fbpx

Don’t wait any longer. Get started today!

 
 

Directive Blogs

Directive has been serving the Oneonta area since 1993, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Remote Teams Demand New Approaches

Many of today’s businesses span continents. That’s not an exaggeration. With faster Internet speeds fueling remote workforces, some businesses choose to strategically use workers from all over the globe to create and sell their products or services. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss some of the adjustments and alterations that you need to make when relying on truly remote teams.

Continue reading

Why Disaster Recovery Is So Important

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file or had your computer crash? It’s a frustrating experience, right? Now, imagine if a major disaster—like a fire or data breach—struck and wiped out all your critical data. That’s where disaster recovery steps in to save the day.

Continue reading

Staying Productive is Crucial for Everyone

It can be difficult staying productive with all the things that happen day-in and day-out around your business. When your team is productive, it helps you stay focused and organized, and it can make a big difference in how successful you are. This week we break down just how keeping productivity levels high can make or break a business.

Continue reading

Worried Your Workplace Might Be Toxic? Here’s How to Fix It

“Toxic” is a buzzword that is often used nowadays, but when it is used to describe a business’ work environment, it needs to be treated with deadly seriousness.

If a workplace is a place people don’t like to be, many drawbacks will ultimately impact operations. Therefore, it is to your benefit to keep your business as positive a workplace as possible.

Let’s discuss how to tell if your company has a toxic workplace and, if so, how to resolve it.

Continue reading

Two Common Issues that Create Inefficiency and What to Do About Them

Efficiency is extremely important for any business to maintain consistent revenue generation. Technology is a big part of that. Today, we’ll discuss two ways that technology can help build a more efficient business. 

Continue reading

Do Everything You Can to Minimize Downtime

Unexpected downtime can wreak havoc on businesses large and small, which is especially bad when so many paths lead to it. Let’s explore some of downtime’s causes, and equally importantly, how it can be avoided.

Continue reading

Is Your Website Compliant with Cookie Laws?

It’s easy to put your website at the farthest corner of your to-do list, but smart business owners know that doing so could put them at a disadvantage and even get them in hot water. Let’s take a quick look at one key consideration you should make to keep yourself on the up-and-up: cookies and the laws surrounding them.

DISCLAIMER: We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. Seek out representation if that is what you are looking for.

Continue reading

Could Your Employees Benefit from a Compressed Workweek?

The concept of a four-day workweek has started to gain significant traction among businesses of all sizes. There's a subtle distinction between the traditional four-day workweek and the compressed workweek, however. Today, we will discuss the compressed workweek and what it means for employees.

Continue reading

Collaboration, Communication, and the Tech that Fuels Both

Collaboration is at the heart of any effective business. Most organizations today are trying to make the most of their limited resources, and one of the ways to do this is with a solid collaboration strategy. Here’s how you can do the same to avoid siloing tasks and squandering your workforce’s potential.

Continue reading

Save Time with Vendor Management

Your business works with a lot of vendors. Each of these vendors requires your time, energy, and resources. Do you have the assets to handle all of them yourself, or would it all be better spent elsewhere on more profitable tasks and projects? Today, we’ll highlight your business’ vendor management options.

Continue reading

Scope Creep Can Railroad Your Projects

Projects are a big part of the small business model. Whether they are projects to improve organizational efficiency or productivity or projects that are completed for customers, strong project management is extremely important. Scope creep happens when a project becomes less efficient because the demands of the project keep changing. In today’s blog, we will try to define scope creep and how to prevent it from being a problem for your business.

Continue reading

Strategic Restructuring Can Improve Your IT Infrastructure

While your business might last into the near future, your IT is more challenging to upkeep and preserve over time. You’ll have to consider reworking and restructuring your infrastructure to ensure that it stands the test of time. Let’s review some warning signs that it might be time to do just that.

Continue reading

If You Notice These Workplace Issues, You Have a Productivity Problem

Productivity is the measure of which an employee and a business is judged by, and for that reason, when productivity starts to lapse at an individual or organizational level it needs to be addressed immediately. In today’s blog, we’ll go through some of the problems that an organization can see when productivity drops.

Continue reading

The Starter Guide for Business Compliance

A business’ compliance with the regulations it operates under is a huge issue that many inside your organization won’t understand but has to draw some attention. Let’s look at some of the variables that go into compliance to outline just how important it is.

