Productivity The most important part of collaboration is that people are able to work together to accomplish a singular goal; and fortunately for all of us, software developers identified this years ago. For a while now, the predominant productivity suites have come with real-time collaboration. This means that multiple people can contribute on a database, on a document, on a presentation, all at once. This built-in collaboration not only can make things move a touch faster, it can also give a tremendous amount of insight into the people you have working for you. The more you know about your employees, the easier it is to manage them. The better they?re managed, the more productive the whole team will be. Communication Communication has long been integral to collaboration. Without consistent communication, who would know what needs to be done or what has been done? Communications can have the opposite effect on collaborative outcomes, of course, and for that reason, it is important for an organization to have communications tools that push collaborative efforts toward positive outcomes rather than wasteful and costly ones. To accomplish this there are new ?collaboration tools? which integrate video conferencing (often with VoIP integrated), instant messaging, and a forum type-platform that gives a whole organization a way to manage tasks, services, and projects. Development Developing a business that makes money and doesn?t crash and burn at the first sign of adversity is hard, hard work. That?s why it is essential to have a solid business development program going on. Most SMBs don?t have a dedicated department that does only this, they typically depend on decision-makers working through the data the business creates to come up with strategies to lead the business forward in prosperity. Since it takes input from every department to make decisions on how policy and procedures are created, businesses set up business intelligence and business analytics platforms to help them track how their current processes are working and give them the underlying information to make strategic changes at a business.  At White Mountain IT Services, we work with New Hampshire businesses that, just like your organization, need the years of experience that our technicians have accrued putting together technology strategies that improve collaboration and build high degrees of efficiency, productivity, and security. Give us a call today at (603) 889-0800 for more information.

Implement Secure Wireless  Having a secure wireless network is extremely important for most businesses today. Not only because it makes it easier to connect devices around the business, but it also gives you the option to provide a Wi-Fi connection that guests and other visitors can use. Unfortunately, that altruism can backfire in a big way. You will want to separate the guest accounts from the productivity accounts to avoid any potential problems with guests bringing malware onto the network.  Antivirus and Anti-Malware With so much data coming in and out of a business? network, it stands to reason that some malicious code will get through. Of course, if this malicious code were to be executed it could cause major problems for your organization. This is where antivirus and anti-malware tools come in. They effectively search your network or endpoints for malicious code and then quarantine it so you can decide what to do with it. Firewalls Firewalls do the same thing, but they are set up as a proactive system. It is essentially a filter that constantly monitors network traffic and isolates and quarantines data that may be problematic. What?s best is that they can be set up between any piece of hardware. This gives additional support to all security strategies within a business? computing environment.  Password Managers The password manager is a platform where people can save all their passwords so they don?t have to remember the dozens they create for business and personal use. This does two things: it keeps a repository of all saved passwords, which means that users only have to remember one; and, it provides the impetus for people to really create unique and secure passwords for every account.  Multi-Factor Authentication Finally, we get to multi-factor authentication (also known as two-factor authentication). This is a strategy more than it is a workable tool. Essentially, password-laden accounts have the option to give users an additional layer of security by making them authenticate by entering a code or thumbprint or some other form of authentication. To learn more about how your business can use today?s security tools to secure your network and infrastructure, give us a call today at (603) 889-0800.

For modern businesses, having a centralized network is still normal. On this network you?ll find at the very least email, some sort of file database support, a security solution, and a backup system. You would also have some endpoints, whether they are workstations, laptops, or mobile devices. That?s about as bare bones as any business could get. As the organization grows, more has to be added. Some organizations have moved significant parts of their computing infrastructure offsite, either to the cloud or to a colocation center where they still have a good deal of control over the management of the infrastructure.  Besides servers and endpoints, there are plenty of pieces of technology the average business uses. There is the modem, and the routers, switches, printers, and more. Then there are other options that businesses often take advantage of such as security systems, digital signage, and other solutions that require additional hardware. All of which come with an assigned cost.  The scaling of all this hardware doesn?t necessarily happen as the company grows. While some organizations may need a hosted VoIP system, for others it simply doesn’t make any sense. This goes for CRM or any other management software, security systems, productivity software, cloud storage, and other software-based solutions. Since many cloud-based platforms are beginning to see higher degrees of utilization, a lot of companies are avoiding huge upfront costs associated with purchasing hardware by relying on these cloud systems, which are more attractive, but whose TCO may actually be higher. By transferring the type of expense to a more recurring, operational expense, today?s businesses are able to accomplish more with less. Additionally, most businesses today are beginning to utilize online marketing platforms, whether they be through a dedicated website, social media platforms, or other means. The cost of these strategies tend to be variable even though most organizations will adhere to a very fixed percentage of total revenue for a marketing budget.  How Small Business IT Deployment Stacks Up As you might expect, the average small business spends a higher percentage of their revenue on IT than larger organizations. According to Gartner, most small businesses, which make up over 99 percent of surveyed companies, and nearly 83 percent of total IT dollars, will spend upward of six percent of their revenue on IT, while larger organizations typically spend around three percent of theirs. This means that smaller businesses are paying more of their available money to get the IT that larger organizations get. This can present problems if a core part of a small business? IT infrastructure fails, or if there is a project that is mismanaged or fails to meet the expected return; a cost that many larger organizations can manage.  However, the market for IT seems very strong with one survey concluding that technology spending across small businesses has grown a whopping 4.8 percent over the past six years; and is expected to grow another 5.1 percent in 2023.  Obviously, larger businesses don?t pay quite as much per worker, but they are cognizant of technology innovation, especially with new solutions available that can reduce downtime, manage mounds of company data, and reduce management costs at the same time. Most larger businesses have already implemented a lot of the technological systems that smaller businesses struggle to implement, so they […]

