Posts written by:

Dave Monahan

Kind Words from Hansbraun

February 29, 2012

As mentioned last week, we have been honoured as a finalist for the GVCC annual awards for the “Business of the Year (11-25 Employees)”. As part of the application process, each nominee submission could be accompanied by Letters of Support. Receiving these letters was one of the most rewarding parts of this process. Over the…

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Greater Victoria Business Awards

February 22, 2012

We’re finalists! Smart Dolphins has been chosen as one of two finalists (cheers to our companions for this honour: Cairnview Mechanical) for the Annual Greater Victoria Business Awards. We are up for the Business of the Year Award (11-25 employees). We were runner up for this award in 2008 – could this be our year?…

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Proactive IT services

February 2, 2012

I’m not sure you’ve heard, but Smart Dolphins is proactive in our approach to IT management. What does Proactive mean? Proactive means doing the IT work that isn’t simply in response to unexpected client needs. Sounds easy enough in theory, but in practice it is challenging to do in any significant quantities. Reactive IT work…

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IT support professionals

January 25, 2012

I’m sorry. I’m sorry to many of the business leaders that I have met with in the past to talk about Smart Dolphins and your technology. I’ve done many of you a disservice. I have let you down and it probably will cost you thousands of dollars and much frustration. I have begun to see…

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The future IT tech

December 9, 2011

Technology seems to be getting easier – stuff that used to need a lot of TLC and kept tech support on their toes, now “just works”. Stuff that would take days or weeks of technical expertise to launch can now just be plugged in. We also have a younger generation who are technically strong and…

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Net Promoter Score (NPS)

December 2, 2011

Fred Reichheld wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in 2003 called, “The One Number You Need to Grow” and the Net Promoter Score was born. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a very simple measure of customer satisfaction, or more specifically, customer loyalty. The NPS is measured through responses to one question: “How…

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Microsoft Outlook reminders

November 21, 2011

Have reminders appear in Outlook for the recipient with this quick tip! Want someone to do something with your email?  Wouldn’t it be nice if your email had some mechanism of popping up and interrupting the recipient at some point to remind them to do something?  That’s where reminder flags come in! – Using Outlook …

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IT risk

October 28, 2011

Technology helps us do what we do faster and easier. We get a new computer that runs 30% faster than our old one. We get some new, fancy piece of software that cuts our efforts in half. Most see this as good stuff. Flipping that around, some view a lack of technology simply as a…

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IT RFPs

October 19, 2011

We see RFPs that we consider pursuing occasionally. Some appear to have fantastic opportunities behind them, but they often have the whole process backwards. To illustrate, imagine you had some rare, life threatening condition. You obviously would be in need of some specialized and highly valued health care. How would you go about getting that…

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Computer maintenance and planning?

September 21, 2011

“Why bother with maintenance on computers when they’re so cheap? We just replace them when they start slowing down.” Sounds logical, right? Common sense, really. Let me set you straight. I heard the logic above from a prospective client recently. They figured they replaced their computers every two to three years (let’s call it 2.5…

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