What are Managed IT Services? Managed IT services are designed to help take care of your IT needs–regardless of what they may be. You will connect with a service provider to select the services your business needs: troubleshooting, ensuring that your network runs as efficiently as possible, and keeping up with your systems so that you don’t run into trouble along the way. If you have an in-house team, you can choose a managed IT service provider that covers the tasks your team can’t or augments your existing team’s skills. If you don’t have an in-house team, a managed IT service provider can take care of many of your tech needs. Services may include: Cybersecurity. Increasingly, in today’s online landscape, it’s important for businesses to have a solid wall of security that will ensure that their data, their business, and their clients are protected. Leaving cybersecurity on the shoulders of your internal IT team may not be enough to keep your business functioning smoothly or prevent potential problems. Many IT professionals do not specialize in cybersecurity, which can leave them struggling to keep up with the latest changes in the industry and keep your business safe. Staff augmentation. You may need IT support on-site for a number of hours across the course of a business week–especially when you have extra things going on. Whether you need help training team members, rolling out a new upgrade to your system, or simply figuring out how to troubleshoot problems, a managed IT service provider can help. Server support and management. You want your servers to run smoothly and all of your data to remain accessible. With a managed IT, service provider, you can often get more effective support that will keep your business up and running more often, rather than dealing with expensive downtime that can prevent you from taking care of your customers the way they deserve. Systems engineering. Sometimes, you need a little extra help with a complex problem–and that’s where your managed IT service provider comes in. This provider can work with you to fix the big problems with your systems, keeping them running more smoothly. The Advantages of Managed IT Services Will managed IT services offer your business exactly what you need? Many small business owners question the effectiveness of a managed service provider, preferring an hourly approach or an in-house team to handle most of their needs. Managed IT services, however, can offer a number of clear advantages. A managed service provider is less expensive than an in-house team. You won’t have to worry about providing vacation time, setting up space in the office, or many of the other expenses that go along with hiring an in-house team, either. Often, using a managed service provider is also less expensive than paying an hourly rate for another provider, especially if you’re working on a big upgrade or noticing more problems than usual. Managed services are easy to scale. Your business’s needs are constantly growing and changing. Sometimes, you may need your IT service provider to offer more, and often quickly, if your business grows in a hurry. Other times, you may need to scale back as your business’s needs change or you slide into a quieter season. With a managed IT service provider, you’ll get exactly the services you […]
1. Establish Standards for Clarity and Concision Here?s the thing: while communication is an essential part of your operations, it has the potential to become a massive time-sink if it isn?t utilized appropriately. We?ve all found ourselves in those meetings that seem to go on and on when the important part could have been covered in five minutes. Any of your collaborative solutions could easily be used in the same way? not the ideal situation when working with a remote team. Make sure your team is using the tools you have provided intelligently and subscribing to the keep-it-super-simple rule as much as they are able. You may find it useful to create a company shorthand to use to help clarify the context of a message. For instance, if something is purely informative and doesn?t need to be acknowledged, a quick label of NRN (No Response Needed) would help save the recipient some time. Every business operates a little differently, so figure out what works best for you. 2. Use the Right Tool for the Job Of course, there are almost as many means to communicate within a business as there are things to be communicated (or so it can sometimes seem). This is for a purpose, as different messages and conversations may be better suited to one format than they are another. Have you ever tried to announce something to a group over an instant message? Unless you?ve stuck the aforementioned NRN label to it or directed anyone with questions to reach out separately, your message is bound to be lost in the crowd before long. In this case, an email would be the better option for you to use. Just as often, you?ll need to quickly inform another individual of something, and an IM would allow you to do so more effectively than an email would. This principle extends to any of your business communications, including virtual meetings and other remote-friendly operations. 3. Review What Works and What Doesn?t So, find a tool to help team members communicate, come up with standards, implement it, and done? right? Not so fast. Collaborative processes are just that: processes. This means that there is always room for growth and improvement to take place within them, and that you need to actively and continually figure out how to facilitate this development. It?s just another part of the process. Take the time to review how smoothly your collaborative processes function when they are implemented. Go through each step to see where any inefficiencies presented themselves, whether the process stalled due to unforeseen complications or it wasn?t executed properly. Once these points are identified, figure out what can be done to mitigate the impacts, be it adding another bullet point to the process or providing additional training to the employee involved. After the process has been adjusted, do it again, and stress test until it gets better, or a new solution presents itself as an option. For help with these solutions, please don?t hesitate to reach out to White Mountain IT Services. We understand how trying times can test a business and can do a lot more than just offer tips on how to make the most of things. To find out how we can improve your operations with the right technology in place, give us a call […]
