Rising concern among UK businesses for the security of UK and EU data transferred and stored in the U.S. came to a head last week when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the EU-US Safe Harbour Framework invalid.Safe Harbour was originally designed as a ‘streamlined and cost-effective’ way for US firms to transfer data from Europe without breaking EU law. In the wake of the Snowden allegations, however, the EC J has ruled Safe Harbour invalid.

While Cloud Direct customers have nothing to worry about (all of our data is securely stored within the EU and bound by strict ISO and DPA standards), we thought it worth outlining what the sinking of the Safe Harbour agreement means for UK businesses that DO have customer data stored in the U.S.Three reasons why UK businesses probably don’t want their customer data stored in the U.S.

1. U.S. companies can no longer self-certifyThe safe harbour agreement that was made between the EU and the US government essentially promised to protect EU citizens’ data if transferred by American companies to the US. All the US company needed to do was “self-certify” that they would protect EU data. This agreement has now been declared invalid by the European Court of Justice.
2. U.S. businesses must now seek to strike EU model clausesSince US businesses can no longer rely on self-certification to authorise the transfer of data outside Europe, they must now incorporate the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses – commonly referred to as ‘model clauses’.
3. A new Safe Harbour agreement could take some timeWhile the good news is that an updated Safe Harbour agreement – called Safe Harbour 2.0 – is being drawn up, the bad news is that talks between the EU and the US have been ongoing for around two years.

If you’re thinking about taking the leap to cloud services, you want to be confident you’re doing the right thing for your business. Since 2003, we’ve migrated numerous organisations to the cloud. Find out about some of their experiences. This blog looks at:

• IT security
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Time and cost savings
• Quality of service and people
• Remote working
• Other cloud IT providers

Peter Howlett, CFO, Pactum Asset Management, said:

About our people

“I fully entrust 90% of our technology to Cloud Direct. They’re all true professionals who actually understand what you’re talking about. Right from the start they’ve been open and have got straight down to problem-solving. They’re really helpful.”

“In our size of a firm, you aren’t normally going to have cloud IT specialists. Even if you do have an IT person, they’ll be a software person who knows a little about hardware and infrastructure – but they won’t be able to touch what Cloud Direct can do for your business.”

About security

“Frankly, any small or medium business that isn’t considering cloud is off their head. (Peter doesn’t mince his words!) People need to get over any misplaced feelings of a lack of security. They need to come to terms with losing a degree of control. Once people get over their fears, their businesses can really benefit from packaged cloud.”

About our technology

“They give us proper remote access, truly integrated across our business, telephone and IT systems.  The processing power of the servicers Cloud Direct provides far exceeds that of even relatively high spec PCs. They’ve even integrated us with Bloomberg. They’re streets ahead of the competition.”

About saving money

“Without a doubt it’s cheaper. Especially if you consider the costs of upgrades, processing and software – it’s dramatically cheaper.”

About saving time

“More than anything, Cloud Direct’s service takes 90% of the responsibility for IT out of my hands. Before Cloud Direct, IT management would suck up all of my time. If something were to go wrong, I could easily spend two days sorting it out. Cloud Direct takes away the big unknown from a time perspective and puts the IT responsibility firmly into the hands of people who truly understand it.”

About the competition

“No-one could give us everything we wanted – until we found Cloud Direct. Not only did Cloud Direct say they could do everything – but they actually could. I was really surprised to discover that our incumbent IT service provider – a major player in London – was unable to deliver more than around a third of what we wanted. My research results for other providers was equally sparse.”

John de-Pulford, IT manager, London & Continental Railways (LCR):

About our people

“Cloud Direct’s people are enthusiastically innovative. They’re always prepared to go the extra mile.”

About working from anywhere

“As long as employees have internet access, they can work from anywhere.”

Steve Pickering, practice manager, McParland Williams

About our technology

“One of the best technology investment decisions we’ve made.”

About our service

“It’s a service that really does do exactly what it says on the tin. I’m so delighted that I’ve recommended Cloud Direct to many of my commercial clients.”

