"What we realized was that most of our staff's frustrations in the field were caused by older laptops that did not keep pace with the ever increasing software requirements."

Debbie Davidman
Principal
Marks Paneth & Shron

Debbie oversees the firm's technology infrastructure and provides strategic guidance and oversight for all of the firm's technology initiatives. She works closely with the firm's leaders and plays a key role in strategic planning.

 

Steering transformational initiatives within your business environment that typically require IT
 

As more and more of our staff work remotely either from home or client offices, IT support is more critical and in demand than ever before. No longer do we have the luxury of controlling the IT environment as tight as in our own offices. What we realized was that most of our staff's frustrations in the field were caused by older laptops that did not keep pace with the ever increasing software requirements. We have become accustomed to instant responses- when the performance of our laptops fell short, people's frustrations grew as they wasted more time waiting for applications to load, resulting in employee dissatisfaction. We made a decision to replace all laptops that were more than three years old. This small change had an enormous effect on worker productivity and attitude.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

With the constant threat of disaster, whether it’s a terrorist threat or natural disaster resulting from adverse climate changes, there is definitely a strong desire to ensure that business continues as usual during and after such disasters. We need to have a strong business continuity plan in effect. It would be nice to have a complete replica of the firm’s production environment in a remote data center with the ability to switch over to that facility quickly and effortlessly with real time data. Accompanying this would be the ability for our staff to easily access all critical programs and data without any re-configuration. Solutions like this exist but it is not within the budget of firms of our size.

With more increasing demands for internet usage for financial firms, whose success depends on uninterrupted access to emails, cloud computing, remote access and telephone, WAN and communication services, it is critical to have complete internet access redundancy for our facilities. In addition, with complete redundant addressing in place, we would have theability to effortlessly switch over and resume communications in the event of an ISP failure.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

With mobility being a more demanding trend in the market, we are constantly being asked to support this technology. We accommodate staff who work from home or are more frequently at clients’ offices by giving them remote access to the corporate network utilizing Virtual Private Networking (VPN) and Remote Access Software. In our offices, we also have in place a modern, secure and efficient wireless infrastructure to accommodate tablets, smart phones and other devices. These technologies facilitate secure access to applications and content.

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs
 

People hate change– that is the lesson that I’ve learned over the years. People will do everything to avoid it and create many workarounds to stick with an old system or workflow even if it makes no sense. Having the latest and greatest tech gadgets should not be a firm’s goal. Technology should be used as a tool which helps company’s achieve their strategic advantage. Technology needs to fit into a well designed workflow and this workflow needs to be embraced by the leadership of the firm. The leadership needs to promote these initiatives.