This summer is a hot one, and the hottest topics we are hearing from business executives revolve around continually announced changes coming from every direction, combined with pressure of providing leadership stability during a time of complexity. I do it by keeping it simple: what business outcomes are we solving?
I like what one customer shared. He manages quarries in multiple states and has forty years of institutional knowledge, trapped in files that can’t be unlocked and searched. Here’s a couple quick lessons from his point of view:
- He has a competitive advantage that lives in his data.
- He has decades of documents but little “knowledge management” from it—at least not yet.
- AI’s value to him depends on his own data’s quality, organization, and accessibility.
We can unlock that with AI, and we build an organization’s governance framework around the needs of the organization. Your data classification can go on right now—call us so we can get you going in the right direction.
The security component remains the admission ticket, since we don’t need your organization’s information floating around the internet unless it is a marketing initiative.
Shortages in equipment continue.
I’d like to think we will start to see price stability, but prices continue to move upward, and shortages continue. Dell announced an upcoming price hike (as of this writing Dell laptops were priced 10 – 20% below Lenovo for same or similar features). and Apple also raised prices a few weeks ago.
We now have pricing subject to immediate change from our vendors and sometimes can obtain a 7-day price lock when we create quotes on hardware. If a purchase is not needed urgently, our procurement desk will take a couple days to look for deals, coupons, or work with our channel sales reps to secure special pricing if we can get it. We do work hard to obtain this, because we treat what you spend as if we were spending our own money on a purchase.
So, the rule of thumb is simple: buy what you need, but don’t buy ahead of what is needed. Then buy promptly, or the requoting process will, unfortunately cost you more.
FREE TRAINING
There are a couple of bright spots still to be found, and one of them is the free training (up to 4 hours) that we can perform for your staff or group. This has now been completed for about 5 of our customers with excellent reviews. You choose any Microsoft subject (even for Google customers, Windows 11 training is still relevant) and we have partnered with our vendor Ingram Micro on training for Office 365 applications. Whether it is basic or advanced Excel, how to best use Teams, footnoting in Word, or creating agents in AI – contact Ben Driscoll (bdriscoll@tsts.com) and/or Gia Lewis-Smallwood (gsmallwood@tsts.com) and be part of it if your staff will benefit from more knowledge in these areas. You will have a custom agenda and a solid, positive experience.
Our own next customer education class is scheduled for August 13th and 20th on use of Microsoft Teams with Copilot and Facilitator features.
In addition, on August 11th, the QC Business Journal has an excellent breakfast symposium on AI, including a cross-industry panel on these frontier firms and what they are doing.
A Great Business Book Recommendation
One last thought before I close out on this hot July day comes from the recent reading of the book Zone to Win by Geoffrey Moore. He writes how established companies can innovate without damaging their core business and sacrificing performance. Managing or incubating new ideas often fail. Not only do the changes brought about by the new product or process cause disruption, but we also manage through a performance lens which eliminates anything interrupting that performance cadence. His book reframes how to manage organizationally to capture the zones of performance, productivity, incubation and innovation and into successful transformation. It was an excellent read about how to bring about new ideas, products, and fresh approaches to ongoing and successful companies without hitting walls.
