by Felicien | Jul 19, 2017 | Education
From strong security to seamless integration and even unprecedented mobile access, Microsoft Office 365 has plenty to offer your business.
Office 365 offers some clear advantages for business, whether you need to boost your collaborative abilities, improve mobile access or only want to be sure your data stays secure. Learning about this innovative, easy to use the suite of software can help you decide if it is a good fit for your organization. If you already use Office 365, learning more about your options can ensure you make the most of this scalable, flexible business solution.
Benefits of Adopting Office 365
Office 365 Offers Easy and Seamless Integration with Other Solutions
The tools you already know, use and rely on for your workflow can seamlessly integrate into Office 365. The list of programs and tools that perform well with Office 365 is extensive and includes common solutions like Word, Excel, Outlook and Power Point. Office 365 makes it easy to standardize your file formats and to ensure that everyone one your team can open, access and use the pieces you create.
Mobile, on the Go Access is Easy with Office 365
Mobile use is at an all-time high and your team uses smartphones, tablets and other devices to stay connected and perform tasks, even when they are not in the office. Microsoft Office 365 allows your team to open and process documents, access contacts and calendar information and send emails from any connected device. Office 365 works with both PC and Mac and with Android, iPhone and even Blackberry devices.
This mobility allows you and your team to work from home, while you are traveling or from virtually anywhere you can get a connection. Whether you are heading to a trade show, calling on clients or taking a much-needed day off, you connect in an instant to get the information you need to serve customers or support your team.
Office 365 Enhances Communication and Collaboration
It’s easier than ever before to collaborate with your team and for your workers to share and access information. A password protected portal can be established that allows your team to quickly access the documentation or files then need – and more than one person can access and work on a piece at a time. Once work is complete, progress is tracked and noted so that anyone in the group can quickly determine what has been done and what still needs to be completed.
Collaboration and communication are about more than just opening, editing and sharing documents; Office 365 also supports robust, large scale storage and sharing and even online meetings.
Intuitive, Easy and Accessible
Unlike some other programs or packages, Office is free of jargon and very user-friendly. It has an intuitive, easy to learn dashboard that is standardized between applications. Even those in your group that are not particularly tech savvy can get up to speed quickly and become efficient users of this flexible suite of tools.
You do not need an on-site IT team to handle Office 365 issues and no one on your team needs to attend any kind of special certification to actually use this software.
Security and Safety Provides Peace of Mind
Microsoft has a robust and proactive security team and Office 365 receives their full attention. In many cases, the company has recognized vulnerabilities and released patches well before a publicized ransomware or malware attack. By identifying risk and possibilities for exploitation early, Microsoft has a long history of taking aggressive action to prevent you from being victimized by cybercriminals. In an ever-changing, ever-evolving landscape, regular patches and updates are a must; you’re far more likely to be victimized if you use a system that is regularly protected and up-to-date.
Security is about more than updates; Office 365 features the same robust systems used by Microsoft and some of the biggest brands to protect networks, documents and even email. With built in scanning capabilities, your Office 365 suite can scan your email around the clock and alert you to any suspicious software or attempts to hack your systems.
Office 365 was designed with reliability in mind and Microsoft does more than the promise they’ll be online; they offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee via a financially backed SLA (Service Level Agreement) to provide peach of mind about availability.
Flexible, Scalable Solutions
With a simple pay-as-you go pricing setup and plenty of flexible options, you can start small and scale at your own pace. You don’t have to pay for more than you’ll use or begin to feel restricted as you grow. For new businesses experiencing growth, this flexibility ensures cost effectiveness. Since you can scale up as needed, your team can continue to work with the tools they are familiar with as you grow, you don’t have to change to a new system or adapt to new tools.
From cost efficiency and scalability to the peace of mind that comes from working with Microsoft, Office 365 has plenty to offer the enterprises of all sizes. Interested in Office 365 and want to learn exactly what it can do for you? Contact {company} at {email} or by phone at {phone}; we understand the power of this powerful suite of tools and know just how much it can help your business grow.
by Felicien | Jul 19, 2017 | Education
This article talks about network problems and some of the signs that it may need to be upgraded. With the network infrastructure becoming a major part of doing business, it is important to get it right.
