Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

Imagine walking through your office and seeing an employee sitting at their desk, staring at their phone for 45 minutes while on the clock. You would step in and say something immediately, right?

Yet, this is exactly what happens every single day in small businesses across the country. It does not look like doing nothing, it looks like a spinning loading icon, a slow VPN connection, or a redundant data entry task.

In the IT world, hoping your backups work is a recipe for disaster. From a pro perspective, a backup that hasn't been tested is just a pile of useless data. We’ve moved past the days of just saving files to a thumb drive; today, it's about business continuity, making sure a company doesn't go bankrupt because a server died or a hacker got in.

If you want to keep a business alive, you need to know these three points.

Over the years, I have watched many industries get disrupted, but few have evolved as dramatically as the automotive sector. In just over two decades, the car has undergone a total metamorphosis. We have moved past the era of purely mechanical machines into an age where our vehicles are essentially high-performance computers on wheels.

Let’s look back at the 25-year digital revolution that turned the automobile into an intelligent, interconnected ecosystem.

The money you throw at anything to do with your business can work as one of two things: a fix or an investment. Obviously, the latter option is the better one, but how can you tell if your spending is actually helping support your future successes?

Here, you’ll find four questions that will act as a sort of litmus test to help you answer that question.

Did you know that most businesses are only one hard drive failure or disaster away from permanently ceasing to exist? While we wish this were hyperbole, the fact of the matter is that not all businesses take data backup and business continuity as seriously as they should. At its core, you can boil down data backup to three key pillars, and with the help of a qualified professional, it’s not nearly as challenging as you’d expect.

The holiday season isn’t usually a time we like to spend dwelling on unpleasantries, but unfortunately, cybercrime is too prevalent for us to ever let our guard down. However, in light of the holiday, we can tell a (somewhat) happier story that nevertheless reminds us what to keep an eye out for.

As such, please enjoy our version of Charles Dickens’ lesser-known holiday story.

One of the more frustrating parts of running a business with an IT budget is the rush to spend all those dollars before they get redistributed to other departments. This happens more often than you might think, yet despite this, you have businesses spending without thought, trying to use up the funds before they dry up. In reality, you want to have each of your IT purchases be an investment in the future of your business—an investment made with intention and thought.

Many businesses find themselves allocating their time for IT in a particular way—70 percent to maintenance, with only 30 percent dedicated to innovation and development. For real growth, the opposite is far preferable.

Fortunately, you can embrace better IT by simply reallocating some of your resources. Let’s explore how.

For most business owners, the question is no longer if a disruption will happen, but when. Whether it's a natural disaster, a major IT failure, or a security breach, every minute your business is down impacts your reputation, your bottom line, and your ability to serve your customers.

If your business is tired of dealing with distorted audio, dropped calls, and general telephone bill chaos, you’re not alone. Countless small businesses are in the same boat, struggling against their telephone provider as they try to run their business in a more efficient manner. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, offers a comprehensive solution to this dilemma, provided you take the time to implement a system that works for you.

That’s what we’re going over today—how to find the right VoIP solution for your SMB and avoid the five most common mistakes they encounter when doing so.

If your company's main computer system completely crashes—we’re talking total shutdown from a dead hard drive, a nasty virus like ransomware, or someone majorly messing up—what actually happens?

For a lot of businesses, the plan is that one dusty external hard drive they plug in at the end of the day. That's not a plan; it's a wish… and when everything goes dark, wishing won't save your job or the business.

One of the most frustrating parts of working in any word processor is adjusting your text size—especially after you copy and paste content into a document. The formatting gets all out of whack and you’re left to pick up the pieces. One way you can make it easier to fix your formatting is to copy and paste as plain text into the document. We’ll show you how.

While remote work presents many benefits, it has also created challenges, particularly due to the lack of visibility you have over your employees—at least physically. While you hope that trust is enough to carry your business, hope is not a plan for employee productivity. You’ll also need tools and methods to monitor your team so you can hold them accountable. We’re here to deliver the fix to your employee productivity needs.

Have you ever wondered why your Wi-Fi is great in one room but practically non-existent in another? You've got a powerful Internet plan, a modern router, but are still experiencing those frustrating dead zones or sluggish speeds. Today, we’re going to tell you that one of the most overlooked, yet critical, factors isn't your Internet provider or router model; it's simply where you put your router.

The placement of your Wi-Fi router can make or break your home Internet experience. Let's dig into the optimal spots and common pitfalls to ensure you're getting the most out of your connection.

Regardless of how productive your well-oiled business machine is running, you might stop and ask yourself, “Am I doing everything I can to keep my business safe from a cyberattack?” Threat detection and response is nothing new, but managed detection and response—the act of outsourcing this responsibility—is an innovative and effective way to keep your business safe. While standard cybersecurity solutions like antivirus and firewalls are still necessary, they are passive at best.

Do you remember Tay? In 2016, Microsoft launched an AI chatbot on Twitter, named Tay, designed to learn from casual and playful conversation. The result was a spectacular public failure. Within 16 hours, the Internet had taught Tay to be wildly offensive, racist, and conspiratorial. Microsoft had to pull the plug in a panic.

Remote and hybrid work aren’t going away, so you can’t expect that today’s workforce won’t demand them in at least some capacity. That means your business needs to be ready to deliver these expectations in at least some capacity, especially if you want to remain competitive. If you aren’t willing to commit to full-on remote work, a hybrid approach combines the flexibility of remote work with the need for in-house operations, and is a perfectly suitable way to offer what employees want and need without sacrificing productivity and security.

If you’re the type of person who would like the boss to think of you whenever they think about who the most valuable member of their team is, you’ve come to the right place. We often say that we’re all about helping the businesses we work with accomplish their goals. The way we see it, the people who work for the business count too… which is why we wanted to share some handy tricks and tips you can use to look good for your employer.

Let’s review how your technology can help you work smarter, not harder, to look good in the office without giving up your work/life balance.

Your team depends on a diverse mix of laptops, smartphones, tablets, desktops, Internet of Things devices, and even some Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) personal devices. While each of them brings productivity to the table, they also open your company’s doors to potential threats. This is why businesses are turning to centralized endpoint management solutions that manage the security and updates of every device on the network—all from one convenient location.

Today, we are examining the importance of a centralized endpoint management solution for your business—and the risks associated with not having one.

Take a walk... I dare you. Go on, right now. Take a walk around your office.

How many computer monitors have a little yellow sticky note stuck to the corner? How many keyboards have a password taped underneath?

This isn't just bad housekeeping; it’s a terrifying security risk hiding in plain sight.

The hard truth is that you can spend $50,000 on the world's most advanced firewall, but if your company's master key is on a 5-cent sticky note, you've left the front door wide open with the key under the mat.