by Felicien | Jun 25, 2019 | Education
There never seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything accomplished, and that goes double for small business owners. When you’re top dog in charge, every small problem or frustration heads your way. Technology support is one of the key complaints from staff members, especially when there are problems with slow network connections or aging computers. You need your staff members to be contributing 110% every day, and that goes for your network infrastructure as well. If you’re struggling with finding the time to respond to dozens of IT challenges while also driving your business forward, it may be time to consider outsourcing your IT operations so your internal teams can focus on the future.
Predictability in Pricing
Whether your business is running on a shoestring or you have a healthy budget, it is tough to get hit with an unexpected bill that can reach tens of thousands of dollars. If your business experiences any type of disaster event that affects your technology, the cost to get everything back up and running can be staggering. The word “disaster” makes you think of something that won’t happen to you, but the reality of technology disasters is much different. Malware and ransomware are rampant in small businesses, with approximately 60% of all data breaches occurring in a small business. When you work with an IT managed services provider, you have an added layer of support for your team that is priced consistently throughout the year. Plus, you have the peace of mind knowing that you have experts that are an extension of your business who already understand your infrastructure — a great step towards being able to rebuild it successfully.
Reducing Overhead — and Improving Quality of Service
Technology is extremely complex and hiring all of the specialists that you truly need to run a complex business would be exorbitantly expensive. With outsourced IT operations, your staff has a platform of consistent support that they can trust to always be there when they are needed. Response times are guaranteed so staff members can focus on doing their job instead of stressing about whether their technology is working properly or quickly enough for their needs. An added benefit is the access to a stable of trained professionals with a broad range of technical knowledge in fields such as cybersecurity, network engineering, customer support, data utilization and more.
Scale Your Business With Ease
Growing your business technology used to be expensive and stressful: how can you make a major purchase of hardware and software based on the scale you think your business will be for the next few years? If you’re in an active growth stage, a poor decision could be disastrous. Either you end up with inadequate hardware that won’t support your business, or you overspend and have crucial capital reserves tied up in resources that aren’t being fully utilized. With IT managed services, scaling your business couldn’t be easier. Bringing a new server online is no longer a tortuous process of weeks, but can be accomplished very quickly by your external support team. Adding software licenses and data storage capacity is also easier, allowing you to focus on growing your business and providing exceptional service to your customers.
Enterprise-Level Technology — Sized for Your Business
It would be difficult for a small business to afford to implement the same type of advanced help desk software, cloud-based software and security measures that you would receive as a client of a managed IT services company. IT support companies are able to afford enterprise-level technology as they are spreading the costs between a variety of clients. You benefit from the advanced tech at only a fraction of the price. Your help desk support requests become more predictable and your business becomes more secure — all while you’re gaining the benefits of an enhanced network infrastructure to power your business.
Outsourcing your IT operations may not be for every business, but the majority of small businesses can see a significant benefit by reducing the burden on internal technology professionals. As an added bonus, the active monitoring provided by IT support specialists can help ensure that your business is protected from cyberattack, with quick remediation and support if you do experience an attack. Accelerate your business growth and support the innovative ideas of your teams when you rely on trusted, experienced technology professionals to provide support for your business.
by Felicien | Jun 25, 2019 | Education
This article covers the definition of metadata and how to view, manage and delete it in Microsoft applications.
What is Metadata?
Metadata is information about your data. It contains facts that can’t be disputed, the same way data does.
Here is an example from Microsoft Word. Let’s say you’re writing a letter to a co-worker. The letter consists of characters that form words and sentences. To the computer, this is translated as a series of ones and zeroes that make up the data associated with your letter. Other information about the letter includes when it was typed, who wrote it, when it was saved, and what version of Word you used. These facts are metadata.
How Can You View Office Metadata in the File?
You can view the metadata associated with your Excel, Word and PowerPoint files. (Metadata for Outlook email is more complicated and isn’t covered here.)
Open the workbook, document or presentation you wish to check.
Click on the File menu in the top-left of the screen.
On the Info screen, you’ll see the Pages, Size, Total Editing Time, Words, Created, Last Modified, and Related People options.
At the bottom of the list, click Show All Properties for more information.
NOTE: Look at the Template data. Keep in mind that a template with your name or company name can be used to trace the file back to you.
How Can You View Office Metadata in Windows Explorer?
You don’t have to open the file to view the metadata. Here’s how to view it in Windows Explorer:
Open Windows Explorer and go to your saved file.
Right-click on for filename or icon and click Properties.
Click on the Details tab of the Properties window. The metadata appears in a list.
What’s the Best Way to View Metadata for All Your Microsoft Files?
You can use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to view the metadata for all your presentations, documents and workbooks. XML is used to store metadata in computing, including Microsoft Office files.
