Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

“Even the Lone Ranger didn’t do it alone.” - Harvey MacKay

In business, there’s a good argument to be made that the most important capital is your social capital. In other words, your relationships with those around you hold quite a bit of value. Below, we’ll review some ways to form positive relationships with those that you have connected with as a result of your business operations.

We have almost made it through this year’s hurricane season, but unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that businesses will suddenly be safe again. Many businesses that are impacted by these kinds of disasters are unprepared, and so when push comes to shove, some ultimately close their doors after trying (and failing) to bounce back. We’re going to tell you how to help avoid this outcome for your business the next time there’s a disaster.

Do you know what an IT provider is really capable of doing for your business and its technology? Chances are, it’s likely more than you think. Below, we’ll review a few benefits that any IT resource worth their salt is capable of providing to a business like yours, and call it this week’s tip!

Maps are one of those very basic technologies that are always improving, starting as lines scratched into the ground and now living in our phones and giving us exponentially larger amounts of data. One of the first examples you may think of is Google Maps, which just got a few impressive updates that make the service even cooler.

By now everyone knows about ransomware, the dastardly strand of malware that encrypts data (or the drives it’s stored on) and sends the user a message demanding payment in a certain amount of time before the data is deleted forever. To add a little more menace to an already stressful situation, the message includes a countdown clock. If it sounds like a bad situation, rest assured it is. How could it get worse you ask? Simple, make it more difficult to stop.

Everyone loves cookies, but browser cookies take on a whole other definition in the computing environment. Do you know what browser cookies do, as well as what their purpose is? Today’s tech term is dedicated to cookies--they might not be delicious, but they do serve an important role within your organization.

High degrees of productivity can be difficult to achieve for a lot of organizations, and this is primarily due to everyone’s least favorite part of the workplace: rampant distractions. Your business’ productivity can suffer from even the most unlikely reasons. We’ll help you address them so you can minimize distractions in the workplace.

Admit it, technology is changing the way you “consume” media. Who of us hasn’t binged a show on a streaming media service while simultaneously looking up the backstory of every character on the show? Today, people want to consume content the way they want, when they want, and for as long as they want; and technology has a lot to do with it.

Email is one of the most common productivity tools in any office. It can also be one of the easiest to become disorganized. However, users of Microsoft Outlook 2016 will find that the program provides plenty of useful tools to ensure that your communications don’t get out of hand. For this week’s tip, we’ll explore some of them.

Windows 10 might be one of the best Microsoft operating systems to come out in a while, but their latest policy regarding major Windows 10 updates is causing quite a stir in the technology industry. Specifically, the large update coming up this October could potentially cause major problems for your organization.

Your company is successful and growing so fast that it is outpacing your current IT. You need to upgrade your systems, but your IT staff is constantly busy, making it extremely difficult to successfully plan, implement, and support new IT initiatives. When your organization is short on technology expertise and resources, outsourcing some part of your organization’s new technology initiatives can work to move your company forward.

When so much of the day is spent working on the computer, it can be argued that efficiency is paramount to productivity. The faster you are able to do things, the more you could potentially get done. This is how shortcuts work: while the changes are incremental, they add up. For this week’s tip, we’ll go over a few such shortcuts.

Displays are a huge selling point for many commercially available technologies. With the need for high definition capabilities now commonplace, many manufacturers have been looking to OLED technology. Today, we will take a look at the OLED display to give you an idea what makes it so fundamentally superior to other LED displays.

If you’re reading this on a computer that’s currently running Windows 7, I have some bad news: the End-of-Life date for this version is approaching. What does this mean for your business and the workstations that support it? Read on to find out.

Microsoft Office 365 takes the familiar Microsoft Office solutions and adds an extra level of usefulness to them in the form of accessibility and collaboration. This week, our tip covers how to use these features of Office 365, in the context of Microsoft Word.

The Human Resources department is now a critical part of any workplace’s success, but there are most likely misconceptions about this department’s mission. Where did the idea of Human Resources come from, and how can technology be leveraged to assist in their duties?

In the course of doing business, many of today’s businesses have encountered some type of major security threat. As these threats get more and more sophisticated, you are beginning to see more businesses and other organizations enlisting the services of companies that are in business to keep their clients safe. We’ll take a look at some of the services that managed security service provides, and how it fits into a business’ IT strategy.

People use computers for almost everything nowadays. However, when they don’t work as intended it can be endlessly frustrating. Whether you have hardware that isn’t properly connecting, or you have software that isn’t responding the way it normally does, many times before you call for assistance there are things you can do to try and fix the problem, or at the very least, understand what the issue is. This process is called troubleshooting. Today, we’ll take a look at what it means to properly troubleshoot computer issues, and when it is your responsibility to look to the professionals as to not cause more problems than when you started.

Touchscreen technology has changed the way that a lot of people access popular devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and even laptops. Children that grow up in the modern world are so accustomed to using touchscreen technology that any monitor or screen that doesn’t have touchscreen features is seen as strange. Is the world moving in a direction where ordinary screens are antiquated? Perhaps--but perhaps not.

Being a business owner in charge of new IT procedures can be a major pain, especially when it comes to your employees. How often do you experience pushback on any significant change to your IT infrastructure or policies? You’re not the only one--many organizations are in the same boat as you, and it can be a difficult situation to be in.