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Web conferencing can save more than money

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:50:25 +0100

Web conferencing is set to become a mainstream business tool, and soon. There are a lot of pressures driving us towards it:
• rising fuel costs
• volcanic ash reducing the opportunity and desire to travel (“will I get back?”)
• climate change pressures encouraging us to reduce travel • economic pressures to keep costs down
• the feeling that whatever changes the new government makes will not be good news

TRead More...

Broadband - home or business?

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:28:20 +0100

Many businesses are seriously under-powered when it comes to home broadband. Our experience in the small business market is that many firms expect their staff to work from home and just assume that any cheap broadband connection is fine. Staff then have a poor experience working remotely on their office network and everyone is unhappy.

What these businesses forget is that working from home often means that a lot of data is going upstream from home to office. Staff are quite naturally expectedRead More...

Ten tips for better business continuity

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:12:45 +0100

The January snow meant that many people were working from home. Some fared better than others, and the calls to our help desk revealed where employers and employees were struggling. Here are Riverbank’s top tips for keeping your business running when the unexpected happens.

1. Top of the list by far is preparation. Have a plan and rehearse it. Then you know how you will do it. Waiting until you are cut off by a foot of snow is not a good way to discover Read More...

Commuting in the snow and ice or working comfortably from home?

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:04:09 +0100

In this prolonged period of icy weather are you still slipping and sliding to work? Many Riverbank clients are working comfortably at home. Thanks to good remote access to their office networks they can remain productive and safe.

If you are thinking that maybe you should do better in enabling your people to work anywhere make a new year's resolution to speak to Riverbank about it. We can tell you more about the cost-effective options available and how other firms are getting the benefRead More...

Reduce your e-mail burden with archiving

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:33:08 +0100

E-mail keeps piling into your business, and your e-mail database keeps on growing. There is a hidden cost to this, which only reveals itself when the database hits its limit or your disk is full. At that point you wish you had been managing your e-mail all along. You realise that even a large server system needs management, and that as new data comes into your organisation so old data must move out of it. E-mail archiving is the solution.

Individual archRead More...

Better connected means better business

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:28:54 +0100

I recently overheard someone lamenting the demands of e-mail, that people now expected an immediate reply. A few years ago, they said, a reply next day was what was expected. We have become a "now, now, now" society.

One reason for this feeling is that e-mail can now follow you around on your mobile phone, whether it's a BlackBerry, an iPhone or a Windows phone. That leads to another strongly expressed view from some people that they don't want to be houndedRead More...

Riverbank partners with O2

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:35:50 +0100

We are pleased to announce that Riverbank has been appointed as the Oxfordshire O2 technology partner.

We have chosen to work with O2 because they have shown a genuine interest in the small and medium business sector. This means that we will be able to deliver better products and better support to our customers.

Firms that need between ten and 50 mobile connections can have mobile phones (with next day replacement), USB modems for mobiRead More...

UK commuters waste 4.6 million hours a day

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:07:05 +0100

A survey of 2,000 adults by Citrix GotoMyPC reveals that UK commuters waste 4.6 million hours every day. Not surprisingly nearly two-thirds of the people interviewed want to reduce the time they spend commuting, mainly by working from home or by using technology to enable flexible and remote working.

And the most common reason why they don't do this already? 46% blamed their boss, who won't let them work from home or work flexible hours.

The easy bit is the technoloRead More...

Ready for bad weather and the flu season?

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:57:48 +0100

Is your business prepared? Winter is just around the corner and influenza (swine or otherwise) still looms. You need to know that your business can continue if staff can't get into the office. And you know that it's no good waiting until there is a foot of snow on the ground before you take action.

If you don't have secure remote access to your network it's time to look at a SonicWALL SSL-VPN device; over 40 Riverbank clients use one.

If you do have remote access, aRead More...

It's time to throw away your chargers - almost

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:43:21 +0100

Do you have a different charger for each mobile device you own? One for the phone, one for the iPod, one for the camera, and so on. The lack of standardisation is very tiresome.

Powermat could be about to change that. It's a new product that charges portable devices by induction. Just lay your BlackBerry (or other mobile device) on the mat and it will recharge.

But don't get too excited just yet. The lack of standards means that you have to buy a special PoweRead More...

Flexible working – working on the move

malcolm@riverbank.co.uk — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:44:34 +0100

What you can do and how well you can do it depends on the quality of your Internet connection. You need to be ready to cope with a great connection, limited connectivity, or none at all. It also depends on what equipment you have with you – your laptop computer, a mobile phone, or nothing at all.

Here are some ideas that work well aRead More...