Author Archives: Duncan Wallace

About Duncan Wallace

HB Technologies is an IT company specialising in solutions for business. Starting in 2007, our personal approach to providing managed office services has seen more than 600 customers choose us for their office technology and support. This is because we appreciate every company has unique requirements for technology and develop a solution that fits. When we say peace of mind, this means any technology solution we provide will enhance your business processes, increasing efficiency, removing human error and by protecting you from security threats. Peace of mind in support means we manage the upgrades so you don’t have to, with preventative maintenance to ensure your systems keep working to your expectations. We also have urgent backup support to ensure you will up and running with minimal delays if there is a failure of any kind. Let us take care of the tech so you can focus on doing what you do best. Feel free to get in touch if we can help you in any way.

Productivity – not always the Holy Grail

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The last couple of years have changed our lives on all fronts, at work and at home in sometimes unimaginable ways. It has changed the way we approach our work and personal lives, and has opened up opportunities for some. Some fortunate workers now have flexibility to balance their home and work lives in ways not previously possible. Positives have included the saving of commuting time which can now be re-focused into other work areas. However there are some not so wonderful outcomes for our workforce, including the lack of social interaction at work, feeling isolated, and for some the pressure to increase productivity when on a personal level, we have perhaps discovered the joys of staying at home a bit more, developed new hobbies, learned new languages, or even engaging our entrepreneurial streak starting new businesses.

Underlying all of this is the danger of our ongoing quest to “keep busy”, and to “do more”. Many of us end up feeling stressed at not being able to do things the way we used to, and feel the need to fill our time with “value-adding activity”. We risk creating an environment for burnout in our workplaces which could flow through to our personal lives. The demarcation point between our business and personal lives has become increasingly muddy.

How can we create a balance between healthy productivity and personal well- being?

Why are we under so much pressure to be “Busy”?

The introduction of technology over the last few decades has changed the pace of business. What used to be a typed memo, written by the sender, typed by the typist, signed then sent via snail mail, can be now be rattled off in an email in a minute, with the response possibly coming a minute later.

We have access to information at the click of a mouse button, whereas we used to have to troll through endless tomes at the library. On a daily basis we are bombarded with articles about business celebrities such as Elon Musk having a norm of 80 to 90 hours as a normal working week. Podcasts, social media posts extol the virtues of maximizing our productive time, with endless tools and “how to’s” to help us get there. Who hasn’t questioned their own self esteem when we see the over achievers on social media running marathons, climbing mountains and having wholesome holidays with their families? We have become experts in “multi-tasking” – using driving time to make phone calls, listening to podcasts while exercising, watching educational tutorials on our laptops on a so-called work break.

If we can’t meet these unrealistic expectations of ourselves to be productive, how are we increasing our risk of burnout in the office, but also, sadly in our personal lives?

Productivity is not the only measure of success

Productivity of itself is not a bad thing, but if not handled carefully, can result in some negative outcomes and risks to our health. Used wisely, productivity allows us to produce more work in a less amount of time, providing opportunities to engage in some other value adding activities. This is a good thing. But if we start applying this business logic to our personal lives, do we always need to be more productive in our personal lives and supposed down time?

The big question we need to ask ourselves is “why do we want to be more productive”. Different situations can require different outcomes. Sometimes it is not what we need to achieve; it is how we go about achieving it.

Boredom is not a bad word

Newsflash – it is ok to do nothing sometimes. Boredom can trigger our brains to imagine and be creative by considering the unfamiliar and to explore where we may not have been before.

Handling boredom is an important skill, as it helps us to re-focus and self regulate. When we are now so used to instant gratification and everything happening so quickly, it is a good lesson to take a moment, develop better self-control, and regulate our speech, actions and emotions. Ever heard of “sleeping on a problem”?

Finally

Productivity is an important quality to encourage in both our business and personal lives, but they must have a clear goal in mind. Putting stress on ourselves to be constantly productive is not a healthy or sustainable practice. Making sure we allow ourselves time to “take a moment” and recuperate is essential in our crazy world. Look after yourselves.

