While technology propels forward at an unprecedented speed, AI emerges as a pivotal element shaping our future. As leaders, you may question how these changes will reverberate through your business and daily routines.

One of AI's significant advantages is its proficiency in automating repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable time for more nuanced work. It can support your marketing team in creating a new sales brochure while machine learning algorithms sift through data to detect patterns and procure humanly unachievable insights.

But AI isn't confined to task automation; it significantly bolsters decision-making by offering real-time insights and predictions. AI-powered tools can identify trends, foresee changes, and assist in making more informed decisions by analysing data from diverse sources.

Google’s Duet and hot on the heals Microsoft’s CoPilot are weaving personalised Virtual Assistants into their workspace suites. These AI-powered assistants can build presentations, manage your schedule, reply to emails, and suggest daily routine modifications, all aligned with your habits and preferences. By employing AI, focusing on critical tasks becomes seamless, enhancing your efficiency.

However, the integration of AI in the workplace is challenging.

It's essential to address concerns like job displacement and ethical dilemmas. This is where the role of a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) becomes crucial. A business needs a leader who can guide AI adoption responsibly, ensuring that the benefits of AI are harnessed while managing potential Governance Risks and Compliance.

So, how can you ready your organisation for an AI-driven future? Here are some starting points:

Educate Yourself: Comprehend the potential applications of AI in your industry and how they can enhance your business.

Start Small: Kick off with basic AI-powered tools and progressively deepen your expertise and understanding.

Keep an Open Mind: AI is a realm of constant evolution, and it's vital to be flexible and adaptive to upcoming opportunities and challenges.

Seek Expert Advice: Engage with AI experts, including our very own (CAIO), to ensure AI is implemented ethically and responsibly.

AI isn't a concept of the future; it's the present standard, revolutionising the world. The role of a (CAIO) will be critical in guiding this transformation, enhancing insights, and refining decision-making processes like never before.

Thinking Of Moving Offices… Or Even Going 100% Remote?

Has hybrid and remote working left you and your team rattling around a too-big office?

If you’re now in the position of overspending on rent, utilities and

cleaning, you might be thinking about downsizing to another location – or even abandoning the office completely.

That’s something that will take some planning if you want a smooth transition with minimal, expensive downtime.

Moves are always stressful, and relocating your IT systems takes more thought than manhandling a desk up the stairs. Here are our top three suggestions to make shifting your IT setup to a new location easier.

Use a checklist

Treat this like any other project. Use a to-do list where you check off each step so that nothing’s forgotten. Allocate every task on the list to specific people so everyone knows who’s responsible for what. Refer to your checklist regularly with progress reviews a month before, a week before, a day before, and on the day of the move. Have another list for unpacking at the other end.

Give your internet provider notice.

We rely on internet connections for most of our work, but it’s common to allow

too little time for this to be set up. It can take six weeks to arrange, install and test the connection so it’s ready for the day you move in. Allow plenty of notice to avoid unwanted stress on the day of the move.

If it’s a new building or a refit, specify all the outlets and connections you want – don’t leave it to the builder to assume, as it will cost more to make changes later.

Use a professional

If it’s just a couple of machines, it could be a DIY job. But for most moves, it’s more involved than just disconnecting and reconnecting a few cables. It’s too easy for everything to become confusing and become over complicated.

A good IT professional will have this process down to fine art and disconnect and reconnect your whole network efficiently and with minimal downtime.

If you’re thinking about a move to new premises and need help planning for it, we can help… get in touch.

Call Us Today

THE HACK PODCAST

Breathe, Believe and Succeed In Business with -Ed Jenneson

In today's fast-paced world, people often find themselves overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. In this engaging podcast, our hosts Leon and Dean chat with Ed Jenneson and delve into the power of discovering yourself and incorporating self-discovery as an essential tool for dealing with these challenges and achieving a balanced life to improve our mental well-being and cultivate resilience for personal growth.

Ed Jenneson is a recognised leader in employment law; he advises on all aspects of employment law. He has been helping clients navigate legal, and HR matters for over 20 years with a passion for people and human-centric solutions.

In the podcast, Ed shares his insights into his struggles with ADHD and dyslexia and explains how important it is to create a space for self-reflection to develop emotional intelligence and handle life’s challenges more effectively. He emphasises the importance of addressing our behaviour, thoughts and feelings to help improve our performance, relationships and work-life balance.

Read the full Blog Here!

Listen on Spotify

NEW TO MICROSOFT 365

Printing gets a security boost

Microsoft 365 is helping to reduce print waste and increase privacy with an update to its printing function. It will hold print jobs until you arrive at the printer.

Then you scan a QR code on the Microsoft Office mobile app to start your print job. Clever, right? It’s called Secure Release Printing, and you can ask your IT partner to set it up for you.

NEW TO GOOGLE WORKSPACE

Hide your activity.

A standard feature on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides is to track all user activity in the activity dashboard. But if you’d rather limit this, you can do so via the activity dashboard privacy settings under tools.

There you’ll see settings to switch off your view history—either for a single document or every time you use Workspace—to ensure you’ll no longer be seen in the activity dashboard

Did You Know?

Snipping Tool lets you record your desktop?

The updated snipping tool in Windows 11 allows you to record your desktop – it’s a great way to produce training videos for remote workers (or anyone else, for that matter).

You can choose which section of the screen you record, with videos saved in MP4 format.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“Data is the pollution problem of the information age, and protecting privacy is the environmental challenge.”

