by Felicien | May 3, 2018 | Education
On May 7th, all smartphones on an LTE network will receive a test notification for the new Public Emergency Alert System.
Don’t let it catch you off guard – coming up on May 7th, 2018, if you live in Ontario or Quebec, your smartphone will receive a test alert for Canada’s Public Emergency Alert System. The same test will run in the rest of the country on May 9th.
Be aware that this first notification will simply be a test by all major broadcast and telecom companies that offer LTE service. In some cases, you may be required to acknowledge receipt of the alert. Depending on your service provider, the alert may also make a notification sound that circumvents the settings on your phone (i.e., even if you have your phone set to silent, in some cases it may still notify with a noise).
These notifications will be sent out as a part of the Alert Ready Emergency Alert System. According to their website, Alert Ready is “designed to deliver critical and potentially life-saving alerts to Canadians through television and radio. The Alert Ready system is developed in partnership with federal, provincial, and territorial emergency management officials, Environment and Climate Change Canada, The Weather Network, and the broadcasting industry and wireless service providers, to ensure you receive alerts immediately and know when to take action to keep yourself and your family safe”.
Once tested and verified, these types of alerts will be sent to Canadians to inform them about a range of types of emergencies and imminent threats, including:
Natural Disasters
Tornado: a vortex of violently rotating winds, often forming a funnel-shaped cloud that is capable of damaging property and injuring people.
Flash Flood: Usually caused by river ice jams and excessive unpredicted rainfall, a flash flood is a sudden onset of water causing immediate flooding of the local area. The danger is in the little to no warning to local residential areas.
Earthquake: A sudden release of violent seismic waves due to energy generated by the movement of plates in the Earth’s crust, which can cause extensive damage in urban environments.
Hurricane: A violent storm made up of intense winds and heavy rain that can lead to storm surge, floods, coastal erosion, and landslides.
Fires
Urban Fire: Any urban fire that presents a threat to multiple residential and/or commercial properties.
Industrial Fire: A large fire in an industrial building or complex that poses a threat to human health.
Wildfire: A large natural fire involving combustibles such as grass, brush, and trees.
Forest Fire: As opposed to a wildfire, a forest fire burns in a forested area, grass or alpine/tundra vegetation and poses a threat to human safety.
Biological
Biological: A potentially dangerous or poisonous substance that is both unstable and easily transferred between living organisms.
Chemical: The misuse or release (unintentional or otherwise) of a chemical substance that could result in serious injury or death.
Radiological: A radiological (radioactive) substance with sufficient concentration to do serious or lethal harm to exposed populations.
Drinking Water Contamination: In the event that drinking water is negatively affected and as such, a boil-water advisory is raised, cautioning use by the public.
Hazardous
Explosive: A potentially dangerous substance or device that may explode within an affecting radius of an urban environment or concentrated population.
Terrorist
Terrorist Threat: The use of violence or threat of violence by individuals or groups against civilians or infrastructure.
Environmental
Air Quality: Caused by an elevated particulate count in the atmosphere that could negatively affect visibility or the health of individuals.
Falling Objects: Natural or human-made materials at risk of falling, which may threaten people or property.
Civil
Civil Emergency: Occurring when humans cause a disruption of services or require varying levels of support, law enforcement, or attention.
Animal Danger: Occurring when a wild or domesticated animal poses a threat to human life or property.
Amber Alert: Issued when a child has been abducted and police services believe that the child’s life is in grave danger. This type of alert gives the public immediate and up-to-date information about the abduction in order to gain their assistance in ensuring a fast and safe return of the child.
911 Service: This type of alert occurs when there is a disruption or outage of telecommunication services between public and emergency responders.
Check out the Alert Ready website to hear an example of the specific alert tone that will play through television, radio, and wireless broadcasts to notify Canadians of an impending emergency.
