The Importance of Proof.
In a very crowded marketplace it’s difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Not because they are necessarily better than you, it’s because everyone is saying the same thing, they are the best, they go the extra mile, they have the best team, they, they, they, they…….
This has been the case for a while, however, it’s become very apparent through 2009 – 2010 as people desperately increase their marketing via mailshots, cold calls, email blasts etc.
Seeing this, we made a decision that we needed to work a different way, we needed to promote ourselves differently.
The OCD way is to stop talking about ourselves, how wonderful we are, how experienced we are, how we go the extra mile, how we invest in training and so on.
Instead we now let the most important people, our Clients, do the talking for us, we operate on the concept of proof.
Our Clients have taken time out of their busy schedules to tell you why they value us, why they partner with us, why they are extremely comfortable recommending us and so on.
We’ve taken it a stage further than most others who dabble with a few case studies or quotes, we have created a complete booklet of case studies which we can send to you, or you can download from our case studies section on the website.
The point of working this way is to differentiate OCD in the IT Service and IT Support marketplace by giving you a high comfort factor in selecting us to partner with.
The feedback prospects and Clients give us is that this approach is incredibly valuable and lets them see we don’t take them for granted and don’t shove generic sales spiel down their neck.
If you’d like to talk further please don’t hesitate to contact us, we’d be delighted to hear from you and provide a tour of our facilities.
An example of how technology can impact business decisions.
We will be launching a new service soon which requires a high speed internet connection.
We can’t use the prevalent ADSL or cable technology as our distance from the telephone exchange is at the outer limit which means our speed isn’t that great and in addition, the upload speed of an ADSL connection is pretty poor.
The result of this means we have to look at a technology called leased lines.
This isn’t something new, it’s been around for a while. It’s a very good connection to the internet, it downloads and uploads information at the same speed and unlike ADSL and Cable and it can be scaled up to very high speeds. The downside? It’s very expensive.
Now, ballpark figures for a 10mb leased line for us are around £11,000 per year for a three year contract (depending on where you are and the type of building you’re in etc. the costs vary).
We may need to increase the speed of this as the service takes off and demand increases, so we could move to a 20mb/30mb or 40mb connection.
Once we get to the 40mb speeds the costs increase to circa £17,000.
Anyway, as we continue to expand the business, we are reaching the point where the office we purchased three years ago is getting tight and we need to increase the space we have.
The connection for OCD between the new service and the office space we require is this -> as Internet providers release new technology called FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) they can provide speeds of 40mb download and 10mb upload for circa £720 per annum.
Only certain exchanges are enabled for this technology with more coming on through this year and in to the future.
All of a sudden we have an interesting business decision to make which is this.
Do we stay where we are and look to buy more space in an office near us, pay for the leased line at £x, or do we look to move to an office near one of the enabled exchanges which would give us our connection for £720 per annum (saving between £10,000 to £17,000) and use the extra we would have spent on the leased line for more office space?
I find it interesting that the need for speed on internet connections can have an impact (potentially) on where you would locate your organisation. It’s not something I had thought about in any great until now. However, given how reliant we are on email and Internet use and because many now and in the future will use more Internet based services, it’s certainly something to think about when you chose to open a new office or relocate an existing one.
Feel free to contact us to have a conversation about this or anything else you feel we could help with, we’d be delighted to hear from you.
OCD are an IT company based in Glasgow who provide IT Consultancy, IT Projects and IT Support services to businesses and charities throughout Scotland and the North of England.
The value of a great team
Very often time passes us by so quickly that it’s easy to forget the quality of and the effort put in by the team around you.
At OCD we are very fortunate to have had such a team for a considerable time now.
In my experience it takes very little time to thank the people around you for the effort they put in, many times this being over and above the call of duty.
It’s great to be involved in such a customer focussed IT company where the team genuinely care about the results and service they provide to our Clients.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at OCD for their commitment, care, hard work, expertise and effort in providing the best possible IT support and IT services to our Clients.
You are a great bunch of people to work alongside and you are a credit to yourselves and the company.
Thank you.
Kevin
How much storage do you need?
It’s amazing how far storage capacity has grown over the years.
I vividly remember when I first got involved in IT support and IT solutions some 23 years ago that we stored 160k on an 8″ floppy (not that floppy) disk.
Most readers may not even remember floppy disks, it was how we stored information before hard drives were commonly used.
Seagate have now launched a 3 terabyte hard drive which is an absolutely huge amount of storage capacity.
To give some perspective, the animated movie Monsters vs Aliens required around 100 terabytes of storage whilst in production.
Whilst this sounds great, there are other things you need to think of before utilising this much storage like:
- How to archive it
- How to access it
- How to protect it and
- How to effectively use it.
OCD are experts in providing this type of advice, so feel free to contact us for advice if you need to, we’re here to help.
Inc.com talk about it a little more here.
Is the Cloud Right for Me?
We get asked frequently whether or not the Cloud* is something that companies should consider / change to / replace their existing solution with.
Many people hear the term and sometimes the hyperbole which can surround it at times and find themselves unsure and confused as to what they should do and what it means for their business. It has featured frequently on the news, in seminars / webinars and newspaper articles for a while now with many vendors pushing their cloud offerings hard.
The simple fact is like anything in life, Cloud computing is the answer and a great solution for some companies and it’s not for others.
First of all you need to have a clear understanding of what it is that you are trying to achieve and whether cloud computing will help you achieve that. There are some things to think about here that are absolutely vital;
- Do you have or can you get a connection to the Internet that will support the application and the number of users who will need to access it concurrently? If you don’t, it just won’t work properly.
- Does using a cloud application deliver any real benefit to you – does it save money, does it deliver more up to date software, or is just a different way of doing what you already do anyway, in which case what is the benefit of change?
- Is it secure? The majority of work done internally in companies is confidential to one degree or another, does the cloud solution you are thinking of deliver the kind of security you want.
- Where does the data get stored? If you have confidential data when you save it or use it on a cloud application, where is it stored when you are not using it and can you be sure it is secure?
These are just four simple questions, but they are ones you need to ask and get answers to. We ask the same questions when we are working for a customer on the idea of cloud computing as a solution. In our design work on our own first cloud application - offsite backup – we went through a rigorous process of researching, questioning and testing before we were absolutely happy that the solution we offer answers the four questions above adequately.
To be sure, there are some great solutions which are Cloud based, CRM systems, email systems, accounts systems to name a few. Some of these are a perfect fit for some companies, however, the best thing you can do is to get the correct unbiased advice up-front from people you can trust and who have the experience and knowledge to steer you in the right direction.
Like most people in IT, we are excited about the potential for cloud based applications, however we also recognise that the software providers can also be a little bit too enthusiastic and take things to market without fully thinking through the implications. To ensure that you do get value and make the right choice for your business, we will always lay out the whole picture so you make your decision based on the full set of facts.
The two following quotes from David Hewitt, the IT Manager from Kilgraston School for Girls says it all I believe:
“OCD were the stand out supplier, the company’s focus on understanding our need and proposing a solution that fitted made them the obvious choice.”
“From the start it was clear that OCD were going to deliver not just a better technical solution, but a higher and more focused level of service. We would confidently recommend OCD”
Our business model is based on the concept of proof. We let our Clients do the talking for us as opposed to the everyday method others use, which is to tell you how wonderful they are in their eyes.
Definitions:
*Cloud – Sometimes referred to as software as a service, software + Service, Internet computing and so on. In simple basic terms it’s where your servers and applications i.e. email are located in a datacentre which you access via the Internet.
*On premise – Where you have servers and applications running locally, i.e. on your business premises.