For most businesses, Wi-Fi is considered an essential need. If the network connection goes down at the office, there is a good chance that everything will run much slower on that day. It is amongst the reasons why IT departments need to be on their toes all the time, looking for potential pitfalls. They do so by upgrading that physical infrastructure often, creating training programs for employees, and doing regular software updates. If you rely on a network at your organization, here are some signs that it could do with an upgrade.
Problems with LAN.
The Local Area Network usually runs at quite a high speed. Thus, any problems such as congestion are not easy to detect. However, when a bottleneck occurs and causes one or more switches to buffer, that can affect application performance, which will become noticeable to users.
LAN congestions should only last for a short period. However, it can take longer in cases where there is extreme congestion. This type of extreme congestion is usually the result of poor configuration. One of the signs that you are having problems with the LAN includes momentary freezes of applications, especially during peak hours.
Problems with Wireless LAN.
Wireless LAN is susceptible to a wide range of challenges. If the wireless LAN is configured for a particular environment, it should work without any problems most of the time. You will have to establish whether the wireless network or underlying issues cause problems you are experiencing. If the problem is as a result of underlying network problems, it should be quite easy to resolve.
Problems with the WAN.
In contrast to the LAN problems that can stem from congestion, WAN can suffer a lot with congestion. When congestion occurs, it tends to last for quite a long time. Sometimes WAN congestion can lead to lost networks for an entire day.
WAN issues can be quite difficult to resolve. However, throwing more money and bandwidth at any problem is not the solution. The best way to address this problem is to control the traffic. This is done by filtering out any traffic that is unwanted.
Another way to reduce WAN infrastructure is to educate users on how to use the IT infrastructure. In most cases, WAN congestion is caused by recreational use of the internet. This is when users use their devices to access funny videos and listen to internet radio.
Issues with VPN.
Virtual Private Networks carry data in an encrypted form. They are prone to the same problems as WANs. However, the additional encryption and tunneling can increase the complexity of data flow. This can cause problems that would otherwise not have existed.
Problems with the internet.
Congestion of the internet is amongst the most common problems experienced on any network. The reason for this is some so many people are accessing the internet for various purposes. As with WAN, if the issue is severe, it can take quite a long time to resolve. You will typically experience web pages failing to render, web pages failing to open, and slow responses.
Unreliable Voice quality
Voice over IP uses a protocol that requires a stable network connection. If there are any issues with the system, it can lead to excessive noise or the speech may sound quite unusual. Poor sound quality usually indicates that there is a lot of packets lost because of network unreliability.
The primary challenge with VoIP is that transmitting a lost packet is meaningless since the voice is real-time. It thus works best when using UDP, which is a protocol that does not have an error recovery mechanism.
If you have problems with voice quality, there is a good chance that you have issues with your network. This can be because of bad network configuration, which leads to lack of traffic prioritization.
Pixelated Video.
When the video is being transferred over a faulty network, it is quite easy for video pixelation to occur. It is usually in the form of rainbow-colored interference that appears on the screen. This can indicate the network is congested or is not properly configured to accommodate video. It is important to note that video traffic places a heavy demand on the network.
Freezing Video.
When the network is awful, the video can freeze. If the video is buffered, this may not be a cause for concern. However, during video conferencing, that can render it unusable. The voice element will always take precedence to video. The result is that video streaming may not even be established.
If you plan to make use of video conferencing, ensure that the network is properly sized and configured. It is particularly true when hosting a video hub that provides conferencing for various endpoints. The network has to provide support for all the video sessions even when they are operating simultaneously.
What are the Qualities of a Good Network?
A good network design is properly documented and follows best practices. This will allow the business to add new software and equipment without compromising the system’s integrity. An IT department that has a good network design is able to concentrate on being innovative and proactive. This is in contrast to an IT department with an inferior network that has to spend most of their time putting out fires.
In any organization, the IT network needs to have a firm foundation. That way, when new equipment and software is added, there are no problems that arise. There is also need to have a policy on how alterations are made to the network. Even minor changes have to be considered since they have a potential impact on the network assessed.
Summary.
