be deemed out of scope for the initial project. Conversely, a focus on collaboration would put the emphasis on teamsites, personalised homepages, and social tools. These decisions about functionality will guide the design process outlined in the next section, allowing the designers to focus on delivering the required capabilities in the best possible way.
5. Design the Intranet
It is easy to create an Intranet that makes perfect sense to the designers and developers of the site, but much harder to produce something that is easy to use for all staff. As the functionality and complexity of the Intranet grows, it becomes even more challenging to deliver a usable Intranet. The answer is to involve staff throughout the project, following a ‘user-centred design’ process. This best-practice approach provides a toolkit of practical techniques that can be used with staff, including:
- personas
- card sorting
- usability testing
The result of this process is a set of designs that can be implemented in SharePoint. These are typically documented in the form of a site map and wireframes (page layouts without design or colour). While the user-centred design process is the same for every Intranet technology in broad terms, it must be done with an understanding of the specific capabilities of SharePoint.
As with every technology, some approaches ‘go with the grain’ of the product, and some are harder to deploy. The design process must therefore consider:
- key features and functionality on offer
- ‘best practice’ approaches from a technology perspective
- platform strengths and weaknesses
- the amount of customisation and development required to deliver desired designs
6. Develop a technology specification
This is where all the detailed technology decisions are made, based on the required functionality and design. As a technology-heavy platform, SharePoint needs to be carefully established to ensure that it’s manageable and scalable. One of the challenges of SharePoint is that all the architectural decisions need to be made at the outset, before the first server is deployed. There is limited opportunity later in the life of the platform to rework or revise the architecture.
Use the insights gained earlier in the project to develop a thorough technology specification, covering:
- overall platform and server architecture
- configuration of SharePoint functionality
- required customisation and development
- data models, content types and lists
- integration of third-party plug-ins and tools
A clear and well-thought-through specification ensures that deployment and development work will proceed with minimum surprises. Like any technology project, jumping straight into development without a plan is a recipe for disaster.
7. Implement the Intranet
In every Intranet project, there are many individual aspects which need to be covered during implementation. These include:
- establishing the technology platform
- configuring the software and tools
- implementing the desired site structure (information architecture)
- establishing metadata, content types and lists
- implementing desired page layouts and templates
- implementing the visual design, including creating HTML and CSS (if not done earlier in the project)
- load testing and user acceptance testing
- training for site administrators and authors
Depending on the complexity of the organisation and the project, all of this may be as simple as using SharePoint largely ‘out of the box’, and doing a few weeks more work. At the larger end, deploying SharePoint may involve months of technical work, and the same again to cover the non-technology aspects.
At Company Net we apply sufficient SharePoint expertise to ensure this phase progresses smoothly, but never forget that the goal is to deliver a great Intranet, not just to deploy SharePoint. Ultimately the project will be judged a success if the new Intranet is clearly valuable for staff and the organisation. Behind-the-scenes work done on the technology platform will win little recognition.
8. Migrate content
One of the goals of many Intranet projects is to deliver better content to staff, particularly when an existing, legacy Intranet is being replaced.
This makes migrating (or creating) content a critical part of the overall project. There are three broad possibilities:
- automated migration
- migration by hand
- partially automated migration
If upgrading from an earlier SharePoint version, automated migration may be a possibility, particularly if content was previously well managed. Most projects, however, will end up conducting some form of manual migration. This should be conducted by the content owners themselves, supported by clear guidelines and standards. Ensure that enough time is set aside for this in the project plan.
9. Establish operational governance
Intranets don’t run themselves. Even when a usable and powerful Intranet is delivered, this effort will be for nothing if it immediately starts to slide into disrepair. The ongoing management and governance of Intranets is therefore critical. This includes establishing:
- an ongoing central team to manage the high-level aspects of the site
- standards and guidelines
- training for content authors and owners
- decision-making processes for Intranet changes and improvements
- ongoing reviews and enhancements
- ongoing promotion and visibility raising
- change management and adoption activities
Most of all, don’t fall into the trap of building a solution and then ‘handing it over to the business’. If the business areas and staff who will be ultimately responsible for Intranet aren’t involved throughout the project, it will be difficult or impossible to do this handover. Instead, consider at the outset of the project the governance and resources that will be put in place for the long-term. This will help to guide decisions about strategy, functionality and design.
Also recognise that deploying new and unfamiliar functionality will also require significant amounts of change management and communication, if adoption is to be assured. This is particularly the case for functionality that requires the active participation of staff, such as personalisation or collaboration.
In conclusion
In many ways, delivering a SharePoint Intranet is just like every other Intranet project. The overall goal remains to deliver a site that is easy for staff to use, and valuable for the business.
Take a measured approach to the project, and start by building a strong understanding of business and staff needs. Use this insight to determine the overall strategy and scope. This drives the selection of specific SharePoint functionality, and underpins a user-centred design process that produces a usable and effective design. With this in hand, the project can proceed to the technology aspects, first developing a specification and plan, and then implementing the platform. Ongoing governance and support ensures that all of this effort isn’t wasted, with ongoing improvements steadily adding value to the site that has been launched.
Company Net First in Europe to Achieve Gold in both Customer Relationship Management and Portals and Collaboration
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, Tag, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Competency, Dynamics CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM business solutions, Gold Customer Relationship Management Competency, Gold Portals and Collaboration, Partner Network accreditation, specialist provider for SharePoint
Leave a Comment Company Net, the specialist provider for SharePoint and Dynamics CRM business solutions, today announced that it has been awarded the highest level of Microsoft Partner Network accreditation, the Gold Customer Relationship Management Competency, to add to the Gold Portals and Collaboration Competency announced previously.
Company Net joins an elite group of less than a dozen organisations worldwide to be awarded Gold Competency in both Customer Relationship Management, and Portals and Collaboration, underlining our position as a global leader in combined Dynamics CRM and SharePoint solutions.
With the release of Dynamics CRM 2011, and its close integration with SharePoint 2010, Company Net is in a unique position to offer our clients the highest levels of technical skills and experience to build effective and innovative business solutions, maximising the complimentary capabilities of both Dynamics CRM and SharePoint.
Derrick McCourt, Regional Director Microsoft, Scotland & Wales commented, “We are delighted to recognise this achievement and welcome Company Net onto the New Gold Standard within the Microsoft Partner Network.
Company Net’s SharePoint and CRM skills are now formally recognised at the highest level of customer satisfaction, project delivery and technical competence that Microsoft require. We would like to congratulate them on this excellent achievement and on their continued commitment to the Microsoft Platform.”
Company Net Attains Gold Competency for Portals and Collaboration
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet, Tag, twitter | Tags: Company Net
Comments (3) Edinburgh, 8th March 2011: Company Net, the specialist provider for SharePoint and Dynamics CRM business solutions, today announced that it has been awarded the highest level of Microsoft Partner Network accreditation, the Gold Portals and Collaboration Competency, a reflection of the excellent work and expertise in SharePoint solutions. 
Derrick McCourt, Regional Director Microsoft, Scotland & Wales commented, “We are delighted to recognise this achievement and welcome Company Net onto the New Gold Standard within the Microsoft Partner Network. Company Net’s SharePoint & CRM skills are now formally recognised at the highest level of customer satisfaction, project delivery and technical competence that Microsoft require. We would like to congratulate them on this excellent achievement and on their continued commitment to the Microsoft Platform.”Company Net and The Union in Miller Homes Moss Side Infusion
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, Social Network, twitter | Tags: Company Net, G.B. Building Solutions, Homes and Communities Agency, Infusion, Manchester City Council, Miller Homes, Moss Side, regeneration, The Union, Website
Comments (1) Company Net, working in creative partnership with The Union (Leeds) has produced a new website for the ‘Infusion’ development in Moss Side, Manchester for Miller Homes, http://www.infusionhomes.co.uk
The website provides important information about this landmark scheme, which is a development by Manchester City Council in partnership with Miller Homes, G.B. Building Solutions and funded by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).
This housing-led regeneration of 64 Victorian terraced homes brings more good news for the area, marking the second of three phases of the Moss Side and Rusholme District Local Plan. ‘Infusion’ will extend the appeal of the area for families and key workers who are looking for affordable stylish homes that are close to the city centre, universities and hospitals.
“We have chosen Infusion as the development’s name as it captures our approach” said Carolyn Walsh, Project Sales and Marketing Manager for Miller Homes: “This development will be the blend of the best of modern, innovative design and respect for the traditional architecture of the area. It is the correct mix of homes to maintain and create a vibrant community.”
Carolyn added: “These homes are setting the standards in the North West, combining high specification, sophisticated style and great value. For people that qualify for the bespoke shared equity scheme, they can now own a new 2 bedroom house for under £70,000. This is really creating a buzz about ‘Infusion’.”
Company Net engaged by Stevenson College for SharePoint 2010 Vision & Scope
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, Tag, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Consultancy, Education, SharePoint 2010, Vision & scope
Leave a Comment Following Company Net’s successful CRM deployment, we have been engaged by Stevenson College Edinburgh (SCE) to undertake Vision & Scope consultancy services to allow SCE’s internal IT resource to identify how the Document Management, Collaboration and Insights (reporting) capabilities of SharePoint 2010 will align with its strategic goals.
Stevenson College Edinburgh is one of the largest Further Education colleges in Scotland, providing educational services including National Qualifications (NQ), Higher National Diplomas (HND) BTEQ and Degree Foundation courses to over 18,000 students a year, from the main campus based in Sighthill in Edinburgh.
SCE has identified a requirement to implement a more standards-based, enterprise-wide platform within the organisation to ensure SCE can continue to maintain and expand the services provided to both students and other stakeholders. With this in mind, SCE is looking to put in place a development platform based on the Microsoft Technology Stack, including Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint and the Dynamics CRM and ERP products, integrated with the existing heterogeneous line of business applications, to create an Information Architecture which will support SCE’s strategic aims going forward.
Having identified the strategic requirement, SCE’s Information Systems & Support staff is aware that it does not have access to the specialist experience and knowledge required to fully understand and exploit the opportunities offered by the latest generation of Microsoft Enterprise products. It has, therefore, engaged Company Net to provide initial consultancy services for the project.
SCE now wishes to more fully understand the capabilities of Sharepoint 2010 specifically around Document Management, Collaboration and Insights (reporting) to realise its strategic goals. Once this engagement is complete, SCE intends to issue an Invitation to Tender to selected interest parties for the development of a Sharepoint 2010 portal.
The purpose of this engagement is for Company Net to lead a short, guided discovery process to further the knowledge of SCE’s internal IT staff into the capabilities of Sharepoint 2010, and to better inform its Invitation to Tender process.
Company Net introduces webcasting organisation WorkCast to an audience of marketers at Microsoft’s Edinburgh office
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Company Net News, SharePoint; Silverlight;
Leave a Comment 
Company Net was pleased to introduce webcasting organisation WorkCast to an audience of the Edinburgh branch of the Chartered Institute of Marketing on Wednesday 9th February.
The seminar showed how WorkCast can provide a variety of self service or managed service solutions based around a Microsoft Silverlight application to help organisations deliver their entire webinar or webcasting service from the promotion of the content, through the production of the content or live event and right through to the management of the recording as an On demand asset.
This event follows the highly successful ‘Debunking the SharePoint Myth’ talk given in September to the CIM by Andy Hamilton and Mike Lynch.
An on-demand version of the webcast from 9th February is available http://tinyurl.com/5sfxmku
Company Net appointed by Stevenson College for CRM implementation.
Filed under: Case Study, Company Net, Company News, Content, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, twitter | Tags: Company Net
Comments (2) 
Company Net has been appointed by Stevenson College Edinburgh (SCE) to implement a Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for the College’s Enterprise arm.
Dynamics CRM will enable SCE Enterprise to more effectively track all communications with clients, and provide the ideal platform for future CRM projects within SCE, where Dynamics CRM’s multi-tenant capabilities will allow them to create logically independent instances for Dynamics CRM to provide completely independent point solutions for multiple projects.
Company Net undertook an envisioning process to identify all of the necessary actions required to port the required information from SCE Enterprise’s current CRM application. Following the envisioning process Company Net implemented the Dynamics CRM solution, and provided training SCE Enterprise staff to allow them, to make best use of some of the powerful features offered by Dynamics CRM.