Let’s use a Word document as an example of how to use XML to view metadata:
In Windows Explorer, go to your saved file.
Make a copy to protect the original file.
Select the copied and either click the F2 button or right-click to select Rename.
Change the file extension to .zip. (NOTE: Each Office filetype ending in x contains compressed XML documents.) Click Yes on the warning that appears.
Right-click the file to choose Extract All…
You will be asked where to save the extracted files and whether to show them when finished. Leave the default values and click Extract.
The extraction produces three folders as well as an XML file. You can examine the files to view the stored information. When you double-click an XML file, it usually opens in Internet Explorer.
You should be able to piece together what the information means. These XML files may include your name: core.xml under the docProps folder, and document.xml and people.xml in the word folder.
How Can You Delete Metadata from Microsoft Files?
Here are the steps to follow to delete your information from these files in Excel, Word or PowerPoint:
Click on the File menu in the top-left corner.
On the Info page, select Check for Issues near the middle of the page.
Select Inspect Document and the Document Inspector opens.
Ensure that all the Document Inspector checkboxes are checked, then select the Inspect button.
Once the Document Inspector finishes, you can see the information it found. If you see a green checkmark in a circle, it found no data for that category. A red exclamation mark indicates it found data of that type.
There’s a Remove All button next to the data type’s description. Click it to remove all data of a certain type. Scroll down to ensure you clear all the desired data.
To double-check, click the Reinspect button to see if you missed anything.
Save your document so that the data isn’t re-entered.
What are the Steps to Ensure the Metadata was Deleted?
First, repeat the steps under “How Can You View Office Metadata in the File?” When you inspect the document.xml, people.xml and core.xml files, there shouldn’t be any personal data. Change the extension from .zip to .docx, to open the file in Word.
How Can You Delete Metadata using Windows Explorer?
This method strips metadata from several files at the same time.
Open Windows Explorer and go to the file with the metadata you want to take out. Right-click it to select Properties.
Under Properties, click the Details tab then select both Remove Properties and Personal Information.
There are two ways to remove information. Remove the metadata from the original file or a copy.
How Do I Remove Metadata from Original File?
Select Remove the following properties from this file:
Check the boxes you want to remove or choose Select All button.
Click OK.
Can You Make a Copy with No Metadata?
This makes a copy of your file with the “Copy” appended to the filename. This copy will have no associated metadata.
Under the Remove Properties window, click Create a copy with all possible properties removed
Click OK.
Compare the properties of the original and copy to view the changes.
Are You in the Clear Now?
What you do next with the document determines whether your metadata stays gone. Digital processing, such as emailing it, may add metadata. The best option is to print and mail the document to avoid add metadata that could be traced back to you.
by Felicien | Jun 24, 2019 | Education
While technology teams are often found reporting to the CFO, that role may not be the first one that comes to mind when you’re discussing digital business transformation. There may be a perception that CFOs are the ones requiring justification for expenses instead of the leaders who are dreaming the big dreams required to fundamentally remake the business. Today’s CFOs are stretching in new directions as their role evolves to be a more visible part of process growth, technology and visioning for the future. With the massive investments that are required to implement new technology solutions, a critical success factor for these projects is to have the full buy-in of finance — and the layer of accountability for results that comes as part and parcel of a CFOs tight involvement in these initiatives.
Businesses Are Spending $6 Trillion on Digital Transformation
That’s right — trillions of dollars are being leveraged to drive digital initiatives from artificial intelligence to IoT (Internet of Things) and augmented reality. The costs of hardware and storage may be negligible, but the never-ending changes to software platforms drive a significant portion of the costs associated with major change. This puts technology leaders in a tenuous position in terms of justifying the spend because these are sunk costs from the perspective of the CFO. Deriving ongoing value from an asset can be challenging when it’s likely to be deprecated in only a few years and has negligible resale value.
Data is a Vital Strategic Asset — and a Risk
The capture and storage of customer data is no longer the realm of marketing folk, as technology leaders and finance professionals alike are scratching their heads in an attempt to keep up with morphing regulations and cybersecurity challenges. Consolidation information into centralized databases is more crucial than ever before due to the shifting climate around privacy regulations in the U.S. and abroad. Leveraging this data to drive advanced personalization can become the competitive advantage that businesses need, but it doesn’t come cheap — or quickly. CFOs are a needed point person between financial activities, the data flowing throughout the organization and are also able to keep their fingers on the pulse of the operational needs of the organization.
Providing Operational Support for Key Digital Initiatives
CFOs can help step in on projects that are floundering and push teams to define core deliverables and stick to the solutions that have the greatest promise for the future. As the head of finance, it’s imperative that CFOs have a handle on where and how data is stored or the organization risks excessive fines and public exposure in the event of a cyber attack or even loss of data access due to a disaster event. In this new and expanding role, CFOs are best able to align the strategic initiatives of the organization with the funding required to drive them forward.
