What?s So Great About Working From Home? There are a lot of obvious pros to not having to commute to work in the morning. For many, it?s avoiding the commute. If you live a short 5-minute drive from the office, this might not be a big deal, but many have to deal with a lot more.  In rural areas in the United States, 30 percent of residents travel a half-hour one-way to get to work. The average commute to work in NYC is about 43 minutes. Working from home also incentivizes workers to eat from home, as opposed to snacking at work and ordering out. This can reduce costs and improve overall health for some. There are fewer office distractions at home, although depending on the circumstance, there may be other distractions. That said, a two-year Stanford study shows a massive productivity boost across the board. Plus, companies can save a lot of money on utilities and space if they were to decide to offer permanent telecommunications. The Downsides of Working From Home Despite overall trends being positive, not every employee is guaranteed to be a paradigm of productivity while working from home. Business owners know this, and stress over it. If you aren?t the business owner, but an employee, you may need to help employers gain confidence and trust when it comes to working remotely. Again, this isn?t the case everywhere, but from an employer?s standpoint, telecommunication can feel like losing a base-guarantee that at least when people are at their desks, they are being somewhat productive.  I would posit that if you are a business owner, while it may be hard to loosen the reins on telecommunication, the benefits are well documented and there are countless cases where it works. An employee who is granted the ability to work remotely and slacks off probably wasn?t all that productive while in the office. The point is, if you are an employee who has just started to work remotely due to the recent pandemic, or if you really enjoy the benefit of working remotely, you may need to ensure that your employer can be confident that telecommunication works for the company. If you are an employer, give it a chance. Both you and your employees have a lot to gain from it if you have the right tools in place. How Employees Can Work Better From Home Be in Seat on Time  – Without the commute, your morning should be a little more flexible. It?s still a good idea to wake up at the same time, but enjoy the extra time you have to do things you normally wouldn?t. Take the dog for a longer walk, do some reading, have a better breakfast – just make sure you are logged in and on the seat on time. Focus on Focusing – One of the biggest benefits of not being in an office is the lack of office distractions. Try to focus on your tasks for longer periods of time. You?ll be able to get more done and have more to show for it. Track Everything – If you weren?t doing this while in the office, you definitely should start, but it is even more important remotely. Track the time it takes to perform certain tasks, track milestones, and communicate often. […]

Before we start the list, there needs to be a disclaimer. The more you focus on productivity, the more you will have to divorce yourself from the humanity of your staff. Rest assured, when managing a corporate culture, the more that is made of productivity gains, the less engaged many of your employees may become. It is essential to your business? success that you find a balance between prioritizing productivity and promoting staff-aimed initiatives to keep your production staff happy and turnover low. Track Time and Limit Time Taken on Tasks You may think you are good at gauging how much time you spend on your typical tasks, but really only a small percentage are. By tracking how much time you take on your daily tasks, you may find out that you spend too much time obsessing over your email, or you may spend an exorbitant amount of time swiping through your social media accounts. Knowing how you can save time is a great first step in actually saving some.  Take Regular Breaks You?re probably thinking that taking breaks works counter to being more productive, but taking scheduled breaks can help improve focus and concentration. This is especially true if you are working on large, time-consuming tasks. Set Attainable Deadlines The old mantra, ?I work better on a deadline? is likely true. That?s why it?s suggested to set deadlines for yourself that are outside of the deadlines imposed by your organization. A manageable amount of stress is typically helpful to keep ahead of your workload. Limit Your Exposure to Meetings If there is a time waster out there, it is the meeting. A normal meeting will resolve the issue in the first ten minutes, or not at all. In fact, according to one study, the average office worker spends around 31 hours a month in meetings. That?s far too long. Stop Multitasking The more the concept is studied, the more that psychologists believe that multitasking is detrimental to overall productivity when compared with having dedicated focus on one task at a time.   Perfection Isn?t Attainable One big roadblock to productivity is the idea that a task can be carried out perfectly. Sure, you can be comprehensive, but when your business is falling behind because you can?t leave well enough alone, you only have yourself to blame.  Be Proactive If you really want to be productive, go into any day knowing what needs to get done. Business is filled with natural distractions; you will want to plan time for all of them. By being proactive, you can eliminate a lot of the not-so-natural distractions. Turn Off Notifications How is anyone supposed to work when they have new notifications popping up at them every few minutes? Business is filled with situations where limiting your exposure to notifications can keep you from being distracted. Turn them off and see how much better you can complete tasks without all the hubbub coming in from the Internet.  Attempt to Reduce Interruptions Most of the time staying productive comes down to focus. There are a million and six different types of possible interruptions, but if you can mitigate them, you can be your most productive self. Do you have any other suggestions on how to improve your productivity? Share them with us and our readers in […]

