Freelance or Interim PMO & Project Manager

Aug202015 by adminNo Comments

A Nudge to Innovation

Change initiatives can be mentally and physically taxing because it is more challenging to be in a “mindful” state of learning something new than in a “mindless” state of doing the familiar. Physical or cognitive “nudges” help — not by forcing adoption of new ideas, but by creatively eliminating obstacles so that it happens naturally. In 2011, Pelle G. Hansen and his students from Roskilde University came up with a litter-reducing nudge that they tested in Copenhagen. The team handed out 1000 candies to pedestrians. All the nearby streets, including garbage cans, ashtrays, and bike baskets were examined for the distinctive empty wrappers, and the wrappers discovered there were counted. Then the process was repeated, but in the second trial, a trail of green footsteps leading to nearby bins…

Aug192015 by adminNo Comments

“Which CRM is Best for My Industry” the Wrong Question to Ask ?

CRM, Home Page

I feel as though a CRM system is an effective vehicle to maximize the benefit of sound business processes – it isn’t, on its own, a solution. We can all agree that platforms such as Salesforce and Dynamics allow for infinite configuration possibilities, but without established business processes in place, the flexibility of those platforms is completely lost on an organisation. How do you progress a contact through a structured sales pipeline process? How do contacts enter your system, and how are they maintained? Does everyone in the organisation have a unified understanding of these processes? Those are the questions you should be asking first; then you can start to explore which platforms best support your processes. Those processes and disciplines are the difference between having an organisation-wide customer lifecycle…

Aug192015 by adminNo Comments

Why SharePoint is the last great ‘on-premises’ application

Home Page, SharePoint

While it seems like almost every piece of IT is moving to cloud these days, there are still plenty of reasons to keep SharePoint in your server room – where it belongs. At the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) last month in Orlando, we heard many of the same grumblings we’ve been hearing about Microsoft for years now: They don’t care about on-premises servers. They’re leaving IT administrators in the dust and hanging them out to dry while forcing Azure and Office 365 content on everyone. They’re ignoring the small and medium business. It’s hard to ignore this trend. It’s also true that the cost-to-benefit ratio continues to decrease to the point where common sense favours moving many workloads up to the cloud where you can transform capex and personnel expense…

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

Legacy Application Refactoring

Home Page, Strategy

There's a problem with desktop virtualization on smartphones and tablets: Desktop applications were never meant for mobile use. Legacy applications, built for a PC with a physical keyboard and mouse, are still critical to today's businesses. The experience of using them on a touchscreen device, however tends to be extremely clunky. Application refactoring attempts to solve that problem by reformatting and optimizing desktop apps for mobile. Refactoring should be a familiar term to those in the developer community; it refers to the process of improving software coding and design without changing its intended functions. The new stock of application refactoring vendors -- which includes Capriza, PowWow, Reddo Mobility and StarMobile -- takes that concept and applies it to legacy software running on modern endpoints. As an added bonus, application refactoring…

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

SharePoint Online customisation – or not !

Home Page, O365, SharePoint

Are You Are Planning A Move To SharePoint Online, If So, Have You Considered Your Customization Strategy? With the release of SharePoint online the way in which you customize your SharePoint implementation has changed. With the back-end being in the Microsoft cloud, the need for back end coding has now diminished. Microsoft are actually doing this to make your implementations more secure, as if there is no customised back end code the chance of your environment breaking Is greatly reduced and your eventual migration path is much easier. SO HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR SHAREPOINT BESPOKE? Despite what many think Microsoft don’t want everyone to conform to the SharePoint that comes out of the box and recommend trying the three below methods for customization: - Browser based customisation (Using the site settings…

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

5 ways to become more people intelligent

Home Page, Projects

I’m not just being ‘nice’ or ‘soft’ when I write this. There is a lot of evidence that happy people are significantly more productive, which means that the bottom line gets a boost, too. If you’re one of the growing number who want to make our project worlds more ‘people-intelligent’, why not try out some of the following suggestions? 1 - Ask a trusted observer to help you ‘see’ what you’re doing, not what you think you’re doing They’re not the same thing. The leaders I work with are committed to achieving success. They do what they do because they honestly believe it’s right. The problem is that accurate self-perception is rare. How many times have you heard a manager say, “I have an open-door policy. I encourage people to…

Aug182015 by adminNo Comments

Ideal project manager ?