Continue reading

How a CRM Can Make Your Business Better

No matter your industry, size, or business model, satisfying your customers is crucial. Your business' survival depends on your ability to do this effectively.

To achieve this, it is essential to leverage every opportunity to deliver for your audience. One way to do this is through modern business technology, such as customer relationship management (CRM). Let's explore what a CRM is and why it's beneficial.

Continue reading

The Value of a Printed Newsletter Should Not Be Underestimated

With so much focus on digital marketing nowadays, it can certainly be tempting to focus solely on these efforts… often, to the detriment of other forms, like print. We wanted to take a few moments to correct this temptation and talk about how print marketing, specifically in the form of printed newsletters, still has a lot of value to offer businesses… particularly, managed service providers.

Continue reading

How are Companies Handling Employees’ Desire to Work from Home?

Many business owners considered allowing their employees to work from home like opening Pandora’s box; once opened, there was no going back. Unfortunately, for these administrators, they were faced with the very real prospect of losing their business if they didn’t allow it. Millions of people started working from home in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now that public fear has diminished, how have companies reacted? Let’s discuss some remote work statistics to get an answer.

Continue reading

Five Common Business IT Headaches Managed Services Help Relieve

Technology frustrations can cause major setbacks for today’s businesses. IT challenges of all kinds can disrupt operations and impact productivity. Fortunately, managed IT services can help solve these common business IT headaches. Therefore, businesses can access a team of experts ready to tackle these issues head-on by outsourcing their IT management to a managed service provider.

Continue reading

Here's Why Oneonta Businesses are Ditching Traditional Phone Systems for VoIP

In the realm of business communication, a seismic shift is underway. Traditional phone systems, once the backbone of business communication, are being phased out. In their place, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems are taking center stage.

But why is this change happening?

Continue reading

Are Businesses Really Considering the Four-Day Workweek?

There has been a lot of talk about ways to get more productivity from your staff. One idea floated a few years ago was reducing the number of days people work to four. Now, if you think, “How does working one less day improve worker productivity?” you aren’t alone. This week, we will take a look at the benefits of a four-day workweek.

Continue reading

Improving Collaboration Can Pay Big Dividends

Effective teamwork is indispensable for business success. Collaboration stands out as an extremely important consideration, yet devising a strategy that expedites project completion and enhances service delivery poses challenges. This week, we get into modern collaboration practices and how technology can help you improve collaboration.

Continue reading

The Problem With Devaluing Employees

Running a business can be tough and result in a lot of frustration from staff, management, and customers. Sometimes that frustration can boil over and cause consternation among the core elements that need to function for a business to be successful. This week, let’s look at an issue that can really hurt your business.

Continue reading

Explaining Shift Shock: Why Younger Employees Leave Good Jobs

You might have noticed that some of your younger workers are leaving your business much earlier than you might expect them to. This could be because of a phenomenon called “shift shock,” which examines employee engagement and satisfaction. Let’s consider how shift shock could potentially harm your business.

Continue reading

Which Leadership Style Do You Tend to Use in Your Business?

Leadership can take many forms. As a leader in your own company, it can pay to understand what form of leadership you tend to express when working with your team. Let’s review some leadership styles to see if anything resonates.

Continue reading

What Makes Outsourcing IT So Valuable for SMBs?

Technology has ingrained itself into just about every facet of modern life, particularly in the business world where every competitive edge makes a difference. Many small and medium-sized businesses simply don’t have the staff on-hand to manage and maintain their technology solutions, instead opting to outsource this important responsibility to managed service providers (MSPs).

Continue reading

Three Ways We Offer Cost-Effective IT Solutions

The entire premise of managed IT services is that they can save your business money, but in what specific ways does working with us make your budget more predictable? It’s really quite simple, and it encompasses three primary pillars: an established level of service, proactive maintenance and management, and the reliability and access to expertise that might otherwise put a stopper on your business’ potential.

Continue reading

You Deserve IT Services Shaped to Your Needs

For any business to succeed, it needs to exhibit some degree of empathy toward its audience. Otherwise, the services and products they offer will be less likely to meet the priorities and needs that its targets are experiencing.