Sam Carew, IT manager, Efficio International Consulting

About remote access

“We recently had a situation where an employee in Belgium lost his machine on a routine business trip. Fortunately he was able to use a web browser and securely log into the web portal and retrieve files.”

If you’d like to find out more about what our customers think, please visit the ‘case studies’ section of our ‘Resources’ page. You can find it here: Case Studies CTA

With businesses employing the use of a vast array of computer technology, it can become a challenge to keep on top of each and every IT process. If you are struggling to get to grips with the many programmes and services your company requires, it may be advisable to consider outsourcing to a professional team. The dedicated specialists here at Cloud Direct are able to work efficiently, offering a range of IT Services in London to give you the support you need.

The size of your company will determine what level of support is necessary, so read on as we take you through the possibilities for small, medium and large businesses.

Small (Less than 50 Employees)

Smaller organisations will most likely not have a fully-fledged IT department in place.

Medium (50-250 Employees)

Whilst some medium sized companies will hire an in-house IT team, others prefer to outsource due to the difference in cost, as a full time IT employee usually has a salary of £35,000-£50,000 a year. There are many other advantages of outsourcing your IT, most notably the fact that rather than just one individual taking charge, we can offer a selection of professionals with experience in different processes, so no matter what you need, you are guaranteed a high level of service.

Large (250+ Employers)

Outsourcing for large businesses can be highly advantageous as operations such as network management, helpdesk and server operations can be dealt with by us, leaving your IT department to concentrate on other technological procedures and developments.

The day to day running of your business can be greatly aided by many things, from outsourcing your IT for maximum efficiency to calling upon professional shredding services London that ensures confidentiality at all times.

Moving your in-house servers and fixed line phones to the cloud is today more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’. More so, it’s becoming increasingly urgent in organisations where in-house IT is holding back business growth and even putting the business at risk. However, many organisations see cloud migration itself as risky, complex and expensive. But it needn’t be. It doesn’t have to be hard to say goodbye to in-house IT.

If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.

― Dr. Seuss

In 2013, more than 70% of companies surveyed by IDC were using, planning, or researching cloud strategies – and that figure continues to increase.

But here’s the bad news. Bloor Research gauges cloud migration failure at a shocking 38%. Added to that the confusing melée of cloud vendors out there, and no wonder small and medium sized organisations are concerned about how they can achieve successful cloud migration. Especially when they usually have fewer resources and more at risk than large enterprises.

When cloud migration becomes urgent

In 10 years, we’ve helped numerous organisations migrate to the cloud – simply, securely and successfully. And we’ve grown to understand the pains and concerns of our customers.

So today, I can share three signs that should shout loud and clear to you that your business needs cloud migration – and fast.

How to know when you’re ready for cloud migration

1. Your business has outgrown its in-house IT infrastructure

You’ll know that you’ve outgrown your in-house infrastructure when you see evidence of the following:

Physical signs

Your server room is a mess. It’s cramped and hot. There’s quite literally no room for your IT infrastructure to grow and meet your future business needs. You think that the only way you can grow is by major reconfiguration of people and office arrangements.

Rising cost of IT per head

Your business needs to flex according to projects and cycles. But regardless, cost per capita should remain constant. In your business, this isn’t happening. And whether that’s because you’re running more applications, dealing with security breaches or down to cost-cutting, you need to address this.

Merger or similar change

The total cost of integrating your disparate onsite IT systems and networks far outweighs the costs of moving multiple entities to hosted desktop and VoIP.

No flexibility for data

Your IT isn’t allowing for the peaks and troughs in data processing that your business demands.

It’s all too complex

The introduction of new services and applications is creating an ever-growing number of silos and blind spots across the business. Hopes for future change and the desire for an agile business are fading. Fast.

2. Your in-house time-bomb: Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS)

Organisations that run on Microsoft Small Business Servers (SBS) 2003/07 are most likely massively feeling the restrictive headache of old world IT. These old servers are poorly equipped to deal with today’s exponential data growth or adoption of new lines of business applications. And your businesses is poorly equipped to deal with the licencing restrictions of SBS.