Tip #1 – Use Block Sender Spam is annoying, and it can even be dangerous. While there are ways to reduce spam, there are no tools that can completely eliminate spam. Outlook has its own built-in spam filter that works pretty well, but a little manual action can help teach Outlook to do better. The Block Sender feature will make it so that particular sender?s email automatically goes to Junk moving forward. It?s easy to use, just select and right-click the spam email in question, choose Junk from the dropdown menu, and click Block Sender. Tip #2 – Create Rules Outlook rules are a pretty cool way to make your email work harder for you. Outlook rules are incredibly flexible, and there is so much you can do with them, that we encourage you to take some time to review all of your options. Let?s try a simple one – let?s say you are working on a specific project, and want to funnel all emails about that project into a specific folder in Outlook. You could hunt through your inbox by hand, or you could make a rule that does it for you automatically. Select the first email you want to move into the new folder, and select Home > Rules > Create Rule. Outlook will then ask ?When I get email with the selected conditions (Subject, From, Sent to) do the following. You?ll want to set the conditions so Outlook knows which emails to filter, and then tell it what to do when it finds an email that meets those conditions. For this example, you would tell it to move the email into the desired folder. Outlook has a lot of overlooked features. Keep an eye on our blog for more tips and tricks for getting more out of the technology you already have!
Hosted Email Most businesses today rely on their email for a sizable portion of their business operations, but the way that they support this email is much different than how they once did in the past. Rather than maintaining an on-premise email server and taking on the need for the in-house space, experience, and investment that such an implementation requires, many businesses are now using email solutions that are part of a Software-as-a-Service offering (more on SaaS later). Taking this route has enabled many small and medium-sized businesses to adopt a much more financially feasible means of using email, along with the available benefits of hosting. Hosted VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol is swiftly being adopted as the way businesses and private users alike place phone calls. Much like an email solution, it can be hosted either onsite or in the cloud, with many businesses realizing the inherent benefits of the latter option. For starters, using a hosted VoIP solution means that a business is no longer on the hook for the on-site hardware (very similarly to hosted email, as you may have noticed). As a result, it is easier to scale up and down your solution to meet your needs, and your telephony as a whole is much more mobile. The As-a-Service Model We?re back to SaaS, as well as the other cloud-based services available to a business. Again, by virtue of the cloud-hosted nature of a Software-as-a-Service solution (as can be found in Platform-as-a-Service, Network-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service) these solutions are a more efficient option for businesses that need access to a given resource, but cannot support these needs independently in a cost-effective way. By delivering these resources via the cloud, providers enable these businesses to put these options into use. If you feel that the cloud would be useful for your business to take advantage of for any of its operational needs or processes, reach out to White Mountain IT Services and talk to one of our seasoned professionals. We can help you determine your best course of action and assist you in following through with it. To learn more, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.
Standardization through Automation To use your network, your users must connect to it with various devices, which will require a few network configurations to be put into place. Putting together standardized configuration templates not only helps to speed up the configuration process, it helps to keep everyone?s devices working in the same way. This centralized uniformity allows better collaboration to be enabled much more efficiently than it would be if you were to configure each device individually. Monitoring and Troubleshooting Of course, a network isn?t infallible, so you will want to make sure you have the tools in place to both detect and resolve any issues that may spring up. Tools are available today that can assist an IT team in identifying the base cause of some negative impact and in efficiently rectifying it, either by removing the issue itself or by mitigating the damage that the issue causes. Patching and Policymaking Just as the rest of your business? IT should be maintained, your network itself needs to be checked periodically for vulnerabilities and bugs. Make sure that your IT administrator is checking for patches and reviewing if your business is at risk. For similar reasons, your provider should also be reviewing network policies to ensure that they benefit both your productivity and your security. Both are essential, especially as compliance standards place certain demands regarding your network?s resilience and the handling of your business? data. Confirming that you are compliant to these standards is necessary if you want to avoid fines and possible business closure. Planning your IT Business technology is always changing, which means you must prepare your IT infrastructure and strategy to accommodate these changes. Otherwise, the decisions that you make now could wind up stifling your business? development and success in the future. Even the most well-optimized network today could become obsolete in an instant, so staying apprised of current and upcoming developments is critical to maintaining your ongoing flexibility and adaptability. If this all sounds like a lot to handle on top of your usual operations, that?s what White Mountain IT Services is here to help with. Our professionals can help you make sure that these standards are met, as well as many others we couldn?t mention here. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.
