Wondering what your IT strategy should look like? Here at Lancom we help many companies create clear IT strategies that allow them to make the most of their existing IT, ensure their IT projects are successful, and reduce their lights-on costs. So we have decided to put together a 5 part series to help you see what should be included in your IT strategy.

Part one: An Introduction

Business Context

Your IT strategy should align with your business strategy. So the first step in creating an effective IT strategy is to look at, and possibly refresh, your business plan. The focus of this should be on what the business does well, how this compares with competitors, and how this gives the business a competitive advantage. This provides the context to articulate the capabilities the business requires to develop and grow, and the part that information technology needs to play in this.

Information Systems Audit

The next step in the process is to audit your Information Systems. You can’t plan unless you know where you are, so you first need a clear picture of what information systems you have and what you are using them for. This audit should include core infrastructure, business productivity infrastructure, vendors and contracts, licensing and warranties, data and telephony, and management and user opinions.

Information Systems Strategy

When it comes to the information systems strategy itself this needs to be a plan that supports the business capabilities and, where appropriate, leads the business capabilities. Using the results of the information systems audit, a strategy can be developed that covers four key imperatives:

1. How do we increase the value realised from our IT investments?
2. How do we improve the success of projects and change initiatives?
3. How do we ensure coherent architectures to enable flexibility and agility?
4. How do we reduce our lights-on costs to increase innovation?

We will expand on each of these four areas in future posts. Looking for some help in developing your organisation’s IT strategy? Learn more about Lancom’s Business Technology Review service.

This is part one of a five part series, to make sure you don’t miss the rest, subscribe to this RSS feed.

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The Lancom Technology newsletter is an email we send out every month packed full of new technologies, advice, and simple tips and tricks for improving your productivity when working on your computer.

The Lancom newsletter can be a great way for you to keep up to date with interesting IT news, and to sign up all you need to do click here and let us know your email address.

Ever misplaced important handwritten notes from a meeting? Or maybe you just didn’t have access to them when you needed them?

We have talked about how great we think Evernote is on this blog before, but thought we would quickly highlight one way that you can use it to make sure you always have easy access to your handwritten notes no matter where you are.

One of the great features of Evernote is that you can email notes straight to your Evernote account, using your unique Evernote email address. This means you can scan handwritten notes with a multifunction printer and then send them directly to Evernote. Once your notes are in Evernote you will be able to access them anytime and anywhere from your computer, your iPad, your iPhone, or your Android device.

What makes this even better is that Evernote is able to recognise your handwriting, meaning that your handwritten notes are completely searchable. When you want to find a page of notes again you can just search for a word or words that appear on that page.

Evernote has both a free and premium account. With the free account Evernote will only recognise your handwriting within images, so if you plan to scan your notes as PDFs the $5 a month/$45 a year premium plan might be worth a look.

To visit the website, and find out more about Evernote, click here.

Note: Evernote also integrates with Livescribe smartpens, a really ingenious device that allows you to easily record and playback everything that you write and hear. To read more about this, click here.

Find the idea of third parties tracking your online activity a little creepy? Last month we covered a few simple things you can do to help stop yourself from being tracked online, and now we’ve found another tool that could help you protect your privacy.

Do Not Track Plus is a free add-on available for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari that helps block third parties from tracking you. To see how it works, check out this video.

Note: If you’re not particularly worried about online tracking, or you are using IE9 or Firefox and have your tracking protection feature turned on (learn more), then you probably don’t need this add-on. If you are using a browser without a tracking protection feature and would like to learn more about Do Not Track Plus, click here.

Hat tip to ComputerWorld for the idea for this post

Wondering how to spot a trustworthy IT supplier? Over the last seven weeks we have been posting once a week about the ways that you can spot the good IT suppliers from the bad. To make things easier we decided to combine the seven points we covered into one summary post, so you can catch up on any you might have missed.