Be sure to take note of how the test occurs – it is the public’s responsibility to ensure that they understand what the alert is informing them of, to consider it carefully, and to respond appropriately and as directed.
For more information about Alert Ready, check out their website here.
by Felicien | May 3, 2018 | Education
Do you use 800 million pounds of paper each year? That’s the latest estimate for the average professional – and nearly 20% ends up in landfills. Would your habits change if you were taxed on paper consumption?
The use of paper to record thoughts, plans, transactions, agreements, or anything at all, is nothing new. Ancient Egyptians invented the earliest known type of “paper”, named papyrus from the plant which the material was created. The more modern forms of paper are likely created from a process similar to that invented by the Chinese, who remain the leading paper manufacturers today.
The ability to document everything from knowledge and information to financial transactions and taxes brought the foundation of the technological era – though not quite as we see it today. For the first time in history, accountability no longer relied on memory or spoken word, but the origin of the “paper trail” concept.
One of the earliest modern ways we’ve found to scale back paper use is the predecessor to the smartphone, the personal digital assistant (PDA), like the Palm Pilot. Migrating from paper planners to a handheld organizer enabled professionals to have easy calendar access, along with a variety of other resources like the Internet and telephone.
Would it surprise you to know that the first person to coin the phrase “PDA” was a former Apple CEO, John Sculley?
The intended purpose of technology is to improve our lives and simplify our tasks. For example, email was designed, in part, to expedite communication in a cost-efficient manner. Written communication that previously took more than a week to deliver via U.S. mail with the added cost of a postage stamp and envelope – also relying on the correct mailing address of the recipient – was now nearly free and instantaneous. The fax machine was intended to serve this same purpose of timely delivery, but still involved paper waste. In fact, fax machines created a unique problem: the sender had to have a print copy to scan and fax, and the recipient thus received a paper copy of the message. In the case of email, technology should decrease the use of paper, and successfully has.
The average professional has indeed cut back on paper use. Statistics vary, but no matter how you look at it, we consume far too much paper for the amount of technology we have at our disposal. Notice the word “consume”? The sad reality is that not all consumed paper is used. Have you ever visited a print station only to have to dig through sheets to find the printed document(s) you’re looking for? How many times do you see the same sheets that never get picked up?
Every year, organizations look to trim costs from their budget in unique ways, but rarely are paper costs fully considered. It’s estimated that U.S. companies spend $120 million annually on printed documents – a number that can, and should, easily be reduced.
Companies like Microsoft are trying to facilitate less paper consumption, and therefore, less waste. From online storage with Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint, where users can store, share, and access files from anywhere without needing to produce paper copies, to collaborative software solutions like Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Project which help groups jointly communicate in real time, modern solutions are geared toward less paper consumption.
One industry where paper consumption has significantly decreased in recent years is the medical field. Patient charts used to be entirely paper, including test results, office visit notes, and full patient history. For large medical practices, this involves a lot of expensive real estate for a physical item that isn’t often used. The movement toward electronic health records is more efficient in every way: cost savings for less paper and less space taken, easy to share and access from anywhere, and less chance of a test result or document getting lost or damaged.
Banking is another industry to vie for the record of worst offender in terms of paper consumption. Between lending for auto purchases or mortgages and account statements, banks recognize the high-consumption of paper and have (slowly) been moving toward online signatures, email statements, and digital records.
Even major metropolitan areas are jumping on the “green” bandwagon. Bike lanes are being rolled out in cities across the country. Mass transit light rail systems are being installed and adopted for easy navigation and decreasing carbon footprints and toxic emissions. On the smaller scale, but no less important, it’s becoming more common for consumers to be emailed a receipt at a point of purchase, rather than have a paper receipt printed at the time of transaction. Most cities have designated locations to return printer ink cartridges for recycling to help cut down on waste.
Commonly purchased with large print workstations are service agreements to maintain the printer. Rather than a set cost, these agreements are based on use and consumption, with fees for black-and-white documents ranging from 5¢ to 12¢ on average, and color documents ranging from triple to more than five times the cost of black-and-white fees. By comparison, cloud storage costs are far more economical!