By understanding the kinds of problems that can plague your network, you will be able to know how best to solve the problems. It is especially important today when technology plays such an important role in how competitive the organization is. Take time today and begin a serious assessment of your network today to determine if it has any issues.
by Felicien | Jul 18, 2017 | Education
Done the right way, automation can vastly improve your workflow and mitigate risk, making it an ideal addition to any organization.
From vastly improved data entry speed to standardized documentation and easy integration of applications, automation can have a huge impact on the way your business processes workflow. Done correctly, automation and AI can speed up your workflow by ensuring that the information you have to work with is accurate and available to everyone who needs it. Automated tracking of changes and work ensures that everyone on the project can see status and needs at a glance and that managers can make real time changes to improve workflow if needed.
At {company}, we know that the benefits of automation are only part of the story; our clients use automation to not only handle routine tasks but to spot and flag irregularities and concerns so that a human operator can take action. Automation can help you be more secure by identifying problem orders, eliminating errors and even recognizing problem behaviors early and taking steps to mitigate risk. At {company}, we recommend automation and AI for a variety of reasons, detailed below:
Simplified Data Entry and Tasks
Automation and AI excel at mundane, repetitive tasks like data entry and processing. Where a human operator can quickly become bored, burnt out, distracted or overwhelmed, automated procedures keep right on going. The 1,000th entry is as fresh and accurate as the first. Automation can also simplify these critical tasks and integrate data into your existing systems without additional prompting or steps. The right automation process can also identify those entries that are questionable in some way or that need to be reviewed by a live operator.
When you use automation for data entry and related tasks, you can swiftly input even large groups of data or information without concerns about fatigue and with a timeline expressed in minutes or hours, not weeks. You’ll also be able to accept and process customer information around the clock, not just during business hours.
Automated technology can also be set up to detect fraudulent or questionable entries from your online forms or site. By recognizing and flagging problems with anything from incorrect or fake addresses to eliminating duplicates or flagging them for review, your AI programs can help cut your losses when it comes to e-commerce fraud.
For those in finance or insurance, both claims processing and new accounts processing are drastically enhanced with automation; robots can be set to accept and set up claims and then service accounts, alerting an individual employee when help is needed.
Automation can have a significant impact on your overall workflow simply by taking on those tasks that don’t require a lot of human interaction or intuitive decision making. This can free up your team to focus on other, more important tasks.
Enhanced Ability to Share & Track Changes
Automation can also make it easier for your team to collaborate. When an automated system takes in data or order, it can make sure everything needed is included, then alert the right team member to process the order. By inputting data with automated processes, your human team is freed up to actually work on a project, instead of tediously tracking down details and paperwork.
As with any cloud based, paperless system, information input via automated system is available instantly to all team members, whether they are in the same room or in different parts of the country. Being able to access the entire project whenever they need to improve collaboration and scheduling, while automated tracking of changes improves work flow and communication. Team members have the option to complete a task with the confidence that all changes are being tracked and saved or they can choose to push the project through to the next person, moving it along and speeding things up.
For managers, automation ensures that there is not a backup at the entry point and that the entire workflow process can be seen from a bird’s eye perspective. Automated reporting can ensure that the management team always knows not only where projects are but where things are hanging up or getting stuck, making it easier to make real time corrections or adjustments as needed to improve workflow.
Improved Accuracy
Human listeners can misinterpret the spoken word or even mishear numbers and names when data is inputted in person or from the phone. Robots don’t make these kinds of mistakes. Even with written paperwork, it can be tough to tell an “I” from an “l” or mistake a poorly written 7 or a 4. Automated systems allow data to come right from the setup point; if the client or customer inputs data into a computer-generated form, that data is always entered correctly. The improved accuracy of both data input and processing helps eliminate errors – and makes sure your customer that ordered 2 items doesn’t receive 22 or 222 of the same thing.
Seamless Integration Between Departments and Applications
Can your sales team access your customer history data to better serve their needs – even while your support staff is processing an order? Can you view caller history when someone calls you, even if you are not at a particular workstation? Automation standardizes data in many ways and makes it easier for you to switch from one application to the next or even between departments. Automation can easily integrate with your legacy systems and even allow you to add functionality or additional services as needed.
