Eitex assists local charities

We like to help others as part of our social value as a social enterprise so we provide refurbished computers FREE OF CHARGE to LOCAL charities and good causes.

Eitex have teamed with Airedale Computers to provide a continual stream of computers which have either been replaced or disposed of by local businesses.

These computers are perfectly adequate for charities, underprivileged or elderly people and with the help of Airedale Computers we are placing them back out in the community.

Our first batch of computers on the picture below includes a top-end HP workstation, a HP Server, HP desktops, to older computers which are 4 or 5 years old.

If you would like to contact us with regards to PC disposal, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

IT Support Company Helps Lancashire Students Improve Communication Skills

Lee Hezzlewood, East Lancashire Regional Director of national IT Support company Eitex has been spending time back in school.

 

When Darwin Aldridge Community Academy asked for volunteers for their Words for Work program from local businesses, Lee whose business interest also include being a director of IT Security Specialists Secure Thinking, put himself forward without really knowing what he was letting himself in for.

 

"My initial understanding was more around helping the students with written communication," said Lee. "But when we attended our training it became apparent that the program had wider goals - to help the children with all aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication."

 

The Words for Work program is part of a national scheme intended to improve the communication skills of year 9 children (13-14yrs) and involves business volunteers showing the students how key communication skills are used in the real world of work and business.

 

The program at Darwin Academy consisted of 8 volunteers working with the students for 6 weeks. The first week the students made a presentation to the volunteers and then had their presentation skills and performance assessed with recommendations from the volunteers on how to improve their approach.

 

The second week involved the students and volunteers interviewing each other with ideas and suggested improvements again passed.

 

Over the remaining 4 weeks the students and the volunteers split into groups with the objective of creating a product highlighting good communication skills and then presenting it to the other groups.

 

The final week was supposed to be where the groups each presented their product to the other teams.  But unfortunately one of the groups hit a rather major snag, as Lee explains.

 

"Our group was making a short slide-show based film with sound effects and music.  Unfortunately, the finished product was placed on a USB memory stick in the care of one of the students who didn't make the session.

 

"It left the other members of the group devastated and they were worried how they were going to get around it!"

 

By a twist of fate, the school had decided to do yet another presentation of the products to a wider audience including the Principal Mr Loughran, and so an additional date was added to the program.

 

"This gave us a great way to  turn our disaster into a massive positive.  So between Imelda O'Keefe of IMS Coaching [the other volunteer in the group], the students and myself, we decided that the "Release Date" for our film would be after Easter and so we left the audience with a little bit of background on our project and a teaser as to what the final product will be like," said Lee.  "All the volunteers thought this was the best lesson the students could have learned - how to turn what should have been a disaster into a really positive outcome."

 

The final presentations will now be held on the 6th May at Darwin Aldridge Community Academy.

 

 

All the jigsaw pieces, in one place

Having seen hundreds of companies you realise that patterns begin to form. Inefficiencies and bad habits repeat over and over.

I don’t believe though that companies wish to operate in this way, they are simply made to do so by the software they use. This is not to say the software is bad, quite the opposite, the problem though seems to be interoperability between applications.

Applications which we see often are:

Sage 50 – for Accountancy, Sales Order and Purchase Order Processing

Microsoft Office
    Word - Word processing
    Excel - Financials / budgets / forecasting / calculations
    Outlook - Used for emailing, Appointments, Contacts
    Access - Database application used for storing information

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) product, usually one of the following:

Microsoft CRM
Sage Act
Goldmine

Industry Specific Software

Almost all of the software we come across is very effective, but seems to work independently to the next. Because of this islands of data are created in each application which usually has to be copied and pasted from somewhere else. Company and Contact information for example is stored in Sage, and in Outlook, maybe in Microsoft Access, and in CRM. Sales Order information may be replicated and stored in Sage, CRM, Access, Excel maybe?

I don’t believe companies can see the impact that these inefficient processes have on their businesses. Additional man-power is employed to cope with busy and hectic workloads, which simply don’t need to be that way. It just seems to be the norm, and is accepted by almost everyone.
 
There is a better way:
 
By taking one common application which is or can be used by everyone is the starting point. For this we generally recommend Microsoft CRM. Why? Well MS CRM can integrate with Sage, fits in nicely to MS Office and Outlook, connects with database systems and more.

With MS CRM you can therefore view different information, from different applications all in one place.

Ok granted, sometimes ‘middleware’ is required to interface between one application and another, but the cost of such systems can be insignificant if measured against the benefits:

- Imagine if you were able to cut down your labour costs, or admin costs which are continual cost savings

- Imagine if you had all your company information at your fingertips, all in one place, all instantly searchable

- Imagine if you could produce quotes, proposals, orders in seconds, rather than minutes, or even hours

- Imagine if you could access the same information from your mobile phone, laptop, at home, abroad, anywhere

- What if you could present information back out to your clients?

The next step:

We don’t offer a revolution out of the box. We recommend a staged approach which starts by mapping your processes, and streamlining them with the use of efficient technology.

In the current market every penny counts, don’t pay wages to cover inefficiencies in your business, get lean and get efficient.