Digital display screens make big impression

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Different types of digital displays are all around us, and both getting bigger (billboards) and smaller (watches).  This technology is unavoidable, and although it looks to be changing and growing fast, it may not be as more significant change as we would expect.  Before we see where we are going, let’s first take a look at where we have come from.

Virtual Reality has been around for over 100 years, and many of us know an early form of this in the View-Master toys that we had as kids.  As digital tech started taking over, and all the toys needed batteries, this type of VR almost disappeared.  Fast forward to the early 2010s and VR began to take off in new ways.  Now we can make a mount for our phones out of cardboard and use these for our own VR experience at home.

If we look at the iPad, this seems like a standard and very normal touch screen tech that came quickly and hasn’t left.  But let us not forget the tablets that came before this.  Some of you may remember the old flip tablet/laptops with Windows XP or even going back as far as Windows 3.1.  They were clunky, expensive, not very user friendly, and you had to use a stylus.

Then came along the iPad in 2010 with its sleek design, and we could throw away that frustrating stylus. While all the above was going on, classrooms had moved from blackboard to whiteboards, and some even used projectors on the whiteboard to display content from computers.

The incorporation of computers and whiteboards has been a goal of many for over ten years. In the early days, it was again clunky, expensive, and not user friendly.  Now, with help from Covid, video conferencing using apps like MicrosoftTeams or Zoom are very mainstream.

By using an interactive whiteboard, with a good camera, speaker and mic, a boardroom now allows businesses to connect and meet between cities or even countries without the expensive cost of travel.  Engineers can work on designs together, management can work through board papers and mark up changes or suggest adjustments required, and suppliers from across the globe can meet you in your own business and bring expertise otherwise inaccessible due to distance.

With other advances in tech, like IoT (Internet of Things), ML (Machine Learning), and AI (Artificial Intelligence), this allows for displays to be much more informative and valuable to businesses and their customers.

For example, you are heading to the Airport, IoT and AI knows that parking sections A, B and D are almost full, so a sign directs you to either C or E parking sections.  When you are going to check in your bags, IoT ML and AI can know how much luggage needs to be checked-in in each line and can estimate the length of time-based on past history.

The digital displays can then guide you to the quickest line.  At the café, instead of staff handwriting, the labels and prices of everything on the display cabinet, the glass of the display cabinet could be a transparent digital display and show you the price and the wait time for that tasty cheese scone.  And when the last scone is taken, the price and description automatically disappear.

With a world that is getting physically bigger (due to travel restrictions) but digitally smaller, other technology like AR (Augmented Reality) will likely become more critical. AR is already here, and most of us have heard of games like Pokemon Go, it was a big hit in 2016 but has disappeared from our focus.  Some local businesses are already using AR today.

I don’t expect to see considerable changes in digital display technology, but bigger changing in its integration with other technologies, whether mobile, IoT, ML, or AI, and it will change the way we use digital display and the value we place on them.

3 ways business intelligence can accelerate your business

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Business intelligence (BI) and the ability to draw higher-level understandings from your data is fundamental for any organisation striving to be agile, future-proofed and ready for tomorrow.

Business intelligence, or BI, is how organisations collect, organise and contextualise data, often using BI reporting tools to provide data-driven insights at a glance and in easy to understand formats. BI refers to a wide range of data-related activities, including data mining, reporting, and querying. All organisations should seriously consider a Business Intelligence initiative to assist in a better understanding of business performance. Financial analysis and forecasts are still an essential part of business planning, but now only provide part of the picture. As companies expand and evolve, data can become more challenging to manage consistently. As a result, businesses regularly face obstacles that prevent them from performing a comprehensive analysis of their data to drive informed business decisions. Fortunately, there are new and powerful business tools doing away with these issues. There are plenty of business intelligence software and services available to help organisations gather and organise data more effectively, improve information access across their business, and successfully support more accurate, reliable results.