From the time savings to the ability to free up your human workforce and even the confidence you get from knowing you are working with accurate data, automation can help. Learn more about what automation and AI can do for your unique business – contact {company} at {email} or {phone} to find out how easy it is to speed up your workflow and revolutionize your business with the power of automation and machine learning.
by Felicien | Jul 18, 2017 | Education
Microsoft has just announced the launch of three new applications designed with small business success in mind. Users of Office 365 Business Premium will have access to great new features that will help streamline routine processes and kick marketing efforts up a notch.
In addition to these new apps, Microsoft is also introducing Office 365 Business Center, developed as a central place for users to manage these additions and get an end-to-end overview of everything that’s happening within your business. Business Premium subscribers in the UK, US, and Canada will have access to a preview of both the new apps and the Business Center starting mid-July.
Here is a quick look at these new Office solutions.
Microsoft Connections
Email marketing is a great way to increase your sales and reach a new customer base. However, figuring out where to start with an email marketing campaign can be a daunting task. Available on the web and as an iOS or Android mobile app, Microsoft Connections will allow you to put together sleek and professional campaigns with surprisingly little effort. Simply choose from a selection of pre-designed templates for customer referrals, newsletters, or announcements and customize your template to suit your marketing project. Easy to use options for prospects and clients to opt-in or unsubscribe from your mailing list is available for each campaign.
As your mailing list grows, you have the ability to create segments to manage specific groups of customers better and target each group accordingly. Subscriber activity updates and performance charts are available to help you track open rates, clicks, offer redemptions, new opt-ins, and unsubscribe numbers for each separate campaign. These statistics will give you a clear picture of which parts of your email marketing strategy are working, and which aren’t.
Microsoft Listings
A consistent and easy to find online presence is a necessity if you want new customers to discover your business. That means making information like location and business hours available and keeping that information up to date. Doing that across multiple sites and platforms can be a hassle, which leads to outdated and unhelpful information being left for prospective customers to find.
Microsoft Listings uses a simple and straightforward web dashboard to help you publish, track, update, and maintain your business’ online presences. Manage business listings on sites like Facebook, Google, Yelp, and Bing from one easy app by making changes to a central profile. Any information changed or added to your Microsoft Listings business profile will automatically update profiles on your connected sites. Track online views and reviews using the dashboard, and use the feedback provided to make impactful changes to your business’ online reputation.
Microsoft Invoicing
Finances are a vital part of every business. Tracking pending payments, getting estimates and invoices out exactly when they’re needed, and processing payments quickly and efficiently are all critical to your business’ ongoing success. Keeping these transactions running smoothly and keeping track of all the necessary details can often be confusing and tedious, especially when each process has its own system. Spreadsheets and paper invoices only add to the headache, and can sometimes lead to costly mistakes.
Microsoft Invoicing takes the hassle out of business finance by making it easy to generate professional-looking invoices and estimates, helping you get paid on time for your products or services. Available on the web and as an iOS or Android app, Microsoft Invoicing connects with QuickBooks, letting you sync customer and business data and transfer needed invoicing information directly from program to program, and to your accountant. This app is set up to work with PayPal, meaning your customers can use their debit or credit cards to pay online, adding an extra level of convenience to transactions that your customers will love.
Office 365 Business Center
This is the hub that brings Connections, Listings, Invoicing, and Bookings together. Office 365 Business Center grants easy access to your business apps and data from a central location. Featuring a unified dashboard, you can quickly view key metrics from each app, such as new appointments, outstanding invoices, open rates on your latest campaign, and Yelp reviews.
This web-only dashboard includes an activity feed that displays the details of what is happening in each app, making it simple to keep tabs on the important goings-on within your business and staying constantly up-to-date. The activity feed also provides suggestions and alerts, helping you make sure invoices are paid on time, and critical tasks aren’t missed.
The best part? Since all of these apps were built to work together, they’re essentially plug-and-play. There’s no time wasted configuring settings and testing connections to make sure your apps are communicating the way you need them to. Data is shared between the apps automatically, saving you and your staff the trouble of re-entering data. And as a business owner, you have complete control over who has access to which apps, and the data they contain.
