This regular column will focus on the latest developments in the digital world and how they are transforming the way we do business.
Steve Price is a founding partner of Birmingham-based digital agency, One Black Bear. Founded in 2007, the agency boasts an enviable national client list including AGA Rangemaster Group, Isuzu 4×4 Vehicles, Marketing Birmingham, The NHS, Subaru Cars and of course Investors in Excellence.
Listen up IT departments — excellence isn’t tied to the office.
As a digital specialist, it’s my job to closely monitor the leaps and bounds the digital realm takes seemingly on a weekly basis. New web-based technologies and initiatives have made the world of business a much more open place and the role of the office as a central hub is becoming less and less pivotal in day-to-day working.
There’s all the obvious things that people can now do remotely like checking emails on their smartphone of choice and train-working on their laptop. But now it’s not just devices that have cut their physical ties. Software and data too now increasingly have ‘no fixed abode’.
Cumbersome rack servers are making way in many smaller, more agile businesses for lightweight web services like Google Docs and Dropbox (Our server cabinet now has christmas decorations in it!). These free, reliable and powerful tools and many others like them can put massive amounts of data online or ‘in the cloud’ where it is readily accessible from anywhere and version-controlled — or backed up in non-geek speek (sic).
As we all inevitably upgrade our computers, the very latest mobile devices enable us to work free from physical tethering of any kind for the lion’s share of a working day and still stay connected to the world-at-large. I can’t think of anyone who’d not want to take advantage of this new ability to work anywhere. We all have busy lives where every minute saved can count for an extra precious minute doing something you love. Or, indeed, help you squeeze the maximum amount of productivity from the working day — do that and you’re truly on the road to excellence.
We are often stymied in our efforts to open people’s eyes to these new tools by the snail’s pace that many corporate IT departments run at. Exchange servers, Office documents and (God, forbid) Internet Explorer 6 consigning many enthusiastic and talented individuals to a desk-based working model that belongs with the water cooler and diet coke breaks of the 90s.
Free yourself from the office. The coffee’s great out here.
Steve Price
Partner
Unsuitable | One Black Bear