But that’s not half the story.

Microsoft is pulling support for its small business servers. That means you’ll no longer receive new security updates, hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates.

With what is effectively now an insecure server, all your data, applications and processes are highly vulnerable to attack. At risk are your email, document storage and business applications. This means your Sage Accounts, CAD Drawings or legal case management software, for example, are all exposed. Yes, your server will still function, but basically it’s a ticking time bomb. And if a vulnerability were to be exploited, all businesses could be exposed to attack.

53% of small-medium business leaders consider growth their number one priority for 2015

If you’re running on SBS, your business needs to migrate to new platforms and technologies as soon as possible. Security risks aside, small businesses, more than most, recognise the need to grow – the need to be agile and adaptable. In a September survey of 232 business and IT leaders, we found that 53% of respondents’ number one priority for 2015 is business growth.

A cloud-based infrastructure hits the jackpot when it comes to allowing business growth. It allows a business to scale. It’s reliable. It’s affordable. It can be packaged according to industry needs.

Of course, each organisation is different; it may be that some areas of the business are left in-house. However the simplest, most agile and secure solution to the SBS problem, is to migrate your Exchange server to Office 365 and of all your other SBS components to hosted desktop (desktop-as-a-service – or DaaS).

3. You need to improve communications and productivity

To compete in business, you’ve got to have speed, mobility and security. But does your in-house infrastructure support the technologies required to function competitively? Are your people able to communicate and collaborate quickly and productively no matter where – or when – they are? Do you have a BYOD policy in place so that your business and customer data is secure if your employees are using their personal devices for work? Is your data encrypted and backed up? Do you have a disaster recovery solution in place?

These are issues that can all be addressed with cloud solutions. And they all rely on the availability of your critical business systems – your email, databases, file stores and business applications. Your business can’t afford poor availability and bandwidth to hold you back from these new working methods.

Business telephone migration to VoIP from a traditional landline/PBX can be painfully complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. You know it will improve your business mobility, business continuity and bottom line, however there are six key things you need to watch out for before you plan your VoIP migration.

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~ Dr Seuss

Why choose hosted VoIP?

But first, let’s look at why you’d want to move your business phones from a traditional landline to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP):

• It supports mobile working and BYOD policies
• It’s cheaper: you avoid CapEx, and instead pay a monthly subscription for what you need
• You get improved call quality with faster broadband
• It boosts business efficiency and productivity

And also:

• It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes
• It’s hassle-free
• It supports growth
• It’s in the cloud, so your business can continue to function no matter what – through flood or fire or mobile working

In May 2014, we covered the key reasons why businesses should switch to hosted VoIP in some depth. If you haven’t already, you can read about them in this blog: Why switch to VoIP for business?

You’ve decided to migrate to hosted VoIP; what next?

So now to the crux of the matter. Here are the six critical questions to ask when moving your business telephones to hosted VoIP.

1. Is my broadband good enough?

VoIP 100% relies on good internet bandwidth to transfer call data. So a slow internet connection will immediately affect the quality of your call.

2. What length of contract best suits my business?

Doubtless, you’ll be looking to minimise the monthly cost of your business VoIP. You’ll always find the cheapest rates if you commit to longer time-scales, so look for a provider that offers 12-, 24- and 36-month contracts. With the flexibility of cloud, you can add extra licences on a month-by-month basis, according to your business requirements, so you only pay for what you need. Opt for a rolling contract, and – while you’ll have more flexibility – you’ll pay premium prices.

3. What level of customer support does my business need?

Alongside email, your phone communications most likely underpin your functionality as a business. It’ll be critical for customer enquiries and sales activities. As with traditional PBX – or landline – any problems will immediately have repercussions in the form of frustrated customers and depleted sales.

This is where a top-rate, UK based customer service will make a world of difference. In this day and age there really is no reason for prolonged – if any – service disruption. There’s also the added benefit of a 24-hour ability to change any of your settings, such as auto-attendant options, hunt groups and call forwarding.