So, what can you do to help cut down on paper waste, thereby cutting costs for your company?
Evaluate who uses a printer at your organization and for what purposes.
Determine if your printer(s) are the most efficient available, and if they are maintained for efficiency.
Monitor overall usage, and then assess how usage can be decreased.
There are so many ways technology can help decrease print usage and costs, and here are a few to get started:
Cloud storage
This cannot be stated enough. Moving file storage to the cloud is a big leap, but can save you time and money.
No more file cabinets taking up real estate.
Documents are easier to find, access, and share from anywhere.
Reusable notebooks
Do you or your team still prefer to take handwritten notes? Using a smart notebook like the Rocketbook Wave propels your note-taking into the next century. Once captured, notes can be shared to the cloud using your smartphone. Once the notebook is full, a quick run in the microwave and it’s empty to use again!
Collaborative platforms
We mentioned Microsoft Teams already, but there are countless options available. From Slack to Basecamp, most offer users a similar feature base intended to encourage digital collaboration and eliminate paper waste.
It’s not unheard of to offer incentives to decrease waste, but the greatest incentive is decreasing costs for the organization resulting in increased revenue – and hopefully increased salaries! Decreased paper waste shouldn’t have to rely on staff incentives – and hopefully, it won’t come to taxation, but you never know…so let’s get ahead of the game and help ourselves while helping the planet. Saving two kinds of green – money and Mother Earth – with one effort!
by Felicien | May 3, 2018 | Education
Recently, several big class-action lawsuits have been filed in California over whether adequate notices are being given to consumers when their personal information is sold. With the major controversy surrounding Facebook and the use of its users’ personal information during the 2016 presidential campaign, the public has become more aware and informed about this topic.
A recent Newsweek article reports that data brokers typically try to stay below the radar so as not to draw attention to what they do for a living. This may be partly responsible for the fact that over half of all Canadians and Americans say that they do not know exactly what happens when they give their name, address, phone number and email address to a website or company.
Recent lawsuits use California’s Shine the Light Law (S.B.27) to object to how these marketing companies use all our data. The lawsuits allege:
“The company failed to properly identify a method for obtaining a disclosure as to how the company shares its customer’s personal information.”
With the publicity surrounding these lawsuits, other consumers are taking notice and filing their own suits, many of them class-action suits. Before deciding whether to file or not, it’s important to know exactly what S.B.27 is and how it works.
Overview of S.B. 27
According to S.B. 27, certain companies must disclose how they share their customer’s information each time a customer asks for it. Each time a company receives a request from a customer wanting to know how the company has shared their information with marketers, they must provide the information. This only covers the previous twelve months. In addition, S.B. 27 only allows consumers to make these requests in cases where the customer was not given access to the company’s privacy policies containing opt-out notices.
In order to be compliant with S.B.27, a company must create a privacy policy that includes opt-out rights, and provide that to their customers in an acceptable manner. It’s important for the consumer to fully understand the privacy notice and how they should proceed with opting out if desired. Many consumers are claiming that they were not notified about how their personal information is being used and who it is being sold to.
Who must comply?
Not all businesses must meet the terms of S.B. 27. Those affected will have these four things in common:
20 or more employees
Business relationships with customers in California
Have in the past, shared a customer’s personal info with other companies for the purpose of marketing
The incident must have taken place within the previous calendar year
There are some businesses who are exempt from the bill’s requirements. These include:
Financial organizations subject to certain provisions of S.B. 1, the California Financial Information Privacy Act.
Those administering business-related disclosures to third parties. For instance, administrative or customer service personnel who do not use the information for their own direct marketing needs.
Rights of each individual under S.B. 27
Consumers have the right to be notified by the business using a designated contact method such as email, phone, and regular mail. In the notification, the company should outline how it shares the personal information of its customers with other businesses for the purposes of direct marketing.