CFOs Taking the Lead in Digital Business
According to McKinsey, CFOs are increasingly pushed to the forefront of digital finance initiatives but are often still struggling to find how they can effectively work with other executives to drive transformative activities. Digitization in finance is a growing trend and one that is being actively embraced by leadership and staff members alike due to the added efficiencies that can be realized with solid technology implementations. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to have a miss as a home run when it comes to digital finance operations — requiring a strong partnership between technology leaders and financial executives to determine where the priorities should lie for business transformation.
Whether or not they are leading digital transformation within the business, CFOs are feeling the disruption that is rippling throughout the organization with the introduction of new technologies and business requirements. “Digital technology is disrupting the role of the CFO. It is fundamentally changing the way organizations approach finances and how they interact with customers,” explained David Axson, managing director at Accenture Strategy. With all of the focus on digital transformation of the business, CFOs will have more than their share of challenges over the next decade.
by Felicien | Jun 24, 2019 | Education
As managed IT services have grown in popularity, you’ve probably heard the concept touted often as the answer to your business’s IT woes. Still, there can be plenty of mystery on the topic. What is managed IT services, exactly? How do organizations integrate managed IT services into their existing business and workflows? Also, who provides these services? In today’s business blog we’ll answer these questions and more.
What Is Managed IT Services Exactly?
Managed IT services is a broad term describing any scenario in which a company (that’s you) partners with a vendor, called a managed service provider (or MSP), to handle some or all IT responsibilities for the company.
The exact services that MPSs offer range pretty widely. Companies, too, vary widely in terms of their IT infrastructure and needs, as well as exactly which IT responsibilities they choose to outsource to an MSP. Some firms may contract with an MSP to handle absolutely everything about their IT infrastructure. More commonly, companies will outsource only certain portions of their IT workload.
It’s a little easier to understand the concept of managed IT services by looking at some examples of how they are currently being used in several types of organizations.
How Do Organizations Utilize Managed IT Services?
Businesses implement managed IT services in a whole host of ways. Here are a few examples.
Some companies look to a managed service provider to handle all or nearly all its IT needs. Growing small businesses, for example, may not have much (or any) in-house IT presence. They need capabilities that they don’t have, and they find it simpler and more affordable to contract with an MSP than to build out their own in-house IT team.
On the other end of the spectrum, a medium or large business with an established in-house IT team might look to a managed service provider to alleviate some stress on that team. A larger firm might outsource helpdesk-level support, for example. In doing so, the company would empower its in-house team. Free from the distractions of troubleshooting workstations and managing software installs, the in-house IT specialists can focus their attention on the higher-level tasks they were hired to do.
Businesses of any size can also look to an MSP to fill a specialized need. Some areas of IT have unpredictable costs, and others are simply cost-prohibitive for many smaller businesses to build on their own. Some areas can be difficult to hire for, too. Examples of specialized needs that can be met through managed IT services include cyber security, information security and compliance, and cloud services.
What Are Reasons to Choose a Managed Service Provider (MSP)?
Businesses who have embraced the managed IT services model do so for a wide variety of reasons. Some are unique to specific industries, but many are universal. Here are a few reasons it likely makes sense for your business to choose a managed service provider for your managed IT services needs.
Scaling for Growth
Scaling your IT infrastructure has real costs when you do it in house. You need additional equipment, additional floor space to house the equipment, and additional personnel to install, run, and monitor the equipment. Managed service providers, on the other hand, already have the equipment. They’re running servers for dozens of businesses, so they have automatic capacity when you need more. They can leverage the economy of scale in a way you can’t.
Growth isn’t just measured in headcount, either. Device count continues to increase, too. Employees expect to be able to interact with systems using their work computer, laptop, tablet, and phone—both on site and off. Your in-house team doesn’t have the time to support all these device issues. A managed service provider does.
The Talent Gap Is Real
If you have an in-house team, are you having trouble keeping it fully staffed with well qualified people? You’re not alone. One reason is that the US has reached full employment, making domestic hiring more difficult than ever before.
Another more serious reason is the digital talent gap. In 2017 (that’s before we reached full employment), 54% of companies were having difficulty finding workers with the right digital skills. It’s not gotten better.
Fill your business’s talent gap by partnering with an MSP. The right MSP will have the specialties you’re missing and will be able to work in harmony with your in-house team.
Who Provides Managed IT Services?
If your business is looking into working with a managed service provider, you may be asking who provides managed IT services. The good news is you have plenty of options. There are quite a few local providers offering managed IT services in every metropolitan area, and there are a few global players as well. We’ll get to that distinction, but first, a word on services offered and specialization.