4. What hardware does my business need?

When migrating to business VoIP you’ll need to ditch your traditional analogue phones. It sounds wasteful, I know, but unfortunately they aren’t forward compatible. Business grade handsets offer high definition call quality on a secure network protected from hackers.

5. How mobile do we need to be?

Some service providers limit their packages to certain devices. Work out what your business needs and go from there. With a robust and compliant cloud solution for your industry, you should be able to access your hosted VoIP services from your PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones – wherever you have a suitable internet connection.

6. What hidden costs do I need to be aware of?

Make sure you’ve looked into costs. Go for per-second billing as opposed to per-minute billing – that’ll make your monthly expenditure a lot more attractive.

What you should expect from your business VoIP provider

So you’ve covered the six key bases and may well have chosen your VoIP provider. Now you just need to make sure they will provide you with:

• A telephony audit and cost analysis
• Solution design and call route planning
• Number porting
• Smooth implementation and early use support
• Product training

Microsoft Office 365 is essentially all your familiar Office applications, but hosted in the cloud. It supports business mobility and the Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) for work model, as you can access your office from anywhere, on any device and at any time. Security is addressed with encryption and intrusion monitoring. But how can you make sure you’re choosing the right Office 365 provider for your business? For example, what happens if you hit downtime and need to get your email back up immediately?

Why Office 365 is good for business mobility and BYOD

Before we look at the six critical questions you need to ask when considering the best Office 365 package for your business, let’s look at how Office 365 has great advantages for today’s modern business.

• Office 365 goes where you do: no matter where you are, your files, email, calendar, contacts, IM, online meetings and team sites go with you.
• It works across all your devices – for example your tablet, laptop, iPhone or Android.
• It’s fresh and familiar: the suite of Office apps are always up-to-date.
• It’s secure: you data is protected against malware, spam, phishing attacks and other threats.
• It’s available 24/7.
• Exchange Online makes your email accessible on your own devices. There are no major firewall changes and no Exchange servers are required.
• With Microsoft WebApps and a plug into Outlook, you can edit, collaborate and share documents in ABC and – in one click – attach a public link to emails. All while on the move.
• With Lync, you can communicate from your own devices, connect, share desktops and hold online meetings.

Six essential questions to ask when choosing your Office 365 package

So here’s the crux of it all. If you’re considering moving to Office 365 to support your business mobility and BYOD programme – or for any other reason – we think it’s important to ask yourself the following six questions.

1. Customer service: will you get the speed and quality of customer service support that you need?

Say, for example, you’re about to present at a client’s office and go to download the email with your presentation document on it when you realise your email is down. The obvious solution would be to call up Microsoft and ask them to fix it asap. But you haven’t paid for the top level of support, so you’re given a ticket and placed in a queue. Your important meeting is over long before your email is back up and running.

Make sure you have the level of support that suits your business requirements. Cloud Direct is a Microsoft cloud services provider (CSP) partner, so we can offer our highly-responsive 24/7 services on top of Microsoft’s basic package. So our customers get the best of both worlds.

2. Data security & privacy: are you comfortable that your cloud services provider will give your business data an acceptable level of security and privacy?

If yours is a small to medium business, you’re likely to experience better security using Office 365 than you can (probably) afford on your own. But, if security is paramount to your business, make sure your data is always recoverable and compliant with legal and industrial regulations. You should consider ISO 27001 accredited backup and disaster recovery.

3. Data uptime: will you get acceptable uptime and accessibility of your data?

Microsoft guarantees data uptime of 99.9%, which may be fine for some organisations, however the impact of downtime can be severe – especially if you’re in a heavily regulated industry such as financial or legal services, healthcare, energy or government.

We have addressed this with our offer of additional security for Office 365 that should afford you greater uptime. This means both productivity and legal requirements are addressed – you can keep working on the move, confident that you aren’t risking your business with a lower level of support.

