The future can be unpredictable at best, especially in today’s times. You never know when your company will suffer from circumstances beyond your control, whether it’s a disaster that uproots your office or a pandemic that forces your entire workforce to transition to remote operations. Thankfully, even in today’s trying times, technology presents opportunities to overcome these challenges.
Upgrading technology can often come with risk. While you might get some return on your investment, will you get it back fast enough to actually make that investment worth it in the end? How can your technology solve problems that your company experiences, and how do you acquire the capital necessary to make significant upgrades? If you dig too deep into the details, you might find that it is difficult to move forward with these major decisions, preventing you from leveraging these amazing benefits. Here are four signs that will give you an idea that it’s time to upgrade your technology.
Imagine that you are a kid again and you get low marks on a test in school. The natural response from your parents and teachers is that you need to double down on studying for that subject, as it is clear that you struggle with it. The same can be said for any professional shortcomings, such as public speaking, interpersonal communication, and other performance-based skills. But what if we flipped this concept on its head and focused not on what our deficits are, but instead where our strengths lie?
Business communications have seen some significant changes, particularly with recent events being what they have been. Instead of your team members having the opportunity to simply turn to one another in the office, there are now added hoops that they must jump through. Let’s go into how your internal and external communications should adjust to meet these changes.
Productivity software has one job: to help you maximize your productivity and do it while minimizing the time you spend on the work. It seems as if that’s pretty simple, especially since there are so many companies out there that create products that claim to do just that. Today, we thought we would unpack what you need out of your productivity software and take a look at some of the variables you should weigh when searching for a certain productivity app.
The laptop has been gradually seeing a boom in the office, replacing the desktop for a more portable option for meetings and remote work. Long gone are the days where the laptop feels like a more expensive, less capable option. They do have their detriments, though. One of the most complained about parts of using a laptop is the trackpad. They’ve added features and improved materials over the years, but the overall experience of using a trackpad hasn’t changed very much for over a decade.
The productivity software suites now available to businesses have come a long way in a relatively very short time. However, when selecting one, it is still crucial to compare your options based on a few key variables. Let’s go over these variables to make sure that the software suite you’re using is the right one for your needs.
The most successful businesses are those that are always seeking to improve what they offer—oftentimes, taking a successful element and simply making it more efficient to deliver. In the past, this basically meant that businesses needed to have their employees work more quickly. However, today’s improved technology and the automation that it makes possible have delivered a much more consistent option.
For any business endeavor, productivity has to be at the very top of the hierarchy of metrics. Think about it, it doesn’t matter what field you work in or what market you cater to, if your business isn’t productive it is going to have a hard time being profitable. For almost a year, many businesses have relied on remote workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and regardless of what you think about remote work, metrics have shown a fairly surprising rate of productivity out of remote workers over this time. With 12 months of data in hand, we take a look at why productivity is still a king of metrics and how the ongoing pandemic has affected the workforce’s productivity.
Regardless of what your business does, there is a good chance that it relies pretty heavily on technology. When that technology falters, so does your business. Sure, this might be for a couple hours at a time, but it all adds up and has a major impact on the success of your business. Many organizations have outsourced their IT support and management, but could benefit from a more proactive approach than the one they currently employ. Today, we will take a look at some of the priorities that businesses should consider when choosing an outsourced IT provider. Proactive Management One of the most crucial elements of a good managed IT services platform is the proactive approach to management. This is due to the fact that by mitigating downtime, an organization will be able to function more efficiently. When we talk about proactive management, we are mainly talking about constant remote monitoring of a network and infrastructure. While some outsourcers will just remotely fix problems that an organization reports, a managed IT services provider will continually monitor the network and infrastructure and use automation to ensure that all of a business’ IT is running smoothly. The whole strategy is to keep downtime to a minimum through conscientious care of the hardware and network using cutting-edge tools designed to automate many of the countless tasks that are needed to do so. The best outsourced IT services will absolutely include proactive monitoring. Backup and Disaster Recovery Sometimes when a business outsources their IT support, they are left to find their own backup system. This can create unnecessary costs, as most managed IT service providers (MSPs) make a point to mention that their backup and disaster recovery platform is central to their offering; and why not? Controlling your data is effectively having control over one of your business’ best assets. A well-functioning BDR should have the ability to backup all assigned data systems incrementally. That way the backup gets as much of your work saved as possible, protecting your business from data loss brought on by any issue, including ransomware, natural disaster, or simple user error. Security Consulting The traditional outsourced IT or break/fix vendor would never consider proactively helping a business avoid the litany of security threats that are out there today. Their business model suggests as much. With an MSP, however, your network’s security is paramount to their ability to be profitable. How’s that? The more problems you have with your network and infrastructure the more time and effort they need to take to ensure your IT is running as promised. As a result, for the MSP to succeed, your business needs to succeed. The IT technicians that work in managed IT services are typically some of the most proficient technicians in your area. They can lend a great deal of knowledge and expertise to keep your business technology assets secure and running as intended. This includes security for your network and infrastructure, your mobile strategies, and even your cloud infrastructure and resources. Patch Management Another proactive measure that a good MSP will deliver is patch management. Most of your supported software continuously releases patches to keep it from being a pathway for infiltration from nefarious outside entities. A good IT services provider will ensure that your software is not only monitored, […]