Sage Blog

Our first guest blogger of 2012 is Jonathan Hirst, Partner at networking and security specialist ITogether . Jonathan talks about the most important resolution for small business owners in 2012

We’ve all made the traditional New Years’ Resolutions pledging to get fit (always sign up to this!), drink less alcohol (I’ve never signed up to this!) and to travel more. According to research conducted by Oxfam at the start of last year 34 million Brits set out to make New Years’ Resolutions this year, and if past trends continue we’ll all  fail to keep them in under a month!

One of the biggest issues facing SME’s every year is the rising threats to their businesses of poor IT security. While many are set to repeat last years’ resolutions to improve their health, SME owners have to set network security at the top of the priority list and it’s not a resolution you can afford to ignore.  Here’s why.

ITogether recently commissioned research that showed that more than half (59%) of employees use their own personal mobile devices such as Android phones and iPads for work, with 61 per cent connecting them to their employers IT systems.

During the last few years we’ve seen a rapid increase in the number of people using social media, and it is now a fixture of our everyday work and personal lives.  Today, social networks connect people to the world around them and employees expect to be able to access their personal online accounts in the workplace.   What is alarming is that, despite this, few companies have established formal processes for handling social networking tools in the workplace leading to an increased risk in cyber attacks and security breaches.

Why not use the New Year to kick start a prioritisation of your businesses IT security? Embrace the consumerisation of technology and use it as a business enabler for your staff. I have devised some top tips below to increase network security, taken from the research findings:

1)      Don’t rattle the cage – Only block access to offensive or illegal content. One in four employers continue to block personal online accounts and social networking sites such as twitter and facebook – this is difficult to control and potentially leaves your staff disgruntled and demotivated.

2)      You won’t beat them, so join them – 91% of respondents reported using social media at work whether agreed by their employer or not. Consider sites like facebook, twitter and blogs as a means of building bridges with employees, but do this in a controlled way.

3)      Be street wise about security – The research found that 40% of employers actively encourage use of personal accounts and social networking sites in the workplace, without ensuring that their network is secure. Put a policy in place and get some simple network monitoring tools in place too that will help you to enforce the policy.

4)      Say goodbye to miscommunication – Having a security policy is useless if it is not socialised and enforced across your organisation. Be open with your staff and use social media to spread the word of what is and what isn’t OK? Create a group on Facebook or LinkedIn that is private to your staff where you can share news.

5)      Grab the bull by the horns – Smart use of devices and online media can vastly benefit your business. Harnessing the enthusiasm your employees show in this space could unlock hidden potential and get them working more effectively!

Jonathan Hirst, Partner at networking and security specialist ITogether

If you’re reading this blog then you may be a regular visitor to the Sage Blog, or more likely you’ll have been directed here by a tweet.

My inspiration to write this blog came from reading an article in the BA Business Life magazine whilst I was flying last week. I read the statistic that 27% of UK SME’s use twitter. Doing a quick piece of math, 27% of 1.4 million businesses registered for VAT equals 460,000 SME businesses using twitter in the UK today…  and this number would rise to well over 1 million if you include businesses who are not VAT registered.

There is a readymade network out here that the SME can leverage, not only to share information about their business, but to set up trading network and build their brand. What’s more the buzz word in industry today is globalisation, more and more businesses are trading overseas and twitter plays to this as you’ll see in the example below, as it has no boundaries.

As a social networking tool Twitter has had a bit of a meteoric rise to fame with between 3 and 6 million users from all walks of life, with some very notable participants in the likes of Bill Gates and Barak Obama, although I’m not sure the latter writes his own tweets.

I have to admit when I tried it first time round, I was unimpressed… how can it possibly be of any use? How do I know who to follow? How do I get followers? What could I talk about? and how could I say it in only 140 characters?

Today, I’m a convert, I use twitter every day, it’s an excellent source of news and information on just about any topic. For me it allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of IT and Business information as well as to share information about Sage as well as my other passions with people who have chosen to follow me.

When I say share information with people who have chosen to follow me, the twitter network leverages the six degrees of separation principle well, so if one of my follower’s re-tweet’s my tweet, then all of their followers get to see my tweet, and so on.

To give you an example of how this works, I tweeted a link to my last blog on the secret to successful innovation then I watched what happened… even though I only have a few hundred followers myself, within the first hour, my original tweet had an audience of over 30,000 people. Within a couple of days my blog had gone around the world and turned up on other sites such as Innovation America,  it also stimulated others to reuse parts of my blog in their own innovation blog a way to keep the message alive and a complement indeed.

I was amazed by what had happened here… one piece of information, seen by a huge audience across the globe and recycled a second and third time, what’s more it increased network traffic on sage.co.uk and on average people looked at 8 pages in addition to the one they were directed to… and all from a single tweet… the power of social networking truly is amazing.

I would strongly encourage all of the SME’s reading this to think about how you might use the power of social/business networking to benefit your business. Twitter is just one part of what you need, it’s a tool to build your network, headline key information and lead people to your business. When they get there they need to find a website, or a blog with more meaningful and relevant information.

I don’t propose to tell you how to get going with twitter in this blog as it has been covered by many  people already… although you might find this link useful from CIO online and this link from Social SmallBiz who offer great advice to SME’s or our own guide to social media for small businesses.

Give it a try, other than a little of your time and effort, it’s free… and you might be as amazed with the results as I was.

Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/_stuartlynn

Written by Stuart Lynn, Head of R&D, Sage Mid Market Division