Since the iPad was first launched two years ago, there has been an explosion of tablets onto the market place. Although the business world is still playing catch up to the consumer world for ‘on the move technology’ and in particular, tablets, it’s definitely closing the gap and seeing tablets in the workplace is no longer an unusual sight.

The unprecedented growth of tablets and other smart mobile devices has given birth to the next generation of business intelligence (BI) – BI on the move – otherwise know as mobile business intelligence (mobile BI). And with Gartner predicting that by 2013, 33% of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices, it is becoming increasingly obvious that mobile BI is here to stay (Gartner: Critical Capabilities for Mobile BI, Joao Tapadinhas, 10 April 2012).

Have you ever hired a plumber when you didn’t have a leak or put your dog into kennels just because you fancied it? I doubt it. Actions are driven by needs and IT is no different.

Implementing software provides answers to our problems or helps to make our lives easier. We no longer purchase IT ‘products’ but instead buy ‘solutions’, and as our working lives get increasingly more complex, there is rarely just one solution to fulfil all our needs. Instead, we are faced with an array of solutions that respond to our ever-increasing list of problems.

Quite a lot actually if the results of our recent research with over 100 mid-sized companies are anything to go by.

Many of us have a tired boiler hidden away in our home – sometimes the house isn’t quite warm enough and we are conscious that we really ought to get it serviced more regularly; we also have a niggling feeling that it’s not very efficient or cost-effective, but we know that little short of catastrophic failure will lead to us actually doing anything about it. In the same way, many mid-sized businesses have a niggling feeling that their finance processes and systems could be improved, but with other priorities vying for their attention they let the old systems wheeze on for the time being and never quite get round to exploring the alternatives.

At last, there’s some good news for the public sector! Shopping for IT products and services just got a bit easier, following the launch of the government’s new G-Cloud.

CloudStore, the G-Cloud’s online app store is already changing the way public sector organisations procure services. It’s made the process faster, more cost-effective and more transparent.

Employees who visit the online store are able to choose from a catalogue of cherry-picked cloud providers and services. They can also view key product information and compare suppliers so they can confidently procure IT services and solutions, which best fit their needs. There’s an impressive directory to choose from which features over 1,700 IT products/services available to the public sector.

We’ve done it again! For a third year in a row, we’ve been given the seal of approval from our charity customers, with 100% of those surveyed by Charity Finance Magazine saying that they would recommend Advanced to other charities.

Look for advice about being a better personal trainer, investment advisor or IT consultant and, without doubt, you’ll be reminded about the importance of understanding your clients’ goals. The theory makes perfect sense – we need to know what our client is shooting for if we’re to help them get there.

However, a recent introductory session with a personal trainer got me thinking that, in reality, many of us aren’t that great at understanding our clients’ goals. For a start, the personal trainer seemed slightly embarrassed as he asked me about my goals; perhaps the question felt like just too much of a cliché. Before I’d even had chance to answer, he followed up with a range of generic answers – making it much easier for me to pick one of these responses rather than spend time explaining what it was I really wanted to achieve. And after I’d selected option two – increased fitness – we failed to explore what that meant in practice: did I want to run a marathon in under 3 hours or simply be able to walk to the bus stop without being out of breath?

“Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.” Scott Adams

It’s perhaps not surprising that the creator of the Dilbert comic strip has a rather cynical view on decision-making. However all of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, are regularly party to decisions made using poor data, unclear criteria and a shaky process – gut feel and the power of personality often rules the day.

Almost 80 per cent of local authority finance professionals are reliant on Excel spreadsheets for their budget monitoring needs and no, I’m not joking! This is just one of the statistics we discovered after teaming up with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) recently for a survey. The survey involved questioning finance professionals from 87 different local authorities (LAs) about their budgeting processes.

In these times of austerity, many organisations, particularly in the public sector are looking to make significant cost savings and maximise value. It’s no secret that business intelligence (BI) solutions can provide the foundation for deep spending cuts and efficiency gains.

Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced) recognises the significant part business intelligence can play in achieving efficiency savings and will be showcasing its full business intelligence portfolio at the 2012 Public Sector Efficiency Expo at Olympia Two in London tomorrow. Advanced Consultant, Paul O’Donnell, will also be hosting a business intelligence seminar which will provide guidance on how to evaluate the myriad of BI solutions available on the market and how to use them.

No software company, even the world’s largest, has the resources to develop all the software and provide all the related services that customers require. This is why partnerships between specialist IT software and services companies that enable the best overall solution for customers, is key. When strategic partnerships are in place between suppliers, customers have access to a comprehensive range of solutions and services, all from a single supplier.