As a managed service provider, this is perhaps most true of us, as our services revolve around predicting the needs of our clientele and resolving them… ideally, before the client even realizes they have a need to fulfill.

Continue reading

Did You Know? Big Tech Companies Don’t Care About Your Data Privacy

How important do you consider security for your personal and private data on your web-connected accounts? If you don’t think about it often, you should be; countless entities out there—including major enterprises and providers you trust—do not respect your data privacy and security. Let’s discuss how some large companies take advantage of your data and some of the questions you should consider when trusting these companies with your data.

Continue reading

Don’t Want to Fully Outsource? Consider Co-Managed IT

SMBs need to be able to navigate the complexities of IT, whether it’s with a completely outsourced IT department or an in-house team of technicians. However, if you are thinking of technology management in this black-and-white way, you are eliminating the potential for enormous benefit through the use of co-managed IT.

Continue reading

Enough Floundering: Here’s a No-Nonsense Guide to Implementing New Technology Solutions

Businesses will often go into the process of self-improvement with unrealistic expectations for how much they can significantly improve their functionality. This simply is not true, and sometimes business owners need to realize that real change—the kind that yields real results—takes time. Thankfully, there are some actionable steps you can take to ensure that your business is moving in the right direction.

Continue reading

Small Businesses Need to Get the Right Tech to Open Up Opportunities

Technology can bring a lot of value for businesses, but sometimes it can be difficult to nail down exactly what can make a business run optimally. There are a lot of options, but all that means is that there are a lot of things that can potentially go wrong. Let’s take a look at some of the technology that small businesses are using to support the new workplace and create better opportunities. 

Continue reading

These Tech Solutions Can Eliminate Some Stress in the Workplace

Businesses have a lot of stressful things going on at any given moment, especially when timelines and deadlines are considered. You have projects that you need to complete for your customers and employees who need to be paid on time, and you would be hard-pressed to find a situation for your organization that isn’t under some sort of time crunch. How can you use technology to make sure that these timelines are met? Let’s go over some solutions.

Continue reading

How to Set Business Resolutions You’ll Be Motivated to Keep

Happy New Year! It’s officially that time when we all make resolutions meant to help improve ourselves, so why not include your business? Better yet, why not make business resolutions that you’re more likely to keep?

Let’s explore some of the ways that you can design your business’ resolutions to maximize the likelihood that you’ll keep them and benefit from them in the long term.

Continue reading

Maybe Don’t Ask Your Staff to Return to In-Office Work (You’ll See Why)

Do you remember a couple of years back when remote work went from being a privilege to the norm? It’s been a while since then, but many businesses have adopted hybrid or full remote operations, and as such, they are able to retain a semblance of normalcy even without the return of in-office work.

Some businesses have managed to get back to the state they were in prior to the pandemic, but there is a reason why a lot of businesses are not pushing the issue. Let’s go over some of them, and why forcing the issue with your employees is not necessarily a good idea.

Continue reading

We’re a Managed Service Provider… So, What Does That Mean?

There are significant benefits to be had by businesses that choose to seek out IT services and assistance from a managed service provider like us. We’re very aware that our word isn’t going to be super convincing on its own, of course, so let’s review what a managed service provider can do and how working with us can help your business.

Continue reading

Five Problems Businesses Have with Modern IT

While it’s true that technology has become essential for businesses, organizations still often grapple with various technology issues that can impact how they do business. Many times organizations get turned around and it can cause some aspect of their IT to be problematic for them. Today, we look at five common technology issues that businesses frequently face.

Continue reading

Getting the Technology You Need Is Not Always Easy

Did you know that a lot of technology investments go over budget or don’t necessarily provide the return that was intended? With technology playing such an important role in business, getting the right technology to fit your business is critical to your efficiency efforts. It’s not always as easy as identifying features in a huge software profile or using the cloud for everything. In today’s blog, we offer five useful tips to help you make informed decisions about your business’ technology.

Continue reading

Hybrid Work is the Future

The workplace has undergone a dramatic shift over the past several years in favor of remote work, due in no small part to worldwide circumstances. In fact, many workers who would prefer to work in-office found themselves unable to, pushing the button on the topic of remote work even more. While there are some outspoken companies that want to see the return of in-office work, experts in the industry seem to be of the opposite opinion.