Services Offered and Specialization
The first question businesses should ask is whether an MSP offers the services they need. Not every MSP has exactly the same offerings or experience, so don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions. Don’t just ask whether they offer a given service; ask how many clients they’ve served with it.
Some industries, like healthcare or finance, have developed specialized IT needs. Accordingly, some MSPs specialize in specific industries or technologies. In short, look for niche players if you’re in a niche industry.
Local vs. Global MSPs
Choosing a local firm means getting local, boots-on-the-ground support. The best local firms offer a wide spectrum of services, including extended hours, and have the infrastructure and personnel depth you need. You’ll get individualized attention and you’ll support your local economy.
Choosing a global firm like Amazon’s AWS gives you access to more raw power and, often, innovative technology others can’t match. Customer service, on the other hand, can be a bit impersonal, and fixing on-site problems can take time.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a quality local managed services provider, we’re here for you. Contact us today to get started.
by Felicien | Jun 24, 2019 | Education
When it comes to watching videos online, no name comes to mind more often than YouTube. They host nearly 2 billion users each month. 60% of people now prefer watching YouTube to watching TV. 80% of people under 49 are watching videos on YouTube.
It’s popular. We get it. Everyone is on it. And there’s a huge variety of content from funny cat videos to videogame walkthroughs to guided meditation. And the fact is that regardless of whether or not you have any reason to hide what you’re watching, it’s no one’s business what you watch on YouTube as long as it’s not illegal. And even that can be a gray area.
Despite this fact, you should know that everything you do on YouTube is very carefully monitored by the company. And you have to ask yourself, just how many of your personal preferences does YouTube have a right to? According to the privacy policy, they have a right to everything. But you do have the option to go incognito. And we’ll show you how.
But first, what does YouTube do with your viewing history?
A.I., Automation & Analytics
YouTube is owned by Google, one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies in the world. Through Google’s many tech assets, they can gather endless amounts of data about you. While we don’t believe Google has any nefarious intentions for this data, we do know that Google puts this data to work to expand the empire they’ve built, primarily by enhancing their ad platform.
In a practical sense, they use this data to learn about individual and demographic behavior. What ads do you click? What makes you click? How long do you watch videos? What do you watch? All of this information helps a company like Google show you more relevant and targeted ads that may be hard not to click because they’ve been engineered with such precision.
Modern analytics allows Google to glean endless amounts of data and aggregate it into a useable form. Using artificial intelligence (A.I.), they can automate this entire process. Each time you visit, it learns something new and continually adjusts the algorithm to deliver more targeted ads.
In YouTube specifically, they can also use viewing data to make relevant recommendations to you.
This technology is actually great. It has opened the doors for personalization and relevancy in advertising that can’t otherwise be achieved. And people love that. 57% of people say they’re willing to share more data for a more personalized experience. But you have a right to control this flow of information.
How to Set up Incognito in YouTube
These instructions are the same whether you’re on Apple or Android. In order for this to work, you do need to log into your YouTube account. And before we go any further, let’s get one misunderstanding out of the way. Just because you don’t log in doesn’t mean they don’t track you. They put cookies on your device to track every visitor.
Follow these steps.
Open the YouTube app.
Tap the profile icon
Tap “turn on incognito”.
Check to see that your profile icon is replaced with the “incognito symbol” to know you can privately watch YouTube videos.
Whenever you go into YouTube, check for this icon first to know that it’s active.
When you finish private viewing, we recommend that you turn this feature off.
Tap the profile icon again.
“Turn off incognito”.
YouTube is again tracking what you do.
Switch back and forth, as needed. It’s so easy to do so.
But you may still have a pressing question. We’d like to address it.
Why Would You Want YouTube to Track You?
Personalization is pretty cool. YouTube can very quickly figure you out and recommend things that you weren’t even thinking to search for but would love to view. YouTube’s personalization is kind of like having your own personal assistant that knows you so well that they can always recommend the perfect thing.
Sometimes that you might want to consider privately watching include:
If you’re viewing something somewhat embarrassing. Seriously, it’s no one’s business.
If you want to view something without seeing ads for it later.
If you’re letting your child, spouse, etc. watch on your account. This way they don’t see recommendations intended for you, which may not be appropriate. And their viewing on your account doesn’t mess with the algorithm. Otherwise, YouTube is recommending children’s cartoons for a month after you let your 4-year-old use your phone.
Remember, You Have the Power
Yes, YouTube and their parent company Google are collecting a lot of data about you. They use this data to enhance your online experience. And most of the time, personalization is awesome. But you may not always want this data collected. And you have the power to say when you’d prefer not to share. Use incognito to watch YouTube videos privately when you want to and turn it back off to get the best recommendations.
