22 latest trends in IT – roundtable ... continued from previous page


understand more about something. There’s massive scope, but at times face-to-face is still essential.


“Right-sourcing is the key, finding the right use for a technology to help you gain a competitive advantage, reduce cost or get something done more efficiently,” Wynne added.


carry business cards,” Harris noted. “You would have expected that to die off 10-15 years ago, but I have just put in an order for more cards.”


One explanation was that the exchanging of business cards was universally accepted and the business equivalent of a handshake, yet exchanging personal details using technologies such as the ‘bumping’ of smartphones was contrived and only available to specific app users.


What technologies can help businesses work smarter?


Once again it depends on what your business is, said the Roundtable.


Greg Harris


. . . and mobile device cameras


Sykes agreed: “There will always be a place for face-to-face but the invention that has changed everything is the digital camera, particularly on our phones. It has become omni-present.”


Wynne confirmed that Furniture Village customers were using cameras to a far greater degree. “Cameras have become such a part of our lives that there is no way that they will not translate into the desktop communications we are having with each other, whether with customers or suppliers across the world.”


Murray pointed out those born in the digital generation (Generation Y) would very likely see a camera on their mobile as simply another app, rather than a standalone device available in shops, increasingly viewed as niche retailers.


…. but maybe not QR codes


“Have QR (quick response) codes taken off?” asked Murray. “Not really,” came the Roundtable reply. “They look too techie.”


Clarke recalled seeing a huge QR code on the back of a lorry. “What’s that about? How are you going to scan it? Do you take a photo? While you’re driving?”


Blumenthal said three years ago he had put his company’s website QR code on all business cards. “I thought it would be useful. Has it been? No.”


“The interesting thing is that people still www.businessmag.co.uk


Walker suggested rapid improvement to high-speed connectivity was now helping most businesses, including those in relatively remote locations, to gain access to cost- effective cloud services. “The prevalence of high-speed connectivity at increasingly competitive pricing, underpins the shift to hosted/cloud services. In addition, since 2008/09 people have been wanting to move away from capital expenditure to Op-ex and the IT world has followed that. “We (Taylor Made) put a new cloud monitoring platform in place in 2010 that has transformed the availability of monitoring services to our SME customers much more affordably than ever before.


“These are ‘under the radar’ technical shifts that are bringing real benefits to businesses.”


Clarke: “Until recently, a lot of businesses have not been able to exploit the amount of data (Big Data) that they possess, either internally for better understanding of their customers, or potentially as a new revenue stream.”


Many businesses have years of customer accounts data. “If they were to ‘anonymise’ that and drop it into a data warehouse for analysis, they might very well move ahead of competitors through their understanding of that data, or even sell it back to their customers as an open portal management tool.


“Five years ago it was almost impossible to drill down and understand such data, but now we are getting the tech tools to analyse and use it. Exploitation of business data is going to be a huge benefit in terms of revenue, transparency and ‘stickiness’ with clients.”


Sykes agreed that most companies did not beneficially manage their data, but pointed out that while there are now Big Data companies tackling the issues of structured and unstructured data “ ... a lot of data will still be useless”.


Taylor: “There is a lot of really valuable untapped data out there, but you have to be able to make it rapidly available and relevant, like Google.” Twenty years ago business


sector research was time-consuming, often required travel, or a personal network of specialised contacts. “Now it can be available in a fraction of a second, and we are conditioned to that.”


People power, CRM, BYOD and security standards


The key driver for such analysis and research was growing ‘people-power’, said Sykes, Businesses wanted to learn more about their customers, product or service purchasers, and end-users in order to improve their CRM (customer relationship management). Communication channels are becoming more diverse and non-traditional as people work, socialise and enjoy their lives in less structured ways. Sykes noted how a colleague was frequently using WhatsApp messaging to make contact rather than the company’s email or phone. “We are now empowered to work the way we want to work.”


Blumenthal raised the issue of people-power being tangible through BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) adoption in some companies. “But, there are still issues over data security. You need to have correct policies and procedures in place and the correct systems to ensure control over any BYOD devices, but how many SMEs have that? I would suggest very few. We can preach to them, but whether they listen is another matter.


It


comes back to the perceived level of risk and the cost of averting that risk.”


Taylor: “You need more Sony-style hacking horror stories or big fines for breaking regulations before people will take it more seriously.” Regulations also needed to have teeth. The Telephone Preference Service still failed to stop phone cold-callers, he highlighted.


Eamon Wynne


Clarke note that recognised security standards such as IS0 27001 were “more or less useless for SMEs to implement because they have been designed for IT functions within large corporations. The ISO ‘monolith’ and its implementation costs are not practical for SMEs. Too many companies were surviving on “string and sticking plaster security,” he added.


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MARCH 2015


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