Continue reading

Technology Solutions to Help Solve Common Operational Problems

Operational problems can not only stymie growth, they can trigger a lot of other issues that can be detrimental to the long term success and sustainability of a business. Unfortunately, it’s often a little difficult to see while you are in the heat of battle. Let’s take a look at some of the solutions that can solve some of the common operational problems that small businesses run into.

Continue reading

The Right IT Company Can Take Your Business to the Next Level

With technology being so important for all businesses in at least some capacity, it’s no small wonder that effectively using it (and having someone on-hand to manage it all) is tremendously valuable for any company. This is where a managed service provider (MSP) can be helpful, even for businesses that have a dedicated IT department. All small businesses benefit from working with an MSP.

Continue reading

Five Ethical Decisions Innovative Businesses Need to Wrestle With

Nowadays, companies grapple with a myriad of ethical challenges, necessitating responsible decision-making to keep the data they store secure. Some decisions that are made straddle the ethical line of right and wrong. Let’s take a look at five uses of technology that are controversial.

Continue reading

How Small Issues Can Snowball Into Major Operational Problems

When it comes to your business’ continuity, you should know that even small issues pose a great threat—especially when they involve your business’ data. Let’s examine two situations where even small mistakes could lead to a cascade of problems that could leave your organization strapped for cash and struggling to stay alive.

Continue reading

Technology Investments Can Significantly Help Your Business

Technology plays a pivotal role in the operations of most businesses, but its primary function is to empower and support the workforce. Many employees have specific expectations when it comes to the technology provided by their organizations. Failure to meet these expectations can drive them to seek employment elsewhere. Let’s delve into five ways technology bolsters your employees' productivity.

Continue reading

KPIs to Help You Measure Your Business’ Productivity

Productivity is the lifeblood of any business, and understanding what it entails is paramount for every decision-maker in the corporate world. The concept of productivity is highly contextual, as no two businesses operate in the same way or are managed identically. Today, we present a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that you need to consider. These twelve metrics will assist you in gauging whether your business is meeting productivity expectations or falling short.

Continue reading

Grow Your Business with Managed IT Services

Across the board, modern businesses rely on no small amount of technology to support their operations, making it key that you, one, have the technology your operations require, and two, have the means to keep this technology operational. Fortunately, managed services help you by providing both. Let’s review what managed services are, and how they work.

Continue reading

5 Ways You Can Improve Your Business’ Inventory Management

Sure, retailers have to manage their inventory effectively, but have you ever thought about the way your own business manages what it keeps on hand? Today we want to discuss five ways your business can more effectively manage inventory—and it turns out technology plays a pretty significant part in improving any inventory control system.

Continue reading

Modern Technology Can Boost Sales Efforts

In many ways, a business is only as capable as its sales team allows it to be… and nowadays, a sales team is only as capable as their tech allows them to be. Let’s take a few minutes to discuss how you can turn this to your advantage by providing your sales team with the technology that supports their goals.

Continue reading

How Data Shapes Your Business Priorities

Over the course of a year, a month, or even a single day, your business accumulates and utilizes a lot of data. You need systems in place to make good use of this data, otherwise your business is leaving efficiency on the table. Today we want to go over some proper uses for your data and how to make the most of this golden opportunity.

Continue reading

Value is at the Center of Any Managed IT Services

Many businesses, irrespective of their size, are increasingly turning towards managed services to streamline their operations, reduce expenses, and elevate their overall customer value proposition. The utilization of managed services has revolutionized the landscape, not just in terms of cost-saving, but also in facilitating businesses to grow and extract greater value from their IT infrastructure. Let's take a look into how managed services achieve this dual objective.

Continue reading

Disaster Recovery as a Service is a Way to Insulate Your Business From Harm

In an era where businesses rely heavily on data and technology, the need for comprehensive disaster recovery solutions has never been more critical. The stakes are high when it comes to safeguarding your company's digital assets and ensuring business continuity in the face of unforeseen disasters. This is where Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) comes into play.

Continue reading

New Technology Can Bring New Perspectives

Your customers expect not to be inconvenienced when doing business with your organization. Small businesses can use new technology to meet these expectations by offering online ordering, mobile apps, and e-commerce platforms. Such innovations not only improve the customer experience but also expand a business' reach. Let’s look at some of the ways new technology can improve your business.