1. Simple and accessible insights

You don’t have to be a software engineer to start using BI for data analysis or understand how it presents information. BI applications make reading and submitting visual reports as straightforward or as detailed as you want it. The tools for building dashboards is usually drag-and-drop, so you can organise data with a few clicks and customise how it is presented. Beginners and experts can use BI tools to quickly explain increases or decreases in data charts by a simple click on an analyse button. The results are displayed in a window with simplified visualisation and an insightful description outlining what factors may have impacted your data. A great example is where data is gathered from machinery operating within a factory. The data can be integrated with a BI tool to identify trends of machinery performance over time.
A human operator can observe this to determine whether the production cycle is slowing; if so, they could work further to identify which machine requires service, dispatching a technician to perform maintenance before the problem results in downtime and a loss of productivity. Some BI tools can identify the underperforming machinery’s specific part, such as by determining that the motor is overheating.

2. Collate data from separate systems into one dashboard

BI tools can be used by anyone in your organisation and can be customised to their role and requirements. The tools can quickly create simplified visualisations of your most business-critical data that anyone can read and understand at a glance.
Why is any of this useful? A unified dashboard can act as a quick reference for any employee needing to access relevant data in a hurry, such as in a meeting. It also makes sharing insights easier if you collaborate remotely.

3. Using BI to identify past results, current performance, and for future predictions

Data modelling has made it possible to forecast trends and predict future outcomes relatively accurately with modern-day software. BI tools can provide great predictive analytics and forecasting features to explore reliable future results for your business. Using the analytics and forecasting tools in BI applications, you can run and compare different ‘What If’ scenarios on your information such as financial forecasts or industry-specific growth markets by adding a forecast to your chart without needing a data analyst’s services. BI Tools use built-in predictive forecasting models to automatically detect seasonality, next reporting period (week, month, year) and provide forecasting results. These models learn from historical data using statistical algorithms (often of the data mining or machine learning kind) to derive probable results and project them in an easy to understand graphical visualisation.

Conclusion:

Business intelligence is becoming an essential part of today’s business. When combined with business analytics, BI offers an ability to differentiate past from present, while predicting the future and responding accordingly. Businesses that implement BI into their operations will likely enhance their competitive edge and bottom line. They can stay across trends and key results optimising their processes based on data-driven insights and making future decisions based on more accurate predictions of what the future might hold.

IT Security – Threat Management

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The problem we are all facing

Security has become a more in-depth executive discussion because of the many ways through which businesses can and are being attacked. Mobility, BYOD (bring your own device), virtualisation, the cloud, and social media have all opened new doors and security loopholes into all our businesses. At the same time, all organisations need IT Security protection to allow their business to function, grow and flourish. And of course, the regulatory environment calls for an increasing number of types and levels of proven compliance, with regular and timely updates and maintenance. Sound Hard? Complicated? You are correct – it is.

Adding pressure to organisations is the fact that technologies, business models, regulatory environments, and the threat landscape are continuously evolving. So, security has become a broad IT discipline that affects the entire organisation and calls for a range of highly specialised and dynamic skills and technologies that most businesses don’t currently have. The boardroom question is: how cost-effectively can these be acquired and implemented?

What is the solution to this serious business issue?

With a specifically structured suite of Managed IT Security products, your IT partner can protect your business from the increasing security breach landscape. Some organisations have firewalls, antivirus, and network intrusion prevention systems in place. However, research shows that they are often not fit for purpose in today’s IT environment, are out of date, and businesses don’t always have the workforce capacity or technology to maintain them efficiently. In particular, systems are often not patched regularly. Consequently, organisations don’t always know whether or not they’ve been attacked and aren’t taking proactive steps. Much more importantly, these very limited systems cannot predict attacks.

A Managed IT Security Solution together with reputable IT tools can and does. Recent highly publicised security breaches at many Australasian businesses have proved just how disastrous security breaches and reputational damage can be. However, achieving this necessitates a fundamental change in security focus as well as significant investment. You need industrial-strength levels of documentation, processes, and procedures. Ideally you need qualified engineers and security specialists to continuously monitor your security systems, analyse the alerts and be able to respond immediately. You need to continuously update your technology with the cumulative experience, insight, and knowledge of many independent security experts working towards the same goal of pre-empting attacks. The best way to achieve this successfully and affordably is through an IT Managed Security Service.

