Portfolio

Going in feet first...

A London based professional Society had ordered a system and customised software primarily to handle their membership database. Unhappy with the progress of their system provider and now unsure of actually what they had ordered, their solicitors called Fish.Net in to assess the situation.

Some specialist investigation work revealed not only was documentation and specification of the membership system weak, but there was a significant amount of unexpected (dubious) files being stored by the supplier - grounds for immediate termination of the contract.

However, the Society had invested a fair amount of money already in the system, and were not in a position to cancel and start again elsewhere. With the aid of Fish.Net, a handover document was generated, to clarify the functionality required, and to specify an approval process for handover. Fish.Net also made clear that the Society should ensure they got possession of all of the original source materials so that if further developments were required they could proceed without the original supplier. All this provided the Society with the negotiation tools they needed to keep going with the project with their original supplier.

Quick tip
Always ensure that you are clear what you are ordering. If you know the way you want things to work and don't know how to write a specification document (or can't make sense of the one the supplier has written) then get outside professional advice. It's always cheaper to sort it out before the contracts starts.

Secure wireless?

A laptop had been unable to connect to the network. After deciding a 'dead' network card but with a client desperate to work on some documents, a workaround was set up by connecting wirelessly to someone else in the building, (another company in an office a few doors down) using their connection to the Internet, and making a Virtual Private Network (VPN) back in to the client's network. We should point out this was disabled soon afterwards, and the other company notified of their promiscuous wireless network which was letting laptops from within the building connect to them.

Quick tip
Never use an out of the box configuration for wireless equipment and always use a properly configured firewall.

Presentations

Some of our clients include:

Frenkel Topping forensic accountants were holding their annual 'Business Services' day for their clients, and asked Fish.Net to provide one of the sessions. A presentation on various aspects of the Internet and business communication was warmly received. The event was held at the Bridgewater Hall, a venue that Fish.Net's Managing Director Chris Paterson is more used to singing in!

Fish.Net - on behalf of Greater Manchester Business Innovation Centre - provided a series of independent seminars to small and medium businesses on Telematics in Business as part of European funding to help local companies become aware of technological innovations. Fish.Net's relaxed and knowledgeable presentation was highly assessed by the various audiences.

Effective Internet Marketing has been a successful seminar subject, commissioned originally by Manchester Chamber of Commerce and repeated throughout various North West Chambers. Audiences have appreciated topics such as websites - the Good, the Bad, the Ineffective - understanding how to assess websites and potential suppliers.