4. Retrieving your data: if your cloud services provider stops offering one or more of the services, do you know how – or if – you can get your data back?

Your data is critical to your business success. Make sure you find out what the process is in this scenario, and make sure you’re happy with it.

5. Business exposure: if you stop paying your provider, do you have a mechanism to access everything your business depends on?

Don’t risk your intellectual property by getting caught out in a data grey zone. Make sure you know the answer and that your business is protected.

6. Your employees are, in fact your biggest threat. So have you got a BYOD policy in place?

Having said the first five points, in fact, when it comes to business mobility and a BYOD model, your service provider is not the most likely to be the cause of business disruption. Your biggest threats, in fact, are your own staff and associates.

“Nearly a third of smartphone users who bring their own devices into the workplace have suffered a security issue and not told their boss”. ~ a Gartner study

In the same study, Gartner found that only 15 per cent of respondents had signed any kind of BYOD usage agreement, and a worrying 59 per cent of employees are using their own devices in the workplace with no formal agreements or controls in place.

With the Information Commissioners Office threatening fines of up to half a million pounds for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act, a BYOD policy is a corporate must-have. Check out this blog: BYOD security risks.

You can download our BYOD policy template here. You’re welcome to edit and brand the template according to your specific organisation’s requirements.

Millie doesn’t have time to worry about cybercrime; she’s trying to run her business. But she knows that faster attacks, more files held for ransom, and a snake pit of malicious code doing the rounds are all putting her increasingly mobile business at risk. Luckily for Millie, her IT manager is switched on to endpoint protection, keeping her business safe from data corruption, data breaches and data loss. Here’s what happened one day in the life of Thoroughly Mobile Millie.

08:00 hours – Millie avoids opening a phishing email

As Millie unwinds after her gym workout, she takes 20 minutes over a coffee to check her emails.  In the midst of them, she finds one from her malware and virus detection software app, warning her against a potential threat. Not recognising the sender, she chooses to blacklist the email.

Smart decision.

Had it not been for the real-time detection model her IT manager set up, in a millisecond, she could’ve exposed her business and contacts to data corruption via the latest evolution of email attack.

Unlike traditional detection models, this endpoint protection module uses file pattern and predictive behaviour recognition, scanning all emails superfast, protecting the business without slowing down Millie’s busy day.

At the same time, Millie’s IT manager is able to access the app’s Web-based portal to manage and report on the entire company’s activities, without having to worry about onsite server hardware or software, and the hassles of managing daily signatures or updates.

09:00 hours – Millie arrives in the office to discover an employee has lost their iPad

It’s what we all dread. Losing a laptop, smartphone or tablet with sensitive customer data – not to mention business data. Every year, thousands of business devices are lost or stolen, exposing organisations to the risk of data breaches, fines from the ICO – damaging business reputations and customer confidence.

However, with their endpoint protection set-up, Millie’s IT manager quickly steps in to lockdown the device and wipe sensitive data. He’s easily able to monitor and secure activity without compromising the mortified employee’s privacy.

11:00 hours – Millie welcomes three new recruits, already governed by endpoint protection

Millie’s business is flexible. It has to be. So as employee numbers grows, contract and grow again, their endpoint protection scales accordingly. This keeps her business secure and compliant with data governance and industry regulations.

And it’s all managed by her IT manager, from one central point. He’s also supported with out-of-the-box advanced system reporting, automated report generation, delivery and proactive metric-based backup management.

12:00 hours – Millie travels to a meeting with her lawyers, and needs to access files on the way

In the taxi on the way to meeting with her lawyer, Millie and a colleague need to make some last-minute changes to a document. A quick Skype for Business message exchange with a colleague in the office directs them to the file, which they access, collaborate on with their office-based colleague, amend and save. Changes are effected immediately and accessible across the business, to both office and remote workers alike. It’s also backed up. This means Millie’s business continues to work at the speed required, they’re productive and there’s no need to waste their IT manager’s budget or time – support costs are minimised.