Company Net’s Club Vita site featured in UK newswires
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, sharepoint internet, Social Network, twitter | Tags: best website design in SharePoint, Club Vita, Company Net, PivotViewer, sharepoint 2007, sharepoint for internet, The Drum, wordpress, wss.com
Leave a Comment 16th November 2010: The launch by Company Net of the new Club Vita site was today carried on newswires across the UK.
The Drum, the UK’s key media and marketing magazine outside of Greater London, carried the story. The Drum covers the latest developments in above and below-the-line advertising, design, PR, media and new media and is always in touch with creative industry news.
WordPress, the open-source CMS platform, carried the story on multiple tag-based sites, as did various design and technology wires.
The Top SharePoint Internet Sites platform wss.com also profiled the site here. This showcase site utilises Silverlight PivotViewer, which enables the user to interact with massive amounts of data on the web in ways that are powerful, informative, and valuable. PivotViewer allows presentation of thousands of things at once and the visualisation of them in a way that exposes value from the group.
Company Net success as part of wider collaborative team in CGCoPE roster award
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet, Social Network, twitter, Windows Live | Tags: applications, CGCoPE, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, roster, Scottish Government, SharePoint, web development
Leave a Comment Company Net has been placed on the Central Government Centre of Procurement Expertise (CGCoPE) roster, as part of a wider CIVIC Computing-led consortium, for Applications, Web Development and Associated Services. This will enable the consortium to be considered for a range of suitable projects by the Scottish Government, Associated Departments and Agencies to the Scottish Government and Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs).
The consortium, comprising CIVIC, Company Net, Logica, User Vision and Rapid Mobile will be competing for LOT 2 work only, which encompasses Applications and Web Development Services. This appointment to a three year multi-supplier framework reflects The Scottish Government’s commitment to small business and enabling small and medium enterprises (“SMEs”) in Scotland to compete for high value contracts and will allow the consortium to compete on a level playing field with large multi-national organisations. The diversity of resource, experience and skills present will allow the consortium to offer value for money and one of the most comprehensive and innovative portfolios of web development services available on the digital landscape today.
A rigorous process of selection was conducted by the CGCoPE over a number of months to ensure that all the companies appointed to the multi supplier framework have the skills and experience as well as the resources to be able to deliver value for money projects during this time of budgetary constraints in the public sector.
Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net commented: “We’re delighted to be part of this consortium and look forward to tackling the opportunities that will come our way because of it. We’ve been working informally with some members of the consortium to date, so it’s positive to have a formal arrangement to pull us all together. Company Net offers a unique element to this group – a deep and robust understanding of the Microsoft stack of products, including SharePoint and Dynamics CRM, and an unrivalled experience of their implementation and integration with other technologies. Most of all, we understand the strategic and mission-critical importance of appropriate technology within organisations”
Club Vita site features in topsharepoint gallery site
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, sharepoint internet, twitter | Tags: Club Vita, cms, forrester research, sharepoint 2007, sharepoint for internet, topsharepoint.com
Leave a Comment Company Net’s new website for Club Vita has been rated a UK top 10 SharePoint site by topsharepoint.com.
The site harnesses the CMS capability of the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform. It also uses an engaging but unconventional scrolling and navigation mechanism to graphically depict the flow of de-risking the pension process – Club Vita’s specialist area of expertise. This engaging user experience is augmented by irreverent illustration based around interactive pages – (Mr Predictor, a ‘What if?’ Calculator and Instant Polling). News contains a dynamically populated headline from the most recent news article. The Club Vita Vitamins newsletter is available via sign-up.
topsharepoint.com showcases some of the world’s best designed SharePoint-based websites from around the world. They carefully select SharePoint websites based on their usability, design, creativity and ability to incorporate modern techniques. SharePoint websites can be submitted for free and the only requirements asked for is that the website is built on SharePoint platform, well designed and original. More information can be found at: http://www.topsharepoint.com/?s=club+vita
As of 10th November 2010, the Club Vita site was rated 6th in the UK.
With over 100 million licenses of SharePoint sold worldwide it’s little wonder SharePoint is the fastest-growing product in the history of Microsoft. On top of this, SharePoint is listed by Forrester Research as the number 1 portal product. The latest version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, delivers not only great Intranet/Extranet platforms but also great platforms for building robust and reliable Internet-facing websites.
Fun with Microsoft Tag
You’ll need to install Microsoft Tag application onto your mobile phone, which you can do quickly and easily by following the instructions at http://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/download/. Then you point your phone at the tag and it recognises it and executes the appropriate action.
We (at Company Net) will be putting vCard tags on our new business cards. Recipients with Microsoft Tag installed on their phone will be able to scan the tag on the card with their phone, and this will automatically transmit our contact details to their phone. A small application of the technology perhaps, but the potential applications are limitless.
A few of them are showcased on the Microsoft Tag site.
Howie is Company Net’s Commercial Director
Editor’s note: Today Softpedia announced “Earlier this week, the software giant revealed that Microsoft Tag has enjoyed consistent adoption and market success with no less than 2 billion tags being printed since the technology was launched in 2009.”
Company Net and DNX map the ‘Longevity Landscape’ for Club Vita
Filed under: Case Study, Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, sharepoint internet, twitter | Tags: Club Vita, cms, Company Net, Hymans Robertson, Internet, sharepoint 2007
Leave a Comment The Club Vita concept http://www.clubvita.co.uk was established by consultants and actuaries Hymans Robertson in order to realise the importance of closing knowledge gap and improving the understanding of occupational pension longevity.
Club Vita’s unique services are designed to help pension fund trustees and sponsors self-manage longevity uncertainty, providing quicker and more detailed analysis resulting in pension contributions, retirement plans and pension designs being adjusted much sooner than is possible today, so avoiding a pension footprint of extra costs falling to future generations.
Company Net, working in creative partnership with Surrey-based B2B and B2C marketing agency DNX has produced a new, dynamic website for the Club Vita brand, using the CMS capability of the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform.
The site, utilising irreverent Flash-based illustrations based around interactive pages – Mr Predictor, What if? Calculator and Instant Polling, while News contains a dynamically populated headline from the most recent news article. The Club Vita Vitamins newsletter is available via sign-up.
Hymans Robertson specialises in advisory and management services to the occupational pensions market in both the private and public sectors, providing core services such as investment and actuarial consultancy, pension scheme design and management, and third party administration.
Club Vita uses Hymans Robertson’s team of highly qualified statisticians, database architects, analysts and longevity consultants to perform the data analysis for members. 
Club Vita LLP is a separate company with access to £1m of initial working capital, operating under the direction of an independent supervisory board, chaired by Peter Thompson, the former chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds. The diverse board is made up of experts drawn from the fields of pensions, ageing and medical research.
iPhone devotees: Why you need to sit up and take notice of the Windows Phone 7
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Social Network, twitter, Windows Live | Tags: apps, email, games, hub strategy, mesh, tiles, windows phone 7
Comments (5) 
With October 21st’s announcement of the new Windows Phone 7, we are seeing its rise as the potential iPhone killer. Forget Android, this is the one you need to pay attention to. Why? Scale, style and apps are the key reasons. Not to mention one of the longest computing heritages and a suite of services that range from business to entertainment, browsing and searching. The Windows Phone 7 hooks this all together in a way that puts the market on its head. Instead of emulating what others have done, Microsoft has taken a radical approach to the mobile device and it will send shivers down the spine of the iPhone:
Tiles: Fundamentally, this just looks better. The tile function of the screen replaces the icon displays seen on the iPhone and the Android with living breathing tiles. Just picking up the phone you can see what is going on in your world without opening any app.
Hub Strategy: The Hub Strategy is core for Windows Phone 7 and it makes a lot of sense. With the music hub, the app is not restricted to content you have uploaded, or bought in, but to open to all the music content on the phone. On an iPhone, for example, you may have many music apps, each with different content and therefore need to remember where your music is before you can play it. With the 7 you can access your music in the various apps, or have a centralised hub of music. 
Take the hub strategy across to other content, like business documents and Office becomes the business hub. This strategy gives you the best of both worlds, as you can use your preferred app or find it in the main hub. Smart.
Sexy Apps, Lots of Apps: It’s all about the apps. Some of the biggest names in apps: Seesmic, Foursquare, Shazam, the Associated Press – are all bringing apps to the 7. So, we don’t need to worry about not having the big names you are used to, as they are already lining up to come on board.
Try before you buy – forget this lite/pro app business. You get to download the app as a trial. The functionality for the trial is core to the new Silverlight toolbox, so it is down to the app developers to decide the best way for the trial. Some apps may be fully functional but on a limited trial time. Other apps may have limited functionality or the first few levels of a game.
Games: Forget Flight Control, how about full on XBOX action on your phone? The graphics look up to it and the game levels, credits and achievements will be recorded against your Live profile.
This cross performance works on a number of levels. Not only will you be able to continue playing your XBOX games on the phone (we don’t know right now if you can play all of them) but also that it remembers you across platforms so you can pick up where you left off when at home in front of your XBOX. In a sense, this is what Sony has been trying to achieve with the PSP/PS3 hook up, but with all the other mobile bits added. If the 7 can be an awesome entertainment platform as well as the business platform of Microsoft’s heritage, this could be amazing.
A Great App Marketplace: One of the initial stumbling blocks for Android was the Marketplace. Not only did it not have as many apps as iTunes, the actual interface was horrible. The new Marketplace interface is better but still hard to find stuff. What about billing? iTunes billing is great, if you have a credit card and an iTunes account. Android again, you need a card and a Google Checkout account. So Microsoft will launch with credit card payments, operator billing, and try before you buy. The operator billing alone should extend the potential reach of app users (anyone under 18 for starters) and offer another convenient way to buy apps.
Email: The 7 will have full capability to support not just Exchange accounts but all other major email providers as well. So, you don’t need to have an Exchange account to be using this for email. However, if you do have exchange, this will be a boon. Remember, the iPhone has Exchange support but the Android does not offer Active Sync. The 7 will offer multiple exchange account sync which will also be good for business users. Let us not forget there are still a lot more people running Exchange emails than Gmail or Apple Mail. Blackberry need to be paying attention to this.
Mesh. Finally: Microsoft’s plans to sync your life across channels and platforms? It seemed a little ahead of its time back then but with the 7, finally everything comes into place. Music, work, games, contacts all come of age in one place.
What we forget is that Microsoft has all the component parts to serve anyone’s digital life. Email, Search, Gaming, Music. Until now some of those have been a bit underwhelming. Roll forward to today and Windows plans are coming together. With the phone the potential centre of users’ digital universe, they tend to gravitate to the platform that gives the greatest experience to hook them all together. The iPhone gets better but doesn’t perfectly integrate your Google life. Nor does Android completely – Gmail, Google apps yes but other accounts like Google Finance still don’t hook up.
Microsoft is the sleeping giant. Historically, not as sexy as Apple, and not as fast as Google. The 7 phone is the show piece if not the centre piece of their empire which will help them back on the path to greatness.
Windows Live 2011 – Now its a social network hub including Facebook & LinkedIn Connectors
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Social Network, Windows Live | Tags: Company Net News, Internet, Microsoft, Social Network, Social Networking, Technology, Windows Live
Comments (1) Starting now you can get your most important networks all together with your Windows Live account. Microsoft are pulling ahead with their strategy of using Windows Live Essentials 2011 as a very useful and feature rich hub.
The new Live messenger 2011(works only with Vista and Windows 7) can be downloaded at- http://explore.live.com/windows-live-messenger?os=other
Adding Facebook and Linked In This is one of the reasons why many love the new live messenger 2011 over other messaging services. Live messenger 2011, has option to add your Facebook, LinkedIn and some other popular social sites with your messenger account, so that you can get live updates from your friends in other social networks,while you are chatting in messenger. To add social a networking facility with Live messenger, look at the lower-right side of your messenger window, you will see an option “connected to”. From there add your Facebook and LinkedIn account ID, for adding more social networking services to your Live ID click on the “Connect more services”
Above is a sample of Windows Messenger with the connectors activated. As a cool addition, Facebook chat is integrated with messenger and so you can use the messenger interface to chat on Facebook.
Connect your Windows Live Writer to your Word Press blogs and have a much easier and satisfying way to create your blog posts compared to editing directly in Word Press and you can publish, edit and preview your posts directly from Live Writer.
All in all at Company Net we think this is a great move forward for Windows Live and when you add in the 25Gb of space on Sky Drive with the new ability to create and share Office documents on line, we are very excited about the whole cloud based Microsoft offering.