Unfollowing vs Unfriending First, it?s important to distinguish between the two actions. Unfollowing is different from unfriending. The latter is reserved for only those who you wish to remove entirely from your feed. The Unfollow feature is more for staying connected, but without the constant updates in your news feed. So, unless you?re interested in removing your virtual connection to an account entirely, the Unfollow option will be the preferred choice. Unfollow a Friend or Page You can unfollow a friend or a page with relative ease. All you have to do is navigate to the top of the profile to find the blue button. It should say Following. If you click that button, you?ll see options, one of which is Unfollow. Once you click the option, the process will complete. If you?re using the mobile application, the feature works the same way. Look for the Following button, tap it, and select the appropriate response. If you see something in your news feed that you would prefer to never see again, you can unfollow someone directly from there, too. You just click the ellipsis button and select the option to Unfollow that user. If you?d rather just keep your social media activity to a minimum while in the workplace rather than simply curating your feed, you can do that through the use of a web content blocker. This will keep time wasted by your employees to a minimum while they are at work. If you?d rather not block certain websites from all employees, then you also have that capability. You can receive insights into how your team uses these websites and restrict access according to what you feel is necessary. It?s great for maintaining productivity without being overly restrictive for all. To learn more about how you can effectively leverage technology for the sake of productivity, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Will artificial intelligence take everybody?s job? Will robots truly take over? We decided it would only be fair to let an actual artificial intelligence chime in and defend itself, but before we do, let?s talk about what this technology is, how it works, and where it could lead us in the future. What is Artificial Intelligence? Ever read Isaac Asimov? How about the 2001 film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence? If you want to be a little more contemporary, we can reference Marvel?s Age of Ultron or HBO?s Westworld. Either way, most dramatized references to artificial intelligence usually involve a being that has a computerized brain that decides it isn?t quite a machine and it isn?t quite human, but it definitely is capable of making better decisions than those that created it.  Usually this goes very badly for the humans, at least for a while. This isn?t something strictly bound to the concept of artificial intelligence, but more to intelligence in general. Without getting too dorky on you, if we made contact with aliens tomorrow that were massively more intelligent than humans, we would struggle to understand their motives. The concept of most science fiction AI is the same?artificial intelligence in most science fiction is able to scale far beyond the scope of what a human brain can process, thus making it scary and potentially very dangerous. This is all just science fiction and entertainment though. In movies and books and all the other entertainment mediums, we tend to give the AI a character. It isn?t just a source of information, it is a living, breathing, thinking person?it just thinks and acts on its own and then (usually) tries to conquer the world.  Fortunately, we?re not even close to producing that.  Instead, the thing that we call ?Artificial Intelligence? is more of a virtual intelligence. It takes data that its developers feed into it, and is able to make billions and billions of connections between that information, and from that, it is able to see and derive patterns and make informed decisions on the fly.  Modern-day autopilot features on self-driving cars do this. After feeding millions or billions of different driving scenarios into a system, an AI can be developed that says ?Hey, sometimes stop signs can be a little crooked, but I can still recognize it as a stop sign.? In fact, almost everyone uses AI nearly every single day. If you do a Google search, you are technically using AI because the search engine crawls millions of websites and indexes information automatically without a human directly manipulating it. At the end of the day, modern artificial intelligence is taking massive amounts of information and coming up with different, digestible ways to put it together. It finds patterns that we might not have the time or patience to see, or to produce new combinations of information in totally new and unique ways. Will Artificial Intelligence Take My Job? Perhaps we should let the AI answer this question, but we wanted to give our prediction first?probably not.  Like any technology, it might make your job easier. There might be businesses that downsize because they think some new AI technology will replace human workers. After all, some businesses would love to cut payroll. Just look at the Fort Worth McDonalds that is nearly […]