| | | The virtual CIO |  How many small to medium businesses have a Chief Information Officer (CIO) to guide their use of information and technology? A CIO is responsible for the information technology within an organisation including the processes and practices supporting the flow of information, whereas the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is generally responsible for the technology infrastructure. They're not the same skill set.
Technology often begins as the domain of the founder of a small business. As technology reaches further into the business and needs become more specialised, or as costly mistakes are made, a technical boffin is hired to sort the mess out. A technical empire grows, and the technology becomes an end in itself. New challenges emerge: managing people and budgets, finding the right staff, aligning IT with business strategies, refreshing and modernising infrastructure, managing customer interfaces with the business’s technology systems, and managing change.
There's not going to be a simple technical fix. Enter the CIO.
While many CIOs have a technical background, this is not universal and increasingly the keys to success are leadership capability, business acumen and strategic perspectives. Typically, the CIO recommends the information technology that will be needed to achieve business goals, and then works within a budget to achieve the plan.
He or she may be involved with analysing and reworking existing business processes, identifying and developing the capacity to use new tools, reshaping technical infrastructure and network access, identifying and exploiting the business’s knowledge resources, and integrating the Internet and the web into both short and long term business strategy. |
How to improve service by re-using existing assetsDoes your business have a CIO? If not, can you resource a CIO with all the skills? Where can you find one that you can trust? The Virtual CIOIt may be time to consider a virtual CIO. With over 25 years of IT experience and customers in many industries, Multibase staff and partners have deep and broad expertise. We specialise in developing and managing complete business IT solutions, and we also maintain and manage specific customer applications and hosted or in-house services. What we can do for youMultibase can combine a wide range of skills and specialisations in a package tailored for each customer, to plan how your IT services will meet your business needs. This may include - Service analysis
- Service design
- IT service operations planning
Our approach works for assignments of any scale. The investment in a planned process is all the more relevant in a challenging business environment to eliminate errors, waste, and unnecessary rework. The Multibase Virtual CIO will work with you to make sure your IT services are strategic assets for your business, with a plan to manage investment, resourcing, operations and improvement, as well as delivering a clear understanding of how they create value for your business. Get the VIRTUAL CIO working for you. Ask for a free consultation about making your IT systems work harder.
How to improve service by re-using existing assetsIs your IT being used to its greatest advantage? Looking to generate more value from your current assets rather than replacing them? Need maintenance of your CL4 application? Here's an exampleA financial management company had just 10 weeks to deliver to its scheme members a complete view of their portfolio through a secure web site , based on highly protected data sources. This information was previously unavailable in real time. Multibase collaborated with the customer to deliver, within the time frame, a dynamic experience that extended the value of the company’s existing customer account portfolio. Previous investments were leveraged and systems consolidated and centralised. The cost was modest compared with expectations. How we can help youMultibase has deep and extensive experience in auditing and maintaining legacy systems, and integrating legacy systems into new solutions that release value from existing assets. This enables you to: - Optimise your use of IT
- Obtain greater and faster return on new IT investment
- Generate value for the business from existing investments for a longer period
Get the VIRTUAL CIO working for you. Ask for a free consultation about generating more value from your existing assets..
How to plan ahead and improve service and business continuityMitigate the effects of adverse events by planning for them ahead of time, instead of waiting for them to occur. The concern is not how likely is the problem, but what would the impact be if it did occur. Multibase provides quality, reliable datacentre hosting options for business applications. We also manage applications hosted on your premises or other datacentres. Specialist hosting can be custom designed to your specifications. Here's an exampleA business maintains its major application on its own premises, but is having difficulty with: - managing secure access for staff, on the road from mobile devices and after hours from home
- keeping Internet bandwidth and server capacity up to the demands of the new broadband-friendly application
- maintaining high availability and capacity
- backups which are regularly failing, and have not been verified for some months because the inhouse staff are too busy.
A business continuity plan is developed. The live system is moved to Multibase's data centre, hosted on a virtual dedicated server. Staff access the system easily and securely on the road, and after hours from home. The server itself is managed and patched by the data centre staff. A warm standby is maintained in the office, with data from the main system regularly updated onto the standby system. The office location for the standby is less expensive than using a second data centre, and offers less risk than having both systems in the same place. The backup regime is optimised, run daily and verified, stored offsite, and as an additional disaster recovery protection, the main server is cloned on a daily basis so that it can be resurrected quickly. The IT staff and the board sleep better every night that passes. How we can help youMultibase hosting services particularly suit specialist hosting requirements, including application and database hosting, secure backend database hosting, remote and legacy system integration, multi-platform installations, and access to remote services. We understand how to keep your business running reliably. Contact us now for a free consultation with your Virtual CIO to hear how a managed solution can take the problem away.
How to collect money more quickly and reduce costsMultibase combines experience in web and mobile payments with security, application development, hosting and operations management to assist customers to save money, improve business processes and focus on generating new business rather than collecting money. Here's an exampleA service business needs to collect customer payments more quickly for its one-off services and monthly contracts. Following a business process review, it decides to offer customers new ways to pay, and new incentives to pay more quickly. A simple web application compares the invoice number and a one-time password, and displays the details of the invoice with a discount if payment is made within 7 days. Customers pay online with Multibase's ePay service. After 7 days, customers are automatically emailed a reminder with a "Pay Now" link to the payment system. Payments outstanding after a further 7 days are referred automatically to the sales manager. For service calls, field officers are equipped with low-cost mobile payment terminals. Payments are settled into the merchant’s account rather than banking and waiting for a cheque to clear. The accounts department is notified automatically when a payment is made. Fees for monthly contracts are managed with Multibase’s rePay, charging regular amounts to a credit card. A fortnightly report from the ePay merchant administration centre lets accounts staff reconcile payments. Instead of ringing customers to chase payments, the customer service officer has time to phone customers and thank them, check their satisfaction levels, and make new sales offers. How we can help youMultibase delivers a wide range of ecommerce services including online credit card clearance, 3D Secure authentication on the web, recurring credit card payments, ecommerce catalogues and shopping carts, and mobile credit card clearance. Contact us now for a free consultation with your Virtual CIO about a managed ecommerce solution.
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