TSG practising what we preach with digital transformation: Aged hardware refresh

If you’re an avid reader of the TSG blog, you’ll have heard the term digital transformation more than once. It’s something we talk about a lot and it umbrellas a lot of areas in business and technology. From overhauling the way organisations work and collaborate by implementing a solution like Office 365, to switching your outdated phone system to a cloud-based and disaster recovery-ready hosted telephony solution as the ‘death of ISDN’ deadline in 2025 draws closer.

Digital transformation is about making business better by adopting technologies that improve efficiency, increase workforce productivity, reduce costs and futureproof business.

Historically digital transformation was exclusive to enterprise-level businesses with big budgets and endless resources, however SMBs now have the power to adapt and overcome as subscription-based pricing models and the cloud continue to revolutionise the technology sector.

It’s a marathon – not a sprint

Large projects and the subsequent hefty upfront budget outlay isn’t the only route to adopting technologies that make a difference. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight, it can start small with gradual changes that can impact business in a big way.

Powering an effective workforce

The slow performance of aged hardware can dramatically hinder the productivity of your workforce, impacting employee output and costing your business money.

An age-related failure of a server or the wider infrastructure can impact an entire business. Considerable amounts of downtime and increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks are just some of the reasons why we’re helping customers to improve their hardware.

Reviewing and renewing equipment such as PCs, printers and servers can have a hugely positive impact on the effectiveness of your workforce.

Speak with our experts today to find out how we can help you take your first step on your journey towards digital transformation.

Practicing what we preach

As we’re constantly banging the drum about these fantastic technologies and what they can do for businesses, we wanted to create a blog series to highlight what we at TSG are doing to ‘digitally transform’. As you’d expect we’re taking our own advice and making small changes (and some larger ones you can read about in future blog posts) across the business and rolling these out to our offices across the UK. These small, undisruptive changes have had a significant impact on money saving, efficiency and security – they also fall in line with ISO and GDPR requirements.

This blog is about aged hardware, in this case replacing our outdated printers with newer models. It may seem a small move and one which may not show much change to our business day to day, however this seamless swap out of printers has benefited us in a number of ways.

In the main it has saved us money, our old printers were starting to cost too much, as they broke down, needed new parts etc. The cost per page has been reduced and staff are no longer forming an orderly queue at the water cooler awaiting prints which has increased productivity – not to mention morale!

Benefits of adopting new printers

• The upfront cost of buying new printers can be a fraction of the cost of running aged printers.
• New printers often reduce the cost per page
• Less chance of printers breaking and needing new parts
• Increased efficiency as print outs take less time
• New printers tend to consume less electricity than their older counterparts

An added bonus…

The decision to refresh our printers in all of our offices (we have offices from Glasgow to London) presented us with an opportunity to reduce some keyring luggage by using our ID cards for authentication. Our ID card solution was driven by a requirement to enhance security measures. A number of our dynamic and mobile workforce visit multiple offices and require access throughout the day.

Traditionally TSG staff have adorned a plethora of fobs to operate security doors in each of our offices and to use the printers. The new ID cards mean that staff carry only one item (reducing the risk of loss) with the added bonus of improving physical security in our offices as each card includes a photo of the holder.

Complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

As the GDPR deadline draws nearer (May 2018) compliance has been high on our agenda, certainly from a digital perspective, we’ve been speaking to customers about the IT security solutions to protect their Personally Identifiable Information (PII), we also released a free trial of the TermSet discovery tool and Qlik Sense that allows businesses to understand exactly what PII they hold.

In addition to this digital perspective, there’s also the physical aspect of GDPR to consider, as TSG has multiple offices around the UK, putting physical controls in place to ensure security optimised is a must.

By implementing our new identification card system and associated procedures we ensure:

• Visual identification of all staff and visitors
• Recording of visitors
• Enforcement of staff signing in/out with door cards
• Internal door controls being enforced, controlling access to sensitive or secure areas
• Staff trained to challenge individuals not wearing identification

Having this access control system in place across all sites ensures continuity and consistency of access as well as an auditable log of all entry-controlled environments. This ability to control access to TSG‘s environment (both physical and technical) is a key part of security and compliance with GDPR.

What’s next?

Stay tuned to find out what other technology we’re using on our journey to digital transformation, we’ll be covering topics from a new hosted telephone system, the tools that empower our workforce to work anywhere and how we’re approaching GDPR.