5 Technology Challenges for Growing Businesses
Your business is growing, and so is your team. That’s great news! However, tasks that were once manageable at a small scale must once again come into the conversation. Technology challenges that were ...
Identifying Vulnerabilities
Security for small businesses doesn’t have to be complex. In fact, there are many tricks you can leverage to not only identify possible vulnerabilities but even fix yourself! We’ve compiled a list of ...
Passwords 101
Have you ever stopped to think about “why” IT departments continuously preach about password security?
We think it’s important to not only educate business owners & their employees on how t...
Scamming 101: Creative ways hackers get your information without you knowing
A picture might say a 1,000 words, but those 1,000 words are what hackers use to guess your password.
COVID has prompted a tidal wave of attacks against businesses and individuals who haven’t practice...
Simple Security Tips for Small Businesses
43% of all breaches occurred at small businesses – and this was before COVID.
The shift to working from home, although forced, puts an exponential amount of businesses at risk.
In honor of #Nati...
How Tech Startups Lose Momentum
The early demise of 70% of startups, whether due to misreading the market or running out of funds, has been well reported over the last 20 years. We all know about the tech startups that boom and bust, but what about the ones that simply don’t grow?
5 Signs it’s Time to Consider Service Desk Outsourcing
Factors such as organizational growth and the evolution of technology can make the operational status quo unsustainable. Below are some key indicators that may mean it’s time to consider a service desk outsourcing partner.
Top 5 Service Desk Agent Soft Skills
Considering the wealth of searchable knowledge at the IT support professional’s fingertips, how that knowledge is conveyed is a crucial differentiator. Below is the list of recruiting must haves, the people skills can take a service desk from good to great.
Is Your Service Desk an Asset Management Asset?
What if the service desk tracked, monitored, and managed all technical investments for you? What if the service desk provided more insight into how those tools functioned and interacted over time?
Top 10 Features Your VoIP System Must Have
The days of Ma Bell have been long gone for decades. Though communications technology continues to evolve, the way many organizations go about the management of their telephone systems remain as archaic as twisted pair copper wire. There is still a vast technological divide between the office phone and the smart phone, in both the disparate ways we leverage the devices and how we pay for them. VoIP phones are a step in the right direction.
5 Reasons Why an Account Manager Drives Customer Satisfaction
What's the difference between an Account Manager and a salesperson? Unlike with a typical sales role where customer interaction is handed off to operations once the ink is dried on a new contract, the Account Manager is there for the long haul. Here are five reasons why that’s a good thing:
How to Make the Most of Your Wireless Access Point Coverage
In order to design an effective wireless solution, there are a few things to consider. The size of the space, the user count or number of devices on the network, and what the users are running on those devices.
Why On-Site IT Support is Still a Thing
With the preponderance of remote deployment, monitoring, access, and remediation tools, it’s safe to say remote help desk support remains the ideal first point of contact for resolving technical issues. Since roughly 80% of all support incidents don’t require a physical presence to resolve, filtering out those incidents at the help desk is the fastest and most efficient way to get end users back to work. But what about the other 20%?
How to Set up IT Services at Your New Office
Entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses have dozens of things to consider before taking the plunge when leasing a new office or coworking space. Understandably, most startups want to dip their proverbial toe in the water before proceeding. From an IT services standpoint, knowing what your options are beforehand is a wise course of action. Below are some key points to review with an MSP that will eliminate move in day jitters and ensure your technology is working for you, not against you.
Sophisticated Threats: Why We Should Be on Cyber Security Lock Down
Even the most cynical of end users can be fooled if they’re not constantly updating their awareness of phishing modus operandi.
5 Key Qualifications of an IT Managed Service Provider
What are the five core IT managed service provider features that define whether or not your firm will experience technical support as a help or a hindrance?
Top 5 Reasons IT Departments Outsource to an MSP
As companies grow, having an internal IT department is a natural consequence of supporting all of the business operations necessary to continue to thrive. Leveraging the latest technology such as messaging, file sharing, and accounting tools, and the networks they run on can contribute to smooth operations while adding a degree of complexity. That’s when organizations bring in more technical staff. They need to maintain the ongoing functionality of those tools as well as introduce new technology that scales up to employee growth and the more diverse ways it’s being applied.
Why Small Businesses Need an All-Inclusive Help Desk
No business, large or small, can afford to be without IT services for any length of time. While large businesses may be more adversely impacted in the OpEx column by company-wide incidents, they are also more likely to have more internal resources available to resolve those issues. The help desk can provide alerts to the network engineers or desktop engineers. From Levels 1 through 3, corporate IT defines all support tasks and separates them between different IT departments.
Network Installation Do’s and Don’ts
Setting up a new office or retail location can be a logistical nightmare from an IT standpoint especially for organizations that don’t have tech savvy boots on the ground to install the network. The reality is emerging businesses don’t always have the luxury of deploying internal resources or leveraging a tried and true partner for crucial IT projects in advance of their expanded geographic foothold.
Help Desk Outsourcing Pricing Models
As with any vendor selection process, pricing matters. The same holds true for the IT services industry. Let’s say you’ve done your due diligence and identified a few help desk providers. All offer a 100% US Based, 24 x 7 x 365 solution and they’re all accountable to meeting SLAs like First Contact Resolution and end user satisfaction ratings. All things quality being equal, the key differentiator ends up being on the bottom line and what services are included in that price.
Co-working Spaces Offer Tech Support along with Cafe Lattés
Before opening a new office, MSPs need to architect the network to have the ability to scale. Successful co-working environments see rapid growth and along with that comes rapid bandwidth utilization. Ensuring that the network is designed to be able to scale up to higher capacity is vital to the business objectives of the co-working platform.
Are you too small for most MSPs?
Just because startups are small, it doesn’t mean they don’t have large scale IT support needs. The truth is, unlike their major corporate counterparts, emerging new businesses tend to have an even more diverse BYOD environment as well as a mixed bag of operating systems, applications, and peripherals. And unlike enterprise-sized accounts, they less frequently have the budget to justify hiring a full time IT person let alone an IT department. As a result, they need their IT services provider to do everything. So where do they turn for support?