And there is more……Windows Live Mesh allows you to very easily synchronise your PC’s – desktop at home and work, laptop, netbook – you name it and on top of that you can synch up to 5GB of Sky Drive data online for access from any web connected PC. This is a brilliant tool, and if you have been using Windows Live Synch or the Windows Live Mesh Beta then now is time to upgrade.
And finally for now, using Outlook 2010 as your email client, you can add Facebook and linked and others using the Outlook Social Connector add-ins. These are cool and allow you to see relevant updates from your contacts right in your inbox, but also to see other contacts who have linked in and Facebook accounts when you receive an email from them. Using this is fun and really brings Outlook to a new level of connectivity. Use it all and enjoy.
Company Net in PLC Magazine ‘Know How’ feature: Matter Management: An in-house legal team’s solution
Filed under: Company News, Content, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, twitter | Tags: In House Lawyers, Know How, Knowledge Management, Legal Portal, Matter Management, PLC Law, William Grant & Sons
Leave a Comment Company Net is featured in the October 2010 edition of PLC magazine in the section Know-how, which considers new developments in knowledge management and technology within the legal space.
The article, which gives explanation of how international spirits company William Grant & Sons implemented an IT solution to give its in-house legal team improved visibility and management of matters, costs and risks, can be read in full here.
PLC, published by the Practical Law Company, is the leading monthly magazine for business lawyers advising companies active in the UK. Key features of PLC’s uniquely practical approach are:
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Analysis of legal developments in a business context.
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Examination of how practitioners apply new law.
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Provision of solutions to legal problems.
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Rigorously edited and clearly presented articles.
The magazine is carefully structured into distinct sections, with each section having a particular purpose. PLC’s contributors are experts; the editorial committee and regular contributors are leaders in their fields. In addition, all our editors are ex-practitioners from leading internationally orientated firms. Subscribers to PLC include over 90 of FTSE 100 companies and all leading law firms and financial institutions. Most leading firms take PLC for all of their corporate lawyers.
Why SharePoint 2010 can be the right Web CMS for your internet site
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Microsoft, SharePoint 2010, web content management
Leave a Comment Some customers may have dismissed SharePoint 2007 as the web content management system for your internet presence, but with the update to SharePoint 2010, and its improvements to web content management, maybe it’s time for them to reconsider?
The growth of SharePoint within organisations is well documented. However many organisations have been apprehensive in adopting SharePoint as a Web Content Management (WCM) system for their public internet presence due to the difficulty in customising SharePoint Server 2007 effectively.
With the release of SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has made a concerted effort to position SharePoint as a leader in the WCM space, prompting organisations that already have deployed SharePoint in an Intranet or Extranet environment to consider the feasibility of adopting the platform. Although many of the technical improvements have already been discussed in various articles, the question that most organisations are now considering is if it is worth moving from their established WCM platform to SharePoint. The recent release of the Gartner WCM Magic Quadrant for 2010 has shown that the new version of SharePoint has improved its capabilities in this area.
Technology Rationalisation
It is the dream of every CIO and administrator to reduce the amount of systems that an organisation possesses and standardise on a platform that will be robust, scalable and ultimately support business goals. If an organisation has made a considerable investment internally on the SharePoint platform, most commonly through an Intranet/Extranet/Collaboration presence, then having a completely separate platform for an Internet presence can be a huge hindrance.
By standardising on SharePoint for all types of web management there are huge savings that can occur. Savings in hardware, licensing and operational costs can amount to huge sums to an organisation. The ability to only have one platform to develop customisations on, one governance model or one common set of skills needed for employees is a very attractive proposition.
Platform Capabilities
With the broadness of the feature set in SharePoint 2010, being able to leverage this in an internet scenario is highly palatable and advantageous. Not only can the considerable WCM capabilities of SharePoint be leveraged but other important feature sets can also be utilised. The social toolset can be used to create public internet sites that can make use of SharePoint’s considerable tagging, ratings, blogs, wiki and other social engagement features. The search capabilities can be leveraged to create compelling search experiences. Business Intelligence for real time reporting can be combined with rich online InfoPath forms capabilities to create more consumer driven sites.
User Rationalisation
From an end-user perspective there are huge advantages of having one platform for daily activities. The time wasted performing the mental switch from one interface to another is well documented. The reduction of training costs is another advantage of having one platform for interaction. User engagement can also be increased with users feeling confident in being able to contribute content across all possible areas of an organisation.
In essence users dislike having many differing interfaces to generate the same output. It simply doesn’t make sense that authoring a news article on the Intranet is different than authoring one on the Internet for many users. Presenting users with one interface, one set of actions, one set of guiding principles can lead to huge efficiency gains across an organisation.
Licensing Changes
The new licensing model that Microsoft is now providing for public facing SharePoint sites is much more palatable then it was for SharePoint 2007. In the days of MOSS, the public connector license necessary to expose SharePoint to an anonymous audience was cost prohibitive for many smaller and mid-tier organisations to adopt.
Partner Ecosystem
It’s also worth noting that because SharePoint is a Microsoft product that the potential to find resources, training, add-ons and partners to assist an organisation in meeting their business objectives in an Internet scenario is increased. The common issue of finding suitably experienced and expert staff in a particular technology can be somewhat alleviated by standardising on a single platform, with the backing of the huge partner ecosystem that revolves around Microsoft. We at Company Net expect partners to become even more engaged with SharePoint work in the near future as the demand grows. With the growth in the public web-facing presence, Microsoft partners could specialise on this skillset and find themselves in a great position for the future.
Company Net successfully outlines business benefits of legal portal to Law Society of Scotland In-House Lawyers Group
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, twitter | Tags: Cofra Holding AG, In-House Counsel, Law Society of Scotland, Lawyers, Legal Portal, Matter Management, William Grant & Sons
Leave a Comment At a talk given to the In-House Lawyers Group (ILG) at The Law Society of Scotland’s headquarters at Drumsheugh Gardens on 16th September, Andy Hamilton and Tracy Hill of Company Net outlined how international spirits company William Grant & Sons (WGS) implemented an IT solution to give its in-house legal team improved visibility and management of matters, costs and risks. The talk included a live demonstation of the system to a mixed audience (on site and remotely linked-in from Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness) of legal counsel from sectors including financial services, food and drink, the public sector and media.
Caroline Lyon, Chair
The event was Chaired by Caroline Lyon, who is Divisional Solicitor for Transport, Culture and Procurement at the Scottish Government Legal Directorate. Caroline fielded some searching questions regarding the system’s cost, security and flexibility – all of which were ably dealt with by Andy and provided the audience with a rounded picture of what was possible.
The talk started with some context behind the development and implementation of the system: As WGS’s operations grew globally through a combination of organic growth and acquisition, the WGS in-house legal team (the team) also began to expand and become geographically dispersed. WGS’s growth created a number of issues for the team, relating to the management of matters, costs, risks and demonstrating the team’s worth.
Prior to this system being in place, each matter was handled by an individual lawyer and the team had little collaboration or cohesion in approach. There was no overall view of what the team was working on, so focusing the team’s limited resources was challenging. There was no central system to log external law firms’ fees, so controlling costs was difficult. There was a lack of data and metrics, so it was difficult to prove the value that the team brought to the business. There was little ability to demonstrate that the team’s strategic priorities (for example, regulatory compliance) were being delivered.
It became clear that, with WGS’s stated intentions to continue to expand their global operations, the team needed a better approach to their management of legal matters, costs and risks, as well as a more effective tool to communicate relevant legal information to the rest of the business.
In January 2010, the new system, the Legal Portal, was launched and went live within the team.
- It is very intuitive and users need little training.
- All legal matters are now stored securely along with their related information such as contacts, contracts, legal maps, costs and email correspondence.
- A workflow/email alert engine is available to guide and enforce the successful progression of certain routine types of matters, including the ability to create email alerts to remind the team of the next stage of the matter, ensuring that deadlines are not missed and matters are progressed in a timely fashion.
- A team calendar gives enhances the legal team’s ability to work collaboratively. Legal know-how is stored and easily searchable, and is grouped by internal and external know-how.
- There are easy to use legal risk calculators, which help to consider risk factors objectively and which provide a consistent and auditable approach to managing contract and litigation risk.
- Contract and trademark management systems allow digital versions of legal contracts and the trademark portfolio to be stored, shared and searched.
- Contracts can be annotated to give subsequent readers of the contracts a better understanding of why particular clauses were drafted and to highlight key dates for future action.
Information on a particular contract or trademark is found through either of two simple interactive graphical interfaces: A world map, where users can click on a country to discover the contracts or trademarks for that country, and images of WGS brands or divisions, where users can click to discover the contracts or trademarks relevant to that brand or division.
Performance dashboards allow measures such as risk, cost and overall workload to be viewed and acted on easily by the team (for example, by division, individual lawyer, law firm and/or work type). Details are displayed in graphical form, providing the team (in particular, the head of the team) with the information to explain what the team does, why they do it and to focus efforts to reduce risk and cost. Internal costs and the costs of using external law firms can be more accurately recorded and monitored, allowing the team to manage budgets more accurately.
The Legal Portal has reduced the administration burden on the team and provides an audit trail of the team’s progress. It helps the team to work better together and, ultimately, to provide even better legal services to their colleagues. Further developments of the Legal Portal are planned, including:
- Links by way of the legal risk calculators through to PLC content which will steer users through the process and offer guidance.
- A compliance section which will deal with the main regulatory areas that affect WGS (including food safety, advertising and promotion, competition law, bribery, and corruption).
The Legal Portal has now also been adopted by Cofra Holding AG, a holding company for a group of companies located in Europe, North and Latin America.
Company Net successfully Debunk the SharePoint Myth at CIM event
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, sharepoint internet, twitter | Tags: Company Net, Creative, debunking, myth, SharePoint, waverley gate
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Andy Hamilton and Mike Lynch spoke to a 45-strong audience of marketing executives last week around the subject of ‘Debunking the SharePoint Myth’. The talk, given at Microsoft’s Scottish headquarters at Waverley Gate, included representatives from a wide range of organisations, including VisitScotland, RBS, Wood Mackenzie, Scottish & Southern Energy and several leading Scottish universities.
Andy and Mike outlined how marketers are well placed to take advantage of the increasing technical and creative capabilities of SharePoint as the basis for mission-critical marketing solutions. Specific case studies highlighted the business benefits that have been brought to arrange of organisations and helped to debunk the myths surrounding what is Microsoft’s biggest server-side selling product ever.
There is a perception within IT and creative circles that SharePoint cannot be branded or designed, and so has to look like more or like as it does out of the box. Company Net is a leading SharePoint consultancy and was one of the very first to create a fully branded, design-lead website using SharePoint. Since then we have worked with several creative agencies to create highly branded and graphically interesting intranets and extranets built on SharePoint, whilst retaining the flexibility and collaboration features of the platform.
The event showed how organisations can re-enforce their identity and brand guidelines by having their internal intranets and customer extranets match the look and feel of the website and corporate brochures, whilst retaining their ease of use features, and how Company Net can bring the ethos of usability and design common to external websites, to internal sites to maximise their usability and effectiveness.
A pdf copy of our presentation is accessed through the link below:
Company Net in major supermarket bank project win
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, twitter | Tags: banking, collaboration, Company Net, intranet, sharepoint 2007, supermarket bank
Leave a Comment A major supermarket bank has confirmed that Company Net has been appointed to deliver their new Intranet on Sharepoint 2007.
The bank is the UK’s most successful supermarket bank with more than six million customer accounts, currently across 28 products and services. It is the sixth largest credit card provider in the UK with 2.4 million cards in circulation.
Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net commented: “The sales process has been pretty rigorous, but we’ve fought off heavyweight opposition from Avanade, Fujitsu, Content & Code and from the bank’s in-house resource. We’ll be working with Quorum and Line Digital, on infrastructure and design respectively. Both are partners we’ve introduced into the project, and we’re looking forward to working with them to deliver this exciting project.”
Company Net hoping to engage with further creative partners at ‘Debunking’ event
Filed under: Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint 2010, twitter | Tags: cim, Company Net, creative partnerships, intranets, SharePoint 2010
Leave a Comment With the increasing emergence of Microsoft Sharepoint impacting organisations in many positive ways, Company Net will outline how marketers are well placed to take advantage of the increasing technical and creative capabilities of Sharepoint as the basis for mission-critical marketing solutions. Specific case studies will highlight the business benefits that have been brought to arrange of organisations and will help to debunk the myths surrounding what is Microsoft’s biggest server-side selling product ever.