Notifications can be completed in any one of several ways:
A customer service representative from the company may contact customers who request this and go over their full policy for sharing customer personal data with third-party marketers.
Customers may view the company’s privacy policy by visiting a store or branch and asking to see it.
Customers may be directed to view the privacy policy statement by visiting the company’s website. The website must clearly show a link to “Your Privacy Rights” or “Your California Privacy Rights”. The privacy notice can be posted on the company’s website or on another web page that includes all this information. The disclosure must include wording that clearly indicates that the information is being given at no cost and is updated regularly with any changes to the law.
Consumers also have the right to request the following information each year from any California company they do business with:
Customers can contact the company to find out whether they implement and comply with S.B. 27.
Customers can request information about how to opt-in or opt-out of information sharing. The company is then responsible to notify the customer free of charge and in writing about opting in or out of sharing personal information.
There are additional requirements for a business that does not provide their consumers with the opt-in and opt-out information. This information must also be provided free of charge in writing or by email.
Companies are required to go into some detail about exactly what customer information they are sharing. They must provide:
Names and addresses of all third parties that obtained personal information during the preceding year from the business for direct marketing purposes.
Exactly what information they shared, i.e., the customer’s name, address, phone number, birth date, etc.
They must ensure that the customer understands what type of business they’re private info has been sold to. For instance, in cases where an individual might not readily recognize the business name, the company must provide examples of the types of products and services the third party vendor sells.
For those who wish to contact one or more companies to ask about how their personal information is being used, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has drafted a letter that can be used to request this information from any company.
The Penalties for Failing to Comply
There are legal remedies provided under the law when S.B. 27 is not properly followed. If a company fails to respond to a disclosure request, the customer is entitled to recover a civil penalty of up to $500 per violation. If the court decides that the company was willful, reckless or intentional in not adhering to S.B. 27, those filing lawsuits may be able to get $3,000 per incident. In some cases, the plaintiff’s attorney fees are also included in the award. A suit should be filed within 90 days of learning that an individual’s personal information was bought or sold without the person’s knowledge.
by Felicien | May 2, 2018 | Education
Got data? Then you’ve got needs – the need to make your data make sense. Microsoft Excel has amazing built-in magic tricks, and all it takes is just a few clicks!
Information is important. Information is critical. Information is what keeps the world moving. Life can depend on having the right information – especially the life of a business. Information is the lifeline for the professional world.
If you think we’re overestimating the value of information, try not being able to access what you need when you need it. There is a reason data is such big business today. Data storage and protection of stored data have become a $30 billion industry, with several large players in the game, including Microsoft and Amazon. Growth is expected to explode in the next five years, to nearly $100 billion by 2022. Brands have embraced the flexibility of cloud data storage with its scalability and efficiency.
The growth of cloud storage is two-fold: brands are recognizing the ease of storing data off-site, and the cost efficiency of increasing storage needs over time due to their own growth. An invisible bonus is the decreased need for in-house redundancy, with data back-ups taking more space on servers and requiring staff to oversee these processes. What do we mean by “in-house redundancy”? We’re talking about how critical data is to the success of organizations, small and large. Think about your data – your information. If your data suddenly disappeared, how long would you be able to continue normal operations? Yes, you could revert to the most recent data back-up with minimal impact – hopefully – but there is also the question of how the data loss occurred. But these are considerations better left for your cybersecurity team.
Back to your data – your information. You need your data. Your data gives you great insights into your brand performance, your customer base, your revenue, and your operational details. But how do you make sense of your raw data? If your information is stored in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution, you likely already have custom reports established to give you the details you need. These CRM solutions are often expensive and require further customization to get the details you need in a way that is meaningful to you and your organization. Not very helpful, is it?
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution allows for the continual data analysis to improve customer relationships and provide the insights needed for customer retention and revenue growth.
