Promote a Culture of Collaboration Sometimes employees can get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the daily grind to the point where they are unaware of what other departments around the office are doing. This can be detrimental to long-term success. The key to promoting collaboration in the workplace is to make sure that it is not only expected, but encouraged as well. Get your team involved in what other departments are doing and find ways to help each other out when possible. This kind of uplifting culture can make all the difference when it comes to fulfillment and engagement. Hold Regular Staff Meetings Your staff are more likely to want to collaborate with each other if they see each other regularly, like at regular staff meetings. Of course, we don?t want you to hold meetings just for the sake of having them?it just helps to hold meetings to discuss new goings-on within your business as a whole. Furthermore, it gives your team opportunities to engage with others who they may not see quite so often. When you hold these meetings, make it a point to request feedback and involvement from your staff. The more involved they are in the discussions, the more likely they will be to want to collaborate with others moving forward. Implement Collaborative Technology Solutions Now, you might be thinking that it is hard to encourage collaboration when you have a team full of remote or hybrid workers, or you just have too many employees that it is impossible to wrangle everyone together for a pow-wow every so often. Thankfully, software tools make managing meetings and collaboration in general so much easier. Imagine the current state of collaboration without technology; it would be so much harder to fulfill the same tasks without access to video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing, and so on. If your business wants to take its collaboration efforts to the next level, White Mountain IT Services can help. We can equip your organization with the tools it needs to succeed long-term, including collaboration software. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

What is Digital Signage? The digital displays you see that guide customers, visitors, and patients in certain locations would qualify as digital signage. Whether it?s the menu behind the counter at McDonalds or the LED billboards you see lighting up the sides of the highway, it?s all digital signage. You can use these digital signs to broadcast information to your target audience. There are several reasons why you might use digital signage for your business. Let?s take a look at some of them. Retail Retail businesses have a lot to gain from digital signage. They can inform a customer?s purchases, especially if they are placed in a location that gets a lot of traffic. They usually lead to higher sales, thereby justifying the increase in costs associated with implementing and maintaining such a device. Digital signage in retail spaces can give customers information about products, promotions, directions, and so much more. Essentially, these signs can be used to fuel the customer?s purchasing decisions and help to target specific products. Healthcare Sometimes a trip to the doctor?s office can be intimidating, but digital signage can make it a much more welcoming experience. Healthcare facilities like hospitals and doctor?s offices can use digital signage to broadcast changes of service, patient check-in information or directions, and even provide a digital interface for workers to use within the patients? rooms. People tend to gravitate their attention toward digital signage compared to traditional signs, so it?s a great way to make sure people in the healthcare industry, or visitors, know what must be done. The Modern Office Some companies struggle to keep their staff updated with the latest organizational information, something which can often get in the way of them fulfilling their day-to-day tasks in the most efficient manner possible. Using digital signage to share important information in common areas can be a tremendous boon for your organization, and it can aid in employee engagement, too. Implementing digital signage might involve the installation of hardware, such as televisions or monitors, as well as the cabling required to set up these systems in the most effective locations within your office. The hardware and software itself is relatively affordable, and digital signage software solutions can be hosted in the cloud, further decreasing the capital costs associated with implementation. While digital signage is far from required for businesses, it is hard to argue with a solution that can increase your revenue by as much as 33 percent and reduce the amount of money you spend on traditional signage. If you?re curious about how digital signage can change the way your business functions, you can discuss your options with one of our trusted technology professionals. To learn more, reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.

