Technically Easy

Tag: Business

  • IT Pitfalls to Avoid When Your Business is Growing

    IT Pitfalls to Avoid When Your Business is Growing

    As your business grows, it can be tempting to concentrate on building new leads, increasing your sales, and pushing your brand. After all, if you want your new venture to flourish, expansion is key to seeing your dreams become a realization. There is, however, one area of business that often gets neglected as we strive to put our business on the map, and that area is IT.

    When a business consists of two or three employees, IT issues are often treated as a minor nuisance.But as your company grows, ignoring your business’s IT infrastructure can lead to a lot of trouble.

    Here are a few basic best practices that will help you make sure IT isn’t another wrench in your wheels.

    Use cloud-based software distribution

    Picture this scenario. You are two years into your business, which has expanded from just one employee working in a spare room, to a bustling office of 20 full-time workers. Everyone is busy, sales are high (hopefully), and your dream is starting to materialize.

    One day, an employee from sales introduces you to a whole new CRM platform that you absolutely love.So you decide to buy it. The problem is, this software has to be manually installed on each employee’s computer. Calculate how much downtime that is for both your IT guy and your employees who have to stare at the ceiling while they’re getting their computer hooked up into the new software.

    When you find yourself in this sort of situation, or preferably before you do, it is wise use cloud-based software distribution.

    In layman’s terms, distributing your software through a cloud-based application helps you connect to your entire IT infrastructure to administer, update, and even patch your software without the need for individual employees to do it themselves. This means your IT administrator doesn’t need to gain physical access to the computers either, but rather gain access from the cloud.

    Now instead of “earning” many hours of downtime by installing software manually in your business’s devices, you can get it done in a click of a button at OOO hours like three in the morning, to not let your employees time go to waste.

    Connect your business software to one cohesive platform

    On the subject of software, another area that occasionally gets neglected when a burgeoning business starts to really bloom is that of ‘software cohesion’.

    If you have ever been asked to provide a spreadsheet for a meeting which resulted in a thirty-minute search through emails, Skype conversations, and the company NAT servers, then you probably need to streamline the use of your software.Luckily, these days you have so many options available, that cutting the use of some software out completely or moving to a more fully functional application is pretty easy.

    If you find your internal communications are spread across multiple platforms, companies such as Slack may have all the functionality that you need, allowing you to consolidate the number of options you need to scour through when trying to find a document or conversation thread. Need to find a file? Search in Slack. Need to find a conversation thread? Enter a keyword and search in Slack. Need to make a VOIP call to another team member? You’ve guessed it, you can do that from within Slack.

    If Slack doesn’t suit you, then perhaps Flock or Microsoft Teams would suit your needs better. Whatever your particular needs, you are more than likely to find a collaboration tool that will simplify your work life, consolidate your data in one place, and give management a much better overview of how the cogs are turning each day.

    When the time comes, upgrade to enterprise-level solutions

    Lastly, one final aspect of our IT strategies that often gets forgotten about, is when to embrace enterprise level tech, as opposed to the consumer grade versions.If your workforce has expanded to more than just a handful of employees, you will eventually have to move your business onto an enterprise level tech solution that works for you.

    Business-grade products are specifically designed to eliminate problems that can exist when using consumer-grade versions, and allow you to scale easily, and securely. While it may look like a cheaper option to continue running the free versions of various software programs that are being used in your office, there will come a time when you hit a wall. When this happens, your workflow will slow down until it is dealt with.

    Luckily, there are many enterprise-level solutions that now run remotely in the cloud, that upgrading is not the headache it used to be. Where you might have hired an IT expert to install a NAS server in your basement a decade ago, cloud-based storage has now taken over physical storage my a huge magnitude, and VOIP-based telephony is now treading the same path. If you feel that your business is starting to outgrow the tech that you originally implemented when starting your business, get the issue sorted quickly. You will thank yourself later.

    In conclusion

    Keeping on top of your IT needs shouldn’t be put on the backburner. The sooner you get your IT plan aligned with your business strategy, the quicker you can go back to doing what you do best, running the company.

  • Growing Your Business? Here’s How to Keep Your People Far and Wide Connected

    Growing Your Business? Here’s How to Keep Your People Far and Wide Connected

    One of the best aspects of technology’s evolution in the lives of most 21st-century businesses is the ability to connect employees, partners, vendors, and clients with one another, regardless of location.

    From the ubiquity of cellphones to the understated power of messaging software, being in the same space at the same time is no longer a requirement for doing business at all, let alone doing it well.

    That being said, there are a myriad of ways you could go about keeping your team and the people you’re working with connected, and some of them are more helpful than others.

    Here is a closer look at a handful of ways you can keep your business humming across time and distance that should also be able to help your business grow.

    Google Docs

    With the advent of the cloud, data storage and whole IT departments have effectively left the building and taken up residence in the 0s and 1s that make up the world’s virtual ether.

    For businesses looking to collaborate with partners near and far, documents and spreadsheets have done the same. Google has a suite of products — all hosted in the cloud — that allow for real-time collaboration between people and teams so long as everyone has an Internet connection.

    So, when a freelancer in Amarillo makes a change to a document that’s in progress, your VP of marketing can literally watch it happen in Fargo.

    Regardless of whether you’re working with accounting spreadsheets, presentations, or annual reports, Google’s software in the cloud will keep your team on the same page, no matter where anybody is located.

    Telepresence

    While not necessary for every business and work application that takes place across distance, telepresence is the crème de la crème of working and interacting together when far apart.

    Effectively a set of technologies that allows people to feel as though they and others are actually present in time and space to one another, telepresence incorporates everything from telerobotics and videoconferencing to experiences with a presenter or speaker that can seem like they’re aspiring to mimic the abilities and features of the “Star Trek” universe’s holodeck.

    If your business requires collaboration and communication on a level that really allows for the subtleties inherent in being present to one another, look for a Cisco distributor and see how your needs can be met via telepresence applications.

    Group Messaging

    Not too long ago, if you wanted to talk with a vendor or someone on your team who wasn’t in the room with you, you would have just picked up the phone and dialed.

    Not too long before that, you might have gotten into a company car or a cab and driven across the county or state for a meeting.

    Before that, a telegram or even a letter would have been required for people in different places to stay abreast of work that wasn’t happening at their worksite.

    Today, group messaging software allows anyone to immediately reach out to a vendor, employee, or co-worker regardless of where the person being reached out to is. All you need is login information and an Internet connection — or in some cases, an app on a smartphone or tablet.

    From simple services like Google’s IM to more elaborate cloud-based software like HipChat that allows users to send group messages, video chat, file share, and create searchable team chat rooms, group messaging has gotten intensely complex and amazingly helpful.

    Being apart no longer requires a phone, a manila envelope, or a recording device — you can have all that and more inside a robust group messaging application.

    Project Management

    Because of the plethora of ways you can stay in touch with workers, vendors, and contractors in today’s technologically laden world, it can come as something of a shock when all that staying in touch about work doesn’t yield solid project management.

    Except: Just talking, sharing, chatting, and working on work isn’t the same as ensuring that the work you’re doing is going in the right direction and at the speed in which it needs to.

    Thankfully, project management software can keep you and your people in the loop regarding what needs to get done and when. From predictive scheduling to better resource management, project management can keep your entire workforce on the same page even when you’re all in different time zones.

    And for you to not fully depend on these applications, you must also have a great understanding about project management. You can get a project management diploma online for you to be able to learn the concepts and manage processes on your own.

    Stay connected with everyone involved with your business no matter where they are. Thanks to cloud-based project management software, chat, and telepresence, the Earth isn’t too big a place from which to run a company.