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Nikita is Lancom's first female engineer! We discussed what a career in tech looks like for her, why she chose Lancom, and the highlights of working in the Technology industry.

If you’ve heard of Power BI, there are probably two pressing questions you have: One: what exactly is it? and two: Is it suitable for my business?

To the first question. Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service from Microsoft. It enables anyone to visualise and analyse data with greater speed, efficiency and understanding. It connects users to a broad range of data through easy-to-use dashboards, interactive reports, and visualisations that bring data to life. This is Microsoft’s official definition, by the way.

Let’s move on then, to the reasons why this powerful tool set could be ideal in your business.

It doesn't matter if your business is the smallest of the SME's or the largest of the Enterprises; defining what is core to you is the first step in understanding what should be important to your team, your customers, and your overall business personality.

You probably understand the importance of having something on paper that proves your business identity, and what your team stands for. But, are you living by this?

Let's be honest: with busy days come pressure to focus on operational related matters, and things like "culture" and "values" become second priority.

This is where we were at the beginning of 2018, when we decided that, in order to move ahead, we needed to stop and re-evaluate our vision. 

This article attempts to lay out some of the learnings we acquired during this process.

Kevin first joined Lancom in 2005 as a Systems engineer, but we knew he was made for relationship management! In his first 7 years at Lancom he helped us solidify our Managed Services practice, and grow our customer base through building solid solutions for New Zealand SMEs.

Seven years later, Kevin re-joined Lancom as a Sales Director, after working for organisations such as Spark & Dimension Data. We chatted to Kevin about his career aspirations, and the motivation to return to Lancom.

…Is greatly exaggerated. But its evolution is right here, right now.

There’s a reason business reporting as you know it is coming to something akin to a sudden death. But, attention grabbing headline aside, business reporting isn’t going anywhere. Instead, it is changing radically away from the Excel spreadsheets you know (and truth be told, probably love), to something far better. Power BI and live reporting.

Starting as a Graduate Engineer, Dmitry joined Lancom's helpdesk team 24 months ago. Since then, we have seen him achieving fantastic customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores from our customers, take part on our Lancom TV program, and overall providing excellent problem solving, while delivering a fantastic customer experience.

In an informal discussion, Dmitry has shared his highlights from the past two years.

Don’t be fooled by the deceptive ease with which you can get started on the Amazon Web Services cloud. While it is certainly true that you can get stuck in with nothing more than a credit card and a vague idea of what you’re after, it pays to start with sound foundations so that as your needs grow and evolve (as they inevitably do – just about everyone who tries AWS very quickly becomes a big fan of it’s low-cost, high-value services), you don’t end up with a horrendous tangle.

On this platform, we speak a lot about facilitating your business growth. From technology to strategies, to productivity hacks to culture – we cover a lot! Today's article is a little different, we want to open the doors to the "backend", and expose our processes, our people, and what we are doing to ensure those who partner with us are getting the best from us.

Being in the business of providing technology solutions to other businesses, we recognise that our clients success is ultimately ours. Our best stories are those told by our customers, not by us. Because of this, we believe that if we double down our focus on helping our clients business’ grow, ultimately, we will grow too.

Curious for a behind the scenes look? Let's get into it!

Sometimes, the tried and true gets tired, outdated, and inefficient.

Recently, we have come to this conclusion with our account management monthly client reporting model, and decided to leverage the power of dashboards to shave countless hours off our reporting model, provide increased transparency, and allow us to give more value to our clients during our monthly meetings.... And least we forget, reduce our environmental footprint!

Curious to get an inside glimpse as to how we’re moving to a paperless reporting system? Here’s the inside scoop!

Over at the Harvard Business Review, a fascinating article which points out (in an almost Nietzschean fashion with the two-way street of the abyss) that the impact of technology in the workplace doesn’t just change the way people get things done, it also influences the way in which businesses are managed and governed.

Once said, the claim makes perfect sense, in the way that pointing out the obvious makes for a ‘duh, why didn’t I think of that’. It also immediately begs the question of how the cloud is changing management in today’s businesses. And, of course the writer Quentin Hardy goes on to point out just exactly that (I’ll get to that in a minute).

What all know is that the cloud is pervasive today. Regardless of business type or size, the cloud plays anything from a small role to an all-encompassing one. For most companies, there’s also a simple rule: the more cloud, the better. After all, flexibility, capital cost reduction, the availability of ‘high technology’ at low prices are all features and benefits with universal appeal.