13:00 hours – Lawyers can get the information they need quickly – with the Legal Hold application

Finding the right data you need quickly is no easy task for any legal team. With the best endpoint protection package for the business, Millie’s IT manager has made data retrieval fast and secure.

With compliant seven-year archiving and eDiscovery, the information the lawyers need is found quickly, saving Millie further the need to pay for costly consultants, legal services and third party tools. It automates and centralises backup and search of data across devices. So IT and legal teams can easily identify, collect, preserver and review potential data internally.

16:00 hours – Millie’s management team reviews their ISO 27001 compliance requirements

With the case meeting out of the way, Millie heads back to the office for a compliance meeting with her management team. To help them keep customers and win new business in an increasingly competitive business environment, Mille is keen to assure her customers of her business commitment to keeping their data secure.

Using the same backup package that protects business critical information of more than four million other corporate users, Millie is able to provide that guarantee with ISO 27001 data security protection.  Advanced encryption and other top-level security procedures and protocols safeguard her business data at all times – during transmission, storage and recovery.

22:30 hours – With endpoint protection, Millie and her IT manager have peace of mind

Safe in the knowledge that the business is protected 24/7, Millie and her IT manager can get a good night’s sleep. (Even though someone, somewhere, is working out a new way to disrupt this…)

£230million. At its worst, that’s how much last winter’s weather was *estimated to cost UK small-medium businesses in a single day. A frustrating **two-fifths of those businesses are now likely to fail in the next two years. A cloud backup and Disaster Recovery solution can stop this happening to your organisation. Here’s how.

“It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it”~ Amelia Barr

According to telecoms provider, Daisy Group plc, nearly a third (31%) of UK businesses have been affected by bad weather over the last two years. Transport problems, power cuts or broadband and phone line failures are all to blame. Last year, bad weather prevented an estimated three million UK workers from completing their normal work responsibilities.

That’s a pretty gloomy picture, right?

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The sunshine behind the cloud: cloud backup and disaster recovery

With cloud backup and disaster recovery in place, the impact of the weather fades dramatically. Why? Because, as long as you have access to the Internet via broadband or 3/4G wireless connections, you can keep up communications and proceed with business as usual – albeit maybe with limited capabilities initially. But either way, your telephone, email, internet connection, power, data and servers are all accessible and under control.

Such a resilient cloud disaster recovery set-up means that, if disaster strikes, you’re ahead of the game. And the faster you get your business back in business, the less your reputation and finances suffer.

Speed: as fast as Hermes, the winged messenger

In the event of a disaster, cloud technology is fast. It reduces recovery times from hours or days to just minutes. Remote access to backed up data means, amongst other things, you no longer have to physically transfer tapes to offsite stand-by sites. You can also recover servers and applications much more quickly, significantly limiting business downtime – which you want to avoid like the plague. The longer you’re unable to operate, the more damaging it is for your business – both financially, and for your reputation.

Guaranteed: as wise as Athena, goddess of wisdom

It’s smart to make sure you have a guarantee behind your data and IT systems recovery. A simple automated appliance can: sit on your server and capture snapshots of it; convert them into virtual rescue images; test their integrity; and test invocation and rescue. This daily process will ensure your business continuity through a disaster.

But make sure you get a convincing SLA and guaranteed 30-day transition period, so your systems are fully tested in your environment before switching back fully to your usual system.

Security – as controlled as Zeus, king of the gods

Your server snapshots should be protected during capture, transfer and storage with encryption and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies. However, for the highest possible protection of your data and systems, what you really want is a service provider that is overlaid end-to-end ISO 27001 security processes, which are independently audited.

Reliability – as steady as wine-loving Bacchus is not!

The cloud is reliable. It avoids introducing risk through human error as it eliminates many of the complex, manual steps that traditional recovery solutions require.

Cost – as accurate as Artemis’s hunting bow

The cloud makes the most of your financial investment. You don’t need to pay for your own hardware just for it to sit idle.

Scalability – as smart in business as Hermes, god of trade

Cloud solutions are easily scalable, so you can expand or contract recovery capabilities on demand, without having to pay for services you don’t need. This is a massive benefit for SMBs.