Bruce Schneier,

Cryptographer and Computer Security Professional

TECH FACTS

The Surface Web (the internet visible to search engines) only accounts for 10%. The rest lives in the Deep Web – where pages aren’t indexed, encrypted, password protected, or behind a paywall. This is normal, legal and very different to the Dark Web… where criminals do business.

One of iTunes’ terms and conditions states that you should not use their devices to create “…nuclear, missile, chemical or biological weapons.”

Only 4.5 billion people around the world have a working toilet. More than 6 billion people have a mobile phone.

Tech Update

Are you asking ChatGPT the wrong questions?

ChatGPT is incredible, but it still has its limitations. If you find it frustrating and inaccurate, you’re likely doing it wrong. Here’s how to get the best out of it.

Be specific. A fundamental question will generate a basic answer. The more detailed your question, the more likely it is to create a good solution. Give it context. For instance, if you’re asking to review an email, tell it whose perspective it’s reading it from – an employee, a frustrated client, and so on. Watch your language. It can cope with a few typos and a little slang, but too much, and you won’t get the great responses you want.

MEET THE TEAM

Dean Bulfield - Head Of Customer Success

What Do You Do At Think Cloud?

I am the Head of the Customer Success role within a company responsible for overseeing the customer success function. My primary focus as a Head of Customer Success is to ensure that customers have a positive experience throughout their journey with the company's products or services.

What Is Your Favourite Movie?

Alien (all of them)

What Do You Enjoy Doing When Not At Work?

I find immense joy in running, playing football, cherishing quality moments with my family, and indulging in the beauty of music; I also have a deep fascination with trainers, constantly seeking the next pair to add to my collection.

What 3 Items Would You Take On A Desert Island?

Multitool Swiss army knife, firestarter kit, waterproof equipment such as clothing, and water collection

What's Different About Working At Think Cloud?

One of the main things is the company culture; we adopt a positive workplace culture, which is a supportive and inclusive environment where employees feel valued, respected, and encouraged to collaborate. We prioritise open communication, teamwork, and employee well-being, fostering motivation, engagement, and overall organisational success.

Using ChatGPT or Google Bard

Prompt Tutorial: Market Research Assistance: using ChatGPT

or Google Bard

Act as a Product Manager

Please acknowledge my following request. Please respond to me as a product manager. I will ask for a subject, and you will help me write a PRD for it with these heders: Subject, Introduction, Problem Statement, Goals and Objectives, User Stories, Technical requirements, Benefits, KPIs, Development Risks, and Conclusion. Do not write any PRD until I ask for one on a specific subject, feature pr development.

Book A Meeting To Learn More Today

FUN TECH QUIZ

ANOTHER MONTH MEANS ANOTHER FUN TECH QUIZ!

Loser fixes the printer jam for a month!

What was Google’s name originally a misspelling of?

‘Creeper’ was the name of the first what?

What’s the world’s most popular password?

What was the first game console to go to space?

How much of the world’s currency is now digital?

Answers at bottom of page.

Is Your Business Missing A Cyber Resiliency Plan?

A recent cyber security report found that just 11% of IT budgets go into incident response, disaster recovery, and infrastructure security. This could be a dangerous

Underinvestment. While it’s vital to keep your data and infrastructure protected with a layered, multi-stranded approach, no network can ever be protected from 100% of

attacks. Even if possible, it would make your systems hard to live with and destroy productivity.

That means you need a cyber resiliency plan to help you respond to any cyber attack that does get past your defenses. It requires different thinking than your other resilience plans around physical disasters. In the case of a flood, for example, your incident response might be to get cleaned up, find a temporary work location and get your systems online again. But in the case of a ransomware attack, you’d need to investigate how the attack occurred, locate and patch the holes in your defenses, and remove all traces of the attack from your systems. For a cyber attack, you’ll also have a different RTO – a Recovery Time Objective – which defines how quickly you expect to get back up and running.

Your resiliency plan should define that RTO so that you understand what downtime costs you’ll be facing.

Where do you start? We recommend:

1. Improving your security: Hopefully, you’ve already ticked this one off. Make

it as hard as possible for crooks to access your systems without creating measures that are so hard to live with that they interfere with the smooth running of your business.

2. Monitoring your systems: The sooner you detect an attack, the faster you can

respond, which will minimise damage. You should constantly monitor suspicious activity and train staff to spot warning signs.

3. Responding swiftly: Your response plan should be available to everyone in the business and include information on who to report a suspected breach to and all the steps to be taken.

4. Making recovery easier: Once an attack is under control, it’s time to recover. That

means having a good backup in place and a rehearsed plan for restoring your systems.

If you need help with cyber resiliency or other disaster recovery plans, get in touch.

BUSINESS GADGET OF THE MONTH

Moleskine Smart Writing Notebook & Pen Set

Classic design for pen and paper fans, with a digital copy of everything

The classic Moleskine notebook includes a Smart Pen and Notes App. It takes an instant digital copy of every page, so you can handwrite your meeting notes but take your doodles to the next level. Widely available for £229

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

QUESTION

IMy employees use WhatsApp to share work info – should I stop this?

ANSWER

If you already use a communication tool like Teams, your people should keep all work communication there. It’s more secure and can save a lot of time hunting for information.

QUESTION

I’ve heard I can upgrade to Windows 11 without TPM 2.?

ANSWER

A TPM is a tiny security chip on your machine, which is required by Windows 11. There is a workaround, but our advice is to avoid it. It may mean you miss out on key security updates, which could leave your entire network vulnerable.

QUESTION

II’ve lost my laptop. What do I do?

ANSWER

You should have a response plan in place for this type of incident. Report it to the correct person so data can be wiped remotely to avoid a breach. If you don’t have a plan or remote management in place, we can help.