That Bristol Sound

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

They say strangers are just friends you haven't met yet, don't they?

What a great couple of days I enjoyed with a few hundred other Kirona DRS users down in Bristol, last week. Good to meet up with some old friends, put a face to many and make some new ones from a few of the strangers there.

I have always encouraged users to get to their suppliers user groups. Not just to hold them to account, although that's important, the venues are often quite good too. I must congratulate David Todd again for setting up a great evening in Bristol for attendees on the SS Great Britain. He always sneaks some history in there if he can too, which always gets my vote. A difficult one to beat next time.

I was there with a great group of folks from Walsall Housing Group, where we are currently putting in enhanced integration to DRS, new Contractor system from Accuserv and mobile to tie it all together from 1stTouch. Interesting to note that other sites I spoke to all had similar issues. Integration always cropping up top of the list. Spookily enough one of our rocks in the road.

An interesting proposal was to use a solution like biztalk as a dedicated umbrella layer. Some sites had gone that way and ended up with a more modular, easily maintainable solution. It does give a more plug-in, plug-out experience and it certainly does work well once the issues are ironed out.

On the integration front too, a few people I met last conference at Chester, still appeared to have not moved on from where they were six months ago. That is a shame, but maybe we are too busy trying to keep the jobs flowing to tackle the bigger picture. In my experience, sometimes that takes someone from outside the organisation to shine a light on you, your processes, your supplier and interfaces. If you take time out to look into those areas, the jobs will flow better, with less of the grief.

Anyway, a big shout out to everyone who came and had a chat about this blog, said hello or introduced themselves to me. I learnt a lot, (some about malt whisky Dave, I will be getting my community library in touch with you soon mate), thanks Kirona, everyone and Bristol.

Related Post: What can we learn from bad planning?

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.


Portishead - Strangers.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


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