A CRM often pulls data from multiple sources to compile reports, like a company’s website or site analytics account for traffic metrics, various marketing efforts like direct mail or email campaigns, or even inbound marketing campaigns to measure response rates, and even social media profiles. All of this may be incredibly helpful, or it may be presented in a way that doesn’t have the right information and meaning that you are looking for to gain particular insights.
Don’t overlook the basics!
Microsoft Excel is a fantastic tool for data references and building tables to find deeper meaning from your data. Microsoft Excel helps you take raw data and organize your information in a way that holds meaning for you. You want to manipulate your data so that you can get helpful insights from the information within. For example, you’d like to identify the group of customers that purchased or canceled with your business within a certain date range. You may be able to customize a report somehow from another platform, like a CRM, but if you either do not have one of these costly software solutions, or just need this information quickly and want to avoid the time it may take to set up a custom report for these details, Microsoft Excel is the perfect solution for this purpose.
Data presentation is rarely perfect for your needs – without that costly and time-consuming customized reporting solution we mentioned earlier. A couple of quick keystrokes can help you get what you need in Microsoft Excel. For example, if you need to quickly ascertain the number of customers who purchased or canceled service within a set month and year, you have multiple options in Microsoft Excel.
First, your raw data probably isn’t formatted how you need it to be. What can you do?
Text to columns feature:
In Microsoft Excel, users have the opportunity to import data in a comma separated values file, a CSV, and then use this feature to separate the information into clean column format.
If your data is somewhat clean and consistent, this is one option. Otherwise, this is going to be manual and laborious.
How are your VBA coding sills? Can you write a macro? This seems like overkill, but it’s one way to get your raw data into an organized format. If you’re going to put this kind of time into your data, you may as well consider the customized reporting features we discussed earlier.
Sort and count manually
This is the least desirable option, as it’s the most manual and will take you the longest – isn’t the goal of technology to improve our lives and increase efficiency and productivity?
So, let’s look at our realistic option:
The super handy formula bar in Microsoft Excel is your best friend here. Follow these steps to get the magic number you need using this “magic trick” in Microsoft Excel.
Step 1: Ensure the date column is formatted properly. Excel defaults to a standard presentation for dates: MM/DD/YY. If your dates vary in presentation, this is an easy step that will save you a headache in later steps!
Step 2: Sort, or don’t sort. This is the magic of Microsoft Excel!
Step 3: A wonderful tool called the COUNTIFS formula is our best friend here. Using this specific example, if we’re looking at a specified data column in B, rows B1 through B50, and the date range is the month of April 2018, we can use this formula:
=COUNTIFS(B1:B50, “>04/01/2018″,B1:B50,”<04/30/2018”)
What this formula does is tell the spreadsheet to return the total number – not the specific rows or cells, mind you – of rows that include customers that are within the date range at you are looking.
Users will either need to update the cell range for the total count (“B1:B50”) or the date range (“04/01/2018” and “04/30/2018”) to update the total count.
If users will need to reflect on this data more often than just once, we recommend users set up a separate tab or sheet within the file for each month, even if the full data is the same, to simplify the process. This will help users compare months at a quick glance.
There you have it.
Quick note: adding more rows, etc., and this count will update accordingly and automatically. Also, sorting won’t impact the formula, just the display.
Microsoft Excel has a huge number of neat little magic tricks designed to help users – and it just takes a bit of manipulation to make your data “talk” to you and tell you what you need to know.
by Felicien | May 2, 2018 | Education
You may think that your technical support and service costs will increase as your organization grows in size and scope. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Most small and mid-sized businesses no longer need to employ dedicated techs or pay for the benefits and management costs that come along with employing them. Today’s Technology Solution Providers (TSP) have the expertise and tools required to provide technical service and support on a 24/7 basis. But when looking for a TSP, search for one that will act as a partner when it comes to your technology planning. A true partner considers the benefit-to-cost ratio and TCO when choosing what you need.
