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| Top -> Business Solutions |
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Business Solutions Our range of services is tailored specifically to allow us to be a one-stop solution provider to small businesses. This approach was born from the realisation that a lot of the work we do is not necessarily in areas of our client’s expertise – after all if the clients were experts, we would be redundant! While some of our projects involve delivering a solution to a fixed set of requirements that was created by a client, most of our work isn’t like that at all. A finalised customer requirement is usually the half-way mark in most of our projects, not the starting point. Those customers who have the resources and know-how to research, trial, and choose the right solutions for their businesses are a minority in our experience. After all, if we’re setting up a solution for a firm of accountants or lawyers or graphic designers, they’re experts at their own businesses, and not business technology! So, although we’re completely comfortable working with a client’s own IT resources, be it a part-time employee or an entire department, we believe our real strength lies in delivering technology-led solutions to our client’s problems. These may or may not even be problems that appear to have a technological aspect to them! Sometimes a complete process-rethink, a radical departure from the current way of doing things is the only way to realise serious gains in productivity, efficiency, satisfaction – whatever the goal. An iForge solution is designed to be as inherently flexible & scalable as possible. While we are very conscious that small businesses tend not to have unlimited IT budgets, it is our experience that with some planning & thought, a budget can often be made to go much further than initially envisioned. Our approach is not to throw ever more, ever newer hardware & software at a problem. We like to deliver solutions that bring lasting value. Solutions that are far greater than the sum total of the processing power & hard drive capacity of the units involved! We want our clients to view their IT expenditure as a strategic investment, not just the cost of some hardware or software. In order to make this happen, we need to deliver systems that are good value, high-performance, stable, reliable, secure, and ensure that they provide a consistently high ROI over time by continuing to perform at a high level. We’ve developed a depth & breadth of services that we believe provides true value to our clients: Depth: We work with end users from the earliest stages of looking at business processes, understanding existing business issues and identifying other possible issues that the business stakeholders may not even be aware of. We then analyse these issues and develop a solution based on our innovative thinking & experience of what “works”. We also come up with ideas regarding new technology-driven ways of doing things that have shown to deliver results in areas that may not even be identified as issues. This solution is then explained in detail & discussed with the key stakeholders, and any changes are incorporated. As mentioned earlier, flexibility is something that comes as standard! At this stage, we may provide a walk-through, demonstration or proof-of-concept of the systems. Once a project specification is approved, we then begin the process of procuring any hardware, software and services that are required to deliver the solution. Our role as suppliers of the goods & services ensures that you benefit from our experience of dealing with suppliers, ensuring the validity of all purchases, and also from our competitive pricing! We have actually been called in on projects simply to facilitate this stage of the process! While some of our customers have extremely competent in-house IT personnel, we have at times been brought in to a) ensure that the goods and services you are procuring are fit for purpose, and b) that the final orders are placed exactly according to what can be quite a complicated specification. This is the point at which our role as business technology consultants turns into the more traditional role of an IT installation company. Depending on the project and requirements, our installation work often begins well before we ever arrive on-site. Setup, installation, configuration (staging) of servers, firewalls, and even workstations can be carried out off-site, so as to minimise the disruption to your work environment. In the same vein, we are also able to schedule the more disruptive aspects of an installation – such as installation of a structured cabling system – for off-peak times, evenings, nights and weekends, and even stagger our work in order to accommodate the requirements of a running office. We firmly believe that we need to be a ‘considerate’ IT installation company in order to accomplish our goal of building a trusted long-term partnership with our clients. |
Once the installation itself is complete, we will then begin the handover phase. Training end-users & administrators on the use of the new systems takes place now, and appropriate training is key to the success of the project. Proper training ensures that a) users are comfortable with news ways to do things, b) the solution delivers the maximum possible ROI by being used to its fullest potential, and c) post-installation issues and support requirements are minimised. This is one of the most crucial elements of the whole project, as this is where end users get to interact with their new system, and after all, the proof of the pudding… While it’s a bit unreasonable to expect to see drastic increases in productivity instantly, as there is a bit of lag as users adjust to new software, processes etc, but we usually see almost immediate improvements in various ‘little things’ , whether it’s the person who hated their old system because it was too old, or they couldn’t do things the way that makes sense, or couldn’t print over a VPN connection or check e-mail on their handheld! And we definitely know that in IT, it’s the little things that can make the difference between something that works and doesn’t, something that makes someone instantly embrace the new way, immediately love what they are now able to, and definitely increases overall satisfaction levels to a point where productivity has only one way to go! Finally, we enter the support & development phase. During the immediate post-installation period we usually provide free technical support to our clients, to help in fine-tuning, tweaking, and sorting out any post-installation niggles. We also provide complete “How Do I” support, to ensure that users are not daunted by anything new that they may have seen or heard, and to encourage users to constantly explore better ways of carrying out their tasks. We provide detailed documentation on our complete installation, including cabling installation, networking infrastructure, collaboration & messaging tools, security installation and any other components. We’re not going to hold you to ransom by installing a network and then refusing to hand over the keys! This is after all, your infrastructure, you have paid for it, and you should have detailed information about it. For a network that is managed by us, we always ask that we retain certain top-level access (you are always provided with an equivalent level of access for emergencies) to the network, in order to allow us to manage the network efficiently. During the development part of this phase, we may outline any future recommendations we may have, based on any aspects that were either not required at this stage, or beyond the scope of the current budget. Breadth: In order to be effective as a one-stop solution provider, we realise we need to not only cover the entire process of putting in place a technology solution, but we provide maximum value to our clients by being a trusted one-point source of information and advice on a complete range of products services that a small business may require. While it’s probably not possible for a single company to be an expert at every single kind of hardware and software solution available, we do have the expertise and experience that enables us to evaluate solutions very effectively, even those that we are not completely familiar with. What does this mean to you, the client? It means that you have a single point of contact, that you can get on the phone, who will be able to provide you with considered information & advice, whether its regarding a particular product you may be considering, or a business technology problem that you are facing. Quite clearly, our role extends beyond the process defined above, as a strategic consultant you can turn to for advice on a wide range of issues, products and services. Our range of products and services is ever-expanding, but can be classified under the following heads:
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To summarise, we offer a width and breadth of service that our clients find invaluable, and while we’ve covered a lot of ground above, there are always things that have not been mentioned that we have experience with, as well as those that we may not have experience with yet, but will happily look at as part of developing our own portfolio of services while enhancing the value we provide to our clients. |
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