Continue reading

Invest in Technology to Avoid These Eight Operational Problems

Businesses need to be cognizant of the role technology plays in today’s operations. Not only do you stand to lose ground on your competition if you fail to properly invest in your technology, it can have other negative effects on your business as well. This week, we outline eight things that can go wrong if you aren’t constantly looking to build a technologically savvy business. 

Continue reading

How to Successfully Implement a New IT Strategy

Technology is an incredibly powerful factor when it comes to your business operations, so we wanted to share how a solid IT strategy can make a significant impact on your company. We’ll explore how poor IT implementation and strategy can affect performance, as well as what you need to do to prioritize your IT.

Continue reading

Use Strategic Technology Upgrades to Build More Efficiently

Businesses struggle with a lot of different issues, but when a problem hits you hard in the pocketbook, it can be disastrous for the whole organization. Let’s take a look at some technology that can help you make the most out of your time and effort.

Continue reading

What You Need to Know About the Lifespan of the Windows 10 OS

The end of support for Windows 10 is scheduled for October 14, 2025. While that is a couple of years away, it's crucial to start strategizing for the future now. After this date, Microsoft will cease providing technical assistance, security updates, and bug fixes for the operating system. This means that continuing to use Windows 10 beyond that point could expose users to security risks and performance issues.

Continue reading

FTC Safeguards Gets a Crucial Update

The United States Federal Trade Commission’s mandate is to prevent fraud and promote consumer protection in today's interconnected world, where the digital landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The FTC recognizes the importance of safeguarding consumer information and has implemented their Safeguards Rule as a means to ensure that businesses protect sensitive data from unauthorized access and misuse. Let’s take a look at the Safeguards Rule and what you need to know about it in regard to your business. 

Continue reading

Prepare to Tackle These Collaboration Security Pitfalls

How does your business handle communication? Does it struggle to properly use its technology and collaboration tools? If so, we have some tips that can help you avoid the most common collaboration mistakes, particularly those related to data security. Read on to learn how you can ensure you’re not putting your data at risk needlessly with inappropriate collaboration security mistakes.

Continue reading

How to Go About Finding the Right Technology for Your Needs

Today’s businesses are heavily reliant on technology to streamline operations and do more to enhance workforce productivity. With the multitude of technology options available, however, finding the right solutions for your business can be more difficult than it seems at first glimpse. Let’s take a look at how technology professionals can help you navigate the technology landscape and find solutions that align with your business needs.

Continue reading

Knowledgeable IT Technicians Present Value for SMBs

With organizations running on technology, it is important that it is reliably managed. It’s also important that your organization has the technology in place that will help your team be the most productive and that will keep your data secure. The best way to accomplish this is with help from certified and knowledgeable IT technicians. 

Continue reading

How Much Time Can AI Save Your Business?

We get it: you’d expect to read the statement “AI is everywhere nowadays” as a science fiction story about the enslavement of humans by the very machines they’ve created. We aren’t quite there yet, but more and more humans are coming to rely on artificial intelligence to automate a lot of different tasks inside their businesses. Let’s take a look at what people are actually using AI for. 

Continue reading

4 Common Pitfalls Holding Back Your Business’ Collaboration

Collaboration tools can be remarkably helpful for businesses, if not downright essential to their success. With the right tools that are, of course, configured the right way, you can see exponential returns on your investment as your staff enjoy the many benefits they provide. Today, we want to discuss four common pitfalls with your collaboration tool security that must be addressed.

Continue reading

Your Team’s Experience at Work Matters, and IT Can Help Improve It

When you consider your business’ investments, you probably think about things like the hardware your team uses and the software this hardware supports. You might think about the furniture you’ve purchased to outfit your office. However, one often overlooked—but incredibly important—element that needs some level of investment is your employee satisfaction.

Continue reading

Improve Your Collaboration Through Technology Solutions

With collaboration remaining an important component of any successful business, it’s important to foster productivity and innovation through strategic implementation of technology solutions designed for this express purpose. Today, we want to discuss some of the aspects of collaboration you need to know to do it more effectively, as well as technology that facilitates this process.