There is a perception within IT and creative circles that Sharepoint cannot be branded or designed, and so has to look like more or like as it does out of the box. Company Net is a leading Sharepoint consultancy and was one of the very first to create a fully branded, design-lead website using Sharepoint.
Since then we have worked with several creative agencies to create highly branded and graphically interesting intranets and extranets built on Sharepoint, whilst retaining the flexibility and collaboration features of the platform.
The event will show how organisations can re-enforce their identity and brand guidelines by having their internal intranets and customer extranets match the look and feel of the website and corporate brochures, whilst retaining their ease of use features, and how Company Net can bring the ethos of usability and design common to external websites, to internal sites to maximise their usability and effectiveness.
Event details here: http://tiny.cc/llgf1
Company Net named preferred supplier for Aberdeen University Student Centre System
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, twitter | Tags: Aberdeen, CRM, Student Centre System, Support Portal, University
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Matter Management System Talk at The Law Society of Scotland
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet, twitter | Tags: In House Lawyers, Law Society of Scotland, Matter Management, SharePoint, Steve Weatherley
Leave a Comment Steve Weatherley of William Grant and Sons will be demonstrating Grant’s Matter Management System at The Law Society of Scotland In House Lawyers group meeting on the evening of 16th September at 26, Drumsheugh Gardens Edinburgh, from 5.30pm. 
Matter Management is the IT system that Steve devised and Company Net built. It provides a central portal for In House legal teams to manage legal matters, control costs and risks. It comprises a full document management facility; a management dashboard for reporting; and a graphical search interface. The system is built on Microsoft SharePoint. You can find further details here: http://www.lawscot.org.uk/update/event.aspx?e=512
Come and hear Steve provide his insights on how it has transformed the in-house team with effective, management solutions. 
We hope to see you there.
Company Net Contractors
We are looking to take on new contractors and have set up a new Group on Linked In called Company Net Contractors.
If you know anyone who would potentially be interested in doing .NET, SharePoint or CRM work
- Image via Wikipedia
on some very exciting projects………………
……..then please get them to join this group and send an email with their CV, current availability and a daily rate to careers@company-net.com.
Company Net attends Lionra Networking Event in Edinburgh
Filed under: Company News, Partners, twitter | Tags: Lionra, Networking
Leave a Comment Company Net’s Chairman, Brian Millhouse and Business Development Director, Tracy Hill, attended the Lionra networking event on 22nd June at the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh.
Hosted by Head Resourcing and Carlyle Associates, this exclusive networking event brought together business people from a number of industry sectors.
Highlight of the evening was an enlightening and engaging talk from Will King, founder of King of Shaves, who expounded on how he took the company from a loss making venture to the world’s third largest producer of men’s facial products. It was good to hear Will’s firm belief in the power of Social Media, and interesting to debate how Social Media plays its part in B to B business. A fascinating evening and a great opportunity to meet new people.
Andy Hamilton, MD Company Net commented “We are very pleased to participate in this well organised event and thank Head Resourcing and Carlyle Associates for their organisation, we look forward to the next one”
Company Net to attend Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, twitter |
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Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net will be in attendance in Washington D.C. on July 11-15 for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Microsoft has launched the event with the statement: “Come with your business challenges and ideas. Leave with solutions and connections.”
The WPC Guest Speaker will be Bill Clinton, Founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States on Wednesday July 14. He will discuss ‘Embracing our Common Humanity.’
During the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010, over 10,000 Microsoft partners and employees will convene in Washington, D.C. to hear from Microsoft key executives and presidents, as well as brainstorm innovative solutions in the IT sector to boost global economy and connectivity. This year, they will have the unique opportunity to be inspired by President Bill Clinton.
President Bill Clinton served the United States of America for eight years during a time of unprecedented prosperity and change. Now, President Clinton is a powerful voice for progress as he shares his unique insights and observations with audiences around the world. President Clinton’s public speeches describe the challenge of globalisation, emphasise our growing interdependence, and point the way toward a common future based on shared goals and values.
Andy Hamilton commented: “This five-day partner event offers Company Net the opportunity to learn about Microsoft’s roadmap and best practices for the year, gain exclusive access to Microsoft executives and other partners, and to explore the infinite opportunities with Microsoft’s cloud computing strategy.”
Company Net joined by Axcentro GmbH on CRM Vision Group
Filed under: Company News, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, Partners, twitter |
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The Axcentro team are proven industry experts and CRM, .NET and CMS specialists in Germany, Switzerland and in India, and develop new, sophisticated customer relationship management solutions, connected Web Sites and integration of social communities.
With an extensive network of leading specialists and in close cooperation with their customers, Axcentro are creating future-oriented solutions for customer relationship management.
Highest quality standards, the use of leading technologies, client focus and creativity are the maxims of their commitment – excellent services through simplified, networked and dynamic workflows in offices, organisations, associations and companies is their focus.
The CRM Vision Group is the leading team of experts for Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Europe. The cooperative was established in 2008 with the aim of a European network of the best Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution providers to realise multi-national CRM projects of the highest quality.
SharePoint Social – Raising a Glass to Enterprise 2.0
Filed under: Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, Social Network |
Leave a Comment We at Company Net are currently engaged by one of a number of clients the drinks industry to design a global Corporate Portal for them on SharePoint 2007. After extensive consultation with a wide cross-section of staff over recent weeks, one of the major themes to emerge was the importance of social element of the corporate portal – in particular:
- allowing staff to use the native Wiki functionality of SharePoint 2007, to form a structured Knowledge-base;
- providing blogging functionality to share experience, expertise and good practice; and
- MySite functionality to join up staff across the organisation – allowing them to profile themselves in a way which has never been possible before.
We were blown away by the enthusiasm and vision of the staff consulted. They were quick to realise the benefits of the SharePoint toolset, and identify areas where they could make use of these to improve communication and information-sharing throughout the business – despite the obvious cultural shift which this brings.
Those cultural considerations are well explored in Richard Dennison’s excellent blog article. This documents some of the challenges experienced by BT in implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools for BT – and how they overcame them.
Whilst BT did not use SharePoint for its project, there are plenty of good news stories about those who have. Check out Social Computing with SharePoint, which sets out the successes of the likes of Electronic Arts and Accenture in their implementations of Enterprise 2.0 functionality using SharePoint 2007.
It’s no surprise that, in October 2009, Gartner placed Microsoft as Visionaries and Leaders in its Magic Quadrant for the ‘Social Computing’ category:
Gartner’s defines the ‘Social Computing’ category as follows:
“We view this market as consisting of products that focus on team collaboration, communities and social interaction. The buyers in this market are looking for persistent virtual environments, in which participants can create, organize and share information, as well as interact with each other.”
Looking ahead to SharePoint 2010, it’s clear that Microsoft are looking to develop the vision further and maintain their position as visionaries. There’s a great blog article on the “New Social Computing Features” of SharePoint 2010 on Microsoft UK’s SharePoint Team’s blog. One particular area of focus for SharePoint 2010 has been developing the social potential of the MySite functionality, as well as further enhancing the existing blogging and wiki features.
Debunking the SharePoint myth: CIM event 15th September 2010
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet, twitter |
Leave a Comment With the increasing emergence of Microsoft SharePoint impacting organisations in many positive ways, Company Net will outline how marketers are well placed to take advantage of the increasing technical and creative capabilities of SharePoint as the basis for mission-critical marketing solutions. Specific case studies will highlight the business benefits that have been brought to arrange of organisations and will help to debunk the myths surrounding what is Microsoft’s biggest server-side selling product ever.
Registration is at 18:15, the event will start at 18:45 and finish at 20:45.
Location: Microsoft
2-4 Waterloo Place
Edinburgh, EH1 3EG GB
Equates to 1.5 CPD hours for CIM members
For further updates follow: http://www.cim.co.uk/events/ukRegions/sco/home.aspx
Company Net to talk to audience of marketers at CIM event on 15th September
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, twitter |
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Company Net is booked to speak at a Chartered Institute of Marketing-hosted evening on Wednesday 15th September at Waverley Gate, Microsoft’s Scottish headquarters.
The audience, traditionally made up of marketing students up to marketing directors across a range of vertical sectors, will hear how Company Net is working with organisations to develop mission-critical technology solutions for marketing executives based on Microsoft technology platforms, such as Sharepoint. More details to follow on the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s events section of their site: http://www.cim.co.uk/events/ukRegions/sco/home.aspx
Company Net win McKinnon & Clarke Dynamic CRM deployment
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, twitter |
Comments (1) McKinnon & Clarke (M & C), the energy management specialists, have selected Company Net for a +370 seat multinational deployment of partner hosted Dynamics CRM. Company Net’s expertise in complex client relationship management solutions will be fully utilised to migrate M & C from NetSuite and Lotus Notes into Dynamics CRM. Our aim is to create a single unified Enterprise-class Dynamic CRM system that is fully integrated with MS Office Sharepoint Server 2007 to handle document management and process control.
McKinnon & Clarke was founded in the UK in 1976. Since then, the company has become a truly international organisation and now has 17 offices in 13 countries, servicing clients in over 20 countries. 
They are experts in all areas of energy management including purchasing, environmental solutions, engineering and auditing of energy and utilities markets. Combining these skills, along with data gathering and the procurement, planning and ongoing management of energy costs and usage, they enable their clients to operate more efficiently while also making significant savings to their energy costs. This project will enable them to move towards their ambitious growth plans.
Miller Homes celebrates 75th anniversary with consumer campaign
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, twitter |
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A two month long consumer campaign to mark the 75th anniversary of developer Miller Homes has begun, spanning social media, radio, press and PR, to drive footfall post the General Election, and the run up to this year’s World Cup. Company Net developer Robert Nicolson will be building the campaign landing page designed by The Union as well as designing and building the voting mechanism and page.
http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2010/05/14/13825-miller-homes-celebrates-75th-anniversary-with-consumer-campaign
MITS and Company Net announce reseller partnership: Soft solutions for hard problems
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Content, Dynamics CRM, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, twitter |
Leave a Comment Today Company Net and MITS (Morisons IT Solutions Ltd) announced a strategic reseller partnership with immediate effect. MITS will carry and introduce the Company Net stack of white-label products and services to a trusted customer base, as well as being the conduit for collaboration with other MITS partners. These currently include Dell, Pilgrim Systems, b2net and vmware. 
MITS is a division of Morisons LLP, a leading and progressive law firm with offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Alan Stuart and Carol-Anne Welsh will be the MITS partnership team working with Company Net on future opportunities. Alan is a director of MITS and a Partner in Morisons LLP’s Commercial Property Department and deals with Construction and IT. He is also a member of the Society for Computers and Law. Carol-Anne is the Technical Director of MITS. She previously worked as a systems analyst for various IT companies before qualifying a solicitor, whilst working in the Institute of Photonics. She is a Professional Member of the British Computer Society and is active in BCS Law, Data Centre and Green IT Specialist Groups.
Alan Stuart
Carol-Anne Welsh
The MITS model offers customers and prospects a ‘hand holding’ IT procurement advisory service, dealing with the whole spectrum of IT procurement from a simple business start-up to full OJEU procurement for Institutions. Based on customers’ business requirements, objectives and strategies, customers are introduced to partners such as Company Net, or if necessary, external consultants, who can deliver IT solutions in the required areas.
Andy Hamilton, MD of Company Net commented: “The MITS model makes perfect sense and we are looking forward to future opportunities to work with a new source of contacts in addition to developing further value-added relationships with other MITS partners where appropriate. We have outlined our stack of products and services to MITS and see ourselves as the go-to suppliers of business critical solutions based around SharePoint, Dynamic CRM and proRM, for whom we are English-language partners. Company Net has an enviable track record of supplying tailored solutions within the legal fraternity and these include Matter Management systems with which we have developed for in-house legal teams and Membership Management tools for organisations such as The Law Society of Scotland and The Faculty of Advocates.”
Company Net first English-language member for CRM Vision Group
Filed under: Case Study, Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, twitter |
Leave a Comment Company Net has joined the CRM Vision Group as its first English-language member. The CRM Vision Group is the leading team of experts for Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Europe. The cooperative was established in 2008 with the aim of a European network of the best Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution providers to realise multi-national CRM projects of the highest quality.