Accessible – as accessible as Aphrodite’s skirts, but in a good way

Because you don’t need to make a massive investment in hardware or in-house specialised recovery knowledge, cloud services (the good ones) put SMBs in a position to adopt an enterprise-level solution that otherwise would be beyond their reach. So not only do cloud solutions require less financial and resourcing investment, they also enable SMBs to achieve the same type of recovery times, recovery points and security levels as large enterprises.

Your entire business in the cloud: phones, emails and calendars

Cloud backup and disaster recovery will give you the confidence that you can maintain business some form of business continuity, no matter the weather. But ultimately, you can run your entire business from the cloud.

All your phone settings, call routings, apps and configurations are saved remotely, in the cloud, so you can still access and manage your phone system from any location with an Internet connection. Unlike the early days of Voice over Internet Protocol, when users could only access a VoIP network from a computer, today you can access it from business handsets and any mobile device with an Internet connection.

The same goes for your email and calendar. For example, with the Microsoft Office 365 suite of cloud solutions, you can access your email, calendar and contacts from any device. You can even conference or collaborate on files with your teams in real time, regardless of physical location. So, if you’ve had to disperse your teams to locations that aren’t your primary site, your people can still keep working and communicating in way that should appear seamless to clients and customers.

The cloud can also provide resilience for your internet connection, with failover that ensures that if one internet connection fails for whatever reason, you will maintain a seamless connection, ensuring business as usual – even wirelessly with 3 and 4G.

To find out how our business continuity/disaster recovery solutions work, check out this two-minute video:

A practical guide to achieving real-world business excellence

Introduction

Sustainable profitable growth – well above market average – is a goal of many businesses. Research by Bain & Co pointed to most businesses aiming to outgrow their market by a factor of two to one, with profits of four times the average. Yet only ten per cent of businesses ever achieve their stated goal.

Too many businesses take short-term, inappropriate actions in a vain attempt to succeed. The most tempting and most common is to book ‘bad’ profits, often at the expense of the customer. Examples abound: the mobile phone provider that offers lower prices to new customers only; the airline that charges you to sit next to your partner or children; the car rental company that charges punitive refilling fees; the bank that charges excessive fees for a letter; the insurance company that quibbles over settling a legitimate claim.

Studies show that typical businesses book between 25% and 50% of bad profits. Booking bad profits at the expense of the customer – at best delivers short term benefits only – at worst it creates long-term resentment and brand damage, stifling longer-term profitable growth. Put another way, if you treat customers badly today, you do not deserve nor will you receive their loyalty.

Work by Bain & Co shows causal links between high customer loyalty and high profitable growth. Across multiple industries and varying sizes of enterprise – those with high loyalty scores outperformed their competitors by a wide margin.

Seven Steps to Driving Customer Loyalty

Satisfaction is not the same as loyalty. Nor is loyalty only about customer service.

Satisfaction is a poor measure of customer loyalty. Satisfaction is about doing the basics right, having good products, fixing or eliminating errors, or being friendly. In many ways, satisfaction is a hygiene factor (as described by Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs). Bain provided further evidence of the lack of correlation between satisfaction and loyalty with micro-level research; with one client 85% of their lost customers reported being satisfied with the service they had been receiving – yet they still left.

In order to achieve high levels of customer loyalty, a business needs to be able to delight or ‘wow’ its customers. This means doing one of two things: 1) delivering exceptional products well or 2) delivering good products exceptionally. Executives need to take a clinical look at their own products and their own service delivery to assess how well they match up to these two tests.

