Email Email has been and will continue to be a work staple. But it shouldn’t be the primary mode of written communication between internal employees, anymore. The format pushes for inertia and thinking twice: there are intros, polite greetings, splintering email threads, and a dozen rereads that become part of the process, no matter how trivial the content. Instead, switch internal communications to instant message tools. Slack channels give plenty of space for different groups to carry on a conversation or announce something to the whole group. Embedded chat tools in Salesforce keep the focus clear and the chain of communication public. Save emails for official matters, rare communications that cross your company’s usual teams or groups, and formal notices. Also, email should be a go-to part of how you communicate with clients and leads. Work Outside of the Office Working from home is here to stay. You’re going to have lots of employees you’ll never meet in person, and you’ll have office regulars who need to work at home for a day because their kid is sick. Set up your team’s workflows and tasks so everything can be done outside of the office. Also, build procedures to make it a regular option: offering flexibility gets you more applicants than even bumping up the salary. On the flip side, you have to have a clear work culture. Some of your employees will take advantage of the freedom to do as little as possible. But many more of your employees will overdo their work, either by worrying that they need to “prove” their work from home status or because they’re out of touch with everyone else’s progress. Maintaining an Online Connection Wifi is everywhere, and that’s good news for regularly traveling employees. The cloud can also be everywhere, which means you can allow tiered access to all of your company files from around the country. That would have been impossible even just ten years ago when remote employees had to have a desktop computer and hardline Internet connection. At the same time, that ever-present access means hackers and automated malware can reach into your employees’ devices. Even unlikely areas and seemingly safe locations are a risk. Make sure everyone has a VPN, no excuses. Information Is the Product Information has always been the product, but the Internet made that truer than ever before. The damage that can be done with mishandled data is also greater than ever before (and that’s before you even consider Facebook’s expected $5 billion fine). Universal internet access means your company is gathering a lot of data about your leads, visitors, and customers. Every site that your employees visit is doing the same thing, and that matters if your company has a BYOD policy or loans out work devices. Get that VPN (we mention it twice because it matters too much to ignore it) and have a network administrator that can clear out the devices before disaster strikes. Business communications aren’t just the information you mean to send. It’s also the information your network and the sites your employees visit pick up along the way. Contact us to learn more about how to modernize your approach to wifi and the cloud.
Every business has different needs for their printers. Your office might have a low-end consumer-based printer on a few desks, or you have a centralized network printer/copier/scanner that everyone can use. Some businesses might have several of these printers, and others might have gone paperless to free themselves from the expense of paper and toner. Regardless of your situation, if you have printers, you should have them managed and controlled. You Can Manage and Control the Expenses Tied to Printing Printer ink and toner isn?t cheap. Unnecessary printing can really add up over time. That?s why some businesses have opted to go paperless with digital documentation solutions (among other reasons; it?s easier to store, search, share, and backup digital data compared to printed documentation too). A business that normally prints a few thousand documents a year will feel the cost savings after they eliminate printing altogether. Reducing the amount that your users print can really make a difference over time. For example, enforcing users to only print in black and white unless color is necessary, and enforcing double-sided printing are a few small policies that will reduce your costs. In a recent survey by Xerox, it was found that 64 percent of small businesses aren?t tracking their printer usage costs. The report also revealed that 47 percent of businesses felt that employees just printing out emails was a big part of their printer usage. There is clearly some waste happening here. Printer Management is Worth Investing In A small business can deploy tools to control, report on, and restrict printer usage throughout an office environment. As mentioned before, every business is going to have different requirements and needs, but simply establishing the policies that prevent users from wasting resources by printing out their emails will lead to savings over time. Another often ignored aspect of owning a printer (or multiple printers) is that, like any device on your network, they are another endpoint. This means they need to be kept updated, maintained, and secure. There have been many cases over the last couple years where cybercriminals have utilized office printers as an entry-point for spreading malware or breaching data. These types of exploits can cost your business a lot more than another ream of paper or toner cartridge. Consider Going Paperless This might not always be an easy option for some businesses who rely on printed documents, but taking steps to reduce the amount of printing your business does can help reduce costs and actually make it easier to share, protect, and back up documents. Going fully digital means that documents can be searched, copied, organized, and shared securely, and backed up without requiring paper, toner, or bulky filing cabinets. Today, even contracts can be shared and signed digitally without a single sheet of paper being used. If you want to learn more about how we can help your business cut costs and reduce the amount of resources you use, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.
Technology #1 – Blockchain Blockchain is a technology that has been emerging for the past several years. People?s first exposure to blockchain was as the core technology that made cryptocurrency possible, but nowadays there are several app developers using the inherent strengths of blockchain technology to improve the security and transparency of their software. Some blockchain applications fit in better than others do. Blockchain is a distributed ledger system where individual transactions are encrypted and aren?t able to be altered. So, every new transaction, even if it is altering an already established transaction, will create its own block. Any business can start using blockchain to boost the security of their accounts receivable process, contract transparency, and their supply chain management systems to ensure they are getting exactly what they are paying for – and that?s just a brief sample of its capabilities. Technology #2 – Business Process Automation As businesses look for more efficient ways to operate, one strategy is to leverage automation where they can. With technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), automated systems are becoming much more viable for many different business-grade technologies, Business Process Automation (BPA) is improving and becoming a driving force for businesses looking for technologies to help with revenue growth. BPA is a key system that ensures that the information that is needed by the workers is shared between every department, and usable when it is received. Driven by AI, Machine Learning, and strategically placed smart technologies, businesses are able to do more, improve operational efficiency, and control how data is used throughout their entire business. Technology #3 – Powerful Collaboration Tools Technology has made collaboration a much more important part of the modern workplace, and there are several options on how to improve organizational collaboration. For departmental collaboration, there are productivity suites like Microsoft Office 365 and Google?s G Suite, collaboration/messaging apps like Slack, and conferencing tools that provide each member of your staff the resources to get the job done. On the other hand, expanding on the BPA strategy we listed above, interdepartmental collaboration tools that include customer resource management (CRM) tools and other business management software can allow your business to operate smarter and much more effectively through the use of efficient access to information. If your business is looking to take a step forward in 2020, integrating some of these emerging tools will go a long way toward creating the efficient operations you are seeking. Call our technology professionals today at (603) 889-0800 to start working with White Mountain IT Services.
