Technology is increasingly important for business, which is why when making decisions about what technology to use and how to use it, decision makers need all the information they can get. Since businesses today depend more on software than ever, it is extremely important that you know why it is so important to keep your business’ applications updated and patched.
Coleman Technologies Blog
As a manager, some of the administrative work can be, if not the worst part of the job, easily the least engaging. For instance, having to create all the different folders for the employees under your purview, projects, and other organizational needs. Fortunately, Microsoft Excel offers a relatively quick and easy way of doing just this.
Microsoft’s operating systems have been around for a long time, and since Windows 95, Microsoft has published free utilities that can help users make slight adjustments to their operating systems to suit their needs. Microsoft PowerToys are even available now, and we want to explore what they can do for your business, as well as how you can acquire them.
Every business depends on some type of software, but some businesses seem to have an application for every single thing and it can be too much for employees or administrators to manage. So the question has to be asked: What is the right amount of software for your business? Today, we’ll discuss the types of software every business needs and how to determine what you need.
Smartphone applications are in high demand from both a consumer and a business perspective, so it stands to reason that these ecosystems are large in scope, encompassing millions of apps on both the Google Play and Apple App stores. Have you ever wondered how these companies ensure that the apps found on their stores are secure and legitimate?
Smartphones are a critical part of your business’ productivity, but sometimes you and your employees might have differing views on how to translate that productivity into profitability for your business. If you want to avoid the pitfalls associated with smartphones, well, today’s article might just be for you. Here are four tips and tricks you can use to get your smartphones to work for you.
Productivity suites are universally one of the best tools for getting work done in the business world, so if you’re not familiar with the term, then take a moment to consider how often you use Microsoft Office products or the Google Workspace apps. These are productivity suites, and they are remarkably important and valuable for your company, whether you realize it or not.
Software makes or breaks businesses, so your software strategy should be implemented with sound logic in mind. One of the ways you can make the most out of your limited resources and budget is to consider cloud-hosted Software as a Service offerings. With SaaS, you can implement better software that is more accessible, flexible, and manageable than the traditional method of hosting.
Software makes business run: that is an undeniable statement. From the operations software that allows your business to manage and pay its people to the CRM that provides a pathway to communicate efficiently with customers, to all of the applications that it takes to conduct business in earnest, software plays a crucial role in your business’ success.
For years, IT has been at the forefront of business administration, productivity, communications, and many other parts of an organization's efficient operations. For the growing business it can be rather difficult to know where to invest your capital so that you can get the best ROI or the most value out of your IT investments. Let’s take a look at how the growing business can use their earmarked capital to improve their business.
In today’s business, the demand for software often outpaces the supply of available coders. For businesses that find the need for new applications to drive their business initiatives, there are now “no code” tools available that can help them create the software they need without having to lean on software developers. This week, we take a look at no code tools and how they can work for your business.
Ultimately, your employees are going to be the ones using your technology to accomplish their daily duties, so it helps to treat them like customers rather than end users. If you examine industry trends to make the best decisions possible with your technology and communications solutions, then you’ll allow your team to flourish in the process.
Adobe Flash Player was deprecated back in 2017, but its official end of life date lands at the end of this year. What this means is that the software will gradually show more and more vulnerabilities that will not be mitigated, and therefore, the software will be far more susceptible to attack. Therefore, it is important that you check to make sure that anyplace that Flash Player would be—including your Internet browsers on your computers and mobile devices—to make sure that Flash isn’t still installed there.
A Few Brief Disclaimers
Before we get into how this is possible, we should mention a few of the prerequisites of this process.
As of right now, the Windows/ChromeOS compatibility is clearly intended for enterprise use, as it is configured for company-wide setups and rings up an annual per-user cost of $70. Furthermore, the method we are covering here is only compatible on higher-end Chromebooks, with at least an i5 or i7 Intel Core processor, 16GB of RAM, and 128GB of onboard storage.
Let’s go over how to set up this capability. As a disclaimer, it will require you to edit some of your menu options, so reach out to your IT resource to confirm that it is okay to do so and to assist you if need be.
You should also know that Track Changes won’t work if a spreadsheet contains a table that hasn’t been converted into a range. To make this conversion, select the table, navigate to the Design tab, and click the Convert to Range option. If you want others to be able to collaborate on your workbook, it needs to be saved in a shared location.
In actuality, you’ve used a template every time you’ve opened a Microsoft Word document… the Normal template. However, you may want to use a different template to meet your different needs. If that’s the case, you’ll need to adjust some settings as you create your document.
As you select New from the File tab, you will be presented with a few options. One of them will be Blank document, but you also have the opportunity to utilize a huge variety of other templates that can be found in the application and then downloaded. Once you have done so, select your chosen template and your new document will be generated with that template’s contents. These can include:
- Boilerplate text
- Styles
- Images and logos
- Table of contents
- Sections that split the document into different parts, with appropriate numbering
- Table and chart boilerplates
Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list of your options. Feel free to explore the different templates and their options to see all that these documents can do.
Once you have a few templates downloaded, you can even edit them to better fit your needs. To do so, all you need to do is open the template you want to edit (File>Open>This PC>My Documents>Open) and make your desired changes. Once that’s done, just Save and Close.