Currently, members of the CRM Vision Group employ more than 230 specialised staff at 12 locations in Europe. All members are Microsoft Gold Certified partners and must meet the stringent quality requirements of the CRM Vision Group and ensure that CRM projects are implemented with high standards and minimal risks. The service portfolio ranges from strategic CRM consulting on the successful implementation and integration to operation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
“We have recognised this it is impossible for a single company to have expertise in all specialities and in all areas, therefore we have a long history of working with quality partners to provide best of breed solutions through a network of partnerships. The CRM Vision Group provides exactly the specialities that we need to be able to offer to our Global Customers.” commented Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net.
In addition to Company Net, other members include:
- ACCENTIS GmbH; Pfäffikon, Switzerland
- FWI Information Technology GmbH; Steyr, Austria
- proMX GmbH; Nürnberg, Germany
- synalis GmbH & Co. KG;Bonn, Germany
- triomis GmbH; Dortmund, Germany
Company Net in demand at Convergence 2010
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft, Partners, twitter |
Leave a Comment After a delay due to the volcanic eruptions in Iceland restricting air travel, Company Net’s Sales Manager James Freel finally arrived at Convergence 2010 at the Georgia World Congress Center on Saturday 24th April at 10pm local time.
The event proved to be a great success for Company Net, exhibiting on the proRM stand at bronze sponsors for the exhibition. Along with the Nuremburg-based team of proMX, James proved a crowd pleaser, not least for their willingness to don their respective national dress for the duration of the event!
There was interest in the proRM product from organisations spanning the Oil & Gas sectors, Pipeline Services, Service Industries and Construction, as well as other Dynamics ERP Products partners who are looking to use proRM to manage their own Dynamics implementations. These organisations were geographically disparate, coming from Brazil, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, South Africa and of course the US. They all went away happy with some useful information, a business card, the promise of a follow up and to boot, a proRM-branded Bavarian beer stein!
James Freel, Company net and Sebastian Boeser-Letz, proMX
Next stop for Company Net will be the in Washington D.C. on July 11-15 for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. There we will be hoping to celebrate proRM winning the CRM Product of the Year Award!
Creative Partnerships prove a Tonic for Company Net with Japanese bank win
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, Partners, twitter |
Leave a Comment Company Net will be working in partnership with London-based Tonic to design and build a new website for a leading Japanese bank. The bank is the core retail banking unit of a financial group which is the second-largest financial services company in Japan and one of the three so-called Japanese “megabanks”.
Tonic is an award-winning design consultancy that specialises in digital media. Established in 1998, they work with a wide range of clients to solve business and marketing communication challenges. They are part of The College – a College Group Company. With an international client base, their global network has 13 offices spanning US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Sitecore will provide the web CMS, which is built on Microsoft .NET 3.5. Sitecore is a web content management system software company that provides enterprise website, intranet, portal and marketing automation software. The company was founded in 2001 and has offices in Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, and Japan. Company Net and Sitecore are strategic partners.
Sitecore has received industry recognition including Web Marketing Association WebAward 2009, 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, and EContent Magazine’s Top 100 Companies that Matter Most.
This project win confirms Company Net’s investment of the value of technology working with creativity, which continues to be the foundation of a number of partnerships with leading creative agencies, both digital and integrated.
Company Net attending Convergence 2010 as English-language experts for proRM
Filed under: Company News, Dynamics CRM, Gold Partner, Microsoft | Tags: Company Net News
Leave a Comment Company Net will be represented by Sales Manager James Freel at Convergence 2010 at the Georgia World Congress Center in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia from April 24-27.
- Convergence 2010 Atlanta—the Premier Microsoft Dynamics Event from April 24 – 27, 2010
Convergence is the premier worldwide Microsoft Dynamics event for experiencing the Microsoft Dynamics community in action. Convergence will offer Company Net a unique opportunity to network with peers, partners, Microsoft team members, and industry experts in order to share ideas and knowledge, as well as to learn the Microsoft strategy and future plans for our Microsoft Dynamics solution.
The full programme features nearly 400 sessions including speakers, detailed product demonstrations and hands-on learning sessions to better understand how experts such as Company Net can further leverage existing business solutions in order to tighten supply chains, deepen customer relationships, empower your workforce and sustain profitability. As an exhibitor James will also have access to the Community and Learning Center, considered the hub of Convergence. This area is designed to be a one-stop shop for networking and learning outside of conference, offering free technical support, research activities and opportunities to meet fellow users and product experts.
Company Net are attending as Bronze Sponsors for the exhibition, promoting the proRM application, a project management and resource management add-on for Dynamics CRM. For proRM, Company Net act as experts in English-speaking markets on behalf of proMX, the developers of the application. proMX, based in Nuremburg, Germany, are a successful national and international system integrator, focusing on customer-optimised and integrated business solutions for small and medium-sized companies with high quality and robust applications for mission-critical segments and processes.
International technology newswires confirm Company Net and Metalogix Partnership
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, Partners, SharePoint |
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April 19th’s announcement across international technology and media newswires has confirmed the announcement of Company Net being added to the Metalogix partner program. Together, Company Net and Metalogix will help organisations throughout the UK derive maximum benefit from their Sharepoint investments.
The press announcement, issued by Erin Jones of E.S. Jones PR for Metalogix and approved by Aline Kaplan of Metalogix Software has so far been carried by PR Newswire via sys-con media (www.sys-con.com/node/1359942),
SOA World Magazine (http://in.sys-con.com/node/1359942),
Nadia Smith Technology Blog (http://nadiasmith.jaadhu.com/2010/04/18/company-net-and-metalogix-partner-to-enable-customers-to-deliver-cost/)
as well as on Metlogix’s own site (http://www.metalogix.net/Company/News/ByYear/2010/Company-Net-and-Metalogix-Partner-to-Enable-Customers-to-Deliver-Cost-Effective-Business-Solutions-Based-on-SharePoint/)
Miguel Nhuch, vice president of International and Business Development, Metalogix commented: “Company Net uses a unique ‘envisioning’ approach to SharePoint development and control, where customers work with them to build a vision of how SharePoint can be used and managed within their organization. Together, Company Net and Metalogix can provide mutual customers with the SharePoint management and migration tools that offer a reliable, repeatable approach to the management and control of SharePoint environments.”
Andy Hamilton, MD of Company Net says “We were delighted to be invited to be a Metalogix Partner and are already utilizing their Migration, Management & Archiving tools for the benefit of our customers. Beyond the most obvious need for their Migration tools, we see great demand for the whole toolkit and look forward to a long and successful partnership with this top class company”
Company Net Blog now posting to Twitter
Filed under: Company News | Tags: Company Net News, Digital, Internet
Leave a Comment We are now using a nice simple tool 
to connect our blog with our various twitter accounts. Linking twitter into LinkedIn also provides a nice way to keep our business contacts up to date.
Company Net Enterprise Portals Envisioning Round Table a success
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 | Tags: Company Net News, SharePoint 2010
Leave a Comment Company Net hosted a round table envisioning session on Enterprise Portals at Microsoft’s offices in Edinburgh on Thursday 25th March, which proved to be a great success. In attendance was a disparate group of Company Net prospects and clients from both the private and public sectors including local authorities, logistics, entertainment, and utilities.
The informal session gave interested parties the opportunity to find out more about the business value of Microsoft® SharePoint® , the approach to implementation and migration, and the added value that SharePoint brings.
Andy Hamilton MD, Company Net presented a session on our approach to building rich, impactful and integrated solutions on the SharePoint platform and then focused more specifically on examples of SharePoint Applications which extend the capability of SharePoint for Line of Business requirements. The group were shown our Legal Mattaer Management System and our Digital Asset Management System as prime examples of such creative solutions, along with SharePoint’s rising presence as a platform for Enterprise Websites.
Tracy Hill then demonstrated further examples of SharePoint adoption worldwide. During this session, Company Net clients Turner Group and Disney each outlined their experience with regard to Sharepoint implementation, which provided excellent insight into the IT & Business process of deployment and most importantly, successful user adoption. One of the key messages for everyone to take away was the importance of ensuring that business users drive such projects. There was a lively discussion, providing the opportunity to exchange experiences, ideas and views with other organisations that were already considering, or using SharePoint, including those that have chosen to work with Company Net.
Finally, Chris Parks, Technology Partner Advisor for Microsoft outlined the features and benefits of Sharepoint 2010, due to be launched in May.Chris ran through some live demos of SharePoint 2010 and fielded numerous questions from those present allowing for excellent insight into Microsoft’s significant investment in moving the SharePoint platform on with its next release. Company Net and Microsoft will host further events throughout 2010.
We would like to thank everyone who attended and particularly John Clift & Rolf Van Atten from Disney and Diane Freckleton & Robin Glennie from Turner Group for their superb input from a client perspective.
For further information on the event please and the benefits working with Company Net, please contact Tracy Hill on tracy.hill@company-net.com or 0131 559 7500
Company Net identifies true growth potential in creative partnerships
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 | Tags: Agencies, Company Net, Company Net News, Creative, Design, Digital, Partnerships, SharePoint, Technology
Leave a Comment Company Net’s investment of the value of technology working with creativity has been the foundation of a number of partnerships with leading creative agencies, both digital and integrated.
Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Company Net identifies this is as a growth area for the company over the coming financial year:
“We currently assist a wide range of creative agencies as technology providers or advisors for online applications, back office functions and brand implementation for Microsoft channels such as SharePoint. We understand their skills, language and requirements to provide a comprehensive value-added offering to their clients. This enables Company Net to tap into unexplored sectors and organisations and to work with some real creative talent. We are comfortable with collaboration and we are exploring partnership areas around social media and usability at present.”
Microsoft is making concerted efforts to capture the creative agency space at present, with the certainty that the graphic design and advertising industries are evolving and growing at an incredible pace towards online platforms. In addition Company Net have identified the tremendous potential for creative agencies to deliver to a growing market for rich, intuitive and high impact internal systems such as Microsoft SharePoint Intranets That movement dramatically increases the importance of software for this industry and additionally Microsoft is pleased to open up the world opportunity offered by Silverlight’s capabilities to advertisers and creative teams. It is currently an area many creative agencies aren’t equipped to explore. If creative agencies want to know more about the project, or need some help in using Silverlight to create rich experiences, then Company Net are here to help.
Company Net adds Digital Asset Management to SharePoint
Filed under: Case Study, Company News, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 | Tags: Company, Company Net News, Digital, Digital Assets Management, Microsoft, Net, SharePoint
Leave a Comment By definition, Digital Asset Management (otherwise known as DAM) includes tasks and decisions relating to ingesting, annotating, cataloging, storage, retrieval, repurposing and the distribution of an organisation’s digital assets. DAM, in its earlier days, was referred to as optimising, maintaining, thinning and exporting files. As digital libraries grew so too did the need to do more with the assets contained therein. DAM has since evolved to become an essential part of an organisation’s business process for organising rich media assets such as pictures, images, video and audio for storage, retrieval and distribution.
What DAM can do for you
Many organisations are integrating DAM as part of their business-critical strategy for managing digital assets. They need dedicated solutions to help overcome operational and organisational challenges unique to them. DAM provides much needed centralisation, optimising workflow, virtual collaboration and seamless integration with other digital media applications so that there is minimal disruption to existing processes while maximising business efficiencies. It ultimately helps organisations of all shapes and size work better, faster and smarter – giving them more time to focus on other mission-critical objectives.
Company Net currently works with Food & Drink, Media and Entertainment Sectors on DAM
Primarily DAM is used by creative users including photographers, video editors, marketing and advertising professionals, to name but a few. So, DAM systems must integrate with all kinds of creative applications, allowing digital data to be quickly accessed, easy to manipulate in a collaborative environment and made available via simplified distribution. Other key benefits include streamlining internal operations, as well as the entire production environment; shortening editing cycles in post-production and providing an end-to-end storage and management solution. DAM plays a vital role in media and entertainment businesses in innovating new designs, generating new sources of revenue or return on investment, and ultimately, in achieving high customer satisfaction.
Print and Publishing
DAM can also help print and publishing businesses in managing the assets that are created in image form like graphics and scanned documents layouts. DAM solutions manage various components of digital assets like images, photographs and their description data associated with them. DAM systems are a key component in identifying the most efficient way to get images, video, audio, pdfs, InDesign, PPTs, Excel, Word, EPS, GIF, and SVG files from where they are created and managed to their ultimate destination.
