Welcome to The Utility View 2011.04 - The Evolution of the PC & Today's Connected Office

The modern workplace has changed significantly in the past decade or two.  Gone are the pad and paper, the typewriter and even the fax machine - pushed aside by today’s office workhorse, the PC (Personal Computer).  The PC has become the dominant backbone for most small and medium-sized, knowledge-based, businesses.  Its proliferation has not only changed the makeup of today’s office environment, but also the way people now work.   As the office evolved from letters and forms to software and applications, so did the way jobs were performed.  Professionals once needed a staff of assistants to do clerical chores but today everyone is a desktop publisher.  Insurance agents rely on insurance-specific line of business applications to provide their customers with quotations, to issue claims, to manage their backoffice, etc.  Financial Services professionals of all types rely on their applications and internet connectivity to perform even the basic tasks of yesteryear.   Similarly, the offices of Accountants, Lawyers, Engineers, Architects and even Physicians are now effectively crippled without their PCs and the web access they provide.

Other changes brought about by the evolution of the office can be seen in the typical office employee’s life.  Not only are they connected while in the office, they are now connected anywhere, any time.  Whether their company expects them to or not, the employees themselves now expect to be able to check their emails on their smartphones while vacationing on a sunny beach or pull out their new iPad, Playbook,  Xoom or Android-powered tablet PC while sitting on the couch late at night and connect to the office to put in a little overtime.  Connectivity and mobility are now a given – as is the fact that the office is no longer a building with 4 walls.  This presents a whole new era of challenges for today’s SMB.

So what does this all mean to you as a business owner?

The recent history lesson above will likely not come as a surprise to you.  As the owner or operator of a small or medium-sized business, you probably see that besides salaries, technology is one of your largest cost-centers.  It is very likely one of your biggest migraine sources as well.  Technology may in many ways make our lives faster, better, more efficient, but it is far from simple.  For example, virtual security concerns from viruses, malware and phishing attempts have probably overtaken your fears about physical office security.  Theft or loss of data, corporate or client, is now a very real concern - particularly in industries saddled with regulatory compliance issues such as patient records (EMR) for the healthcare field or investor information in the financial services world.  In other words, things are getting more and more complicated despite a lot of technology marketing campaigns that stress the simplicity of their products.  Incidentally, part of the appeal of devices such as tablet PCs can probably be attributed to consumer response against complexity - touch the screen and you are underway... which people like.   

A real-world analogy to put this in perspective can be found in the world of photography.  Do you remember buying film?  Shooting a roll and taking it to be processed, waiting a week and then seeing the results?  Then taking the snapshots and throwing them in a box or picking out the good ones and putting them in an album then filing it away?  Fairly simple process right?  Today we have the luxury of digital cameras.  Thousands of images can be taken and stored on one memory stick in your camera.  No processing time, no waiting to see how they turned out - convenient right?  Well yes - but now you have other concerns.  How do you MANAGE those thousands of pictures?  Where do you STORE them?  Do you download them all to your computer then burn copies to DVDs or copy them over to a portable harddrive or upload them to a storage spot ‘in the cloud’?  And what about processing them?  It’s no longer ‘de rigeur’ to simply print out a few 4 x 6s.  Now you can tweak your photos in a photo-editing SOFTWARE or application first - perfect each and every one before uploading them to a print shop.  And then there the multitude of other options for processing too...  Why slap a few pictures in an old album when you can create and lay out your very own professionally printed photobook?  Oh and you better make sure to make your favorites available online for social media purposes and share that album with your friends and family.  Are you going to use Facebook, Flickr or Picasa?

Similarly, in today’s office, you now have security and protection concerns.  You have an increasing base of assets (overall and per person) in the form of PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablet PCs to manage, update & maintain.  You have data storage and backup concerns.  Your employees need help with technical issues - including training on the software and applications they now use 24/7.  

How can you simplify your life from a technology perspective?

For small organizations, say under 30 employees, you likely do not have an internal IT resource unless your technology needs are particularly complex.  Although not ideal, you likely contract an outside IT provider to help you stay current - but as one of their many clients, you can’t always be a priority to them.  If you are a larger organizations, you may have an in-house “IT guy” but he or she is likely busy just maintaining your current infrastructure - leaving little time for strategic planning or corporate projects.  One easy solution to manage your complexity can be found by taking a page from larger organizations...

Enterprises have long had the ability and the need, to run their PC infrastructure in a more centralized fashion.  Less diversity and more uniformity.  Enterprises tend to:

• Roll out system updates and software patches ‘en-masse’ rather than going desk to desk to service each employee  - saves times and ensures a proper inventory of all assets and software licensing compliance.

• Utilize a central helpdesk for end-user questions.  Multi-national companies may have one ‘IT hub’, if you will, that all users across the world can call and access to receive individual support or ask IT questions.  They can take remote control of your desktop (or even your smartphone or tablet) in a secure window, with your permission and you can watch as they move your cursor before your eyes from thousands of miles away.  You get instantaneous help when you need it, no waiting for someone to schedule time to come visit you and no downtime for you as you await their arrival.  

• Employ an automated desktop maintenance schedule to keep PCs running smoothly by daily removal of unwanted files and folders, cleansing of temp files, weekly defragmentations of system partitions, checks of harddrive status etc.

• Use online backup to make the protection of your data a daily (nightly) or weekly automatic event so your employees files and folders are backed up and protected in vaulted, fully-redundant, offsite data storage facilities.

• Implement security & protection in the form of ongoing anti-virus and patch management service to protect each machine (and your business) from exposure to viruses, hackers, and data loss. It takes only one infected and un-patched machine to bring your entire network down.
  
  You may be saying to yourself “ok, that sounds great, but our company is NOT an Enterprise, so how can we act like one?”  That’s where partnering with a trusted IT business partner can help your organization.  One with a national (or international) scale so they can spread enterprise-level services among many SMBs so you won’t be charged enterprise-like prices.  One that also has visible local ownership and a name with a personal stake in your well-being.  One that will give you the automation to secure and maintain your PCs and provide you with a diversely trained helpdesk team to meet all your needs, no matter what business you are in.