Blog entries from Malcolm Newdick

Two new people at Riverbank

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:28:20 +0100

This week we said good-bye to Sarah Hunt, our office manager since 2005. She has done a huge amount for Riverbank and we will miss her. In her place we are delighted to welcome Karen Harris (karen@riverbank.co.uk).

We are also very pleased to welcome Marc Prole back to Riverbank following his return from his round-the-world travels. We're sure he will enjoy being in one place for a while and it's great that he has chosen Riverbank as the place to be. He is contactable at marcRead More...

Another day, another lost laptop

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:42:58 +0100

Today's security scare is courtesy of the Yorkshire Building Society who lost a laptop that contained "a substantial part of the customer database". Here's what they did wrong:

The laptop was not encrypted.The laptop was not kept in a secure location (it was under a manager's desk).Unbelievably the manager had written down the passwords and just to make things easy for themselves kept the password details in the bag with the laptop computer.

The building society has made formal undertakiRead More...

Data loss? That will be a £2m fine.

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:14:23 +0100

The FSA has fined Zurich Insurance £2.275m for a data loss. Not only did they fail to protect their customer data properly, they did not even notice they had lost confidential details of 46,000 customers. The problem was not so much the loss of the data - it was the lack of adequate systems that cost Zurich so dearly.

As a small business you probably aren't running the risk of a £2m fine, but you are running the risk of losing your reputation and your customerRead More...

You’ve got the tools – let’s make lots of money

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:37:20 +0100

(with apologies to the Pet Shop Boys)
There are two powerful Microsoft server applications that you probably already have - Exchange and SharePoint. Here are ten ideas that could help you deliver better service to your clients or make your business more efficient.

1. Scheduling meetings

Do you struggle to arrange meetings? Use the Outlook Scheduling assistant to show you when people are free. It’s a great tool to show you the next available time the people yoRead More...

Word styles – part 2

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:20:22 +0100

Following on from last month’s article about getting started with Word styles your next job is to create your company style.

Why do you need a company style?

Every company needs to build its brand. Your brand is the embodiment of your values and it is the image you present to the world. Large companies generally do their branding extremely well - whether it’s Coca-Cola, Starbucks or Asda. What you as a customer experience is a totally consistent delivery of the Read More...

New BlackBerry zealot

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:46:29 +0100

At Riverbank we like to be "vendor-neutral" - unbiased in real English - so our Business Development Manager, Chris Jones, happily took his iPhone along on a two-day BlackBerry training course this week. Bad idea.

He has returned a changed man. He is convinced that BlackBerry is the way forward for any serious business. He can tell you why the compression of the BlackBerry e-mail transmissions means lower costs, particularly when roaming. He can tell you how BlackBerRead More...

Cloud computing in demand

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:11:59 +0100

Cloud computing is beginning to hit the business radar. So what's the appeal?

The appeal for one Riverbank client is flexibility and scalability. Their staff work a lot from home and from client sites so they need a system that will work well from anywhere. They have ambitions for growth, and they like the idea of only incurring the cost as they grow. With cloud computing they can add one user at a time and know exactly what the additional cost will be. And in these uncertain timesRead More...

New people at Riverbank

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:36:19 +0100

We are very pleased to welcome two new people to Riverbank - Kevin Ya and Chris Davis.

Kevin is a recent graduate and is with us for a few months to help with the implementation of our new integrated management software. He lives in Clifton Hampden where his parents run the Plough pub and restaurant (highly recommended by Marc Juffkins).

Chris has joined us as one of our senior technical team. He has eight years of professional experience in IT. Chris has a degree in human bRead More...

The data glut

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:14:04 +0100

We live in an era of too much data – there’s more ‘stuff’ than you can ever hope to read or use. So how do you get it organised and how do you keep a focus on what’s important to your business? This is the topic we’ll look at over the next three months.

New data in – old data out

Get started with Word styles

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:47:42 +0100

Styles are a great feature in Microsoft Word. If you have a house style for everything you write you will immediately be at home with styles in Word. If not, here is a paragraph of explanation.

