January 2021 - Bay of Plenty Business News

January 2021 BAY OF PLENTY BUSINESS NEWS 21
The best use of techspertise
During 2020, new data
and privacy laws came
into play, remote working
exploded, and cybersecurity,
data protection and IT
risks become constant conversation
pieces. Business owners
and operators had to become
IT experts overnight. Nontrained
IT staff in organisations
have also had IT-related
tasks added to their workload.
This may have not been a
new thing, but demands seem
to have increased and expectations
and keeping up the
knowledge can be daunting.
This period of the year has
historically been the time for
new jobs, and changes of roles
and you may face a hole in the
organisation with knowledge
and the “go-to” IT person leaving
for pastures new.
This is a great opportunity
to review what resources are
required and to get the best
bang for your buck. So do you
outsource or hire in house with
specific IT assistance in mind,
or look at a co-managed IT
solution.
Deloitte’s latest Global
Outsourcing Survey found that
57 percent of companies outsource
so that they can better
focus on their core business.
Benefits of IT service
outsourcing
Focusing on your core business
activities and outsourcing
activities like IT has many
potential benefits including:
• Helping create a business
culture where everyone is
focused on achieving the
same goals.
• Increased in-house productivity:
When employees do
not have to worry about
certain IT tasks that they
have little to no experience
with, they are free to focus
solely on their day-to-day
job duties and core business
functions. This can result in
increased employee productivity
as well as reduced
stress associated with having
to perform IT tasks.
• It reduces the amount you
spend on business functions
that don’t directly contribute
to revenue growth. Hiring
and managing in-house
employees requires a sig-
TECH TALK
> BY TONY SNOW
Tony Snow is chief executive and co-founder of Stratus Blue.
He can be contacted at Tony@stratusblue.co.nz.
nificant time investment.
• It’s a cost-effective way
to improve your team’s
efficiency. Outsourcing
enables you to have
an in-house team that
can leverage the support of
outsourced workers. When
having an outsourced IT
department, you can often
cut costs in relation to your
company’s IT requirements
and can provide more
skilled resources for less
money. Spend can be fixed
and budgeted. For example,
having an IT team in-house
can be costly, whereas outsourcing
your IT tasks can
reduce costs in relation to
salary, employee equipment,
benefits and more.
• An Outsource IT department
remains upskilled,
trained and has your best
interests at heart. Most IT
companies have expertise
in several IT areas as
well as special equipment
or technology that allows
them to be more productive
and provide a higher level
of services. Outsourcing
IT tasks can often result in
an increased quality of task
completion compared to
having in-house staff complete
the tasks. Maintenance,
security and updates
get done and disaster recovery
plans can be checked.
There are also reasons
to hire in house
• An employee will have
greater buy-in to your
company.
• Knowledge and skills
developed by working
on your projects is kept
in-house and is available
for later use.
• An employee has greater
familiarity with your organisation,
simply because they
are onsite all the time and,
depending on your IT company
arrangements, you
have greater cost control.
• It prevents doubling up of
work efforts, which can
happen in communication
from your employees to a
third party.
• Data sensitivity and size of
company. Are you comfortable
an outside party may
have operational control
over certain business functions
and potential access
to sensitive information?
Many IT services require
that you provide sensitive
information pertaining to
your business’s security
and data, so you should
also get a clear idea of how
the IT resource – either in
house or externally – will
protect your information.
A co-managed IT situation
is also popular where an
in-house champion looks after
either strategy and longterm
plans where an outsource IT
department looks after the dayto-day
operational aspects. Or
vice versa.
With the right agreement
in place with an outsource IT
department, which deals with
hundreds of different business
environments, getting up to
speed and having best practices
can be implemented easily
and effectively.
I recommend that you
weigh up over the break the
pros and cons of outsourcing
vs employing for specific
requirements, and stay safe
this summer.
A year in reflection
By all accounts this past year has not been a typical one for
anyone in NZ and that is certainly no different in the industries I
work in. I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect back on
the past 12 months and recount just one of our more memorable
jobs (on the advice of our lawyer we have slightly changed some
details to protect privacy).
CREDIT CONTROL
> BY NICK KERR
Nick Kerr is Area Manager BOP for EC Credit Control NZ Ltd.
He is also a director of International Private Investigations Ltd.
Nick can be reached at nick.kerr@eccreditcontrol.co.nz
In the investigations and
repossession industry you
don’t often get seen as the
good guy by all parties in the
situation. But over the past
year we have partnered with a
nationwide estate management
company that gives us the
chance to give good news to
those who we come in contact
with and please our clients just
the same.
A few months ago we were
contacted by an estate manager
who had tried all avenues
to locate the beneficiary of a
large estate.
The estate manager knew
the beneficiary’s gender and
first name and that was it. No
date of birth, no surname and
no next-of-kin details. “We
know we are asking you to do
the impossible and have no
Over the past year we have partnered with
a nationwide estate management company
that gives us the chance to give good news
to those who we come in contact with and
please our clients just the same.”
expectations of you being able
to do this,” the estate managers
told us.
Our initial research was
to do an analysis on the first
name to see how common it
was. In this case there were
approximately 11,000 people
worldwide with the same first
name. The highest concentrations
of this name were Mexico,
Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga and
Niue, with some in New Zealand
and Australia.
We had some intel that the
beneficiary travelled in and out
on New Zealand frequently so
working on that assumption we
looked at countries which are
New Zealand territories or had
a reciprocal agreement allowing
for visa free travel starting
with the Pacific Islands.
We got in touch with the
community leaders in these
countries and after a couple
of weeks got the break we
needed, made a few phone
calls, verified the information
then presented the estate manager
with the beneficiary’s full
legal name, address, email
address, phone number and
photo ID.
As you can imagine, they
were very happy with the service
as was the beneficiary,
who had no idea any inheritance
was due at all.
In a job where you mainly
get sent out to confront people
or discover nefarious activity,
and you see people at their
lowest ebb – whether in the
grips of addiction, a downward
cycle of depression or actively
involved in criminal and harmful
activities – it makes a really
refreshing change to be an
instrumental part of a real positive
change in someone’s life.
In addition to the above
example, some numbers we’ve
achieved in the last year have
included:
• 280 successful repossessions
out of a total of
290 repossession orders
received.
• Four major fraud/ commercial
espionage cases investigated,
and $4.5 million
worth of loss prevented.
• 85 “unfindable” debtors
located out of 88 requests
received.
• More than $2 million worth
of liquidation loss avoided
for 40 credit management
clients.
And that is in addition to
my other work of setting up
100 best practice credit management
systems for local
businesses to prevent debt and
liquidation losses.
All in all, it has been a
great year for business and I
would like to thank all of our
clients that have trusted us,
the suppliers that we have had
the pleasure to work with, and
the readers that have read my
ramblings and given me some
wonderful feedback.
Best wishes from me and
my team for a profitable,
rewarding – and above all
enjoyable 2021.