Think digital transformation, the go-to phrase in recent years, is a new development? Think again. Properly speaking, digitisation began when the first computers were switched on in businesses; machines like UNIVAC 1, Leo and perhaps even Colossus (they really gave those early room-sized devices cool names).

There’s a lot of concern around the automation of work and the implication this process might have on employment… your employment, specifically. While the natural response might be to try and stop automation to save your job, we all know what happened with the Luddites. Sure, they may have won one or two battles (in unpleasant fashion – smashing ‘the machines’) but they most certainly did not win the war. That’s why we have mechanisation on a massive scale today – mechanisation which, truth be told, makes our lives enormously more convenient.

Instead of attempting the impossible and holding back the new tsunami of automation, a better way is to look at how automation can work for you, rather than against you.

In other words, it’s time to automate everything that can be automated; whatever remains is where you actually create value. It may be a generalisation, but those aspects of your work which are not easily done by a machine is probably where your competitive advantage lies.

Tide of cranky old applications to which the business seems beholden? You know what I mean – everyone hates the application because it’s slow but without it, things just don’t work. If this sounds familiar, the time has come for application modernisation. It couldn’t come at a better time because Microsoft’s Azure cloud provides multiple advantages including low cost, enterprise security, endless scalability and anywhere, any device access.

Which is all well and good, but how, exactly, do you get the basement-dwelling application out from under the stairs and into the cloud?

It is surely one of the enduring surprises of the information and communications technology industry that, despite the never-ending hype which comes from the ‘latest greatest’, an enormous number of companies are still running applications and hardware which could quite easily form part of a Te Papa exhibition.

With every release, the opportunities Microsoft’s Office 365 offers business to leverage technology gets strong and stronger. However, with all these great capabilities on offer, it can be a bit of a mind boggle trying to keep up – we get into a routine with the way we work, and sometimes changing that can be hard. 

But when there are such strong advantages to be had, it’s important to keep yourself, your staff, and your business up to date – that’s the key with any digital transformation!

So, for those of you who are on Office 365, or those curious as to the nitty gritty details of the opportunities within the ecosystem, here’s our take on the top 5 business changing features you need to be utilising.

There’s so much said about the cloud that it can quickly become a little confusing as to just exactly what it is, and what it isn’t. As a result, there are more than a few misconceptions and myths about it. Check out these top 6 misapprehensions about the cloud which should help you get the most from online services, while simultaneously reducing any risks.

 Cost savings tends to be a primary justification for moving into the cloud and for good reason: it generally (but not always) does mean reduced capital expenditure. However, there is a lot more to it; because cost savings are generally only a ‘once off’, too, it is the other benefits which have to be longer-lasting in order to deliver ongoing value.

More important than cost, by far, is that a shift to cloud computing should be accompanied by an appropriate business strategy. Cloud can, in fact, be a catalyst for further improvement.

For example:

Use the savings wisely

Use that ‘once off’ saving when shifting to the cloud to invest in other improvements. Upgraded to Office 365 rather than an on-premise capital investment? Use the leftover cash to invest in skills training to take advantage of the new applications in the suite (Flow, Teams, Power BI, OneNote, Sway, SharePoint).
By taking this approach, you’re able to leverage cloud computing to facilitate broader strategic goals; in this case, improving employee performance and convenience. Those Office applications, once you get to know them, are quite awesome in how they can transform the way people work.

There’s good reason for analysts putting growth in the business intelligence market in double figures and surging to a value of over US$29 billion by 2020: it delivers real value to an increasingly broad cross section of businesses (in fact, Forbes says small businesses have the highest rate of BI adoption in 2018!) But just precisely what can Microsoft’s contender, Power BI, do for your company? Check out these five common problems that this powerful solution can address.

Sometimes, the tried and true gets tired, outdated, and inefficient.

Recently, we have come to this conclusion with our account management monthly client reporting model, and decided to leverage the power of dashboards to shave countless hours off our reporting model, provide increased transparency, and allow us to give more value to our clients during our monthly meetings.... And least we forget, reduce our environmental footprint!

Curious to get an inside glimpse as to how we’re moving to a paperless reporting system? Here’s the inside scoop!

Over at the Harvard Business Review, a fascinating article which points out (in an almost Nietzschean fashion with the two-way street of the abyss) that the impact of technology in the workplace doesn’t just change the way people get things done, it also influences the way in which businesses are managed and governed.

Once said, the claim makes perfect sense, in the way that pointing out the obvious makes for a ‘duh, why didn’t I think of that’. It also immediately begs the question of how the cloud is changing management in today’s businesses. And, of course the writer Quentin Hardy goes on to point out just exactly that (I’ll get to that in a minute).

What all know is that the cloud is pervasive today. Regardless of business type or size, the cloud plays anything from a small role to an all-encompassing one. For most companies, there’s also a simple rule: the more cloud, the better. After all, flexibility, capital cost reduction, the availability of ‘high technology’ at low prices are all features and benefits with universal appeal.