Continue reading

Build Efficiency Through Strategically-Implemented Processes

Every business is trying to do what they do with fewer interruptions and reduced costs. The more you can do with less, the more profitable your business can become. Building efficient processes is essential for the growing business, so this week will explore various strategies and practical tips to help you build more efficient processes.

Continue reading

Does Managed IT Really Pay for Itself?

Businesses use all types of sayings to try to draw in customers. One of the core selling points of managed IT services is that “it pays for itself”. This is more than just marketing. The multiple services that make up managed IT services all help a business save time and money, but when added together, it can really help the bottom line of a business more than most services they can use. In this week’s blog we thought we would go through the core elements of a managed IT services agreement to show how it really does pay for itself. 

Continue reading

Digital Monitoring? It’s Great and Helpful, Under the Right Circumstances

Digital monitoring is a bit of a contentious topic in business, but according to a survey from Gartner, it might not be as contentious of a topic as previously thought. In fact, employees are often in favor of digital monitoring under the appropriate circumstances, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their jobs.

Continue reading

Many Businesses Have Found the Value in Hybrid Operations, You Might Too

The reliance on remote workers has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, and presents businesses some stark challenges as well as some amazing opportunities. As a result, a lot of businesses have tried to find middle ground and started implementing a hybrid approach to their workforce. Let’s take a look at what hybrid work entails and how it can benefit your organization.

Continue reading

Three Ways You Can Make Technology Work for You

While extremely useful, there are plenty of potential frustrations when using technology for your business. From extended downtime from broken technology to hackers trying to steal your data to tools that don’t really fit the specific needs of your business: managing a lot of technology can be difficult. In this blog, we are set to discuss three things you should focus on to get out in front of potential technology problems.

Continue reading

Why Your IT Team Should Have Its Own Mission Statement

You’re probably familiar with the concept of a mission statement, particularly in terms of your business as a whole. Did you know, however, that you don’t need to stop there? You can—and we’d argue, should—establish more specific organizational missions for your different departments. Let’s consider how you can benefit from creating a mission for your IT team to uphold throughout its operations, and how you might go about doing so.

Continue reading

How You Can Make Sense of Your Priorities with an Eisenhower Matrix

If your time is anything like mine, you often find it taken up by task after task, with all these responsibilities fighting for your attention. You’ve probably found yourself staring at your to-do list, trying to figure out what to tackle next, more times than you’d care to admit.

Continue reading

Bureaucracy In Your Business Can Ruin Efficiency

For business managers, it can sometimes be difficult to create policies and procedures that allow for the efficiency that they’d like to see from their business. Business growth leads to more complex situations which in turn demand more complex procedures. This enhanced complexity can not only get constant in that you need to alter the way things are done, you also could fall into the trap of mistakenly putting productivity roadblocks up that can alter the way your business operates.

Continue reading

IT Compliance is Important: Here are Some Requirements You May Need to Know

Compliance is a critical element of many businesses’ requirements, with pretty severe penalties as a consequence if the prescribed standards are not met. Even more importantly, most compliance requirements and regulations are put in place for the welfare of not only the business, but its clientele as well. This makes it critical to know which apply to your business, and how to meet them fully.

Continue reading

Does Your IT Staff Have These Important Certifications?

Information technology is a constantly changing industry, with practices shifting all the time. As a result, anyone you have working on your company’s IT should be actively seeking out various certifications to confirm that they are keeping up on modern trends and standards. To help you accomplish this, we’ve put together a brief list of valuable IT certifications that your IT personnel—whether they’re in-house employees or outsourced professionals—should have.

Continue reading

3 Ways that Managed Services Can Boost Your Business’ Profitability

In good times and bad, profitability is the priority for most businesses out there. Having said that, this priority is typically a challenging one to achieve, but did you know that there are a few different ways that investing in a relationship with a managed service provider can help increase your productivity—and as a result, your overall profitability?

Continue reading

An Organized Workspace Has Major Benefits

Every office has that one person that doesn’t seem to care that they are working in a room with other people. You know the type: They have day-old food on their desk. There are papers and other unnecessary items strewn about the desktop. Things are sticky and smell strange. The funny part is they seem comfortable with that mess. They may be the only one that is. In this week’s blog, we discuss the benefits of keeping your workspace clean.

