Hey It’s Valentine’s Day Soon: Do You Love Your IT Company?

by Felicien | Feb 12, 2018 | Education

There are few things worse than feeling trapped in an unfulfilling relationship – especially when it’s a vital business relationship.
Technology is an integral part of everything your business does, which raises a few important questions about your current IT set up. For starters, what is your relationship like with your technology systems – rock solid, or more than a little rocky?
How about with your technology service provider – are they always there for you when you need them the most? Do you still love your technology service provider the same way that you did the day you first met? Does your relationship with them still make you happy, and leave you feeling confident and supported in everything your business does? Can you count on them to help you reach your goals and achieve your dreams for the future?

One last question – has your passion for your network faded, leaving you frustrated, disappointed, and longing for happier times? If the answer is yes, then we have some good news for you… Your IT cupid is here to help you get back that lovin’ feeling. Let {company} rekindle your passion for your business technology. Something that is such a core part of your daily life shouldn’t be a constant drag on your mood, your productivity, and your success.
You deserve better. You deserve a technology company who puts you first and treats you like you’re special. IT and IT support are in no way one-size-fits-all. Your technology infrastructure should be as unique as your individual business, and tailored to meet your specific needs. Everything from the software you use to the way your data backup system is configured should take into account the way your company operates, and what your employees need to have access to in order to be effective and efficient.
A cookie-cutter IT infrastructure can’t help your business grow and thrive. If your IT company can’t or won’t treat you like you’re not just another client, it’s time to look for someone who will be more than happy to treat you right.
If you’ve stopped feeling that spark from your tech support when you pick up the phone and call them, it’s a surefire sign that the relationship is no longer working for you. Dreading making a call to the help desk because you know that you’re going to, at best, get an apathetic response from the person on the other end of the line is not a good feeling. This is a company you’re trusting with your business’ most valuable assets, and if they can’t make your needs a priority? That’s a serious problem.
What happens when something goes seriously wrong, and you know that your emergency is going to be treated like just another service ticket? What could possibly be a worse feeling than that?
It’s time to put your foot down and stop being taken for granted by IT companies who have become complacent, thinking that you will always be there for them to come to when they feel like it. You can’t afford to be kept waiting each and every time you need something from your IT provider, and you can’t afford to leave your technology in the hands of someone who isn’t interested in helping you get the most out of your IT. Technology is evolving fast, and having someone there to help you take advantage of innovative solutions can make all the difference to your business’ future success.
Like any good relationship, your IT provider shouldn’t only pay you attention when there is something broken that needs to be fixed. They should want to spend time with you and work on building a solid, trusting rapport with you and your staff. They should want to take the time to learn what your business’ goals and values are, and connect with you without you always needing to be the one who makes the first move.
No relationship should ever be one-sided. If you’re doing all the work, then what’s the point of keeping that IT company in your life? If they’re not giving you everything you need and more, it’s time to let go, move on, and find someone who deserves your business.
Here’s our number: {phone}. Whenever you’re ready to chat with us, give us a call. We’d love to sit down with you, get to know your business better, and find out what we can do to help you get the most out of your current technology and future technology investments. We want to help you reach your business goals, and offer the best possible service to your customers.
And of course, you’re welcome to ask us anything you’d like to know about who we are, what our values are, and what we have to offer. We’re an open book.
Ready to set up that first date and talk technology with a team of professionals who truly care about your business? Give {company} a call at {phone} or email us at {email} today.

IT Strategy – Why Businesses Are Turning To Managed IT Services

by Felicien | Feb 12, 2018 | Education

Your Step By Step Guide To Transitioning To VoIP

by Felicien | Feb 9, 2018 | Education

Get untangled from your landline, and let VoIP boost your business’ efficiency, reliability, and quality.