Advertising, Creative and Marketing Agencies
Advertising, design and marketing services companies face a challenging business landscape with shorter client engagement times, lower billed revenue per account executive, reduced customer switching costs and an increasing commoditisation of the services they are delivering. These changes suggest that revenue growth appears to be an impossible goal for agencies. DAM provides a powerful tool that relieves some of the throughput strain on existing creative, studio, and production staff; meets the need for tighter security for clients’ rich media assets; and enables creative teams to move faster, be more efficient and effective on an everyday basis.
The Educational Sector
Educators are challenged with the task of integrating e-learning environments with in-class teaching programs. DAM plays a vital role in helping modern educational and training institutions promote and encourage new forms of learning and generate revenue from sources never before possible. DAM systems give them the ability to leverage a virtual ‘treasure trove’ of existing learning assets contained within libraries and instructors’ offices. The technology lets instructors cost-effectively access, repurpose and deliver them via distance-learning, video lectures and instruction, self-service portals, and collaborative curriculum development and make them available to the faculty, students, and the wider world.
Conclusion
The unprecedented rise in the number of digital assets in an organisation’s virtual library is one of several driving forces behind the need for sophisticated DAM solutions. In less than 10 years alone DAM has moved from a ‘nice to have’ service to a ‘need to have’ business requirement that: streamlines the creative workflow process; enables a centralised and collaborative creative working environment; provides a reliable and scalable platform that cost-effectively delivers assets across a distributed network; and finally, unleashes the revenue potential of an existing library of assets that can be easily repurposed to generate new top line growth. Innovative technology vendors such as Company Net, and their ability to bring solutions to market are helping reshape the way organisations think about what DAM can do for them.
Company Net in attendance at CeBIT 2010, 2 – 6 March, Hanover
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner | Tags: CeBIT, Company Net, Digital, Industry, IT, Show, Technology
Leave a Comment Company Net was represented by Sales Manager James Freel at this year’s CeBIT exhibition.
With an exhibition area of roughly 450,000 m² (5 million ft²) and up to 700,000 visitors, is it the world’s foremost tradeshow for the digital industry, held each spring on the world’s largest fairground in Hanover, Germany.
Its special mix of exhibits, conferences, keynote addresses, corporate events and business lounges makes it the No. 1 annual meeting point for ICT buyers, sellers, developers and users from around the globe. This year’s show covered all the latest IT and telecommunications products, services and solutions and highlight themes – Business IT, ICT Infrastructure and Future ICT. “Connected Worlds” was the keynote topic at CeBIT 2010.
Company Net to host Enterprise Portals Envisioning Round Table on 25th March
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 | Tags: COFRA, Company Net, Envisioning, Microsoft, Portals, SharePoint, William Grant
Leave a Comment Company Net will host a round table envisioning session on Enterprise Portals at Microsoft’s offices in Edinburgh: The Burns Room, Microsoft, Waverley Gate, 2-4 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh EH1 3EG on Thursday 25th March.
This informal session will give interested parties the opportunity to find out more about the business value of Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, the challenges of implementation and migration, and the added value that SharePoint brings. There will be an opportunity to exchange experiences, ideas and views with other organisations that are already using SharePoint, including those that have chosen to work with Company Net such as COFRA and William Grant & Sons.
For further details contact Tracy Hill ay Tracy.Hill@company-net.com or James Freel at James.Freel@company-net.com
Mike Lynch comes aboard as Flare Partnership begins taking shape
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Uncategorized | Tags: Collaborative, Company Net News, Creativity, Flare, Mike Lynch, Partnership, Technology
Comments (1) Mike Lynch has joined Company Net and will be driving forward the new collaborative joint venture agency Flare with immediate effect.
Flare is a collaborative joint venture between Company Net and Shaw Marketing and Design, encompassing further value-added partners where appropriate to give the most robust solution to individual client and project needs. Flare services a wide range of target audiences and business sectors with robust marketing, creative consultancy and programme management, underpinned with the delivery of bespoke and integrated creative solutions and business applications using the Microsoft platform.
Flare was borne out of an ambition to apply a top-quality collaborative approach to business ‘pressure points’ and deliver an effective client solution that delivers both functionally and aesthetically. The two core elements of Flare, Company Net and Shaw Marketing and Design, remain constants, but the model lends itself to encompassing those partners whom we believe can add value to a relationship or project for the benefit of the client. The web development arm of Company Net and the digital and creative offer of Shaw give Flare immediate traction in this area.
Business and marketing benefits of using Flare will include significant cost savings, new commercial opportunities and the ease of problematic ‘pressure points’ within those organisations. The Flare model is structured for best-practice working but is able to adapt to a ‘needs-based’ partnership solution. It can seamlessly work with both in and out-house creative teams, as comfortably as it can with in- or out-house technology teams.
Mike has spent the last 15 years within the creative agency sector in both Edinburgh and London, including a decade as group marketing director for Navyblue Design Group, where he worked in a programme planning capacity with both Company Net and Miller Homes as part of a creative/technology/client triumvirate. He has long experience in planning, managing and implementing marketing communications activities and developing client relationships as well as facilitating strategic partnerships that bring maximum value to client revenue streams. He has a sound understanding of both the creative services and technology industries and processes, from concept to delivery as well as the financial pressures, hazards and ambitions of clients, both in the private and public sectors.
SharePoint 2010 Public Beta now Available for Download
Filed under: Company News, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet | Tags: Microsoft, SharePoint
Leave a Comment The excitement surround Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 continues to build.
Following hot on the heels of last month’s Sharepoint Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has announced that the Public Beta release for Sharepoint 2010 is now available for download.
Company Net Partners with Metalogix
Filed under: Company News, Partners, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, sharepoint internet | Tags: Company Net News, Metalogix, Microsoft, MOSS 2007, SharePoint
Comments (1)
Company Net is delighted to announce its partnership with Metalogix
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To start the partnership off on the right footing, Company Net has already completed its first implementation of Metalogix’s Sharepoint Site Migration Manager - enabling one of its public sector clients to successfully migrate content from Sharepoint 2003 to Sharepoint 2007.
With Sharepoint 2010 soon to be released, Metalogix’s Sharepoint Site Migration Manager service offering is perfectly placed to assist customers in the migration of its Sharepoint and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 content to newer Sharepoint platforms.
Don’t just take our word for it. Check out Sharepoint Reviews.
Company Net Website on Top SharePoint
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, SharePoint, sharepoint internet | Tags: Accessibilty, Company Net News, Compliance, Creative Design, Number 1 SharePoint Site, SharePoint
Comments (1) We are very pleased that our new website was accepted onto the Top SharePoint list today.
Top SharePoint for Company Net Website
We have extended our approach to ensure AA accessibility and ensure a high degree of xHTML compliance whilst making sure that site performance is maximised. We are practicing what we preach and showcasing what is very achievable for SharePoint Internet sites. We have received great design input from our partners Red Dress Creative and Shaw Marketing and Design and combined their initiatives into our own final design for the site.
We are actively looking for many more SharePoint Website projects and believe that if you currently use SharePoint for your internal portal that there are significant benefits to be achieved by also puting your website on this platform.
These benefits include:
- Simplified content management requiring no coding experience
- Business users own and manage their content from end to end
- Single interface for managing intranet and extranet, reducing training requirement for staff
- Familiar Microsoft Office interface
- No reliance on third party suppliers to maintain company website
- Improved customer interaction through SharePoint discussion forum and blog capabilities
If you are a Microsoft Gold Partner then we are offering knowledge and skills transfer whilst building or migrating your own site to SharePoint. You can see more details here on the Partner Channel Builder Portal
Social Technology Solutions for Business
Filed under: Company News | Tags: Social Networking, Social Technology
Leave a Comment How does it work for business, all this Social Networking. There is no simple answer but in essence it is all about creating communities and having direct peer to peer access to discuss and introduce your products and services rather than use the tired and over used direct marketing methods.
We at Company Net are very privileged to have a partner www.reddresscreative.com who are pioneers in the use of the social networking for business, co-founder Colin Gilchrist is a mate and has guided us through the in’s and outs of the social network and how we can benefit. Starting with a presentation to our staff, Colin has been on hand to help and advise throughout. If you are struggling to understand the concepts and the approach, I can heartily recommend getting in touch.
For us, as technology providers of collaboration and communication solutions it is a very exciting time as customers and clients find a clear benefit by embracing the use of these solutions in a social way. One such client, Miller Homes has fully embraced web technology in the past to benefit considerably from the rich online experience provided to their customers, now they are using twitter to further enhance their reach to the community of home buyers, providing help, insight and influence to guide people through a difficult time because of the economic reset. The great thing also is that they are doing this alongside a TV advertising campaign and effectively using social networking to reinforce the TV message and explain how it fits in with the Company’s thinking.
Here is some further research that I did to look into the effectiveness of the use of Social Technology.
apparently around 70% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 10% trust advertisements.
What we are seeing now is that the social network tools are capturing the basic human instinct to listen more attentively to others who have had an experience and to rely much more readily on the advice those informed individuals deliver. Add lots of people together who share their experiences and reinforce, discuss, agree, argue and basically form a consensus about every topic under the sun. For me it really started to be noticable on the on-line e-commerce websites a few years ago with the introduction of customer reviews. Suddenly we had a direct access to the experience of others who had purchased the product already, what is in the box?, does it work as described?, do you recommend that I buy it? – these are all questions that are answered by people freely giving of their own time to inform others about a purchase. It’s the sort of conversation that used to be contained in the pub, but now you can broadcast your view to everyone, safe in the knowledge that some one somewhere will appreciate your opinion and be influenced by it, others may well argue with it, but this is the essence of opinion forming as the discussion is even more valid when different view points help others to come to a conclusion. If the figures above are to be believed, we basically trust each other much more than being told what to do, oh, maybe that’s why Governments are struggling so much to provide credible social networking connections with their constituents?
It has always staggered me that vast marketing budget spend can be justified in terms of extremely low hit rates – TV adverts are prime kettle boiling interludes, direct mail gets about a 1% return rate and when have you ever responded positively to a marketing phone call at home just as you are sitting down to your tea
According to Social Harbor:
With Facebook and Twitter grabbing national news headlines, it may not be all that surprising to hear the number of users on social networking sites has doubled since 2007. However, the numbers are staggering to look at.
Almost 1/3 of the US population – 55.6 million adults to be specific – visit social networking sites at least monthly. This according to the latest report from Forrester Research. That number was 15% in 2007 and only up to 18% last year in 2008.
This puts the popularity of social networking among adults higher than instant messaging, streaming music, and reading blogs. Here is the complete breakdown from Forrester’s report:
Kurt Mackie is online news editor, Enterprise Group, at 1105 Media Inc.
Social networking solutions are various Web-based collaborative applications, typically labeled as “Web 2.0″ technologies or even “Web 3.0” by some. The use of forums, wikis and blogs is seen as a cheaper way of marketing products by “building communities.”
“Companies are finding the return on investment for social media campaigns to be aggressively outpacing traditional marketing strategies,” said Aaron Sloman, CEO of speakTECH, in a prepared statement. “It’s driving a transformation where traditional marketing departments need to re-tool as interactive marketing agencies.”
A Telligent white paper suggests that social networking sites can reduce help desk costs through technical support forums. Wikis, blogs and forums also generate free content and can replace printed marketing materials. The white paper, “Increase the Impact of Your Digital Marketing Spend in a Down Economy,” also suggests that social networking solutions boost customer engagement and brand awareness.
Social media spending is expected to grow in the U.S. market over the next five years, from $716 million in 2009 to $3.1 billion plus in 2014, according to an upcoming Forrester Research report. Such growth would represent “a 34 percent compound annual growth rate,” which is “a significantly higher rate of growth than the future spending on other interactive marketing channels,” Forrester explained in a press release
So there are some compelling reasons to get your business moving with Social Technology. As with every other technology there are phases of development, we are moving from the innovation into early maturity phase and that’s when the good ideas get translated into real benefits.
Galliford Try chooses Company Net for Website Build
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, Partners, WPC 2009 | Tags: Company Net News, Compliance, Sitecore, Website, WPC 09
Leave a Comment 
Building on Company Net’s experience in the construction industry, Company Net has been appointed by Galliford Try to redevelop its Galliford Try Homes web site. We are delighted to be involved in this prestigious project.
