Fordway Blog

Remote working was undoubtedly one of the biggest success stories of 2020. Organisations adapted incredibly quickly, thanks to IT teams working extremely hard to make things happen, and no doubt many people will continue working this way in the longer term.

I think we’ll all be glad to see the back of 2020! It’s certainly been a challenging year, but IT teams, suppliers and vendors across the country have risen to the challenge magnificently and we should all take a moment to give ourselves a pat on the back.

We’re delighted that Fordway is one of just 21 suppliers appointed to the new ICT Solutions Delivery framework run by the NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC). It’s testament to our strong track record working with NHS organisations over many years, including University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, Bristol Community Health and Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

Although local authorities are increasingly moving services to the cloud, they’ve been much slower to do so than central government. After working on cloud implementations with both councils and government agencies, I believe there’s one key reason for this - the wide range of services local authorities provide.

Heard about the chief executive who’s confident that his organisation has 24x7 IT support, but doesn’t realise that this relies on one of two key people answering their phone at 2am if something goes wrong?

If your organisation is using a mix of cloud services from different providers, how are you going to ensure delivery of the agreed service levels? Human nature being what it is, if a problem occurs, each supplier will typically claim that “it’s not my fault”, so you need a quick, effective way of finding out exactly where the problem lies. Ideally this should use information independent of that provided by the cloud supplier.

We’ve all read those articles about digital transformation. The ones which extol the virtues of a continuous change programme underpinned by a technology roadmap to drive business improvement. It sounds marvellous. After all, we all acknowledge the benefits and value that data and automation can bring. But the tricky bit for many organisations is simply getting there.

At this time of year I’m always asked to look into my crystal ball and predict the IT trends that will make the most impact in the next 12 months. Here are my four top tips.