Selecting the Right Technical Service, Support and Solutions Can Be a Balancing Act.
As your business relies more on technology for your daily operations, you can’t afford downtime that halts your productivity or the lost revenue that comes along with it. Because of this, you shouldn’t take shortcuts when it comes to choosing the quality and up-to-date technology solutions that you need to do your job. But just the same, you must consider your budgetary requirements when determining what to invest in. This is difficult to do on your own as technology is changing so rapidly. The answer is to find the right TSP –one who will get to know your business, help you decide what technology assets you require and determine if you will get a positive return from them.
This a fine balancing act. You must use the right solutions to handle your workload, but you must also stay within your budget. Only an experienced and knowledgeable Technology Solutions Provider can provide the strategic expertise required to find this balance. If they don’t know what you’re talking about when you recite TCO, then it’s time to find another provider. As you know, TCO refers to the total cost of ownership. A TSP who has experience in strategic planning can apply this principle when helping you select your IT assets and services.
TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Your IT environment is one of your most important business investments. It’s also one of the most expensive and unpredictable. This is where TCO for your technology becomes an important part of your budgetary planning. The total cost of ownership is a financial estimate that helps you determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or system.
TCO for your technology assets is calculated by dividing the cost avoidance and reduction that you realize over a specified period of time by the amount you invest over that same period of time. Total Cost of Ownership typically relates to four categories:
Downtime
Computing Costs
Data Storage
Business Administration
The Cost of Downtime
The cost of downtime is dependent on a number of areas. Monetary losses vary and are dependent on your revenue, industry, the actual duration of the outage, the number of people impacted, the time of day, and more. The cost of downtime is usually higher for businesses that rely on high-level data transactions, like banks and online retailers. And, if you experience an unplanned downtime during peak business hours, your costs will be higher. To keep it simple, calculate how much it costs your business when your employees can’t access the technology they need to do their jobs. This should include every dollar you’d lose to server downtime including hidden costs like clients leaving your business for another one, and the amount you have to pay employees when they can’t perform their duties due to downed technology.
Computing Costs
This isn’t so difficult to calculate. It’s the price you pay for things like:
Computers and servers,
Applications and Software as a Service (SaaS) subscriptions,
IT Maintenance,
Employee training on hardware, software, and IT security awareness,
Software and Hardware Upgrades,
Cyber Security solutions like antivirus and antimalware or Security as a Service (SecaaS),
Cloud Solutions,
Contracted technical support and service and more–Anything that’s related to computing.
Data Storage Costs
This would include your costs for network and storage infrastructure, server configuration and deployment, power and cooling costs for data centers, and administrative costs for data backup and recovery capabilities.
Business Administrative Costs
This would be anything that impacts your daily business functions including labor, vendor contracts, procurement processes, accounting costs, and other overhead costs related to your IT operations.
Re-Evaluate Your Current Approach to Technical Service and Support.
Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are typically understaffed when it comes to technical service and support. They don’t have the money to hire in-house techs, nor can they find the talent they need. Many SMBs operate in a reactionary way rather than the preferred proactive technical service and support model because they fear that contracting to a TSP will cost too much money. This is just the opposite. If you simply calculate your TCO for your technology as we explained above, you’ll realize that you have a lot to protect. Downtime alone can cost you your business if it lasts more than a few days.
With the ever-changing technology landscape and sophisticated cyber mafias cropping up, your business is at an increased risk of downtime, breaches and data loss without the right approach to technology. Unfortunately, your CFO or CIO might tell you that the only solution is to hire more IT staff. This just isn’t the way to go for a variety of reasons:
IT talent is hard to find.
If you do find them, you have to ensure they are continually trained and certified on new platforms, security solutions, software, and hardware.
They cost more to hire and employ than outsourcing to a TSP.