This application and service launch comes with an added bonus for Business Premium users – MileIQ is being made available to for you to use along with your Office 365 subscription. MileIQ makes tracking and reporting mileage from a personal vehicle used for business activities such as meetings, conferences, or sales calls simple and convenient. Users will be able to log unlimited drives each month as part of your Business Premium subscription.
by Felicien | Jul 18, 2017 | Education
Pitching your accounting firm to clients doesn’t have to be boring. You can radically adjust your accounting firm’s image through new cloud-based technologies.
Let’s face it: it’s difficult to make an accounting firm exciting. At best you can usually hope for “stable and trustworthy.” But when differentiating yourself from the competition, you really want a “wow” factor. You just need to figure out how to introduce that into spreadsheets and depreciation schedules. And that’s where technology comes in. Few things get people as hyped today as “the cloud.” By using the cloud, you can position your accounting firm as modern, technologically advanced, and cost-effective.
The Future of Accounting Is On the Cloud
Actually, the future of everything is on the cloud — and it’s useless to fight it. Just a few years ago, cloud-based technology was regarded as a sort of quirky trend. Microsoft was running inscrutable advertising about moving your photos and documents “to the cloud,” and there was wave after wave of security-related concerns. But that’s not today. Today cloud-based technology is the de facto standard for enterprise-level work. The lowest estimates of companies using a cloud-based infrastructure hover around 55%. So why should the accounting industry lag behind?
An Industry Based on Legacy Solutions
There are very few industries that are as fixated on legacy solutions as the accounting industry. Similar industries include the legal profession and the medical profession. It’s simple math: anything that has to deal with numbers is usually best left to old and proven solutions. But it’s also something else: the accounting field (and the medical field, and the legal field) tends to deal with highly educated, intelligent professionals, who are not necessarily tech savvy.
And there’s nothing more stubborn than a very intelligent and very busy partner. Partners in accounting firms tend to be very resistant to changing their technology. Not only is it an investment of time and money, but it can disrupt their own work flow — and why fix it if it isn’t broken?
The Advantages of Cloud-Based Technology
But because accounting firms are historically hesitant to adopt new technologies, it opens the door for accounting firms to become competitive. Cloud-based technologies have some tremendous advantages, both for businesses in general and for accounting firms specifically:
Employees can work from anywhere. Partners can easily work from home without disruption; employees can be outsourced from different states or different countries. As a work force is consistently going mobile, this becomes very important. Accounting firms will even be able to recruit better talent by offering work-from-home hours or flex-time.
The cloud is intuitive and easy to use. Though partners may be hesitant to adopt new technology, the cloud is different — the cloud is an intuitive platform built primarily on web interfaces. Many of the software solutions being ported to the cloud are things that the employees and partners are already familiar with using, such as Office 365.
Services can be automated and improved. Through the cloud, organizations are able to tap into tremendous amounts of resources and advanced technology. Firms will be able to automate much of their services, delivering better services at lower costs. They will also be able to offer more to their clients, in terms of advanced solutions such as web portals.
Cloud solutions are far less costly. Rather than having to invest in on-premise servers and equipment, a company can pay for only the resources that they strictly need through their cloud solutions. This means that they can spend more money on other areas of their business, such as expansion or customer care.
A cloud service provides better uptime. Because a cloud solution is generally managed through third-party services along with a 24/7 help desk, accounting firms don’t need to fear potentially going down or experiencing business disruption. Companies also don’t need to invest in in-house IT services when they have a cloud-based solution.
Cloud solutions are better secured. Accounting firms deal with tremendous amounts of personally identifiable information and finance-related information. Though there were security concerns initially, the cloud is now very well secured — and that’s important in an era where ransomware and phishing attempts are running rampant. Many cloud solutions can automatically detect and mitigate these threats.
It isn’t just that cloud-based solutions are the future of accounting — it’s that it’s likely that your competition isn’t leveraging the cloud in an effective way… or potentially at all. A cloud-based solution is going to give your organization a huge number of benefits, both in terms of costs and services available. It’s also going to show that your organization is committed to advancement; that it isn’t afraid to change and to evolve.
It’s hard to transition to any new solution, but cloud-based solutions are much easier to transition to compared to other types of upgrade or radical infrastructure change. Today an accounting firm can get absolutely everything they need setup for them in a single, all-in-one infrastructure — improving upon productivity and reducing IT-related expenses. The only question is when you’re going to take your first step into the clouds.