Update the HDD to an SSD Computers use hard drives to store data. There are a few types of drives, but the most common ones are Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Solid State Drives (SSD). HDD are the traditional, heavy, mechanical-based drives that we?ve used in computers for over 40 years. SSDs are a little more modern. HDDs and SSDs work in drastically different ways. Traditional hard disk drives work by storing data on tiny, thin magnetic platters. These platters are stacked on top of each other and spin like a record at around 7200 rpm. A magnetic head reads and writes the data sort of like the needle on a record player. It takes a little time for the hard drives to spin up, for the head to find the data, and then read the data. This is why these drives are typically slower than their more modern alternative. Solid state drives have no moving parts. They store the data electronically, and are extremely efficient. In fact, not only do they consume less power, but they are faster, AND will tend to outlive an HDD if used the same way. What?s the Catch? The only downside is that SSDs are slightly more expensive, and they don?t quite support the massive capacity that HDDs can. I say slightly more expensive, because it was only a few years ago where the price difference was much more significant. A typical SSD that would fit the needs of your average user was once a couple hundred dollars, where at the time an HDD was less than a hundred dollars. If you were buying a dozen computers for your office, that added up pretty quickly. Today though, the difference in price is negligible, and the performance that an SSD brings is well worth it. The only caveat is that the higher capacity SSDs are still more expensive than high capacity HHDs, but that only starts to affect users who need to store a massive amount of data on their PC, like video editors and gamers. How Much of a Difference Do SSD Drives Make? Results are going to vary based on the device and what it?s running, and what the rest of the hardware profile is, but we can give you a real-world example. A PC that was bought 4 years ago with a traditional HDD took about 48 seconds to get to the login screen when booting up. It then took an additional 80 seconds before the user could get to their email. Our technicians migrated all of the data to a new SSD, and the boot time (to the login screen) went down to 12 seconds. After logging in, it took about 20 seconds to get into email. It?s Time to Upgrade If you are one of those business owners that truly believe that every bit helps, upgrading to SSDs can provide your with faster computers; and, over time, that increased speed will most certainly result in higher degrees of productivity. Call us today at (603) 889-0800 to talk to one of our knowledgeable consultants about upgrading your company?s workstations to solid state drives.
A View Through Windows The first Microsoft Windows OS, Windows 1.0, was released on November 20, 1985. It was a direct response to Macintosh releasing the first PC-based GUI (graphic user interface) in 1984. The rivalry between the two companies has seen them become the two largest companies in the world (as of this writing). If you combined just those two companies? value, you would have the 10th best economy in the world. This fact will give you an idea just how much the world depends on Apple and Microsoft; and, what it means when Microsoft makes big changes to its premier product, their PC OS. Over the years, Windows has been the most successful single piece of software developed until mobile OSs started to be developed 20 years after the first Windows OS. The Windows 3.1 OS launch in 1992 was the first time Windows had become the most widely used GUI-based OS, but Microsoft didn?t find its true footing until the release of Windows 95 in 1994. After the release of Windows 95, Microsoft had no real competition. After a few years of marginal upgrades, the company?s best-selling OS, Windows XP was released and was a mega hit. More users used Windows XP than any other Windows product. It made strides in both individual usability and business purposes and set the stage for the modern OS. Almost five full years after Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP, 1.5 percent of computers continue to run the OS. Microsoft whiffed with its follow-up to XP, Windows Vista, but then followed it up with the excellent Windows 7, which they are retiring in a couple of weeks. Windows 7 turned out to be extremely popular, but Windows 8–and the improved version Windows 8.1–were widely panned. Microsoft followed 8.1 up with Windows 10, which has been a popular option for four years now. What?s Next for Windows? After four years and with over 60 percent of PCs now running the OS, Windows 10 is now situated as the #1 PC OS in the world by a large margin; but what will happen to it? Over 20 years, Microsoft rarely goes more than four years between new OS rollouts, but as of this writing there are only rumors suggesting Microsoft?s plan moving forward. From what we could find, Microsoft plans to continue upgrading Windows 10 for the foreseeable future. Prior to Windows 10, organizations suffered from a training burden of having to deploy and learn a new OS every three or four years. It also meant that some of the features and functionality that end-users now expect would take more time to develop. By keeping the Windows 10 OS as a base for future improvements, it can update the software more frequently, maintaining the superior functionality and security that are needed. Since there are more demands on today?s OSs it makes more sense to keep updating the features, security updates, and deploy dedicated patches. You could see a scenario where after the company retires Windows 8.1 in 2023, you could see Windows 10 rebranded as just Windows, where it would effectively become Windows as a Service. As it seems at this time, Windows 10 will be the base of a constantly updating system that is more agile than any one product that Microsoft has ever […]
