Business Solutions & Software Group Blog

Managed IT services are a great way to make your small business take advantage of a smaller budget while still getting all of the services that are critical to everyday success. One of the best ways you accomplish this is by using proactive maintenance to ensure unforeseen issues are accounted for. If a managed service provider only solved issues after they appeared, then it wouldn’t be any different from your typical break-fix IT solution. We take proactive measures to save your business in the long run.

Spreadsheets are great for organizing information, but they aren’t particularly interesting to look at--especially if you aren’t using Microsoft Excel to the best of your ability. Today’s tip is dedicated to going over some of the more obscure Microsoft Excel tips and tricks that will help you stylize your spreadsheets and make them more dynamic.

A lot is being made about running smarter businesses. Many businesses are looking to their data to try and work out how to build a better business. Two terms you typically hear during this conversation are business intelligence and business analysis. Today, we will take a look at the two terms, decipher their meaning, how they are different from one another, and how they can help you determine the resources a business needs to improve itself.

Your choice of browser can easily impact your security, as each handles how it informs you whether or not your connection is encrypted differently. This is especially important to recognize, especially when the Chrome browser will soon run counter to the advice users have received for quite some time.

Adding a watermark to a document is a great way to very visibly share a message about the contents of a document. Microsoft Word makes it pretty easy to do it yourself and leverage the associated benefits. Below, we explain how.

Once again, there is an example of why all users need to be careful about what they install. This time, however, users of the Google Chrome browser are the ones being specifically targeted by a particularly nasty attack known as “Nigelthorn.”

There is a lot of demand for perfected wireless charging. If this could happen, it’s possible to think about a world where no devices ever ran out of juice. Though there is a major push to make this happen, it’s clear that there are some people out there who don’t think that wireless charging will have as drastic an effect as it would seem.

The Internet might be an incredible tool to get lots of work done, but it can also be a major detriment in the form of workplace distractions. It’s true that your employees might feel tempted to visit these websites when left be, but what if you were to remove these websites as possibilities entirely? This week’s tip is about blocking certain websites that can be problematic for productivity.

Like cars and industrial equipment, computers are complex machines. To function properly they will need to be maintained, and sometimes fixed. Components inevitably fail, users (very) often make mistakes, and sometimes other people deliberately break things out of a litany of emotions. If your computer has seen better days, and you’ve done all you can, seeing if you can get it repaired will involve unhooking it and bringing to your local computer guy.

You may have heard of .NET framework before, or if you routinely use a Microsoft Windows operating system you’ve probably been prompted to install it at some point. Pronounced “dot net”, it is the predominant software framework of Windows, the most used non-mobile operating system in the world. Today we will introduce some software terms, go into what a software framework is, and how .NET framework is unique.

One of the biggest benefits of mobile data is how useful it is to business users for networking and productivity while they’re on-the-go. However, one of the biggest drawbacks to mobile data is how easy it is to use up while networking and being productive, and how expensive this can be. Fortunately, there are some ways to reduce the amount of data an Android device uses, as we’ll discuss in this tip.

Thanks to what’s become known as the “as a service” business model, organizations of all sizes can take advantage of great services that once may not have been as accessible. Even better is that they are often provided at an even more affordable rate than ever before. We’ll walk you through the specifics of what you can expect to receive from a using an “as a service” model.

There are situations that happen every day that can be extraordinarily stressful for people. Some people are better under duress, while some people fold like origami, but no matter what type of person you are, the workplace is one of the biggest stressors for human beings. Today, we’ll review some sources of stress and how people react to it.

The word “computer” actually originated in the 1600s, when it was used to describe a person who carries out calculations and the requisite processes. Today, those processes are carried out mechanically. Let’s examine the piece of the computer that allows it to do so, the CPU.

Money is what makes the world go around, or so they say. Everyone is in business to make money, but the degree to which the organization deals with it might vary. For example, some companies, like banks, are designed to make money by helping others manage theirs. Banks and marketplace lenders take advantage of what is called financial technology, or FinTech, to more effectively provide services to individuals or organizations that want to manage, borrow, pay, see, or use their money in more efficient ways.

There are few applications that have come along that are as attractive as VoIP is to a small business owner or administrator. The promise of eliminating the recurring expense of a commercial phone bill, while using the bandwidth that’s already on the books seems like a complete no-brainer for a business, but there are some pitfalls that have to be sidestepped to get the most out of a VoIP solution. Today, we will look at all the pros and cons of implementing a dedicated VoIP solution, and whether the promise of the technology matches up to the reality of deploying it.

As great as technology can be for a business, there is typically a lot more going on behind the scenes. Therefore, it becomes evident after just a few minutes of looking into it, that cabling is a much bigger deal than you’ve ever considered. Having an effective strategy in place to manage your cabling initiatives will go a long way toward ensuring your organization’s technology cabling is squared away.

Innovation has always been a major part of building better solutions, but some of the most recent trends have been in regard to enhancing security. Adapting to the threat environment is one of the most important parts of running a business, so innovation has been geared toward giving users and organizations alike the security they need. That being said, a lot can change in a short period of time. Let’s take a look at some predictions for how security will change in the near future.

Google is well-known in the technology industry for providing great tools not only for the average computer user, but professional organizations all around the world. One of the largest is Gmail, Google’s signature email solution. If you pair it with the right extensions, Gmail’s usefulness far exceeds what it can achieve on its own. Today’s blog will help you optimize your efficiency using Google Chrome extensions for Gmail.

If you know more about your organization and its customers, you’ll be able to make better decisions about the future of your business. Thanks to an increased focus on business intelligence, even small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of these analytical tools to improve operations and customer relations. What is business intelligence? How does it work, and why does your business need it?