38 | ACCESS
in
ACTION | NOVEMBER 2013
ACCESS in ACTION
By Andrew Ferry, Baseplan Managing
Director
The first article in the Working Smarter
series highlighted the pressures business
owners face when trying to stay in front of
the technology curve.
The underpinning premise of Working
Smarter is using technology to be more
productive, responsive and attentive
in your daily business activities. Not all
technology solutions will be right for
your business; so don’t lose yourself in
the technology. Rather, let it assist your
business to run leaner and smarter.
QR Codes
Barcoding has been around for many
years and its usefulness has recently been
extended with the invention of QR Codes.
Simply put, a QR Code is a barcode with
attitude. Originally invented for the
Japanese automotive industry, the QR
code has been adapted to widespread
commercial use, most commonly seen in
magazines and advertisements.
A great use of QR Codes is for website
links to be embedded in marketing
material. There are many QR Code
Generators available online that are easy
to use. The more basic generators available
simply require you to copy and paste your
website link and click Generate QR Code.
You can then save the QR code and apply it
to your marketing material.
When you scan the QR Code with your
mobile phone camera the embedded
web site is loaded into your mobile
web browser. This requires the user has
installed a freely available QR Code
reader application which can be found on
Android, Apple and Windows app stores -
search for ‘QR Code’.
The design of the QR Code is quite clever
because it incorporates error correction
allowing partially damaged QR Codes to
be read correctly – something old school
barcodes have trouble with. The amount of
error correction in the QR Code determines
how much ‘space’ is left for data.
Kennards Hire has applied this
technology to its business with great
results. QR Codes are now printed on
their equipment tags, that when scanned,
automatically load the Kennards Hire
website detailing service history for the
equipment from its Baseplan ERP system.
QR Codes are becoming increasingly
abundant in business use. They can be
used in all sorts of places such as hire
schedules, delivery dockets, invoices
and in fact almost every document you
Working (Even) Smarter
could conceivably hand to a client or use
internally with a mobile solution. The old
style 2D bar code as found on product
labels are limited in length, do not offer
error correction and are not automated
in a way they can be used to easily direct
customers to websites. They are still very
useful when used with barcode scanners
for input of long product numbers.
Sample QR code:
The Cloud
The term ‘Cloud’ is everywhere.
However, there seems to be a lack of unity
when it comes to defining what the cloud
actually is. In basic terms, the cloud is a
collection of remotely hosted computer
servers and associated computing services
that can be accessed over the Internet. In
practical terms it means you can now use
another company’s massive computing
infrastructure as though it is your own
for a monthly fee. Real world examples
of this include Amazon, Rackspace and
Microsoft Azure. These are all service
providers that offer to host and or manage
your computer infrastructure. They offer
computing resources over the Internet so
you don’t have to worry about purchasing
and housing additional servers at your site.
A simple example is that of a web server.
Some of the considerations in terms of
provisioning a web server will be high
availability (ie: it stays up even when
you have local issues at your office), high
performance and scalability (you can pay
more to make it bigger and faster when
you need).
From a business perspective, Cloud is
used to augment existing infrastructure.
You get more computing power without
the pain of buying, installing it and
maintaining it, all for a monthly fee. These
fees can be very low, with the cost being
only a couple of hundred dollars a month
for several servers.
The setup of these servers is generally
quick and easy with the time to configure
a cloud based server taking around 15
minutes. Of course integrating this cloud
based server with your own internal
systems will take a bit of work by your
IT staff but it is not overly difficult.
Alternatively some external IT providers
will help you with this for a fee.
‘Cloud’ also includes:
Remote data storage provided by a third
party – such as a place to archive or backup
data.
Remote virtual servers – quickly get
access to high powered servers to run
your systems on without large upfront
costs. These servers are maintained from
the point of view of the hardware ie: you
don’t need to worry about any hardware
issues. Different levels of data redundancy
are configurable. A virtual server is a
technology that allows one physical
computer server to look like multiple
servers.
The Cloud may be standalone or
‘hybrid’ which means your Cloud based
infrastructure is joined with your local
servers making for a more integrated user
experience (after a more complex set up).
Monthly fees can be much cheaper
than financing your own new computing
infrastructure.
Some caveats:
With Cloud you must trust a third party
with your data. So far the track record
of Cloud providers has been pretty good.
That being said, there have been a few
examples of a Cloud provider been ‘down’
with services and unavailable for extended
periods. Downtime can be mitigated
to some extent with additional service
offerings from Cloud providers including
the ability to ‘mirror’ the services you
are using to other geographical regions
around the world.
With Cloud your data may be hosted
overseas. You may be charged large fees to
retrieve large data from the Cloud such as
retrieving backups. If you fail to pay your
account your Cloud based services could be
withdrawn by the service provider.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
Software as a Service is often linked
with Cloud as you are effectively using
software on someone else’s computing
infrastructure in the Cloud. Ultimately,
this means installation and setup times are
almost eliminated.
Examples of SaaS include Dropbox which
is a Cloud storage service that works across
desktop and mobile platforms allowing
easy synchronisation of your files such as
music, photos etc across multiple devices.
From your desktop you can click on a link
that displays your files as though they are
on your local computer. You can also see
the same files on your mobile device.
As with Cloud there are some
advantages and disadvantages for SaaS:
All of the good points of Cloud apply to
SaaS.
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