Boss: I don’t understand that IT Stuff…
Do leaders switch off with technology and say "I don't understand that IT stuff" too often? Last year I was lucky enough to be invited to Finish Cyber Security company, F-Secure’s annual conference in London. Aside from the usual corporate hospitality trappings, they also had a great list of speakers. I particularly enjoyed Rory Sutherland and Risto Siilasmaa. Risto is the founder of F-Secure and Chairman of Nokia. His talk is something that seems to have etched itself in my mind for about six months. There were quite a few [...]
A Lightbulb moment
A lightbulb moment, if you have never had one, it is a really great feeling. Especially when you are presenting and one of the people you are talking to, suddenly gets it! This happened to Unleashed last week. We have been working with a large client automating one of their work processes – turning a manual time-consuming process into an automated workflow. This was our third workshop honing the process. From day one we have had full ‘buy-in’ from the management and people driving cost efficiencies. This was the first [...]
The changing role of IT Leaders
Over the last few years, we have seen the changing role of IT Leaders. IT is no longer about managing servers, PCs and Laptops. IT is more about evolving technology. Many businesses now buy IT on a consumption model or monthly cost. This cost can go up or down depending on what the business is doing. As such most servers are now in the cloud, email has moved from on-site Microsoft Exchange to cloud-based Office 365. Now all of a sudden IT Managers are no longer supporting servers and exchange. [...]
We have always done it that way
How many times have you heard ‘We have always done it that way’ - my guess, is far too many! It could possibly be the most damaging sentence ever heard in business. If your business suffers a major data breach through cyber attack you are not going to say oh well ‘we have always done it that way’ you are going to make changes and pretty fast. You won’t hear a football club after being relegated saying ‘We have always done it that way’ and we always will – No, [...]
What is workflow automation?
What is workflow automation, but more importantly what can it do for my business? For as long as I have been in business (and that is a long time!) We have had forms to fill in if we want something. These forms can be anything, Holiday requests, expenses, purchase orders, invoices, timesheets, Job offers, employee onboarding, and budget approval. The list is endless. All of these forms take time to fill in – when I started you had to do this with a pen! You then need to print or [...]
What Digital Transformation means to me
Digital Transformation. The term almost brings a tear to my eye, if you think of the marketeers working in IT, how much time they must have spent to come up with that one. I think they took the afternoon off afterwards. It’s certainly so new, I can still smell the fresh paint, where us IT Consultants have just painted over the ‘Cyber Security’ signage. Underneath that there may even be a vague trace of a sign for ‘Unified Communications.’ That may leave you with the impression that I’m entirely cynical [...]