Author Archive
Finding the office of the future
Filed under: Company News | Tags: cloud, Office 365, productivity
Leave a Comment If you’re concerned with keeping connected with your business while on the move, imagine the headache of trying to keep in touch with all of the 80 musicians and 75 staff of an internationally renowned and constantly travelling orchestra! This article from the BBC describes how the London Symphony Orchestra is starting to do just that.
We’ve previously described at length in this blog the benefits of the Microsoft Office 365 technology that we use ourselves here at Company Net, but it is interesting in the same article to hear about the changes that Microsoft have made themselves in their Amsterdam office, leveraging Office 365 to overcome a shortage of office space. By investing in their same unified communications and cloud computing that we use, Microsoft have been able to halve their previously cramped office space and completely change the way they work. Employees no longer have a desk and are are encouraged to decide where they work depending on the tasks they have have to do, perhaps at home, in a coffee bar, hot desk or private room as they feel appropriate. Microsoft report that as a result, their workforce is happier and more productive, and both sales and cost savings have increased.
© BBC. Staff in Microsoft's Amsterdam office have no fixed desks and instead decide where they want to work each day based on the tasks they have to perform
An important point made by the article is that physical changes to the way we work, in terms of location and flexibility, requires a re-think in the way in which we look at productivity, shifting the focus away from “face time”. This puts me in mind of a recent article on the Harvard Business Review, “Reward Value, Not Face Time“, describing the benefits of giving your employees greater autonomy and accountability in the work they do.
So it seems clear that increasing flexibility in the workplace is likely to benefit your business just as much as it has done for organisations such as Microsoft and the LSO, as long as you have the correct technology in place to underpin it. It works for us at Company Net and we’d be more than happy to discuss your plans to leverage technology to increase productivity in your organisation on 0131 559 7500.
We’d love any feedback as to what else you’d like to hear about on this blog, so please comment and let’s get some discussion going!
Howden Charity Dinner
On Friday night, Company Net were thrilled to join our clients at Howden at the beautiful Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow for their Charity Dinner in aid of Hazelwood School.
Hazelwood School for children and young people with sensory impairment is a co-educational, inter-denominational school for children and young people aged from 2-19 years, and can accommodate up to 60 pupils, who are supported by a team of 50 specialist staff, along with helpers and volunteers. The School is purpose-built and placed in a beautiful wooded setting adjacent to Bellahouston Park, and the specially designed and award-winning building (voted Scotland’s Best New Building in 2008, amongst a number of other accolades) includes features such as tactile walls which allow visually impaired pupils to navigate their way around the school by touch.
The purpose of the evening was to raise funds to help Hazelwood to deliver a range of important therapies to their pupils, which have had to be reduced due to funding cuts in the education sector. These therapies include massage, music therapy, rebound therapy and equine therapy, all of which provide a range of vital benefits to the children, from facilitating movement, relaxation and sensory stimulation to improved communication skills and confidence.
We had a fantastic evening hearing about the important work done by the school, and enjoying a performance by the school band The Fridays, a pre-dinner game of ”True or False” (during which one of our number ended up on stage!), a hotly contested auction and plenty of entertainment. The hotel itself has recently undergone a £20 million refurbishment and we were lucky enough to spend the evening in the Grand Room with its beautiful chandeliers and candles, the perfect venue for such a great event.
© Grand Central Hotel
The evening raised £21,500 for Hazelwood School, and Company Net were absolutely thrilled to be able to support both Howden and Hazelwood and be a part of such a fantastic event.
Where are you working from today?
Filed under: Company News | Tags: Office 365, remote working
Leave a Comment I hope everyone is having a productive first day of 2012′s “Anywhere Working Week”!
Anywhere Working is a group initiative whose aim is to show how remote working can benefit ourselves and our environment, increasing our productivity and wellbeing and saving us time and money, and is encouraging as many people as possible to explore their options for working away from the office this week. Readers of this blog will know that remote working and the myriad ways in which technology is changing the face of our workplace are one of our passions at Company Net, so we’re pleased to be able to get on board and spread the word.
There’s plenty of good information on the site, including a really useful calculator which works out how much time, money and CO2 you could save per week, month and year, depending on how often you might commit to working from home. Having the figures in front of you certainly makes for a compelling case, and I was suprised to learn how much CO2 in particular I could save just by commuting one day fewer per week.
The Anywhere Working Consortium is supported by a number of organisations, including Microsoft, Vodafone, Nokia, Transport for London, Nuffield Health and Business In the Community. As a Microsoft Partner, we’re not at all surprised to see Microsoft involved with the initiative – Microsoft’s Office 365 is what we at Company Net use to stay connected and securely access and collaborate on all of our documents via the cloud, allowing us to move seamlessly from working in the office to offsite. We’ve had a fantastic experience using this technology and we’re happy to be able to offer our expertise to allow others to see the advantages Office 365 can bring to your business. As active users ourselves, we’re ideally placed to talk you through any questions you may have. Please feel free to get in touch at contactus@company-net.com or on 0131 5597500 for further info.
“It’s no longer viable for businesses to stick to rigid, inefficient ways of working if they want to compete successfully in the market,” Gordon Frazer, Managing Director at Microsoft UK.
The Anywhere Working site also features plenty of really interesting case studies, from the likes of EDF Energy, the Open University, BAA Heathrow, MacRoberts LLP and the London Symphony Orchestra to help you explore the implications and impact for your business.
So where’s your favourite place to work, for days when you’re not in the office? I’m lucky enough to live in the centre of Edinburgh, so I’m surrounded by places with wi-fi to stroll out to if working at home becomes lonely, but for me it’s a toss up – the focused peace and quiet of my kitchen table, or the sociability and ready availability of all those sustaining lattes in my favourite cafe… I think I’d have to choose a little bit of both!
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Will you be working remotely for Anywhere Working Week? Have you been surprised by how much time and money you could save by commuting one day less a week, and is this a commitment you’re thinking of making? And do you have all the technologies you need to stay connected already in place?
Let us know what you think and any experiences you have of Anywhere Working this week, and let’s see if we can get some discussion going!
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 (5) 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
Leave a Comment 
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.
Pyjamas and work… does not compute?
Filed under: Company Net, Company News | Tags: 2020 vision, Company Net, Company Net News
Comments (3) 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…
Like this:
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
Leave a Comment 
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
Comments (1) 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!
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 (2) 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
Comments (1) 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 (4) 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 (3) 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.
Andy Hamilton
Howie
sallyjatkinson