Data Lakes Compared to Data Warehouses Structure The difference between data lakes and data warehouses is pretty well described by their names. Much like a real-life lake, a data lake is effectively a catch-all mix of the entirety of its contents, while the data warehouse is very much like a real warehouse is (or should be): organized, and only containing what is necessary to store. Due to these differences, a data lake and a data warehouse hold raw and processed data, respectively. Who Puts These Storage Options to Use? The difference in structure that these two storage systems present makes them more useful in much different use cases. Business users, who need specific and organized data with clear and practical utility, benefit from the structure of a data warehouse. A data lake tends to be of the most use to a data scientist, as they can see the big picture and use their skills to draw conclusions from the mess of information present. What is the Solution For? Data lakes, as the name would suggest, are very large. As a result, they are ideal for storage. Their unstructured nature also lends itself well to data analytics, as our hypothetical data scientist will attest to. The structure present in the data warehouse makes them the better choice for drawing insights from aggregated data. Lake, Warehouse, or Both? In many cases, the most benefit is to be had by leveraging both of these options. The massive amount of unstructured data in the data lake helps with machine learning processes, and data warehouses lend themselves well to business analytics. Your particular industry can also play a role. Industries that produce massive amounts of data with no real structure, like healthcare and education, might see the most benefit from the size of a data lake. Businesses that operate in the financial industry and other industries like it might find the data warehouse better for their needs, with its optimized accessibility lending itself to their processes. How well are you using your data, and how well are you securing it? White Mountain IT Services can help you ensure that you are protected from data loss and are in the best position to use it. To learn more, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

For the individuals, getting a new computer is exciting, but for the business, the hardware refresh is looked upon a little less favorably. Of course, having working technology is a must, so recycling your company?s old hardware and upgrading to something new is essentially a necessary expense. There are many different ways that a business can choose to go about spending their hardware budget; and, many different types of computers that have different value to different workers.  Basic Considerations It may not seem like it?s all that important what type of PC you are buying as workstations. Of course, there are dozens of different manufacturers out there, but since they ultimately use the same type of hardware, you will be getting basically the same thing. There are some obvious questions you will want to answer. They include: How much do I have to spend? What are the workstations for? Do you need any special components? What software will you be running on the system? First, you have to purchase your new machines with your budget in mind. One thing that should be said: cheaper is not always better. Sure, you obviously don?t want to waste money, but buying bargain basement options may not give you the reliability your team needs.  Each workstation has to fit the position it is being used for. For example, if the person who is going to be using the machine most is someone that does a fair amount of their work outside of the office, purchasing a desktop computer may be shortsighted.  Moreover, each workstation needs to be able to handle the workloads and the minimum requirements for the software that they run. If you need a few workstations that are only for word processing or data entry, they will be simpler and less expensive to procure. Other Workstation Tips If you are buying computers, you will also want to take these variables into consideration:  Always get the same OS – To make it easier to maintain, you will want all your workstations to run the same operating system. Today, there are Windows, macOS, and Chrome that come equipped on most machines, with the predominant computers running Microsoft Windows 10.  Get the most powerful processor you can afford – This consideration is actually tougher than you may think, considering that there are so many processor types to choose from. The faster the processor, the faster the computer. Get enough RAM – Make sure that your computer has enough memory. Depending on what the user needs to do, you may need additional RAM to handle the workload. Typical office users might be fine with 8 gigabytes of RAM, but a user working in image editing or video editing would need a lot more. There are a lot of considerations to make when looking to onboard new hires or complete an IT refresh. Luckily the IT professionals at White Mountain IT Services can help you make the right IT procurement decisions for your needs and budget. If you would like some help making the right hardware choices for your business, call us today at (603) 889-0800.

How Coronavirus is Impacting Businesses To make a long story short, people aren?t very motivated to go into work when the news cycle is inundated with warnings about an infectious disease spreading worldwide. As a result, businesses everywhere will likely see more employee absences (as many have actually encouraged). While this is clearly better for the public health, an unprepared business will see significant detriments to its productivity and its overall operations. In lieu of this, what can a business do to prepare for absences resulting from a massive health scare, or any other disaster event? File Sync and Sharing One option is to adopt file synchronization and sharing technologies–an option that more businesses are taking advantage of, for many reasons. With these solutions in place, your workforce no longer needs to be in the office to complete the work responsibilities that must be fulfilled. Therefore, should one of your employees fall ill or otherwise can?t make it into the office, you aren?t losing the productivity they would otherwise offer. Why Businesses Use Secure File Sync and Share Solutions The biggest benefits of this approach are present right in its name: Secure Consider what could happen if your employees needed to access work resources outside of the office but lacked any approved means to do so. Either the work wouldn?t get done, or your employees would resort to workarounds that involved software that your organization had no control over. The tools that these workarounds utilize, known as shadow IT, can very easily put sensitive company data at risk. Providing your employees with an approved and secure alternative through file sync and sharing can eliminate these risks, as well as support your disaster recovery efforts. Sync On the subject of allowing employees the means to work outside of the office, imagine if they had worked for three days at home and made excellent progress on a particular project. Sounds great, but not if they showed back up at the office having forgotten to send their progress over–or worse, had neglected to save it. File sync means that as an employee makes progress on a given file, that progress is automatically saved as an entry in a referenceable version history. This has the added benefit of allowing productivity to be possible with any device that has received access to a given file in the solution.  Share As collaboration is such a priority in today?s offices, we would be amiss if we didn?t discuss the ?sharing? aspect of these solutions. Duplicate copies of a given document only make the collaborative process more confusing. Instead, file sync and sharing solutions allow multiple coworkers to share simultaneous access to a given file, permitting them to work together regardless of the physical distance between them. Interested in Learning More About File Sync and Share Solutions? Whether you?re proactively preparing for a disaster or you are simply trying to provide your employees with more flexibility, reach out to White Mountain IT Services to learn more about the solutions we have available to you. Our experts are available at (603) 889-0800 to answer your questions about your IT.