Tag Archive for: technology

Quick recoveries with external IT support

Small-business owners with limited financial resources have to manage their office IT on their own. Although this might work for a while, it can grow into a massive problem when the business starts expanding. At that point, you’ll want to focus on that expansion, not repairing tech problems. This is where external IT support comes into play.

Access to new technologies and industry experts

Managed Services Providers (MSPs) are equipped with resources most small businesses can’t afford. They employ teams of experts in fields ranging from cybersecurity to data management to networking — all available for you on an outsourced basis. For example, an MSP provides advanced security software and applications that can help your business avoid the risks of cyberthreat.

They also work with industry tech leaders who provide insights into upcoming hardware and software products in the market. This ensures you receive updated recommendations on the latest technologies so you can use them in your business, and they often come with deals and discounts that you wouldn’t normally have access to.

Knowledge from past breaches

External IT support providers have been helping businesses recover from all kinds of tech disasters since the dawn of hackers. They now have enough knowledge to prepare Data Backup and Disaster Recovery plans for you. This way, you and your team would still be up and running after suffering from an IT emergency without disrupting much of your business operations.

External support providers’ experience with data protection will ensure your systems are monitored around the clock so your security systems are always functioning properly to keep cybercriminals at bay.

Run your business with ease

You don’t specialize in technology, so you don’t have the skill or the experience in dealing with digital felons. You also know how vulnerable your business is online and won’t dare do anything to jeopardize it. That’s why external support is such a great asset — you’ll be able to manage your business without any worries because your external IT provider will keep it protected.

In the end, you also have to be cautious in your search for an external support provider. Conduct your research thoroughly, read through all their testimonial pages, and verify whether their business objectives coincide with yours. To put your mind at ease and to make sure that your business’s technology is in good hands, you can always send us a message and we’ll provide you all the references you need.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

/by

How to calculate your technology ROI

2016Apr4_BusinessValue_CWhen purchasing new technology, how often do you consider its return on investment? For many business owners, calculating ROI is a tricky task that is sometimes skipped altogether. It shouldn’t be because if IT isn’t saving you money, it’s costing you. Here’s how you can gain a better understanding of technology ROI and how you can calculate it in your business.

ROI basics

What does it mean to have a positive return on investment? It’s pretty simple. A positive ROI means the results a technology produces are greater than or equal to the amount of time and money invested. Obviously you want a positive ROI, but when is the right time to consider it? Should it be before or after you make a technology purchase? The answer is both. Before purchasing, you want to carefully consider whether a technology service or product is worth your money. Then months after you’ve implemented it, you should analyze whether or not you made a good investment. Doing this enables you to learn from your mistakes (if you made one) and make a wiser technology purchase next time.

Also, don’t forget to look at your technology currently in use. Ask yourself, is your technology simply keeping the lights on? Or is it providing a solid foundation for your business to grow? If the answer is the former, there are likely better options out there worth trying.

How to calculate ROI

When calculating ROI, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Here is a simple formula to get you started.

ROI = net gain/cost
Example: You spend $100 and make $150. Your net gain is $50
ROI = 50/100 = 50%

If you’ve yet to purchase a service or new equipment, you obviously don’t know how much profit it will generate. So you’ll have to do a bit of guesswork and estimation. It’s also important to consider some intangibles. Think about the productivity costs of staff time, disruption, and frustration (because most of us don’t work effectively when frustrated). Let’s take staff time for example. How much time will your staff save if you implement a Managed Services solution? With your employees no longer having to put out IT fires daily, what if your entire staff saves 50 hours a week because of it? How much does that add up to in saved salary expense? It’s important here not just to think about the savings in time, but also what your staff could be doing with those extra 50 hours. They could put those hours towards marketing or growing your business. And that alone could make up for the costs of the technology investment itself.

Intangibles don’t just apply to saving time, frustration and disruptions, but also the costs of implementing the new technology. For example, how much time will be required to train your staff on the new technology? What’s the cost of that? Also, how much time will it take to migrate from your old system to the new one? You should consider all of these when estimating your ROI.