Layered Security Options

Below are some security options that need to be considered by businesses: –

Managed Firewall: protects your key information assets across networks, hosts, applications, and databases.

Managed Advanced Intrusion Prevention: can provide a fully managed, 24/7 service that uses network-based intrusion detection and prevention systems to protect networks from attack.

Managed Email Filtering Services ensures that emails are monitored and managed effectively to provide continued protection from information leakage and from viruses, trojans, spyware, and malicious code distributed via email.

Web Managed DNS: provides secure DNS management (filters the internet address book for bad addresses) to remove the threat of any related security threats, with the added functionality of web filtering by location and/or employee.

Managed Password and Account Access Policies: Changing passwords at least every 90 days and/or implementing multi-factor authentication ensures that imposters cannot log into your account from elsewhere, even if they steal your username and password.

If some or all of these descriptions and/or technology terms are not familiar to you, and you are worried about how secure your IT environment is, you need to talk to your IT provider as soon as you can, and before it’s too late.

It is important to note that recent changes to the New Zealand Privacy Act means businesses will be required to notify the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals after suffering a privacy breach where personal and business information is criminally accessed, and where serious harm is likely. The new Act takes effect on 1st December 2020.

Can your business afford the reputational damage?

Remote work is here to stay, and will be transformational

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How did you cope with seeing computers, keyboards, screens and staff walk out the door on 26th March, wondering whether this remote worker experiment would actually work?

What we witnessed was the future being sucked forward in a vacuum of necessity created by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Whether you were well prepared or not, remote working as an option is the new reality for many businesses here and around the world.

It is now important to reflect on what this all means and how a remote enabled workforce can add value to our business and organisation, and what technology you’ll need to make it happen.

Remote Work Benefits

Remote working provides the opportunity to reassess existing technology, systems and operational processes that can provide employees with a workplace promoting engagement, diversity, and wellness. This is likely to elevate productivity and performance across the board.

In essence, if you establish a pragmatic work-from-home protocol, you will need to be closer to your workforce than ever before. Nowhere to hide for leaders and employees alike, unlocking potential and giving you a competitive edge.

Being able to tap into a remote work talent pool not restrained geographically can address access to new skills and create new job roles within your organisation. That said, remote work may not be ideal for every business, but it gives many a chance to rethink team diversity and dynamics and the necessary expertise to drive success

The Right Technology and Processes

Business leaders will need to implement the proper businesses tools and software, and managers must put in the right processes. Here are some ideas to help with some of the challenges you will need to address.

One of the most recognised reasons for remote team challenges and failures is poor communication. Good internal communication is the life blood of a great business culture. Without the right tools to facilitate real-time communication, teams will not interact as often or meaningfully, and employees could feel more isolated.

But when teams leverage collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, Slack, Zoho, and ZOOM, they create transparency and sharing in real-time which results in better accountability, morale and productivity. Key toolset features include instant messaging, video conferencing, voice notes, and document management.

Collaboration

Over 60 percent of teams say collaboration is the most important ingredient of business success. Today’s collaboration software empowers teams to work smarter together whether in the office, in a remote work centre (outsourcing) or at home.

These tools provide real-time delivery and deployment of information as well as instant, reliable and secure access to company data and information whenever and wherever the teams need it. Many of these software tools are available and at no additional cost as part of your Microsoft or Google accounts feature sets.

These virtual work spaces will continue to evolve and can play a critical part in the success of your business. It does this by keeping work organised, prioritised while ensuring teams are always online and co-ordinated.

Team Messaging

Facilitates real-time, one on one and team messaging technology has emerged as the primary means of communication for remote teams. They’ll have the ability to send and receive messages instantly, providing secure access to people and information that email and social media apps cannot.

Video Conferencing (VC)

Communicating face-to face from just about anywhere and anytime, from work, the airport, in the orchard or in a taxi. The VC tool must allow for screen-sharing and recording so participants can share important insights with the rest of the team on any device they choose.

File Sharing

File sharing apps makes available all of your important files and documents via the cloud and sync them across all your device and teams. The same security protocols apply to your users whether in the office or at home, so your data is safe, and access can be audited.