A recent study revealed that 94% of business’ marketing budgets are spent trying to get consumers to call. If businesses are paying so much of their advertising and marketing budget on a communications system, shouldn’t it be reliable and efficient?
This need for a more reliable form of communication is forcing many businesses to make the transition from the landline to the VoIP. However, this transition can be a scary process. How are you supposed to make this transition while running your business? A lapse in phone service means a loss of communication with your customers, which could mean a loss of profit.
Why Move To VoIP?
The move to VoIP offers your business improvements in efficiency, reliability, and quality, all at an affordable cost. Landline phones are becoming obsolete – by choosing to remain with a landline system, your business may become obsolete as well.
Efficiency
VoIP provides your business improved efficiency by limiting issues that come from having to replace or fix phones, as well as complicated management of adding and or removing employees. On traditional landline phone systems, you would have to wait lengthy periods of time for a phone to be replaced, or for a roll truck to fix issues. All this time spent waiting for a fix costs you money.
With a VoIP system, you don’t have to deal with these issues, which means less downtime. VoIP also improves your business’ efficiency by providing you with numerous options for routing and answering calls, without the expensive on-premises technology and staff.
Reliability
VoIP provides your business improved reliability by delivering a clear, seamless quality of phone service. This service can run on multiple internet connections, and can even extend to your smartphone. VoIP can work reliably through anything that mother nature may throw at you from hurricanes to snowstorms. Additionally, if you lose your business due to a fire, your VoIP phone service will still work. This is one of the main reasons why there are now over 288 million VoIP users.
Quality
VoIP provides your business improved quality through clarity of your calls. These calls come with a digital readout display, and the option to work without a headset. For those that still wish to use a headset, they can receive their calls through the use of a “softphone”, which is software that allows users to make telephone calls through the internet on their computers.
Affordability
VoIP saves your business 40-80% compared to the cost of traditional landline phone service. Landlines now cost more than VoIP phone systems both in the initial setup, as well as in ongoing contracts. For example, landlines for five employees cost an average of $563/month, while VoIP services for the same amount of users costs only an average of $27.95/month.
Years ago, VoIP systems would cost $10-$50/month, after the cost of the headset (which usually cost $200 each). It’s easy to see how quickly this can add up. Today, VoIP comes at affordable rates as low as $0. Phones will be set up ahead of time, that way there is no lapse in your communication with your clients. This saves your business money by limiting the loss of contact, during this time of transition. Secondly, there is a “Proof of Concept” (POC), which allows you to have your phones in place, and try them out before deciding whether they’re right for your business.
Preparing For The Move
So how do you transition from traditional landline phones to VoIP, while at the same time shortening the loss of communication? Preparing for the move means you need to gather pertinent information such as how many employees you have, what your cabling needs are, what your current infrastructure is, and what are the nonnegotiable-features that you need from the new phone system.
Step By Step
You begin by evaluating your cost analysis. Fully understanding the budget upfront and ongoing ensures that you will be able to get the most out of this new program, without being oversold. After looking at the move from a financial standpoint, you are ready for your live demo. This provides you and your employees a chance not only to see all of the VoIP system’s features but also to try them out, in a risk-free environment. Once you decide on which features you need, you are ready to decide which service provider best fits your company’s needs. For 2017, the top three VoIP service providers were Ring Central, Vonage Business, and 8×8 Global Communications.
Once you have selected a plan and a service provider, you want to ensure that you have no network issues that could limit or infringe on the successful integration of your new VoIP system. From these network tests, you should make any adjustments or upgrades that you feel are necessary to ensure the best result for your business. Lastly, you will complete your trial period, or your Proof of Concept period, that allows you to see first-hand how the service works and if it meets your business needs. If so, then you move on to finalize the agreement, and select a “Go Live Date”.
After your VoIP system is up and running, employees should be trained to use all the features that they provide. Some of these features include having a virtual receptionist, voicemail-to-email, automatic call forwarding, and three-digit dialing. Training and ongoing support are a crucial part of developing and maintaining your successful relationship with your VoIP.
Moving to VoIP does not have to be a cumbersome and time-consuming challenge. It could mean a more efficient, reliable, and qualitative business. With the new VoIP service, you would be able to rid yourself of the hassles of maintenance agreements, capital expenditure, truck rolls, and lengthy wait periods that traditional landline phones come with. Lastly, you will have access to excellent customer care support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Don’t let your phone system hold your business back from its full potential any longer. Disentangle yourself from your landlines’ limitations and see what the freedom provided by a VoIP system can do for your company.

Businesses Can Now Schedule Instagram Posts

by Felicien | Feb 9, 2018 | Education

Following in the footsteps of other social media giants, Instagram is now trying to add flexibility to their platform in order to attract more business owners. Since their inception in 2010, Instagram has had no way to allow users to schedule posts. Posting manually can be time-consuming for businesses that want to send out posts daily at certain times. Savvy business owners are well-versed on the best days of the week and the most optimal times for post scheduling.

