Coleman Technologies Blog

Regularly, when a business is searching for ways to move their operations forward, there is a little hand wringing on how to do so. Every decision your business has to make comes with a price tag, and the more that you can do without spending a lot of money, the more value you are going to see. For this week’s blog, we thought we’d take a look at some actions you can take with your technology to ensure that your business is going in the right direction.

If you truly want to run your business effectively, it all starts with understanding how its costs break down. If you are armed with this knowledge, you can make better decisions about solution procurement and operations management. Let’s examine how you can cut costs without harming your business in the process.

Every business has different types of workers; often to management’s chagrin. Ideally, all of an organization’s workers would be enthusiastic about their jobs and the status of a business as a whole. Unfortunately, people don’t always have like minds about the state of things and can see their morale reduced and their productivity wane. 

We hate to be the bad guy, but we’re certain that you cannot multitask nearly as well as you think you can. Multitasking is just not how the human brain works, and whether or not you believe in the psychology of it, we think you stand to benefit by outsourcing some of the tasks on your plate to a managed service provider.

2023 is right around the corner, and if the past few years are any indication, it will be rife with challenges for businesses to overcome. Let’s consider some of these challenges, and what technologies can help minimize or even eliminate them.

In business, experience is always useful. Nowhere is that more apparent than when managing your organization’s IT infrastructure. The problem is that acquiring the expertise to do just that can be quite confusing for most business owners. Today, we’ll talk about how technology management experience can produce better business from one end to the other. 

Despite what detractors say, regulations are in place for good reason. They typically protect individuals from organizational malfeasance. Many of these regulations are actual laws passed by a governing body and cover the entire spectrum of the issue, not just the data involved. The ones that have data protection regulations written into them mostly deal with the handling and protection of sensitive information. For organizations that work in industries covered by these regulations there are very visible costs that go into compliance. Today, we look at the costs incurred by these organizations as a result of these regulations, and how to ascertain how they affect your business.

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.

The average person will spend an estimated one-third of their life at work. One third. That’s a lot of time, providing plenty of opportunity to accumulate stress. Over time, these emotions could potentially overwhelm your employees and lead to a breakdown. This is, naturally, harmful to your business, so let’s explore some strategies you can share with your team to help them deal with their workday stresses.

Businesses of all sizes have been able to successfully overcome operational challenges by rethinking and adapting the technology they utilize. Let’s consider a huge example and look at what The Lego Group (as in the building blocks) has done to address some of their technological challenges with improved solutions—as well as how your business can do the same.

What is VoIP?

At first glance, VoIP is almost indistinguishable from the telephone services you are used to using—in fact, you’ve likely used it before.

Defining Managed Services

On a very fundamental level, managed services and tech support are very different due to the way they operate.

Traditional tech support, also referred to as break-fix IT, are those that most people think of. Whenever a piece of technology breaks down or has some other issue, an IT technician is called to fix it. This was the predominant—and really, the only—option to receive any level of IT support for some time, despite the expensive repeat visits and prolonged operational interruptions that came with it. For larger enterprises, hiring full-time IT staff solved this problem. It’s still costly, and often too costly for small businesses, but it does lead to faster turnaround times and ongoing support.

What are Managed Services?

Let’s start off with a very basic description of what “managed services” are, as compared to the common impression of “tech support.” Whenever one thinks about “tech support” or “IT,” they’re likely thinking of the break-fix version: some piece of information technology breaks or malfunctions, so IT is called in to fix it. While this proved effective enough, it also led to a lot of repeat visits… oftentimes for things that were relatively simple to fix.

Why Do You Need Data Backup?

This is pretty self-explanatory. Your business is constantly under threat. You may not realize it because you’ve been fortunate enough not to have any threat be bad enough where your operational and financial data is actively at risk. That may not always be the case, however. Consider how important your data is and think about all the things that could happen where you would have to deal with data loss. Situations that stem from natural disasters, scams and hackers, hardware failure, and human error can all trigger data loss. That’s a lot of variables to cover to keep hoping that nothing will happen. 

“What does—and doesn’t—work?”

To motivate your team to take ownership over their responsibilities and invest in your successful operations, you need to communicate that what they say has credence. Your team can be a goldmine of insights if you hear what they have to say. Think about it, they’re the ones that have hands-on experience using the tools that you’ve put in place.

It’s true that there are a lot of businesses that rely on their workforce to show up every day. Many of these businesses were forced to shut down or operate at limited capacity during the pandemic but are just now getting up to speed. Outside of operations, there are a lot of administrative uses of technology, some of which involve protecting employee and customer information. Let’s get into some of the strategies that businesses can use to get the most out of their workforce at this time. 

What is it to be Proactive?

It’s all about preventing issues and risk. Being proactive is simply action taken after a risk assessment. Many times, risk is inherent, so being proactive is just managing situations to keep risk at bay. It goes without saying that taking proactive steps, especially in business, can be some of the most effective strategies to get ahead. Why is this? It comes down to time. 

Making the Most of What You Have

As states have mandated that businesses either close or move operations offsite for the well-being of their employees and clients, many people seem to have been caught off-guard by the duration of these orders. As a result, many businesses have since shifted from a “shut down and wait it out” strategy to trying to do whatever they can—which, for many, is implementing a remote workforce.

IT Management Matters More Than Ever

From a certain point of view, businesses now find themselves in a unique position to restructure their operations. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an inconvenient case study of sorts that shows a promising outlook on remote productivity.

It has also helped to shine the light on how impactful waste can be in poorly managed IT strategies. Without any engaged oversight, the heightened use of cloud services can lead to a few considerable issues, including

Let’s review some recommended technologies for you to embrace as you reopen your business.

Updated Hardware and Software Solutions

First things first—while businesses resume their operations, the chaos that will predictably ensue is the perfect time for cybercriminals to take their shot. Therefore, you need to make it a priority that all your hardware and software solutions are fully updated or upgraded as improvements are made available. In doing so, you make sure that the tools your team will use are as secure as they can be against the latest threats.