Home Page, Projects

“Calm in all situations, even the biggest crisis. Thoughtful, and considerate and knows what will make those involved feel better about what is going on and what needs to be done. Gives the confidence and direction needed so that the team understands the urgency, gains the confidence that things will be sorted, and are inspired to help.” (more…)

Aug172015 by adminNo Comments

Is it a Problem or an Incident

Home Page, ITIL

On the IT service desk (and for anyone who studies ITIL), the words ‘problem’ and ‘incident’ are often used interchangeably. Sometimes, people throw in the word ‘issue’ to further confuse the situation. However, these two words have totally different meanings, and the difference is actually important in being able to communicate how urgent the situation is and what needs to be done in order to fix it. Here are the meanings of each word, according to the definitions used by ITIL, and how these meanings translate into the timeliness of the fix needed. What is an Incident? An incident is an event that leads to an unplanned disruption of service. The important part to remember is ‘disruption of service,’ because if an issue does not disrupt service, even if it was…

Aug122015 by adminNo Comments

How I can Help

Home Page, Me

Businesses sometimes struggle with the move to more flexible working practices and the IT challenges it brings. Working remotely on mobile devices, that access systems in the cloud, will become natural. Want to talk, call me, top of the page. To ensure engagement with staff, you’re likely to need to provide systems that people want to work with. I can help your business understand what IT platforms tools and services you could be investing in to ensure you’re not left behind in this ever changing world. I understand how IT suppliers & providers work and they sometimes struggle to meet the organisations expectations. (more…)

Aug92015 by adminNo Comments

CRM Adoption

CRM, Home Page

To encourage staff to use CRM, it must be an essential step in the process. If staff don't need to use the system, they won’t. Its just a fact of change management, there must be a motive. If part of the process defines using CRM then they probably will, over time some affection will arrive and as they begin to get used to the system they will use it more effectively and willingly. Nothing is perfect first time, so hold regular meetings to discuss the functionality of the system and how this could be improved. Feedback is key; so ask users what they like/don’t like and use customisation and training to solve these issues.

Aug72015 by adminNo Comments

OneDrive – Limiting file sync to domain joined PC’s

Home Page, O365

OneDrive for Business enables users to synchronize their files for offline use across their PCs or Macs. One of the most common requests from IT admins is to have the ability to block sync on unmanaged PCs. Now you can enable file sync to work only on domain-joined PCs (and you can even specify which of your domains you want to allow to sync), thereby blocking file sync on personally owned or unmanaged PCs. Note that using this setting means that you will disable file sync on all Macs as they cannot be domain-joined and managed like PCs. This new control uses PowerShell to limit file sync to a list of permitted domains and, if your organization uses multiple domains, you can select the individual domains from which you allow…

Jul312015 by adminNo Comments

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Spring 2015 – Immersive MS Excel

CRM, Home Page

The release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Spring 2015 includes a helpful new feature; Immersive Excel. This functionality allows a user to manipulate Dynamics CRM data in MS Excel, without the cumbersome "Export to Re-import" process required in the past. The Spring release handles this process behind the scenes now, giving the user a multi-record, frictionless data manipulation experience. However, this feature is only available using Dynamics CRM Online and O365 MS Excel Online. Here are the requirements to take advantage of this new, powerful feature: Dynamics CRM Online Separate O365 License required Export to Excel Security Role Privilege Available in the Web Client Let's dive right in to demonstrate what can be done with the new Immersive MS Excel. This example contains a list of Leads that need some…

Jul302015 by adminNo Comments

Your Office in the Cloud

Home Page, O365, Uncategorized

Office 365 brings together the power of the familiar Office applications with business class email (powered by Exchange Online), document sharing (powered by SharePoint Online), and instant messaging and video conferencing (powered by Skype for Business Online). Everything works seamlessly together to give you the best productivity experience across your devices – from PCs to smartphones to tablets. Because it is a cloud-based service hosted by Microsoft, you always get the latest technology without the need to upgrade your servers and it comes with virus/malware protection, automatic backup, and 99.9% uptime guarantee with a financially-backed service level agreement. Office Latest version of Office desktop applications licensed as a subscription Per user licensing across 5 devices including PC, Mac, iPad/iPhone and Android Tablet Stream any Office application on a PC while…

Jul302015 by adminNo Comments

Snacking Dining Cooking

Home Page, O365

Imagine if you could access the latest Microsoft desktop suite, while taking advantage of trusted communication and collaboration products to enhance efficiency and reduce cost. Imagine if it was available for a per user per month price, meaning you could pay for what you need, when you need it. With Microsoft Office 365, that possibility becomes a reality. The Office 365 offer helps you take full advantage of the latest technology, whatever the size of your business. What is more, with our ongoing support, you can secure maximum business benefit from your investment. With Microsoft Office 365, you can: Collaborate: Office 365 enables colleagues and business partners to work effectively together, sharing documents and information with ease. This enhances efficiency, and facilitates productive team working. Work remotely: Because it is…