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.

 Register now!

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.”

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!

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…

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

Join us?

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!