This type of scheduling feature is already available on many platforms including WordPress and is considered indispensable, allowing users to schedule a post for whenever they like. Research shows that there are better times and days of the week to post content.
What days and times are best for your posts?
One study claims that videos that get posted to Instagram at 9:00 PM get 34 percent more action. Regular content will get more attention if posted on Monday or Thursday between 3:00 – 4:00 PM. Instagram traffic decreases on Sundays. All these little facts can help users reap a big reward in engagement from their audience, which is why business owners are taking the time to learn all the nuances of optimizing traffic on their favorite social media platforms.
A few drawbacks
Instagram will add support to its API, then use the functionality of applications like SocialFlow, Sprout Social, and HootSuite to support the feature. Eventually, they do believe that post-scheduling will be added to the product itself. At the moment, the post-scheduling feature doesn’t include ads, but that could change as well.
“The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers,” said Ryan Holmes, HootSuite CEO. “Now, they (business owners) can manage large volumes of content, multiple team members and multiple Instagram accounts with ease and security. HootSuite is excited to partner with Instagram to make this happen.”
The major drawback is that most regular users will not be able to take advantage of post scheduling. Only larger companies that use third-party software programs with Instagram will be able to use the new feature. Industry experts do believe that it’s only a matter of time before post scheduling will be free and available to everyone.
SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson commented that, “It’s always been very time-consuming to create Instagram posts. That’s not necessarily a problem for individual consumers, but when you’re a media company that creates more than 100,000 posts a month, it’s simply impossible to do everything manually”.
Instagram replacing older API platforms
Instagram has plans to phase out their older API Platform during the next two years. The older API will be replaced with a newer Graph API. This will give users the ability to analyze metrics on their company’s performance. By allowing business owners to gain insights and analyze metrics, Instagram believes it can better compete with giants like Facebook and Twitter. The new API will also allow users to moderate comments and respond to them. These changes are set to take place on July 31, 2018.
Ingenious new features in the works for Instagram
Other features aimed at attracting more businesses to its platform are being considered by Instagram. These include a feature called business discovery, which, similar to LinkedIn, will give Instagram users the ability to check out other business profiles. The company notes that it will eventually roll out these cool features to all its regular users, and not just business owners.
Post images directly to Instagram with HootSuite
One of the more popular software platforms that integrates with Instagram is HootSuite. Posts can be scheduled from the HootSuite dashboard or the mobile app. As previously stated, only business accounts are eligible for this service at this time. Using HootSuite, customers can schedule their posts so that they are published on a specific day and timed. HootSuite also allows companies to run analytics to discover information that can help them reach a broader audience.
Other new features
The early results are in and the majority of business owners are reporting better conversion rates and more traffic with these new Instagram features. This success has spawned a new revolution for Instagram, a platform that has always been about photos and videos. Now, using a feature called “Type Mode”, users can type words that can be placed on colorful backgrounds (e.g., many users enjoy sharing the lyrics to their favorite song). Users can add fancy font styles, photos or videos to enhance the post. Instagram users are traditionally very imaginative people so this offers them an innovative outlet for their creativity.
From January 2013 to September 2017, the number of active Instagram users has risen from 90 million to 800 million. Though this does seem like a huge number of people interacting on their platform each week, for context, Facebook has over 2 billion users worldwide. Social media platforms with this type of potential exposure represent an unprecedented advertising market for companies of all sizes and types.

Microsoft Teams: Business Without Boundaries

by Felicien | Feb 8, 2018 | Education

Where you work is no longer defined by four walls and a door – not even by cubicle walls. Gone are the days where productivity requires a set geographical location, at least for some roles, anyway.
Recent years have seen the rise of the remote workforce that can effectively collaborate on projects from across the globe. Organizations can cut costs and increase productivity using various platforms that facilitate communication and collaboration, and it’s only becoming more popular.
Revolution or Evolution?
Major metropolitan cities from New York to Los Angeles are filled with your classic skyscrapers, and every town and suburb in between is dotted with professional office parks. However, are these buildings, once filled to the brim with bustling businesses, still relevant?
They’re no longer the norm – but why? Even with the periodic recession, the overall post-WWII American economy didn’t just emerge with success – it exploded! The “four walls and a door” was waiting for every entry-level candidate until the late 1980’s when the cubicle first gained popularity.
Fast-forward to today, and the latest concept to revolutionize the workforce isn’t revolutionary at all. Telecommuters now represent a significant portion of the global workforce, and do so quite ably. To say the idea of the office has evolved is quite the understatement: now, an office can be anywhere. From your desk at home to your local coffee shop, from the waiting room at your car dealership to Row 6 Seat B on your flight, telecommuting facilitates progress so long as you can access your files, email, and anything else you need to get the job done.