Is your {city} accounting firm thinking about moving to the cloud? Contact {company} today to find out more about leveraging the cloud for your firm, either through {email} or {phone}!
by Felicien | Jul 18, 2017 | Education
CIOs need to take the lead on creating enterprise digital transformations that leverage the power of cloud-first solutions, such as Microsoft Office 365.
Office 365 is one of the largest things to happen to business enterprises since the launch of Salesforce. With over 85 million users, Office 365 is a global force that is helping companies boost productivity, while simultaneously reducing the burdens felt by IT departments. As Microsoft seeks to continue its digital transformation, CIOs need to be prepared to rethink how they can use the platform to their advantage, while simultaneously rethinking the architecture necessary to get the most out of Office 365.
Why Do CIOs Need To Pay Attention To Office 365?
As a CIO, it is your job to lead your company’s digital transformation. This means that you must take into account your current and future needs by asking “is your network ready?” The use of Office 365 can transform your IT infrastructure by moving users away from desktop solutions, while also migrating the LAN to the cloud. The latter migrations can result in an increase of Internet-bound traffic by as much as 40 percent. To effectively leverage the benefits of this transformation, you must determine if your network is ready for a cloud-centric approach.
Preparing your network is made easier when you take into account the following factors:
Your network must be ready to move from a LAN based network to a WAN based network.
Firewalls, Internet gateways, and proxies must be prepared for the migration.
You must do more than simply upgrade central gateways and increase bandwidth.
Through an agile approach you can redesign and restructure your network to support Office 365. However, to do this, you must look for information beyond your network. As CIO, it is your job to design, strategize, analyze, and implement your company’s digital transformation strategy. This means that you must recognize that your internal network will not typically be equipped to provide the optimal user experience when using Office 365 to its full potential. As such, you must accept that the open Internet can provide the network solution that you need to create a new, secure corporate network that is beneficial to your users.
Keep in mind that the decision to become a cloud-based or cloud-first architecture is not one that should be made from the top down. In other words, as CIO it is your job to coordinate your teams to discuss the networking, security, application support, risk, compliance factors that must be considered before a migration can be completed. Don’t let your teams fall back on traditional solutions that will slow down and complicate your digital transformation. Instead, grasp innovation by the horns to ensure that you have the technologies, controls, support, and digital practices needed to deliver benefits to your entire enterprise.
Speaking of benefits, before you balk at the thought of redesigning your network’s architecture, take a moment to explore the benefits of Office 365.
By restructuring your network to support Office 365, you can move away from the legacy architectures and promote digital transformational growth.
You can more easily scale your enterprise IT infrastructure to more readily meet evolving business needs.
Office 365 is designed to bring about positive digital transformations that will benefit the entire business.
Security is no longer dependent solely on internal network solutions; instead, a wider source can be deployed to strengthen cloud-based security applications.
Improved collaboration amongst employees is made easier (especially when employees are dispersed across locations or working remotely).
Increased productivity for users who need to work on multiple devices.
Enhanced opportunities for mobile usage, as well as easier setup, maintenance, and security.
Through the cloud-based solution, resources are freed-up so that they can be strategically allocated.
The Bottom Line: Office 365 Can Help CIOs Complete Digital Transformations
It is clear that Office 365 provides countless benefits to any enterprise looking to continue their digital transformations. However, the issue that many companies encounter is the cost benefit. To ensure that the cost of equipment upgrades and network infrastructure enhancements do not surpass budget allocations, enterprises need to account for cost efficiency measures. In this vein, a transition to a cloud-first strategy is made easier when you work with a team of experts who have successfully deployed Office 365 enterprise solutions.
By working with the right individuals, you can ensure that you avoid the challenges of other enterprises, who have chosen to rely solely on internal networks during their digital transformation. Instead, you can leverage the power of Office 365 as a catalyst to increase user collaboration, improve productivity levels, streamline communications, and create the infrastructure needed for continued business growth. To discover how Office 365 can be successfully implemented within your enterprise contact {company} located in {city} via {email} or {phone}.