You have to manage them. If you don’t have a CIO who understands everything they do, how are you going to know if they are doing what they should?
Turnover will be high because many techs use their employment at a small business as a stepping stone to a higher position.
The recruitment search and costs, along with the time you must invest to find new techs is unsustainable for small businesses.
If you don’t have the IT support you need, you’ll be dealing with increased downtime and IT failures.
Labor is the most expensive element when it comes to technical services and support. A break-fix model is labor intensive and increases your costs. This no longer is a factor when using a TSP who provides managed IT services. Your best move is to turn your IT management over to a TSP. By doing so, you can better gauge your technology needs while keeping costs down. Experienced Technology Service Professionals can help you use new tools that reduce costs by automating many labor-intensive tasks.
If you do some simple calculations, you’ll realize how much more expensive an in-house tech is than outsourcing to a TSP. An in-house network administrator can cost you upwards of $60,000 a year. Then you’ll have the added expense of employee benefits like Social Security contributions, workman’s compensation insurance, health insurance, vacation time and sick leave. In addition, there’s always the ongoing certifications you’ll have to pay for. Plus, you’ll have the costs associated with additional benefits like health insurance, social security contributions, vacation days and sick leave. Now, this one network administrator costs you more than $100,000 a year. Then there’s the required 3.5% raises that they’ll demand each year and the ever-increasing healthcare insurance costs. One network administrator can cost you more than $100k a year.
Here’s something else to add into your calculations. Recent studies have shown that close to 40% of all IT failures are caused by errors made by in-house IT staff and that they will spend up to 50% of their time detecting and remediating these errors. Once again, you’re looking at a reactive rather than proactive approach to technical service and support when you use onsite technicians. You can see how relying on them increases your TCO.
If your CFO suggests you use an outside tech service on an as-needed basis, you’re also looking at a poor TCO. The term for this is “break-fix,” and it can be an expensive proposition. Plus, it can take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours for one of these techs to visit your site. You won’t be high on their priority list because they’ll be serving their Managed Service clients first. Imagine going more than two days without your technology. This can set some businesses back for weeks, not to mention the angry customers they must deal with.
The Way to Lower Your TCO is to Outsource Your IT Management to a TSP.
The right Technology Solution Provider will put considerable effort into understanding your operational and
business needs. With this knowledge, they will develop and deliver a set of specific cost-effective services that align technology with your goals. This will increase your system reliability, your organization’s business continuity, staff productivity and, ultimately customer satisfaction.
The right TSP will align your technology with your organizational goals. They will ensure your technology provides a greater ROI (Return on Investment) and decreased TCO. They do this by streamlining costs, increasing your productivity and revenue, and avoiding expensive onsite IT fees for replacement or repairs.
When you outsource your technical service and support to a Technology Solutions Provider you’ll have:
Immediate access to a team of IT professionals who have a depth and breadth of knowledge and experience in the latest technology solutions. You could never afford this amount of expertise with in-house techs.
Around-the-clock technical support with remote monitoring of your network, so you can get your IT system up and running if there’s an issue. With remote monitoring, issues can be averted before they cause downtime.
A team of certified professionals with the knowledge that can save you time when implementing new projects.
Cyber Security experts who can mitigate security risks and compliance problems that result in penalties, liability and your credibility with customers. Plus, they have the expertise to conduct security awareness training for your employees, and they will know about the newest exploits to beware of.
TSPs offer an IT management model that saves you in labor costs and downtime. They do this with:
Remote Desktop Management and Support
Monitoring of Network/Operating System and Alerts
Updates for Anti-Virus Software
Backup and Disaster-Recovery Solutions
Application of critical Patches and Software Updates
Resource Availability of Best-In-Class IT Solutions scaled to your needs.
Audits of Computer/Network/Software
Enforcement of Network Cyber Security Policies
Mobile Data Management and Monitoring
One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing your IT services to a TSP is that they remove the unplanned costs that many small businesses deal with. Instead, they offer a fixed monthly fee for the services they provide. Plus, you and your staff can focus on your core responsibilities– You won’t be distracted by IT issues.