Lastly, don’t forget to consider the unique circumstance of subscription purchases. Since you are usually paying these on a monthly basis, it can be a bit tricky to add up real costs. That’s why it’s important to use a timeline for these. For example, if you subscribe to software as a service, what’s the cost of that plan over the course of one year or five? How much money will you save over that time span?

What’s the benefit?

Besides the staffing example mentioned above, consider how a technology investment can create new revenue streams. For example, an investment in VoIP opens up an opportunity to offer video consulting to clients in parts of the country (or even world) that would normally be out of reach. This obviously leads to a new revenue stream and increased profits. So ask yourself, can the technology you’re considering create new revenue streams?

Next steps

Before making a technology purchase, it’s wise to talk with both management and end users about your decision. If you fail to consult your end users before implementation, they may disagree with your decision and therefore take longer to adapt or even rebel against it. Checking with them beforehand gives them a chance to offer valuable feedback on how it will be used in the trenches, and will get them onboard with the technology if you implement it. As for your management team, they can be a valuable resource to bounce ideas off of and gain insights about the technology you may have overlooked.

Lastly, ROI does not need to be calculated for every purchase. If you need to buy something small, like a new keyboard, just go and buy it. Save your ROI calculations for much larger investments that can have a dramatic impact on your business.

If you need help determining the ROI of a potential technology investment, feel free to give us a call for a chat. Our experts can help you determine the true benefits of a given technology and help you make a wise investment.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

/by

Tips to monitor employee activities online

2016Mar15_Security_CWhen it comes to monitoring your employees online, there are potential positives and negatives for your company. But as a business owner who’s never done it before, you may be clueless as to what these are. So to help, we’ve come up with a list of the pros and cons of employee monitoring. And if you do decide to go through with it, we’ve provided some tips for a smooth implementation process.

The case for monitoring

There are a number of reasons why monitoring your employees is a good idea. Doing so can help you:

  • Protect your organization from data theft or harm – because some disgruntled employees may try to steal from you or corrupt your data.
  • Ensure you have a harassment free workplace – because cyber harassment (sexual or otherwise) happens among employees.
  • Ensure staff are complying with policies – not downloading illegal programs or spending time on websites with illegal or hostile content.
  • Provide evidence in case of a lawsuit – heaven forbid this happens, but if an employee participates in illegal activities on your business’s computers, monitoring can provide evidence of it.

The sad fact of the matter is that many businesses who monitor end up discovering that employees are doing things they’re not happy about. Research by Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio, revealed that two thirds of companies monitor their employees, and half of them have fired employees due to their behavior on email and the web.

Cons

Of course there are some potential downsides to monitoring that you should be aware of as well. These include:

  • Productivity loss – monitoring can kill employee morale, and therefore you may see a hit in their productivity if they feel you distrust them.
  • TMI and lawsuits – you’ll likely learn about the personal lives of your employees that you would’ve never known about had you not monitored. You may discover their political or religious views, sexual orientation or medical problems. This could potentially open up your business to privacy or discrimination issues if you or your management team act negatively on this information.

Monitoring guidelines to follow

If you decide to monitor your employees, here are a few tips you should follow.

1. Create written policies

When you decide to monitor, ask yourself, are you doing it for security purposes? Is it to ensure your employees are not wasting large amounts of time on Social media? Whatever the reasons, it’s smart to balance your policies with the expectations of your employees. If you’re too strict with your monitoring, you could create that atmosphere of distrust we mentioned above. So set guidelines for acceptable use of email, social media, web surfing, instant messaging, and downloading software and apps. Also, in your policy, include how monitoring will be carried out and how data will be secured or destroyed.

2. Tell your employees

It’s important to inform your employees about your monitoring. If they find out you’re doing it without their knowledge, you could create resentment among them or even face legal issues. And just by letting staff know, you may actually see a boost in productivity as it could deter them from wasting time on the web.