Did you know that telecommuting has increased by more than 300% in the past 20 years? Technology has made telecommuting easier and more effective and has helped organizations retain quality staff longer.

No longer is the stereotypical full-time staffer a given when organizations look to fill a role, either. People are now demanding flexibility in a job description, and what was once a 9-to-5 position is becoming obsolete. For more than a decade, flexibility has evolved into an expectation over a fringe benefit, and with good reason. A global remote workforce offers business without boundaries and productivity that never stops.
A Collaborative Culture
The evolving business culture demands evolving means by which to collaborate and connect. Digital platforms are plentiful, with features that cater to your business’ specific needs. Platforms like Basecamp and Trello are beloved by project managers, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Sharepoint offer great sales team support, and technology teams rely on tools like Microsoft Team Foundation Server – often shortened to TFS. Organization is critical to any company, especially when teams are separated by time zones.
Where would we be today without Microsoft? Microsoft and Windows have remained the primary professional computing mainstays for about 30 years. Microsoft Office remains the fundamental application suite on which companies rely for day-to-day operations, even when office space is nonexistent. The irony of the name is not lost on us, either!
Microsoft recognized an opportunity in the permanence of telecommuting. Never one to shy away from innovation, Microsoft launched a suite of applications catering to the “digital” crowd in 2011, under its Office 365 brand. If Microsoft Office is a basic tool for the 9-to-5 professional, the subscription-based Office 365 is a fundamental lifeline of the telecommuter. Office 365 allows the use of applications across a multitude of devices, as well as file hosting, email, and a range of other networking tools designed to feed our daily addiction to all things Microsoft.
Rumors began swirling in 2016 of a Microsoft acquisition bid for the cloud-based Slack collaboration tool, a darling of the technology industry – but why buy when you can create and customize? Microsoft’s Skype for Business product offered similar basic functionalities and was already installed on the digital desktops of millions of professional customers. In early 2017, Microsoft released what it believed to be the next-level professional platform: Microsoft Teams.

Slack offers itself as a “freemium” product, a marketing and pricing strategy where the base model of a product or service is widely available free of charge, but premium features are available for those willing to pay the added cost.

Making the Most of Your Microsoft
Microsoft didn’t face a great hurdle in convincing customers to “buy in” to Microsoft Teams, given its position as a new-and-improved version of anything currently on the market. If Microsoft Office was the predecessor to Office 365 and Skype for Business, Teams is the logical next generation.
Why is the next generation so important? Microsoft realizes that the workplace is evolving and that more businesses are hiring independent contractors, freelancers, consultants, and other external resources to support permanent staff – all of which work together toward one common goal. Microsoft Teams refers to these external resources as “Guests.” If collaboration is the cornerstone of professional success, then communication is the foundation upon which that stone is laid, and Guests don’t need to be granted full access to proprietary information.
The solution is Guest Access, and it’s a new feature in Teams, which customers have been requesting for some time. Aside from the previously mentioned independent contractors, etc., Guests may also include vendors, suppliers, or even interns. Guest Access is available to users who have an email address that corresponds to an Azure Active Directory or Office 365 work or school account.
Organizations can provide external access to their teams for applications to partners, resources, chat communication, and documents in channels while maintaining control and protection.
In Microsoft Teams, Guest Access is a tenant-level setting that’s turned off by default. Do you need help turning on this new feature? Follow these steps:

The global admin needs to login to the dashboard: https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home
In the left navigation menu, expand Settings and select “Service and Admin.”
Scroll and select Office 365 Group settings.
In the menu that opens, toggle the bottom option to “On,” giving Group Owners the ability to add Guests from outside the organization, and click “Save.”

This setting needs to be enabled because Team permissions are based on Groups.

Next, scroll through the list to select Microsoft Teams
In the left navigation menu, find the “Settings by user/license type” and select “Guest” in the drop-down menu and toggle setting to “On.”
Click “Save.”

After changing these settings, Team Owners can add and manage Guest Access within their Team.

Whether you include mostly in-house staff, a team of telecommuters, or a range of every type of resource at your organization, we can help you make 2018 the best year yet – as a team!