Many of the software tools to achieve a permanent migration to a remote work reality for your organisation are readily accessible, are easy to deploy, are secure, deliver instant results and are easily deployed, if you know how.

Over recent months, many of us have been thrust into a remote work environment, and it looks like this concept is here to stay, largely driven through necessity and the safety of our workforce. But also, the benefits of remote work have been well and truly realised, and can be a powerful tool for organisations going forward.

Key Tech trends set to emerge

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Whether you have a decent grasp on technology or not, you’ll probably be aware that emerging technologies are changing the way we work and interact with others. In fact, with things like machine learning and touch commerce becoming increasingly popular across every industry from banking to healthcare, technology is transforming the way we do business, making hi-tech investment inevitable for most organisations.

Here are four key technology trends you should know about as we head into 2020:

1. Internet of Things (IOT)

One of the biggest tech trends to emerge in recent years is the Internet of Things. In layman terms, Internet Of Things (IOT) consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded processors, sensors and communication hardware to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their environments. Sometimes, these devices communicate with other related devices and act on the information they get from one another. How could this impact you? It depends on your industry.
For example, for those who work in marketing, advertising, media or business management, IOT could provide a wealth of information on how consumers engage with products by tracking their interactions with digital devices. In turn, this data could be used to optimise marketing campaigns and user experiences.

How will it affect your business?: The exciting thing about IOT is that it can change the way we do business and the business models we use to do it. IOT technologies will drive process automation, home automation, smart cars, decision analytics, and smart farming.

2. Machine learning

Another exciting emerging technology is machine learning, which is essentially a computer’s ability to learn on its own by analysing data and tracking repeating patterns. For example, Google is using machine learning and satellite data to prevent illegal fishing. On any given day, 22 million data points are created that show where ships are in the world’s waterways. Google engineers found that when they applied machine learning to the data, they could identify why a vessel was at sea. They ultimately created Global Fishing Watch that shows where fishing was happening and could then identify when fishing was happening illegally.

How it’s affecting industries: Machine learning is also changing the way companies do business with customers. Companies like Google are using machine learning on mobile devices which can continue learning even when offline. The result? Machine learning will redefine the way businesses interact with their customers by helping them anticipate and meet their customer needs.

3. Virtual reality (VR)

Remember watching movies about virtual reality and wondering what if it was actually like that in real life? Well, it’s about to be! VR has been around since the mid 20th Century, but
until recently the technology wasn’t able to deliver the fully immersive digital experience users have been expecting. That’s about to change with recent improvements to both hardware and programming, and the effects are going to be felt across almost every industry from retail to education.

How it’s affecting industries: Virtual reality has been a popular component of video games for several years and this trend is continuing to expand. In addition to video games, VR is likely to affect companies across the board as they adopt the technology to help them engage customers more effectively and optimize their sales and marketing efforts. It’s also a potentially useful tool for health and safety training and job learning, and is increasingly being adopted by educational organisations.

4. Cognitive Technology

Cognitive technology is a field of computer science that mimics functions of the human brain through various means, including natural language processing, data mining and pattern recognition. For example, the cognitive technology umbrella includes things like natural language processing (NLP), and speech recognition (e.g. Siri, Alexa and Google Home). Combined, these different technologies are able to automate and optimise many tasks that were previously done by people, including certain aspects of accounting and analytics and predictive decisions.

How it can impact our world: Cognitive technology could be a great ally in protecting our planet. Physics-based prediction models already exist for forecasting things like weather, pollution, and drought. But with machine learning, we can systematically understand which model performs better when, where and under what circumstance. Through machine learning and video analytics, cognitive technology can help us understand what the norms are and discover anomalies or problem areas. This will help us minimise deforestation, track urbanisation, mitigate diseases and to better understand and control ecosystems.

With emerging technologies changing professional industries including banking, eCommerce, agriculture, healthcare and education, staying up to date on the latest trends will give you a better understanding of your industry. This will be a catalyst in opening up new opportunities and hopefully making your business more sustainable, relevant and competitive.