Coleman Technologies Blog

When the lights flicker and screens go black, most Fraser Valley business owners scramble. They watch helplessly as transactions freeze, customer data vanishes mid-save, and productivity grinds to a halt. But keeping your Abbotsford business running during power outages isn’t just possible. It’s the competitive advantage that separates thriving companies from those forced to close their doors.

In 2024, over 1.4 million BC Hydro customers experienced weather-related power outages, marking the worst year in the utility’s history. Nearly 75% of British Columbians faced at least one unexpected blackout. For businesses without proper protection, each of those outages represented lost revenue, corrupted files, and frustrated customers walking out the door.

Nobody likes getting large support bills from technology companies—especially when they are unexpected. This is the case for both the business owners footing the bill and the employees who might be held responsible for racking up the bill in the first place. This puts SMBs in a bit of an impossible situation; either spend money to keep employees productive, or save money and suffer from productivity issues.

If your business is looking to cut costs, one area to focus on is printing. While paper documents have traditionally played a significant role in business operations, they can consume a lot of office space and are challenging to manage efficiently. Let’s explore how you can reduce your printing expenses and streamline your document management processes.

Staying optimistic can be challenging, not just in business but in life. Here’s a few ways to give your business a little more confidence in your ability to support your business.

Your business needs IT expertise, regardless of how much it is integrated into your operations. You need someone on staff who not only understands your technology, but someone who can help you make the most of it to get the leg up on competition. Today, we want to explore how you can hire the right IT professionals for your organization’s specific needs, including both hard and soft skills.

IT support is essential for businesses, but traditional on-site support can be expensive and inefficient.

Thankfully, remote IT support, such as that offered through managed services, is now available. This is a game-changer for small to medium-sized businesses. Let's explore the benefits of remote IT support.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face the challenge of managing complex IT systems with very limited resources. Enter managed service providers, or MSPs, the guardians of IT that can help your business stay ahead of the game. An MSP's approach to IT support delivery offers many benefits that traditional IT support and even an in-house team might struggle to match.

Let's delve into three compelling reasons why our innovative approach is best for your IT support needs, especially if you want to scale up and streamline operations.

When it comes to running a successful business, customer confidence is everything. It can make or break your business’ reputation. If you’re too reckless with your customers, why would anyone else be willing to sign on with you? Thankfully, there are plenty of ways you can build customer confidence, and technology plays a pivotal role in many of them. Today, we want to explore how you can build customer confidence through the use of business technology solutions.

As a small business, we’re sure you want to improve your profit margin so that you can offer more exciting and innovative services or products. One way that many businesses bleed capital is through their IT expenses. While it might make sense on paper to address technology challenges only when they present themselves, the truth is the exact opposite.

As we’re in the midst of Q3 of 2023, common wisdom says that now is about the time that small businesses should be planning their budgets for the next fiscal year. As such, if you haven’t already done so, it’s time to give managed IT services some serious consideration.

I was meeting with an old colleague the other day. We met over Microsoft Teams to just check in and see how they were doing—no real itinerary, just to check in with a familiar face that I haven’t personally talked to in a few years. They had a little trouble getting into Microsoft Teams, since they were used to Zoom. I patiently smiled and helped them through it, and told them “No worries, it’s always the little differences that complicate things!”

At the time, I said this just to be empathetic. At first, the nerdy computer-geek part of my brain told me that the process to get into a Zoom meeting vs a Teams meeting, from their perspective, is exactly the same. But after the call, I really thought about this small interaction, and you know what? Things have gotten complicated.

Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, managing technology can easily become a full-time job. If you are only calling a technician when you are dealing with a computer issue, then you might be sitting on a ticking time bomb. Whether you have internal staff responsible for managing your IT, or you rely on a third-party, you’ll want to make sure the following tasks are getting done.

What Is Your IT Company Taking Care Of For You?

Selecting a company to maintain your technology is one of the most important decisions you can make for your business. You must find the most competent and reliable IT support provider in your area.

What Is Your Ransomware Response?
It feels like no more than a few days go by without another ransomware story in the news. What used to be just one threat present in the cybercrime landscape has now become the most clear and present danger to modern businesses.

• What would you do if the power went out right now?
• What if your area flooded for days on end?
• Do you have a plan in place to recover from disaster quickly and keep your business running?

The internet has become a part of our everyday lives. But many people don't realize that the internet can be a harmful place for both individuals and companies. The dark web is one facet of the internet that can compromise our sensitive data — and it's important to be mindful of what it is and how it can impact us.

Data backups protect a business from catastrophic data loss resulting from hardware failures, natural disasters, cybersecurity attacks, system outages, or network disruptions. Backing up data involves replicating it and storing it in different places, such as the cloud, backup servers, and dedicated backup devices. This way, you can recover your data and information from a previous state and time in case of system outages.

In recent years, cloud-based productivity suites have become more and more popular with businesses of all sizes, in a wide and varied range of industries. It's the type of solution that has something to offer everyone.

Cloud-based technologies, in general, are changing the way users like you view the capabilities of their technology — especially Microsoft 365.

What is Data Automation?

In so many words, data automation is the collection and transcription of data using software, rather than the outdated and time-consuming manual processes that were once necessary.

Rather than one of your valuable employees being committed to data entry instead of the other tasks that are better suited to their talents and abilities, data automation utilizes technology to attend to it. As a result, your team can focus on their other responsibilities, while your data is managed more efficiently and accurately.

Adding More Organization Into Your Chrome Browser

Admit it, you have a tendency to use too many browser tabs. At any given time, you may have 5-10-20 browser tabs open. If you use more than one screen, it could be more. Way more. Most users use their Chrome browser for so much of your online life that you hardly pay attention. Then you wonder why your PC is running slow. The truth is people use a lot of browser tabs, and they are better off for it.