Continue reading

Perfecting Productivity, Part Four: Promoting Productivity in Your Business

So, at this point, we’ve talked about what productivity is, how it can be measured, and how to protect it from what could potentially impact it negatively. To bring this brief series to a close, let’s talk about the things you can do to maximize it as much as possible for your business’ benefit.

Continue reading

Is Outsourcing HR Right for Your Business?

Lots of businesses are facing a financial crunch as the margins they operate under continue to shrink. This unfortunate trend has led a lot of businesses to outsource elements of their operations to try and cut costs. One part of the business that is either outsourced or cut out entirely has been the human resources department. 

Continue reading

Perfecting Productivity, Part Three: Protecting Productivity

We’ve been spending the past few weeks examining productivity and how to optimize it, and today, we felt it was necessary to address the issues that could throw the proverbial wrench into the works. 

Don’t worry, though, we’re also going to touch on how you can avoid and/or mitigate the issues that might threaten your productivity.

Continue reading

Perfecting Productivity, Part Two: How to Portion Out Productivity

Recently, we talked about productivity, and how it can be defined. We wanted to continue our deep dive into the concept of productivity with an examination of the different ways that you can measure your own.

So, how can you keep track of your productivity?

Continue reading

Why Solid Project Management is So Important

When we talk about projects, we typically mean new technology deployment. Our technicians spend a lot of time trying to outfit our clients with the right technologies for their business. What becomes evident pretty quickly is that most businesses don’t just need help with the IT projects, they need to get the tools in place for their own project management needs. In this week’s blog, we will briefly discuss what businesses should be looking for in project management and how today’s tools can help your organization be more productive and get more done. 

Continue reading

The IT Guy Has Changed

IT support is a must for the modern business. Whether you have an internal IT administrator, a team of technicians on staff, or you outsource your management, you need to ensure that your business has the support and service needed to keep your business’ technology running efficiently. 

Continue reading

Perfecting Productivity, Part One: Prescribing Productivity

Productivity has been, is now, and likely will forever be heralded as one of the preeminent goals for any business. As such, it makes sense to understand as much as we can about it. To do so, we’ll be examining a different aspect of productivity for the next few weeks.

First up: what is productivity, in the first place?

Continue reading

How You Spend Your Business’ Money Matters

Your decisions with capital will bleed into every part of your organization, so it’s crucial that you are able to determine the difference between capital expenses and operational expenses. When you know what each of these accomplish, you can do more with the same amount of capital.

Continue reading

Is Your Business Being Held Back By All Those Meetings? Research Says Yes

Meetings are a common hold-up for getting things done in the office, an idea that is certainly not unfounded. Research supports the premise that meetings impact productivity. Let’s consider what the numbers say and how you can work to ensure meetings don’t influence your company’s productivity in a negative way.

Continue reading

A Trustworthy Recovery Strategy Requires a Few Things

A disaster can take many forms, from a raging snowstorm to deleting the wrong file. Regardless of what kind of disaster you face, you can know that it doesn’t take much to impact a business, especially if the business doesn’t have a business continuity plan in place. How does your business recover from such a devastating scenario? How can it get its data back and in proper working order? That’s what we want to tell you about today.

Continue reading

How to Keep Rapid Growth From Hurting Your Business

All successful businesses want to grow and better themselves, as growth is a direct indicator that you are doing something right, from providing better services to your customers or servicing more customers. If you’re not ready to adapt to this growth, you’re in for a difficult time. Here are three ways you can keep your business operating even when you’re experiencing unprecedented growth.

Continue reading

Attract and Retain Employees with Solid IT

Technology is only effective in the hands of the right—or, at least, well-trained—employees. To work toward this goal, you’ll have to ramp up your hiring processes to ensure you garner the interest of the right candidates for the jobs. Nowhere is this more true than for your IT department. Let’s go over how you can make your business an attractive employment option for skilled and innovative technicians.

Continue reading

What You Need to Have a Solid Recovery Strategy

No one can tell when a disaster is going to hit your business or what form that disaster is going to take. The cause could be a storm, human error, or some freak occurrence that nobody could have seen coming. In order to get back up and running after one of these incidents a company needs to have a strong business continuity strategy. An essential part of this strategy is knowing how to recover data depending on the way it’s lost. Getting data back and working for your company is the only way to stave off ruin, so let’s look at data recovery strategies that can literally save your business.