1. They keep up to date with the latest best practices for managing their customers IT - Keeping up to date with the latest best practices for managing IT is about more than just up to date qualifications. While these are very important, a trustworthy IT supplier should go beyond this and actively seek out new ideas on how best to manage IT for their customers.…read more
   
   
2. They have well thought-out systems and processes for managing your IT jobs - A PSA system that keeps track of all IT service tickets is essential, but another aspect you need to consider is what happens outside of the system. Do the people involved follow well thought-out processes?...read more
   
   
3. They have a continuing commitment to delivering the best service - Gaining regular feedback from customers is one of the best ways to make sure service stays at a high standard, and to look for areas where it could be even better. A trustworthy IT supplier will look to gain feedback from their customers at every level…read more
   
   
4. Their recommendations and advice are based on experience - When assessing an IT supplier one thing you definitely need to consider is experience, but experience is about more than just years in the business. You should also look at their experience with businesses like yours, and the experience of the individuals you will be dealing with the most…read more
   
   
5. They care about customer service and communication - A trustworthy IT supplier should care about more than just the technical ability of their staff. They should also care about the level of communication and customer service they deliver…read more
   
   
6. They won’t try to lock you into a long fixed term contract - A trustworthy IT support provider won’t try to lock you into a long fixed term contract. This is because all a fixed term does is make it harder for you to leave if you are unhappy…read more
   
   
7. They recognise the importance of keeping their customers informed - You should never be left questioning what is happening with your IT, because a trustworthy IT supplier should give you a way to access up to the minute information on it…read more

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Are you receiving unwanted promotional SMS messages? Text ads can be really annoying and if you regularly enter competitions or trial a lot of services you can end up receiving a lot of them.

How to make it stop

Under the Unsolicited Electronic Mail Messages Act all senders of messages like these must include an option to opt-out via text, and this option must be free. If you recognised the company sending you the texts and know that you probably did give them your number, then the easiest way to stop them texting you is to opt-out.

If they don’t include an opt-out option, or you are sure you have never given them your number, then you have the ability to report them online.

What else can you do?

If you are using an Android phone there are lots of apps available that allow you to block texts from certain numbers, or even texts that include certain words. Here are a couple of free ones you could look into.

If you are using an iPhone, unfortunately the only way you can use apps like these is if your phone is jailbroken, but there is another alternative. If you are using Vodafone you can use their free Blacklisting service that allows customers to block texts from up to 20 phone numbers. You can manage your blacklist by logging on to your online account.

Want to read about a way to avoid getting email spam when signing up to online services? Click here.

Like keeping up with the latest IT advice and news from Lancom? If you’re a LinkedIn user you can now follow us there. To check out the Lancom LinkedIn company page, click here.

Not a LinkedIn user? You can also friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to see additional stuff that doesn’t quite make it to this blog.  

They recognise the importance of keeping their customers informed

You should never be left questioning what is happening with your IT, because a trustworthy IT supplier should give you a way to access up to the minute information on it.

Your IT support company should make available a way for you to see all your open tickets, your invoices, and statistics on your IT whenever you want to.

At Lancom we currently have an online console that allows our customers to see all these things, and we are in the process of deploying a new technology that will show them even more information. To find out more about this new technology, click here.

This is the seventh and final part of the ‘How to spot a trustworthy IT supplier' series, click here to read the others.

Thinking about joining LinkedIn, but not quite sure how it works or how to make the most of it?

MakeUseOf currently has a pretty good free guide available on their site that covers how to establish your account, as well some tips for personalizing and developing it.

If you would like to check out this guide, click here.

They won’t try to lock you into a long fixed term contract

A trustworthy IT support provider won’t try to lock you into a long fixed term contract. This is because all a fixed term does is make it harder for you to leave if you are unhappy.

In most cases there is no need for a fixed term at all, and signing any 36 month contract is definitely not advised. The only situations when a fixed term may be needed is if there is bundled hardware leasing, or if it is a specialty contract where the vender has to maintain a very specific skill set that is unique to you.

At Lancom our standard terms allow a customer to terminate the service, for any reason, with only 90 days’ notice. This is something we have been offering for 12 years and in that time we have never regretted it. To read more about this, click here.

This is part six of a seven part ‘How to spot a trustworthy IT supplier' series, click here to read the rest.