The technology nonprofit CompTIA surveyed 400 businesses that outsourced their IT needs to a Technology Services Provider. Of these businesses, 96% reported saving a substantial amount annually — 184 realized cost reductions of 25% or more, and 58 over 50% reduced costs.
Your TSP Can Save You Money and Increase Productivity and Security with Virtualization and Cloud Computing.
Be sure to ask your TSP for today’s “new” managed IT services–Virtualization and Cloud Computing. Other SMBs have found that new technology innovations like virtualization and the Cloud is the way to lower their TCO and save money.
With virtualization, your TSP creates virtual resources such as servers, operating systems, workstations, storage systems or networks. Virtualization is more cost-effective than using traditional methods. It also allows you to scale your services up or down as your company grows or decreases in size. Many seasonal businesses benefit from this as they don’t have to continue paying for services they don’t use.
Cloud computing provides services, such as software platforms, storage, and servers over the Internet. It provides SMBs storage and business processes that were previously only available to large enterprises. Information is available via a central web-based data center to anyone with a computing device and the proper login credentials. And, with cloud computing, you can sync your business data to your users’ connected devices in real time for enhanced productivity, collaboration and mobility.
Virtualization and cloud computing provide a lower TCO and a more cost-effective way of using technology. They also provide business continuity with increased data security, recoverability and the ability to access your IT environment from anywhere you have an Internet connection.
According to studies by VMWare (a cloud and virtualization software and services company), businesses that implement virtualization have reduced their total cost of ownership for IT operations by
up to 67%. The right Technology Service Provider can show you how to maximize your server resources, improve your overall IT performance, enhance your cyber security, do more with less, and, ultimately, save you money.
The following are some of the benefits of virtualization:
Virtualization will save you money. Virtualization lowers your technology and energy costs. You’ll need fewer servers, networking gear, racks, and hardware. Your maintenance, heating, cooling, and energy costs are all reduced. Plus, instead of purchasing new equipment, you simply add a new virtual server when you need more storage space for your data and IT solutions.
You’ll have more storage and faster application deployment. Server virtualization isolates applications, so you no longer need to worry about incompatibilities. You’ll realize improved application performance, with much faster provisioning. Virtualization also allows you to fully utilize your physical servers and set up virtual machines with the precise amount of memory and storage you require.
Your business continuity and disaster recovery will be improved. With virtualization, your data can be migrated to another server when you need to perform repairs or specific tasks. This way you don’t need to shut down servers, so downtime is no longer an issue. Your data is always available, even if a server is shut down — so business continuity is greatly enhanced. Virtualization’s single-system image also makes recovery painless.
You can easily transition to the Cloud. If you’re considering moving data to the cloud, the process is a lot less complex with virtualization. The data stored on virtualized servers is already free of hardware, so making the transition to a public or private cloud is simple.
You can do more with less. Virtualization allows you to virtualize your entire network or just specific aspects of it, so you can simplify business operations and promote efficiencies. You can do more with less because virtualization allows you to accomplish more with fewer servers.
Your cybersecurity will be improved. Virtualization can combine features with security functions to streamline your security operations. With automated provisioning and sharing across both virtual and physical security platforms, virtualization can enhance your cyber security without sacrificing performance.
As business owners and managers realize the cost-saving factors associated with cloud computing and virtualization, they are re-evaluating their IT strategy when allocating money for technical services and support. They’re now seeing that outsourcing to a TSP provides a greater return on investment and a reduced total cost of ownership.
Your Technology Solutions Provider can be a valued business partner who can offer the expertise you need to grow your business with the right IT solutions. However, no matter what approach you use for IT management, it’s important to conduct a cost-benefit review to make sure you’re getting the best ROI and lowest TCO from your technology investments.