First, let?s take a moment to define what automation is before we explore how it can be utilized to your business? benefit from here on out. What is Automation in the First Place? Automation is, putting it simply, the act of taking the responsibility for a task off of an employee?s itinerary and having this task reallocated to a computing system. As machines can complete many tasks with far greater speed and accuracy than the average (or even above-average) office worker could ever accomplish, any task that doesn?t rely on human adaptability or flexibility to properly complete could feasibly be automated?at least to the point that your human resources could instead act as an overseer for your technology, allowing you to accomplish far more.in far less time. Naturally, this is a good thing? but having said that, it is important that your automation efforts come at an appropriate time. When is Automation the Right Move? There are a few signals that automation is worth implementing that businesses should keep an eye out for: Your Team is Spending a Lot of Time Moving Data Between Applications There is possibly just one thing worse than data entry? data reentry. Mind-numbing and time-consuming, the chore of moving data from one place to another is just that?a chore. Automation can eliminate it entirely, saving your team time and effort and allowing that time and effort to be used more effectively. The Task is Inherently Dull or Detracts from Your Priorities If a task can be completed more or less mindlessly, all the while taking time away from the other responsibilities your team needs to complete, you probably don?t need to spend all that long on it. Automation can actively take such tasks off your plate. The Task is Endlessly Repetitive, Regular, or Both On a related note, how often does your team need to perform the same process, and how predictably does the process need to be performed? If you can confidently predict and/or plan for a process, you can successfully automate the process. We Can Help You Automate Your Business Processes We have the expertise required to help you take your processes and streamline them, allowing you and your team to accomplish more. If you?re interested in learning more about automation and what it can do for your business, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

What File Types are Available? Depending on the Google App you are using, the file types might vary, but they will coincide with whatever common file formats you are used to seeing for that particular type of file. Here is a breakdown for Docs, Sheets, and Slides: Docs Microsoft Word (.docx) OpenDocument Format (.odt) Rich Text Format (.rtf) PDF Document (.pdf) Plain Text Format (.txt) Web Page (.html, zipped) EPUB Publication (.epub) Sheets Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) OpenDocument (.ods) PDF (.pdf) Web Page (.html) Comma Separated Values (.csv) Tab Separated Values (.tsv) Slides Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx) ODP Document (.odp) PDF Document (.pdf) Plain Text (.txt) JPEG image (.jpg, current slide) PNG image (.png, current slide) Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg, current slide) When you are ready, simply go to File > Download and select the file type you want! It?s that easy. What other quick-and-dirty tips do you want to see in the future? Let us know in the comments below.

Software Vulnerabilities If a piece of software has some kind of security flaw or shortcoming in it, a hacker can take advantage of it in numerous different ways. Whether the security issue comes from an improperly coded application, an out-of-date or neglected piece of software, or even something just being misconfigured, there are plenty of ways that the tools you rely on can inadvertently let in a threat. Making sure you only use software that has been vetted and cleared by an IT resource and is properly updated will be critical to your ongoing security. Insufficient Passwords If we?ve said it once, we?ve said it thousands of times?you need to be sure that everyone in your organization is using sufficiently secure passwords, or ideally, passphrases, and that each account they have is protected by a unique one. This makes it so that?should one password be undermined (ideally through no fault of your own)—it is just that one account that?s problematic and needs to be fixed. If you?re concerned about your team having difficulty keeping track of all these passwords and/or passphrases, implementing a password management system is a secure and efficient option that we can help you execute. Social Engineering Let me ask you something?what would your response be if I were to reach out to you and request some of your data, or ask to have a password updated? I should hope that your first instinct would be to say no until you confirm that the request is legitimate and aboveboard. Cybercriminals don?t all use fancy programming and malware, all the time. Why would they, if they can get just as much, just by targeting your employees and taking advantage of them directly? You need to be sure that your team members understand how real this threat is, and that they can identify when this kind of attack comes in. Excessive Permissions Let me ask you one more thing: does every member of your crew need the same access to the same resources in order to do their jobs? Of course not?in fact, there are more examples where the exact opposite is the case. Your support team doesn?t need access to the rest of the team?s time off requests, and your sales team doesn?t need access to the entire business? budget. Locking down access permissions on a need-to-know basis will help to eliminate the risk of a data leak. On the subject? Malicious Insiders Not all data breaches are sourced from outside your business. Whether one of your employees feels the need to lash out in perceived retribution, someone with ill moral structure decides to act in their own interest, another business has a plant employed at your company, or someone has decided to turn data theft into a side hustle?insider threats come in all shapes and forms. Restricting permissions to only those who actively need them helps to take some of the teeth out of an insider attack. Malware There are so many different forms of malware out there, and it doesn?t help that it only takes one to potentially bring your network to its needs and abscond with your data. What?s worse, these threats have no shortage of means to get onto your infrastructure. From downloaded attachments to public Wi-Fi connections to infected USB devices to so […]