When you tell your employees, explain why you’re doing it and the risks your business faces from misuse of digital assets. Reassure them you’re not doing it to spy on their personal life, but only attempting to create a compliant and law abiding workplace. Because their activities will now be less private, encourage your staff to keep their personal communication to their smartphones. Also, provide a copy of your written policy to employees to read over and sign.

3. Get the right technology tools

While there are many technology tools to monitor your employees, bear in mind, you don’t need to follow their every move. In fact, you shouldn’t as it will not only waste your time, but also cause you to find out more information than necessary. So look for technology that will alert you to potential problems, so you can focus on more important things. Lastly, you may also want to consider technology that can block certain content, like porn or hate websites, as employee access to this content could create larger problems.

Whether or not to monitor your employees can be a tricky decision but, if implemented correctly, could benefit your business in making it more secure and even more productive. For more information about security and other IT support tools, get in touch. We’ll make our best effort to help however we can.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

/by

Become better with these productivity tips

2016Feb15_Productivity_CWe live in the age of distraction. If it’s not the hundredth urgent email in your inbox that blows your focus, maybe it’s your IT staff pounding on your door with another technology emergency. Whatever the circumstance, you may be tired of looking in the mirror only to see bags under your eyes from too many late nights at the office. That’s why we’ve come up with a few principles to help you become more productive in your business and life, and to hopefully help you get some sleep.

Have a single focus

When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were asked what the single most important reason for their success in life was, both answered with a single word: focus. It is that important. When you work on one task for an extended period of time, the quality of your work is at its highest. What’s more, you’ll also finish that task in a shorter amount of time than if you had to stop and start it repeatedly due to distractions.

This principle of focus can be applied to many areas of business and life. Whether you’re writing a report, sharing time with your family, or simply reading a book for your own pleasure, the quality of that experience improves with the more uninterrupted time you dedicate to it. Now, when it comes to IT and technology, this same principle can have a tremendous impact on your business. Not only do technology distractions – such as constantly breaking computers, security breaches, and slow servers – hurt your productivity, but they also crush your spirits. How can you focus on growing your business like this? This is where an MSP comes in. They can help eliminate all IT interruptions so you get back to doing what you do best – running your business. What’s not to love about that?

Obey Parkinson’s law

If you ever pulled an all-nighter as a university student, you may be familiar with Parkinson’s law. The principle states that the time it takes to complete a task expands or shrinks depending on the time allotted for it. For example, when you were hitting the books in high school or college, you may have noticed that a few students (and maybe you were one of them) would put off an important paper or project to the last moment and still end up getting an A. While at the same time, other students would take weeks to complete the same project or paper and only manage a B. So how did this happen? This peculiar phenomenon is the magic of Parkinson’s law at work. When you have less time to work on a project, you focus only on the important aspects of it. Oftentimes this is all you need to do a good job.

So whether it’s a company meeting or the amount of time you put towards researching your next vacation, apply Parkinson’s law to increase everyone’s focus and ensure you’re not wasting valuable time on the task. As for your IT, give your in-house staff a reasonable, yet specific amount of time, to complete a task. This will ensure they finish the job in a timely manner, and then move on to other projects. Alternatively, you can simply outsource all of your IT to an MSP for a single, flat monthly fee, and never have to worry about it to begin with.

Use technology to become superhuman

As human beings, technology enables us to become more than we could have ever dreamed of. Apps like Evernote can enable us to remember every valuable piece of information we encounter. Cloud technology can bring a remote workforce scattered around the country together so they can work on the same project simultaneously. VoIP gives you the ability to video-chat with business partners, loved ones, and friends while they’re as far off as Bangkok or Baghdad. Technology is reshaping not only the business world, but also the life of every individual on the planet. So when it comes to your own business, is your company going to take advantage?

We hope that these productivity tips will help improve your life in and outside of the office. If you’d like to know more about how IT can transform your business, to make it more efficient and profitable, give us a call today.

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

/by