Every publication has its own style. The style of the Financial Times is different from The Sun – each has their own unique and identifiable style. It&rsquRead More...

End of the road for Windows XP

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:43:04 +0100

Microsoft has announced that the end of the road for Windows XP arrives on 22 October when it will stop supplying it as an option for new PCs. No-one is expecting a rush to snap up the final few copies though - its successor Windows 7 has proved to be popular and uncontroversial.

Support for Windows XP is scheduled to continue until 2014.

Update 23/7/10: This change applies only to factory-installed operating systems. There are still 'eRead More...

False economy no. 2 - spending money

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:24:59 +0100

Did you know that you can now rent software licences from Microsoft instead of purchasing them? Renting often seems like a bad idea - cheap over the short term but expensive over the long term. But we're discovering that rental can make good sense for Riverbank clients.

Take a Microsoft server licence as an example. What we are finding is that over three years the software rental costs are tending to be slightly lower than the price of purchasing the licence. The crossover happens in yeRead More...

False economy no.1 - not spending money

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:06:57 +0100

You don't like spending money on computers during an economic downturn. I can sympathise with that because we don't like doing that either. But beware of creating a problem for yourself further down the line.

One Riverbank client recently complained that their computers were running slowly. One of the reasons behind this was that many of the machines were over five years old. Because the company doesn't have a programme of regular replacement of ageing computers they have reaRead More...

Data protection with teeth

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:05:00 +0100

Since April this year the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has had real teeth. It now has the power to fine companies up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act.

Common breaches of the Data Protection Act include:

Loss of laptops, disks and data sticks containing client data. Insecure transmission of personal information.

Simple steps that you can take:

Make sure that all company laptops have full disk encryption (remeRead More...

Beware of calls from 'Microsoft'

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 06:26:39 +0100

"I was sitting at home one evening working on the computer when they phone rang. It was Microsoft warning me that they had a report of a virus infection on my computer. They would like to run a free scan on the computer to check it." So began the lament of a friend who got caught by this scam.

With 20:20 hindsight it's obvious that the call wasn't genuine, but it's not so obvious if you are taken by surprise. This particular episode ended with demands for money to remove the aRead More...

Can we buy you dinner for two?

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:47:31 +0100

Would you like lunch or dinner for two at Le Manoir, with the compliments of Riverbank? That’s our reward to you if you introduce a new client to Riverbank.

Growing Riverbank’s business is important to us, and a lot of our new clients come via referrals. It is important to us to make the most of that goodwill. So if you know of someone whose IT support isn’t as good as it should be, please tell them about Riverbank. As soon as they sign up for a Riverbank support contrRead More...

Cloud computing – better and cheaper IT?

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:28:22 +0100

There is plenty of hype around cloud computing, but are companies actually doing it? Many large firms are apparently holding back from making a drastic change to their IT systems, preferring to wait until others have gone before them and made their mistakes. Many smaller businesses are hesitant about making their entire business dependent on a single Internet connection. They are also worried about secRead More...

Economic clouds bring new opportunities

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:25:24 +0100

Every cloud has a silver lining, so they say, and if there is to be a double-dip recession we’d all better start looking hard for that lining.

If your customers are feeling cautious they are likely to want to avoid large capital expenditure. Can you help them with this? In Riverbank we can provide hardware and software as a service so there is zero capital cost. This even applies to traditional high-cost items like servers. It’s proving to be an attractive option for clientsRead More...

Make friends with Word’s dot leader

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:02:33 +0100

If the words “dot leader” don’t mean anything to you it’s time to get up to speed with using tabs in Microsoft Word. Other symptoms that you need tabs include struggling to line things up and adding spaces here and there until things do line up correctly.

Like so many aspects of word processing the ‘tab’ dates back to the days of typewriters. It was a mechanical stopping point along the carriage that enabled you to tabulate, ie to line up columns of Read More...

Kyle Allard profiled on Facebook

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:11:20 +0100

Kyle Allard, one of our recent recruits, has been featured in a Facebook profile by CompTIA. CompTIA is a non-profit organisation promoting standards and education for the IT industry.

Find out more about Kyle here.