The process of achieving superior loyalty (and hence superior profits and growth) can be broken down into seven steps:

1. Identify the most attractive segments and understand their needs. Most businesses begin by selling ‘anything’ to ‘anyone’. They evolve and become more focused in their approach, yet many find it hard to resist the temptation for easy revenues and easy profits – by selling ‘almost anything’ to ‘almost anyone’. Identifying the most attractive slices of the market (biggest opportunity, best fit, most profitable, least competitive, closest to core…) is the vital first step if a reputation for being exceptional is to be achieved.
2. Design differentially better value propositions. Once you have a clear idea of your ideal segments, then having an equally clear idea of the customers’ needs is next. Designing products that are clearly better than the current competition at addressing the discovered needs is theoretically simple – but requires strong leadership to push through.
3. Acquire new target customers. This is the normal process of marketing and sales – albeit more targeted and focussed than before steps one and two.
4. Deliver superior customer experience. Delivering exception service goes beyond simply responding to customers’ requests and fixing problems. The requirement is to delight, surprise and wow the customer. Implementing changes in front-line functions that can follow through on this is extremely difficult – not least because it is difficult to get timely feedback and to measure how well you are doing. Certainly, the changes required will touch many aspects of the business from recruitment, training, incentives, management and leadership.
5. Grow share of wallet for target customers. A customer who is delighted with one product or service from you is much more likely to buy another. And without the overhead of having to re-acquire the customer for subsequent products, the overall profitability of the business increases.
6. Drive loyalty and retention. As customers stay longer, the life-time value you receive from them increases – as does the level of referral. We can all understand how this lack of attrition provides the foundation for growth.
7. Retain more profit to out invest and outgrow the competition. Loyal customers, spending more – combined with lower acquisition costs – results in more profit. These profits can be used to innovate, enter new markets, develop brand power – and accelerate past the competition.

Using Net Promoter Score to measure and drive progress

“Have I treated you in a way that deserves your loyalty…?”

Loyalty is hard to measure. Most business functions rely upon Key Performance Indicators developed over hundreds of years that are understood, bench-marked and proven. Tools for managing profit have strict standards; all businesses follow them and are able to compare their own results with their peers. If we accept that loyalty is a driver of long term profit – then a way to measure loyalty is critical – such a measure would be a powerful ‘leading indicator’ on any balanced scorecard.

We have already dismissed customer satisfaction as a valid measure. This, amongst other things, led Bain, Satmetrix and Fred Reichheld to develop a loyalty measure called Net Promoter Score (NPS). The purpose of NPS is to measure how well a business and its employees treat their customers – and – provide micro-level feedback as to make the necessary changes to improve the score (by which we mean improve loyalty).

Net Promoter is:

• An operating metric that describes the health of the customer balance sheet
• A leading (as opposed to lagging) indicator of growth on a ‘Balanced Score Card’ (see related article on Balanced Score Cards)
• A way to provide a singular focus for the business to focus on customer experience improvement
• A diagnostic tool for understanding opportunities to improve at the ‘Moments of Truth’ (as described by Jan Carlzon in his book of the same name).
• An enabler for creating a closed-loop process that can improve the customer relationship

Net Promoter is not:

• A replacement for other types of research, which can probe specific areas or provide deeper qualitative insight.
• A reason to wait until customers complain before addressing their issues with the experience.
• A metric that will improve before the right changes are made in the customer experience and they have had time to perceive the changes
• A substitute for institutional passion around improving the customer experience.

NPS methodology relies on just two questions:

• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
• What can we do to improve what we do?

The first question is powerfully simple – it probes both the rational (head) and the irrational (heart) of the customer. Before answering, the customer has to think about their own reputation and credibility. You only have to think about a personal situation where someone might ask you to recommend the best restaurant to take a special guest to – or your advice on a great school for their child. The questions make you stop and think; you only recommend if you’re sure.

In order to provide a global benchmark, the responses to NPS surveys must be on a fixed scale of zero to ten (not one to ten), where zero means ‘very unlikely’ and ten means ‘very likely’. The responses a categorised into those who are:

• Promoters – score 9 or 10
• Neutrals – score 7, or 8
• Detractors – score 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6

To calculate your NPS simply subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters (the Neutrals are ignored).

The result is expressed as a percentage and range from -100% through to 100%. It is not uncommon for negative scores to pervade certain industries; scores of over 70% are considered to be world-class.