Why Bother with Templates at All?
There are a few advantages to using templates that you should see significant benefits from, such as:
- Templates can be shared amongst your staff and unify your business’ style.
- Templates can be used to make forms much easier (and less expensive) to reproduce.
- Templates can reference your other applications to simplify additional tasks.
- Templates allow you to quickly reformat your documents if need be.
So, do you think you’ll do any investigating into templates in the future? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments, and let us know what other tips you would find helpful!
Planning Stages
Most businesses use some type of management program to streamline things. Whether that be a simple Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a more intuitive Professional Services Automation (PSA), or an end-to-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, your company relies on software to get the job done.
Today, there is an opportunity to mix your business' production software--whether it be communication integration, file sync and sharing, another form of back-end integration, or a customer-facing application--with your management platform. Planning an integration like this can have big benefits, especially if you are beginning to use analytics to help you make critical business decisions. After all, the whole point in integrating your various business components is to make data flow better.
The main hurdle to accomplishing this is, of course, how do you go about getting this done? If your organization doesn’t have on-staff developers, outsourcing your integration project quickly becomes your only recourse. If you are going to pay someone outside your company to connect your proverbial pieces, then you need to have an idea of what you want to accomplish ready when you start the relationship. It is essential that the outsourced developer knows your needs, and that you provide them with tools and access needed to complete, and thoroughly test, the integration. Most simple integrations can be done cheaply, and can provide massive returns on your investment, while larger integrations may not see the immediate return, but over time can provide massive cost-and-time-saving benefits.
Integration Benefits
Speaking of benefits, we’ve already touched on the main benefit of software integration: Unimpeded data flow. Integration can also result in:
- Cost savings
- Increased end-to-end efficiency
- Organizational growth
- Improving business with no downtime
- Enhanced business analysis and intelligence
According to one study, small businesses that build a completely integrated suite can boost sales by upwards of 12 percent, reduce overhead by increasing inventory reporting, and increase revenue-creating situations by almost 50 percent.
If your organization has seemingly tried it all to boost productivity and efficiency, you may be missing out on a great way to improve both, while also providing a way for businesses to better plan for the future. Do you think that integrating your business’ software will help your business? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
What is “Blockchain” Anyway?
Blockchain is defined as a distributed ledger system that creates a single encrypted and unalterable file whenever any transaction is made to help preserve its continuity. As every device involved in the blockchain helps to store it, the blockchain itself is unprecedentedly transparent. This allows business systems to be both more accountable, and secure.
Accountability
Let’s return for a moment to how the blockchain works—each time a transaction of any kind is made, be it adding new data or revising some that already existed, a new “node” (think of it as another link in the chain) is created to document the transaction and encrypt it. As a result, you wind up with a running record of reliable data. As you might imagine, this offers itself quite well to many industries.
Banking and Financial Services
With the importance of the record-keeping that these organizations maintain being so apparent, it only makes sense that blockchain is used to automatically keep track of where funds are being moved.
Real Estate
Real estate processes are notoriously intricate and confusing. Blockchain provides an option that could make the entire experience of buying and selling real estate much more transparent.
Wills and Inheritances
Tragically, wills and inheritances can be very hotly contested, and their veracity may be called into question. The transparent and immutable logs of the blockchain could eventually lead to many fights being averted in the future.
Voting
Elections now face more scrutiny than ever before, as votes are counted, recounted, contested, and recounted again. Using the blockchain could help to eliminate most challenges and issues that call the integrity of an election into question.
Supply Chain Management and Logistics
Managing all the moving pieces of a supply chain could be made much simpler by integrating blockchain technology. Goods and resources could be easily tracked and directed where they need to go, with confirmation when they arrive at their destination.
Security
Communications have gone digital, with unprecedented numbers sent and received each day. As more people than ever rely on these communications for a variety of reasons, data sharing needs to be more reliably secure. The blockchain is well suited for this task, as each transfer of data remains fully transparent, while the data contained in the nodes remains undisclosed. This technology can even be safely used to hold parties to their shared agreements by facilitating proper compensation once certain requirements are met. These capabilities will likely lead to advancements in:
Education
Consider how many files any educational institution needs to maintain and verify, and the amount of personal information shared in these records. Blockchain makes it so that these paper files are no longer necessary, while also making it easier to verify registration, management, and financial aid-related data.
Healthcare
Any patient who needs to see multiple physicians knows the frustration of working with providers who operate in different healthcare networks. However, healthcare has a good track record with embracing innovative technology solutions. Introducing blockchain could ultimately lead to self-managed healthcare records.
Stock Trading
There are many ways that stock exchange processes could be made better with the assistance of blockchain technologies. Two clear improvements: convenience, and of course security.
Public Records
Many states are still overly reliant on paper documents, which are very easy to alter and otherwise manipulate (never mind steal). Shifting to digital documents that are supported by blockchain could do a lot to reduce fraud, ensure accountability, and generally improve security.
The Internet of Things
IoT devices are overwhelmingly insecure, but if they were decentralized through the blockchain, some of this insecurity could be resolved.
To learn more about blockchain technology, feel free to call Coleman Technologies to discuss it, as well as the options you currently have to leverage for your business. Reach out at (604) 513-9428 today!