Developing around 3,000 homes per year, in the South of England Galliford Try Homes is best known to consumers for homebuilding brands including Linden Homes, Stamford Homes and Midas Homes. In Scotland they also own Morrison Construction.
With numerous acquisitions, the company is keen to consolidate it’s brand position and ensure the websites of group companies are reflective of its leading market position and more able to connect with prospective customers.
The new site will be built on Sitecore’s .NET CMS platform, and will benefit from the rich variety of Content Management capabilities which this brings.
Sitecore News
Sitecore have just announced the launch of the new Online Marketing Suite on the 1st of October. This is a very exciting addition to the CMS product and allows for extremely good website analytics with categorisation and connectivity of visitor leads through to internal systems such as Dynamics CRM. We had the privilege of a demo of the new system at Microsoft World Partner Conference from none other than UK MD, Simon Bartolo and were very impressed indeed. We have been invited to the launch in London and will report back on the new features in more detail soon.
Company Net is an accredited Sitecore partner and proud to be building first class websites on this excellent .net CMS platform
Philip Hogg Joins Company Net’s Panel of Experts
Company Net is delighted to welcome Philip Hogg to its Panel of Experts.
Philip is an experienced and respected marketer, and has just set up his own consulting firm pHc. Philip’s expertise centres around Customer Experience Management (CXM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Usability.
Philip brings years of pragmatic experience in these fields, having experienced them both as a purchaser and supplier of the services.
You can read more about Philip’s role on Company Net’s Panel of Experts, and Company Net’s philosophy behind selecting partners on our blog.
Partnership Case Study – “Philip Hogg joins Company Net Panel of Experts”
Filed under: Case Study, Company Net, Partners | Tags: Creative Design, Partners
Comments (2) We place great emphasis on our Partnerships and seek out the best to add business acumen and experience to our portfolio of services and solutions. Finding people who have a passion for business, a flair for creativity with a focus on technology solutions and a capacity to deliver, is a task we undertake readily and persistently. The reward is the opportunity to engage with some of the best business professionals we can find, in a variety of specialist fields.
All too often, the reality is that Companies try to do too much themselves, whilst believing they can stretch beyond their capabilities without impacting their clients. This leads, at best to compromising their solutions and at worst, failing to deliver adequately.
Combining keyskills allows for an unlimited potential to extend your solutions into your market place and provide your clients with the maximum value when purchasing your services. It carrys well beyond solid thought leadership onto providing a “Best of Breed” solution that provides your customers with exactly what they need.
Partnership Case Study
We recently engaged with a very experienced and respected Marketing Consultant, Philip Hogg. This opportunity came about as the timing was perfect for both of us and during a couple of conversations we easily realised that our passions and beliefs were very closely aligned in our joint fields. This has to be the root of all good business partnership and fundamental to its success.
I welcome Philip Hogg to our Panel of Experts and look forward to working with him on our projects. As we deliver high quality business consultancy to our customers, we are further strengthened by Philip’s presence.
About Phillip
For nearly 10 years Philip Hogg was Marketing Director for Miller Homes, the UK’s largest privately owned house builder . During this period Miller grew from the 26th to the 6thlargest housebuilder in the UK and was renowned for its approach to marketing, customer satisfaction and innovation.
Miller Homes lead the housebuilding industry in many aspects, in particular with its approach to e-marketing and pioneered 3 category leading websites – www.millerhomes.co.uk, www.mymillerhome.com and www.mymillerstreet.co.uk, these websites went on to become multi award winning and more importantly generated demonstrable business value.
The Partnership
Company Net was the technology partner who built these websites, engineered the integration with other enterprise systems and contributed significantly to the design and functionality, and success.
Philip has now set up a new consulting company – pHc – and the opportunity has arisen for continued collaboration with Company Net. The prize for both parties is to harness Philip’s marketing and user-oriented skills along with Company Net’s technical excellence and offer this package to other organisations.
About pHc
A FORMULA FOR SUCCESS
We’re specialists. Specialists in understanding.
By really understanding how people think and act we can develop appropriate strategies and help create successful products. We prod and poke, ask lots of questions, study how people behave and try not to jump to conclusions. Then after all of this, we create strategies and solutions.
We’re particularly skilled and passionate about Customer Experience Management (CXM), which is reckoned to be the next competitive battleground as product differentiation becomes more difficult and has a decreasing lifespan. We have specialist research skills and techniques that allow us to observe and measure the complete interface between customer/user and the brand – each interaction will create a customer emotion and an attitude that needs to be understood and managed.
This neatly links into another area where we are experienced – CRM– Customer Relationship Management. Often wrongly thought of as just software systems, when in fact it should be a cultural and holistic way of doing business. We help organisations to get maximum value from their CRMsystems by looking at how they interface with other systems and also how they use them – often the barriers to utilisation are nothing to do with the technology….
Usability and UI – User Interfaces– is the next area that we are passionate about. One of the driving philosophies behind the successful Miller websites was to make the sites intuitive and easy to use. The phrases “what would the user want” and “how would the user think” were key to making them a success. This philosophy is sadly missing from many websites and IT products; technically they may be excellent, but from a users perspective all too often they mystify, confuse and de-motivate.
Many of the above elements come together in the form of e-marketing. From website design, search engine optimisation, social, email and mobile marketing there is a common element – thinking and understanding how customers behave and then engineering solutions that are appropriate, relevant and business effective.
There is a science to what we do.
Balancing brands and customers – the Company Net and pHc way.
Strike value into your business and see the rewards of mutual thinking, collaboration and joint effort be rewarded in all that you do.
Another Microsoft Certified Professional Developer – 50 Up!
Well done to Duncan King, who today became a Microsoft Certified Professional Developer. Duncan passed the final exam required to complete the MCPD certification series, with flying colours.
Company Net’s complement of Microsoft Certified Professionals currently stands at 12, with 50 separate certifications shared across the following accredited paths:
- Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)
- Microsoft Certified Applications Developer (MCAD)
- Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
- Microsoft Certified Professional in Systems Integration (MCPSI)
- Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
- Microsoft Certified Product Specialist (MCPS)
- Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE)
- Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
- Microsoft Certified Network Product Specialist (MCNPS)
- Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP)
- Microsoft Certified Solution Provider (MCSP)
- Microsoft Certified Business Management Solutions Specialist (MBSS)
What is SharePoint? A definition for the users…
Filed under: Company Net, Microsoft, SharePoint 2007 | Tags: Microsoft, MOSS 2007, SharePoint
Leave a Comment In a recent strategy session with one of our partners, 30 seconds into our presentation on SharePoint, the question came, “What IS SharePoint”?
It is the sort of question that usually gets answered with words like intranet, extranet, internet, portal, document management, search, content management and development platform. Not very definitive or easy to understand for most people.
So we set about coming up with a clearer answer, aimed firmly at the end users.
SharePoint is a communication and collaboration platform. It fully integrates with your Microsoft Office applications and uses web technology to allow your Company’s employees, suppliers and customers to significantly improve how they find and share knowledge, information and data. It is where you work together every day.
Once you have this definition in place it is much easier to associate the various elements of the SharePoint toolkit with the real world of end users as follows :
Intranet – A shared web environment for internal employees
Extrantet – A shared web environment for authorised external users such as suppliers and authorised customers
Internet - Web access to your company for anonymous customers
Portal – An internal website that allows everyone in the company to publish information and communicate with each other
Document Management- Keeping documents, images, videos, in fact any sort of data, well organised and ordered so that everyon has the correct version to work on.
Enterprise search – A vastly improved way of being able to find the information you need to do your job more easily.
Development Platform- SharePoint comes with a very substantial toolkit built in, and is readily customisable, but it does not end there, it is also capable of being built upon by experts to provide highly tailored , business specific solutions.
Here is a nice video doing the rounds that shows SharePoint in action with some, but not all, of these features:
Hope that gives some clarity to what we mean when we talk about SharePoint.
Who is the Villan, the BBC or BSkyB …..or the ECB?
Filed under: Content, Newspapers, Sport | Tags: BBC, BSkyB, James Murdock, Sky Sports, The Ashes, Website
Comments (2) My colleague Howie has posted some thought provoking comments in his blog here on his impression of James Murdock’s views on the BBC in the MacTaggart lecture, and more specifically on the increasing dominance of Sky Sport’s coverage of National Sporting events such as The Ashes.
I think there are some interesting issues here.
First of all, I listened to Mr Murdock’s entire speech. I found it to be well presented and unrelenting in its attack on our taxpayer funded, over regulated, media provision in the UK. I particularly agreed with his customer centric remarks, the respect for customer choice to decide for themselves what they want to do, rather than being fed a pre-prescribed diet and expected to follow it.
Secondly, the imbalance that the BBC creates in this regulated market maybe had a place in the analogue world. But in the digital world this imbalance creates a massive strain on the ability of every other media provider to be able to profitably invest in competitive media products and services. There is nothing else akin to the BBC Charter in media world. It is therefore by definition an anomaly, and like all anomalies it creates difficulty at some level. Today the biggest difficulty is that tax payer owned news and media content is distributed free at the point of consumption to everyone in the UK.
Thirdly, as a businessman, I fully understand the extent of the problem. How can anyone compete with a separately funded, stat
e controlled enterprise? The BBC is completely immune to the current downturn in the economy. There is no reduction in our licence fee to accommodate the financial pain that the country is facing. By definition, as all other “competitors” are required to gain revenue from dwindling resources, the BBC simply gets stronger; its £4.6bn annual revenue safe and secure and supplemented by hoards of commercial ventures such as world-wide syndication of its programmes, numerous programme specific magazines sold commercially and of course it’s cross programme advertising.
In my view there is nothing wrong in principle with having variety like the BBC, Commercial TV and Subscription TV all side by side. However when you add into the mix, the over regulation and protectionism of the regulator Ofcom, then you create an impossible situation with pretty dire consequences. One such issue of consequence is the free BBC website. Richly imbued with access to its rich archive of taxpayer paid media content, the BBC has an immensely artificial advantage over every other media provider in the country. It effectively eliminates the capacity of competitive media providers to ever be able to earn revenue from on-line versions of their creative and news content. With the younger generation increasingly failing to buy newsprint, then the ultimate outcome is the disappearance of newsprint and its corresponding online versions within a relatively short period of time. I touched on this in my previous blog.
Mr Murdock’s little quoted final words were “The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit” and I say hear hear to that.
Free to Air Sports Coverage
In a consumer age we have every right to make our choices – including paying for subscription TV or not, but as with all choices we have to bear the consequences of making the choice. The consequence may be not being able to see the cricket. It’s not that it’s not available for you to see, but you have chosen not to pay for it. That surely is fair enough.
So then, perhaps a quick look at the rights holder, in this case the ECB and at the players who now earn much more in cricket than they ever did before, might be more appropriate. The ECB generated £300m in its 5 year deal with Sky. Commenting on the BBC’s decision not to bid at all for the rights, here’s what a BBC spokesperson said, as the Guardian reported, at the time
“We have always said that any bid for live test cricket is subject to value for money and ability to schedule. In our view neither of these criteria were met,” she added.
“We have consistently argued that not having cricket as a listed event puts it out of reach of all terrestrial broadcasters. This is the ECB’s choice and they are entitled to it. It is absurd to blame the BBC for this outcome.”
The “listed event” reference at the heart of the BBC’s argument is a fair one I think, the 1996 Broadcasting Act provided an A & B list of protected sporting events. For whatever reason, in the 1998 list, Cricket was “demoted” into the B list by the Government, meaning that the only requirement was to ensure that there were highlights transmitted on a terrestrial channel. This decision is at the heart of the problem, not the fact that Sky has more ability to invest higher amounts to broadcast sport than the publicly funded BBC
The vast sums being poured into sport for media rights, that Howie mentions have their advantages too. Sky money dragged English football out of the horrendous pit it was in at the end of the 80′s. Football violence was rife, stadiums were dilapidated and certainly not fit for families and the only football matches we ever saw on TV were the Match of the Day highlights, The Home Internationals and the odd English International (as long as it was not too far away!)
Sky’s sports coverage today is superb and with HD and Surround Sound the viewing experience is second to none. The Premiership “Product” has to be right up there with the best sporting events in the world. It’s arguably the best football league on the world – just look at Premiership club success in Europe on an increasingly regular basis.
