information technology
T
he recession, assuming we can now call it that, is going to mean a lot of changes for business. There will be slowdowns, there will be cutbacks and there will be a general tightening. Some things might appear to be a good target for cuts and IT is one of them. At Cisco we believe this would be a mistake; viewed strategically as an asset rather than simply as a cost, a good implementation of IT should increase productivity rather than act as a drain on finances. That’s OK for Cisco to say, a lot of people will retort, but we’re used to dealing with people in massive enterprises who can hive off an entire department for feasibility studies and testing of any new technology that can take months out to do it. To an extent this is true; Cisco has been a leading supplier to the enterprise size of company for a long time, and nobody should shy away from this sort of pedigree. Advances and economies of scale, though, mean there is now a mutually-beneficial opportunity to take the sort of technology and productivity benefits to the small to medium enterprise. We know - it can look scary, but bear with us. Understandably there are people who wonder whether a classic enterprise supplier will understand the smaller enterprise. To begin with, nobody actually identifies themselves as an SME; they’re a lawyer, they’re a small charity, they’re a web developer, they’re a manufacturing organisation. The one thing all these categories share in common is that they share next to nothing in common. They’re typically cash-strapped (we all know that feeling now but a lot of smaller businesses were already living hand-to-mouth before the crunch started) but they do have the advantage of being able to move quickly when they make a decision - if they want a new network in the place it’s not a matter of months before it’s in, it might be next week. This is why we approach the market through
32 | sustaininggrowth
MAKING THE MOST a network of dedicated resellers - there’s no substitute for being near a customer and understanding their business intimately. This is most important for the smaller business, which might not have a dedicated IT department at all. So far, so self-evident to the customer. The question is what can be achieved through the right deployment of networking technology. There are actually numerous benefits that can be delivered straight to a company that buys the right technology alongside the right advice. Networking technology does a number of things. It extends the reach of your business by connecting people in real time. If you’ve ever suspected a sale has been lost because someone has had to go and check stock levels or a prospect’s credit rating when they get back to the office, you’ll know how much this will improve your productivity. Customer service will improve - a field support engineer will be able to check the availability of parts automatically, or if you’re in technical support they may be able to diagnose and cure a customer’s problem without leaving their desk. There’s plenty more. Perhaps security is more of an issue to you than simply install-
ing the latest antivirus package on every PC. So a set of network equipment with its own firewalls and other security built in would be useful, particularly if they are built to watch for unusual behaviour on your system as well as known risks. Perhaps your concern is for your premises when you’re not there. Cisco offers a range of fully-featured webcams which will monitor them for you and will feed the images in real time to the Internet - so you can log on and have a glance at your office when you need to as long as you’re near a web browser (that’s correct, you can check what’s happening in your office by using your phone if it’s able to receive Internet images). The fact that some of these cameras are available for under £100 is all to the good. The point is that as you can see it’s not expensive, but also none of this is difficult. It can be complicated, by all means, but that’s why we recommend businesses work with our partners to achieve this. It needs the right skill set to implement the right ‘solution’ as we call it in the industry - and identifying a solution involves diagnosing the business problem that needs solving in the first place. This is when getting the right partner in place is as important as getting the right hardware