There are many small IT firms that can help get computers running again; virus cleaning, upgrades and clearing out old programs. This can help at home but without fundamental change in a business environment, the network will just revert back to its "bad ways".

Larger consultancy firms can often help with integration as they will have the breadth of knowledge to deal with many systems. However, they will often just advise clients to replace what they have with their recommended system. Home networks, with their PS3s, XBoxes and Wii's all wanting to share the Internet connection securely can be a challenge.

Andrews Technology can help in all these cases, but what makes us special is our database, programming and automation capabilities.

• Do you need Excel to read in data from another system?
• Do you want Word to create letters using information from a database, then export it to a PDF file?
• Do you want to generate special files that can be read in by your Robot or CNC machine?

Often, it only takes a small amount of automation to make efficiencies in a process - anything involving repetition, automation or conversion.

 Hello, my name is Paul Andrews and I am the Managing Director of Andrews Technology Limited.

Corporate experience

I have worked as an IT specialist since 1997, when I joined a very small IT department in a very large organisation!

We had over 100 desktops (mostly Windows for Workgroups 3.11), a Netware based network and Microsoft Mail for our internal email. As with most companies at the time the IT department (consisting of the IT Manager and myself, the Network Analyst) were part of the Finance directorship.

I worked there for several years, introducing remote dialup, Internet based email, web browsing at the desktop and Windows 98. To put things in perspective, most of the employees did not think Internet email would be of any use - at the time only a handful even knew of someone with an email address.

I learnt a great deal at that company - in particular, how a company can manage being pioneering without sacrificing stability. With such a large number of desktops things like record keeping, standardisation, total cost of ownership, testing and user training are paramount.

Small business experience

When I left that company, I wanted a change of pace - so I became the (sole) Network Engineer / Systems Analyst for the UK office of a worldwide manufacturing firm, reporting to the Managing Director.

Here, the goals were quite different - there were only twenty office computers, but a shopfloor full of stand-alone technology. For this company, IT wasn't just part of the operating costs - it had to add value. Here was a three-pronged approach; bring down operational costs, streamline office activities (to save on time and staffing), and improve shopfloor efficiency.