Perhaps the Sky money is now being invested to make similar improvements to the ability of English Cricket to improve the product. Not being a cricket fan, I am much more minded to watch, as I did the Ashes this year, when there is a chance of them winning. The “it’s the taking part that counts” attitude has been far too long embedded in cricket and now at last we are starting to compete, maybe it’s uncomfortable to accept, but the Sky investment in the ECB may be making the difference already.
So, my friendly advice is enjoy the Cricket ….go get a subscription to Sky to help pay their £300m back or beware that the same outcome that the SPL’s disastrous run in with Sky, had for Scottish Football, may happen to Cricket if the £300m does not turn out to be a good investment.
Free News – Do you get it?
Filed under: Content, Newspapers | Tags: BBC, Free Content, Newspapers, Website
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Colin and Keith have some interesting things to say about the future of newspapers and in particular the influence of the “free” BBC website in the debate.
Almost all the business portals we create for customers have rss news feeds added, mostly from the BBC. Companies are following on from the on line revolution that’s going on in our personal lives with regard to where we get our news from.
We have all the technology now to get the information we want, as soon as it happens and filter it down to exactly what we want to see. This also goes for our daily diet of news which is now presenting huge problems for the traditional content providers i.e the national newspapers.
I had a meeting not so long ago with 2 Local Newspaper Executives who were quite clear and agreed between them that the newspaper industry would be finished within a generation. What was most shocking to me was their almost complete acceptance that there was nothing they could do! I guess some would say it will be no bad thing if the papers disappear, but be careful what you wish for.
The BBC has a Charter to ensure it is impartial. It’s website therefore is expected to reflect this impartiality and deliver us the facts as they occur. What would the future look like if this was the main source of news once the national newspapers disappeared. Sure it would be free or paid for by licence fee in the UK, but would that be good enough?
Some one has to pay, right? Murdock’s News International have made the initial running, aggressively and maybe not so wisely. Well if not and the future that is being touted contains only free news, as no-one wants to pay for it other than by watching adverts, then inevitably we will end up loosing something of the rich journalistic flavours and spins that are smeared on top of our printed press news articles. Newspapers are not just about news, they convey opinion and challenge us to respond.
Perhaps opinions are now more readily and accurately formed in the peer to peer world of social networking with more purity. In business today we see the immense benefit of collaboration amongst workers to ach
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
ieve so much more, perhaps this collaboration mentality will really drive the opinions of the future and we leave behind the closeted partisan political views of the traditional press. Or do the newspapers somehow find the means to invent a way to charge for their content in an acceptable way and simply move 100% on line to deliver their output and maintain their influence. Direct, targeted, advertising must surely pay a part as the old order of paying for blunt adverts driven by circulation and demographic price models gives way.
Lets find a way to ensure that the future of news is not just about impartial facts and that it contains at least some of the rich heritage of our national press with our love / hate relationship at least partially in tact.
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Museums Galleries Scotland Moves to Sharepoint
Museums Galleries Scotland is the membership body for over 340 museums and galleries throughout Scotland.
MGS is a long-standing customer of Company Net, allowing both organisations to benefit from a trusted partnership. This provides a great environment for Company Net to assist MGS’s business by providing strategic expertise to help MGS roadmap and then deliver technical solutions.
The latest phase, which is now underway, will involve Company Net delivering a usable, feature-rich Sharepoint 2007 solution to MGS. Initially, the focus will be on the provision of work areas, project collaboration and document management.
The subsequent phase is then expected to integrate the Sharepoint instance with MGS’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution, which was implemented by Company Net earlier this year.
SharePoint – Affordable AA Compliance for your Internet Site
Filed under: Company Net, SharePoint 2007 | Tags: Accessibilty, Compliance, Internet, Microsoft, SharePoint
Comments (1) Here are a few insights from Steven Gardner our Senior Technical Architect on the solution for achieving AA Compliance when using SharePoint for your website.
To start with a little bit about compliance:
Standards compliance is the adherence of a websites HTML and CSS markup to W3C standards. Over the past couple of years making websites standards compliant has become a major driver in the development of public facing websites, why? In the not too distant past, few websites were developed to any form of standard but instead targeted a particular browser as their preferred display medium. Targeting a particular browser had the effect that when a user viewed a website with a different browser, then at best the user suffered a less than optimal browsing experience but in the worst cases were completely unable to view the website. As browser market share has become more distributed, from a business perspective, denying potential customer’s access to your website just because of the browser they use is simply throwing sales away!
The Problem
For web standards compliance, there are a number of fundamental issues which have to be addressed:
- Lack of DOCTYPE
- Invalid HTML markup
- Table based layouts
- HTML containing custom attributes
- Over reliance on JavaScript for basic functions
- Use of inline CSS styles
The Solution
In partnership with Microsoft, HiSoftware developed the Accessibility Toolkit for SharePoint 2.0 (AKS). The toolkit offers a number of new features to help meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints (WCAG 1.0 AA) and the newest WCAG 2.0 AA Candidate Recommendation while significantly reducing the time, knowledge and effort required to implement such a website.
Along with developing the AKS, HiSoftware have also developed a direct replacement for the default text editor within SharePoint called Accessible Rich Text Editor(aRTE). aRTE allows a user to edit content in a Word like editor but crucially ensuring that the output is XHTML compliant and accessible.
Steven’s White Paper on the full topic is available for download below:
Project Scotland was the Top SharePoint Internet Site in the UK (for a while)
Filed under: Company Net, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007 | Tags: Accessibilty, Compliance, Creative Design, Internet, Number 1 SharePoint Site, Optimisation, SharePoint, Website
Comments (2) We were happy that our site built for Project Scotland rose up to top spot for a couple of weeks.
In the meantime we have been finalising our own site on MOSS 2007
Here is a quick preview:
Company Net Website
Other than good design our focus has also been on AA accessibility and xHTML compliance using HiSoftware tools and achieving excellent optimisation resulting in a nice reduction in overall footprint.
Answering the question that SharePoint has a large footprint
We will shortly be issuing a White paper to share the approach to Accessibility and Optimisation which we believe are fundamental to seeing SharePoint websites continue to flourish.
Sitecore Launch for HMIe
Filed under: Company News | Tags: Company Net News, Compliance, Sitecore, Website, xHTML
Leave a Comment Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) has just launched a new mini-site, HMIe Performs. The site provides HMIe with a vehicle to share more widely and frequently its performance against its objectives and targets.
Developed by Company Net on the Sitecore web content management platform, the project demonstrated how effective Sitecore is for producing Accessible web sites which are W3C compliant in xHTML and CSS.
Top SharePoint Site Admission for Project Scotland
Filed under: Company Net, Company News, SharePoint 2007, Uncategorized | Tags: Company Net News, Compliance, Creative Design, MOSS 2007, SharePoint, xHTML
Leave a Comment We were very pleased to have our site for Project Scotland accepted into the Top Internet Sites website today. See what you think and place your vote.
With creative design supplied by The Union and Dynamics CRM functionality surfacing through SharePoint and InfoPath by Company Net the end result has been very effective in driving this magnificent Scottish Charity’s goal of providing volunteering opportunities to 16-25 year olds in Scotland.
Accessibility
We will shortly be addressing the issue of accessibility in SharePoint websites and sharing our experience of overcoming the challenges facing developers when needing to produce xHTML compliant websites using SharePoint. The recently launched Hisoft Rich Text Editor, provides an advanced toolkit to allow the delivery of xHTML compliance with new found ease, including for example compliant Flash Movies. We are currently testing an AA compliant version of the Project Scotland website with excellent results and performance improvements which we will re-launch shortly. What’s important here is that we have been able to retro design the exiting site in a very short period of time. Along with great creative design capability, the accessibility issue is essential to overcome and we have taken the decision to showcase this in our own new website which has had design input from one of our Creative Partners Digital Face and Shaw and is shortly due for release.
We believe there is a huge opportunity for Creative Design Agencies to work with partners to devise and design top value websites for clients. Build upon your client’s existing investment in SharePoint without compromising any creativity and providing the client with a perfect combination of SharePoint’s impressive functionality for ECM, Internal Portals, Document Management, Search and Collaboration with public facing sites that are visually stunning, compliant and functional, with the essential ability to be administered with familiar experience internally.
The ball is rolling……time to get on board
See Some Top Internet Facing SharePoint Sites
Filed under: Company Net, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, twitter | Tags: Internet, Microsoft, MOSS 2007, Project Scotland, SharePoint, twitter
Leave a Comment If you are starting to think about using MOSS for your Internet facing Website but are worried the design may be too “boxy” and stuffy with SharePoint the its really worth a vist to look around this site where you will find some great examples of Internet Facing SharePoint.
At Company Net, we have also had some great Microsoft feedback from Tara Hellier for our Project Scotland solution here, SharePoint Server 2007 – Customising the Look and Feel of Sites. Its great to be recognised in this way, thanks Tara, you know what you are talking about 
.
And with SharePoint 2010 heading towards us fast, there is no better time to be asking your partners to show you the solution. Here’s some more, a sneak preview of SharePoint 2010
My other SharePoint site is a Ferrari
Filed under: Company Net, Gold Partner, Microsoft, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, twitter, WPC 2009 | Tags: Ferrari, Gold Partner, MOSS 2007, Project Scotland, SharePoint, twitter, Website, WPC 09
Comments (1) You bet, we are right now in the final steps of re-launching our own website on SharePoint 2007. Its been a very quick process for the lads and hot on the heals of the new Ferrari website we couldn’t be in better company. We already have a great example of one our own clients, Project Scotland, who blazed the trail with SharePoint last year and put immense design and marketing effort into this Award Winning site which really blows away the misconception that these sites are restrictive for designers.
We have had some great design input ourselves from our good buddies at Digital Face and also some excellent content copyrighting form our Flare (our new Joint Venture Creative Digital Design House – more about this exciting news later) partners Shaw Design.
We practice what we preach here and using dedicated partners to infuse our work with expert skills and creativity to add to our own extensive capability is what we are about.
Our approach is to work in partnership with our customers to envisage, design and deploy, high impact, business value solutions, whilst ensuring knowledge & skills transfer to secure maximum self sufficiency for lifetime enhancements and support
SharePoint at WPC 2009
Hang on there, does sharepoint really work for websites, well yes. Here’s a shot from one of the many presentations at WPC 2009
It is a fact that allot of customers already using sharepoint for their internal needs such as Portals, Enterprise Search, Content Management and Document Management etc., do not know that the toolkit and development platform they are already invested in can provide their website also. By adding an extra licence from Microsoft, you unlock yet more potential. Working with a trusted advisor to guide you through to a solution by architecting and designing your SharePoint website, will further leverage your existing in-house skills which you have already developed. That’s ensuring productivity and real return on your employees skills and experience already.
So tap into that SharePoint investment you have made already and come and investigate the exciting new opprtunities to signioficnatly enhance and update your web presence with SharePoint 2007 and of course SharePoint 2010.
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- SharePoint at WPC
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- SharePoint at WPC 2009
We have had the sneak preview of SharePoint 2010 at WPC and it raises the bar even higher with an even better user interface and lots more functionality and integration tools, so watch this space. We will be going to Las Vagas in October, just before the official launch and will bring you back all the information then.
Company Net at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
Company Net has just returned from Microsoft’s annual WPC event for partners.
It was a genuinely inspiring experience, setting out Microsoft’s take on managing through the global economic “reset” and providing clear strategic direction to the assembled partners. And of course, Microsoft took the opportunity to launch its new Microsoft Partner Network.
From Company Net’s perspective, WPC was a tremendously positive experience, re-affirming a number of the strategic “big bets” which it has already positioned itself for.
You can read more on Howie’s Blog.
Turner and Co. Launches GROUPnet Intranet Portal on Sharepoint
Filed under: Company News, Uncategorized | Tags: Company Net News
Leave a Comment A privately-controlled group of autonomous companies, Turner & Co. is engaged in the supply and servicing of equipment, as well as the provision of comprehensive support services. It employs over 2,400 staff worldwide, across a number of subsidiary companies.
Company Net were engaged by Turner to develop an Intranet solution built on Sharepoint 2007, to better facilitate the storage and sharing of information throughout the organisation.
The Intranet was launched on time and to budget on 30th June – another great demonstration of what can be achieved by striking up a joint partnership between customer and supplier.
Andy Hamilton
Howie
sallyjatkinson
