Content list

• IT - 4 reasons to invest during a recession
• Microsoft - the new efficiency
• Applying project lessons
• ERP implementations and change management
• Events
• Techie corner
• Microsoft Office Tips

Information Technology - 4 reasons to invest during a recession

Samantha Botello

In the current economy, business leaders are being forced to make some tough decisions.
For many, a natural instinct is to cut spending across all departments.
Though this seems to be the simplest solution, it's not always the best one.
Some investments can actually help your business weather through the 
current economic storm. Despite the impulse to reduce budgets, here are four reasons
you should consider investing in Information Technology during a recession:

1. Increase Productivity While Reducing Costs
Information systems streamline business operations and help you do more with less.
By investing in new technologies and automating business processes, you can run your business more efficiently. It may even be a good time to consider moving your systems "into the cloud." Cloud computing can reduce your hardware and maintenance costs while giving you increased capacity and greater scalability.
 
2. Gain Competitive Advantage and Customer Loyalty
With both businesses and consumers strictly evaluating their budgets and spending, it is more important than ever to differentiate yourself from the competition. While your competitors are cutting their technology budgets, you have the opportunity to expand market share. 
By leveraging technology, you can create innovative products and services or implement
a new business approach.
 
3. Attract New Business
Now is the time to promote your business by expanding your web presence. Consider updating
your website with new features such as: news feeds, newsletters, event calendars, case studies, photo galleries, customer support features, product catalogs, blogs, social networking capabilities, and SEO improvements. Adding such web enhancements will increase traffic to your site and offer more value to site visitors.
 
4. Invest in the Future
The economy will rebound eventually, and you need to be ready to hit the ground running
when it does. While business has slowed and workloads have decreased, it is a perfect time
to plan and implement IT infrastructure improvements. This way, when business does pick up,
you will be better prepared and able to respond to growth.

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Microsoft - the new efficiency                                

In his latest executive email Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, made these comments: 

“In all the talk about the economy, one term that comes up more and more frequently is
something called “the new normal.” I like this phrase because it speaks to the fact that
economic reality has undergone a fundamental shift over the course of the past 12 months.
…...In the new normal, one thing is clear: cutting costs is extremely important. But cost cutting
by itself is not a long-term winning strategy. To build a sustainable competitive advantage, 
companies must ultimately do two things — increase productivity and find ways to deliver 
new value to customers.”

How does Microsoft Dynamics NAV help to make your business be more efficient?
Watch this case study on You Tube and find out why Dudley Tool and Engineering
chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The case study highlights these benefits of the solution: 
 

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Do we really apply lessons learnt to projects?

By Ron Rosenhead                                                                                  

Peter Honey is ,a highly respected Chartered Psychologist, suggests that people claim to learn something new each day but, if you ask them to describe what they have learned, you rarely get a convincing answer.
He asserts that if you can articulate learning:
• the learner becomes clear what he has learned
• the learning is shared, making it a trigger for others to learn
• the learning is more easily converted into action plans
• the learning is amenable to quality assurance

So what has this all to do with project management?
There are too many examples of ‘failed projects (however you define the word fail). How much learning follows from these failed projects? How much learning is shared with successful projects? My experience suggests very little.
Few companies can boast a robust project learning process. Lessons learned fail to be captured and shared, and defeat the whole learning process. My experience also shows that project closure meetings/processes rarely happen so how can learning be built into the overall project management process
Peter Honey suggests that is not easy to articulate real learning. I believe we need to go beyond ‘the Honey line’. He says: “when someone claims that lessons have been learned, we should ask what lessons have been learned and really probe further.” My suggestion; build into projects a much stronger process to capture and share learning. 

Corporate culture and change management in ERP implementations

By Neville Turbit
What most managers who have been through an ERP implementation, will tell you, 
is the biggest impact is on "Corporate Culture". It is always underestimated and 
never overestimated.

Corporate Culture is a combination of two things:
• The type of people who are employed by a company. Their personal values,
skills, habits etc.
• The way the organisation works. The focus, decision making process, attitude
to staff, stability, etc

Both feed off one another. Job applicants who feel aligned with the way the, organisation works
and comfortable with the style of person who interviews them, will likely get the job, 
and perpetuate the Culture.

To successfully take on an ERP system, an organisation needs to change
it's "Corporate Culture". It may need to change from being highly flexible and not paying
a lot of attention to consistency or accuracy, to one of being almost obsessed with detail.
Of being prepared to have Business Practices that are actually adhered to rather than just being documented and forgotten. People need to change from focusing on turnover to focusing on profit.
ERP makes profit far more measurable down to Department, Customer and Material level. 

Staff need to change their focus from their own job, to the whole organisation.
What they do in their area has impacts in places they may never have envisaged. 
None of this is easy, and in many cases will be un-achievable. Some people will not be
prepared to make the change and will either leave of their own volition or be asked to
leave. This is the cost of ERP.

Another dimension to "Cultural Change" is the timeframe in which the change is to be
made. It basically needs to happen over a few days. One week you can bend all the
rules and get away with it; next week the system will not let you. 

No matter how much training and preparation takes place, it cannot prepare many
people for reality. That is not to say the preparation should not take place.
The preparation will ease the pain, not take it all away. The more preparation the
less the pain. 

On the positive side, some people will take to the system like the proverbial duck to
water. These people tend to be (but not all are) younger, newer employees who have
had experience in other organisations. They know the benefits of a good system and
are frustrated with the current one. They will jump at the chance to make use of the
new technology. 

Change Management
Change Management is about setting expectations that lessen the pain of change.
People involved in a change expect to go from A to B. Perhaps where they are
actually going is to C. Change Management is about getting them used to the idea that
C is the real destination. 

To give an example, any new system is bound to have teething problems. If users
expect that all is not going to run smoothly on day 1, and that they may be working
back late for the first week because of problems bedding in the new system, they are
less likely to reject the system when it does go wrong. On the other hand telling staff
that this is going to be a great new system with no problems can only lead to
disappointment and rejection when bugs appear. As such, change management is
measurable. 

Measuring attitudinal changes is not a complicated process. Properly managed, we
can see how people feel about the changes over a period of time, and how they shift in
their expectations. The results of money spent on change management can be seen.

Events

Microsoft SABS & ITA Breakfast 


Microsoft webcasts
Exchange 2010 Q&A
Windows 7 and why it matters to your business
Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation
will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
                    - Bill Gates 

The Techie Corner 
Reasons to upgrade your Microsoft Dynamics NAV to version 2009 

5) NAV 2009 Works the Way you Want – role-tailored clients                                                    

Microsoft® Office Tip for the Month

Excel - Select the contents of a cell using the keyboard 
So how can you easily select the contents of a cell to add to it, edit it, or delete all 
or part of it without using that rodenty little tool? Step away from the mouse ... and press F2.
Yup, it's that simple.
Now you can just edit away, and you can use SHIFT+arrow keys to select and then edit or delete particular words or numbers within the cell.

 The lighter side

 Software engineering explained
 

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