Continue reading

Fledgling Smartphone Market Sees Decline in Innovation

Smartphones are everywhere. Nearly everyone has one either in their pocket or in their hand and that fact would make you think that the underlying smartphone market is one that is remarkably strong. This really isn’t the case. Today, we’ll take a brief look at the smartphone market and how a lack of true innovation is one of the reasons the industry has seen large decreases in sales. 

Continue reading

IT Management is Just a Fraction of How We Can Help

How does your business manage its IT? Do you have an in-house team, and how busy are they with all of the hustle and bustle of their everyday duties? Do they have time to address the many challenges and requests made of them? If not, then perhaps you should consider a different model for your IT management. Luckily, we have just the opportunity for you, and you won’t want to miss out on it.

Continue reading

Remote or In-House, Keeping Your Staff Upbeat Is Essential for Productivity

More than ever, it is important for your employees to have positive work experiences. People have many more resources to find new work today, and with so many people willing to find the “right fit” it can be quite expensive for organizations. While the best way is always to compensate people well, if you are facing a situation where you need to be creative to keep your people around, we have three suggestions. 

Continue reading

Sometimes, Business Growth Requires You to Be a Bit Uncomfortable

Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, largely because there’s a lot that can pop up and cause problems that need to be addressed. Let’s discuss how successful business owners rally through tough times to help attain this kind of success.

Continue reading

You Can’t Go Wrong with the Value Managed IT Services Bring

Technology is complex, and it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. This is more the case for business technology than consumer technology. Even those who consider themselves tech-savvy might be lost when it comes to managing business-grade technology solutions. How can you make sure that your business technology is receiving the service it needs to stay operational long-term?

Continue reading

How to Safely Adjust Your IT Budget in Tough Times

When times get tough, businesses are pretty quick to start cutting costs wherever they can…and frequently, the business’ IT is the first thing to hit the chopping block.

While we contend that IT is the last thing you want to cut back on when times are tough, you may not have a choice. Therefore, we wanted to take a few moments to explore how you can resist some of these cuts—and if not, what you need to prioritize.

Continue reading

Consider a Switch to VoIP this Year

The telephone, as a technology, has been around for quite a while, more or less serving businesses for that entire time. Of course, we’ve seen quite a few advancements in telephony over the years, which has helped it to remain a cornerstone of modern business communications to this day in the form of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

Continue reading

How to Tell Your Business’ Technology Needs an Upgrade

Do your employees have a hard time with the technology that you’ve provided them? Are your digitization efforts lagging behind? Are the systems your business is using coming up on their end of support date? Old technology can cause major problems for a business. In this week’s blog, we go through some of the signs that you may need to upgrade your business’ technology.

Continue reading

Make Work Simpler Through Automation

All jobs have aspects of them that are simply dull or unengaging. After all, nothing can be exciting all the time. This week we wanted to focus on these rote tasks and what you can do to make them less of an impact on your time and job fulfillment. Turns out, the key to solving this issue stems from technology, specifically the ability to automate said tasks.

Continue reading

How to Manage a Hot Desking Workplace

Hot desking—the workplace organization method wherein there are no assigned workstations—has an assortment of pros and cons to it, but many companies are finding the more fiscal benefits to be worth the trade-offs. Let’s explore some of the pros and cons of hot desking, and go over a few tips and strategies that will help if you choose to implement it. 

Continue reading

What Should be Expected from a CIO in the Coming Years?

With technology playing such a massive role in modern business processes, having someone in the higher ranks to oversee it is a huge advantage. This is the role of the Chief Information Officer—the CIO—which makes them an integral part of the modern C-suite.

So, what kind of thing does the CIO (or your business’ equivalent of it) need to know and consider in order to fulfill their role? 

Continue reading

Get Busy Setting Your Business Up for Success

Regularly, when a business is searching for ways to move their operations forward, there is a little hand wringing on how to do so. Every decision your business has to make comes with a price tag, and the more that you can do without spending a lot of money, the more value you are going to see. For this week’s blog, we thought we’d take a look at some actions you can take with your technology to ensure that your business is going in the right direction.

Continue reading