• An efficiency review is a simple and effective way to identify irrelevant, redundant, onerous, outdated or even “missing” processes in the business. • Many Trustee Office processes are excellent candidates for automation using Microsoft SharePoint templates, which can be deployed within a couple of weeks either on the trustee office premises premises (using a current SharePoint investment) or on the Microsoft Cloud (SharePoint Online offered through Telstra’s T-Suite). Some examples of these templates might include: 1. Trustee Secretariat – Track Board Paperwork, including meeting minutes, document packs (optional grouping by agenda), task management, issue tracking, KPI reporting around board initiatives, board meeting rating and continuous improvement, support for electronic discussions prior to and/or after meetings. 2. Trustee’s Control Centre – Track product management initiatives (such as new products and services, as well as the changes to investment, insurance and fee options) and coordinate recurring tasks with internal and external parties (including. Risk Register) and synchronise with the ‘Fund Calendar’ 3. Project360o– This might be an end-to-end overview of a strategic project, starting from project initiation workflow, documents (incl. WIKI support), tasks, issues, calendar, contacts, discussions, project portfolio dashboard and executive views.

2. IT should be an asset not a cost Trustees need to apply the same diligence and professionalism to their own office as they do to their member administration functions. Traditionally, trustee offices only thought of IT Services as a cost to be managed, and something to be ‘insourced’ or ‘outsourced’. Again, the long standing relationship with administrators has been exploited with no tangible benefit other than the dubious minimisation of explicit costs. Other issues that are critical to the IT infrastructure include service uptime of at least 99.9 per cent, business continuity, disaster recovery and business-class security – all within a cost effective model. How can all these ideals be achieved? The Cloud can provide the best of both worlds. It provides the scale and assurance of a large outsourced solution with the control over destiny of an inhouse service. Cloud computing allows IT in the trustee office to be viewed as an asset to be leveraged, rather than a cost that needs to be managed. Trustees can focus on what matters most – their business objectives for maximising member benefits. The Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) from Microsoft Online Services is a set of subscription-based communications and collaboration services hosted by Microsoft. It includes –

• Microsoft Exchange Online (e-mail messaging, calendaring, and contacts) • Microsoft SharePoint Online (Web-based collaboration and document-sharing) • Microsoft Office Live Meeting (audio and video Webconferencing) • Microsoft Office Communications Online (instant messaging and presence capabilities). Microsoft hosts and manages the servers that support these offerings, while vendors are available that can provide local support (including fixed price email migration from on-premise to cloud) and/or other value-added services and support. Subscribing trustee offices do not have to invest in the onsite infrastructure or support resources required to run such a solution. Instead, they pay a monthly fee based on the number of users accessing the services. Through Microsoft Online Services, trustee offices get access to the enterprise-class communication services it needs— including desktop and mobile e-mail, calendaring and contacts, instant messaging, presence, shared workspaces and web-conferencing applications—all supported by financially-backed service level agreements from Microsoft that promise high availability and high reliability.