Telesys Voice and Data Blog

Does your business have trouble with managing and maintaining your technology? If so, you’re not alone. Many small businesses struggle with even the most basic elements of IT maintenance. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just take this responsibility and shift it off of your employees? The best way to approach technology maintenance is to implement managed IT services.

Small businesses often neglect IT maintenance because they can’t afford to hire in-house technicians. These kinds of skills are in high demand, which often means that small businesses--with their limited budgets--have trouble finding technicians that they can afford. Furthermore, these skills might be region-locked, meaning that they are more difficult to find in certain areas than others, making it challenging to find the skills you need, when they’re needed.

A lot of businesses tend to do one of two things: have their current employees (who aren’t trained IT technicians) perform most of the work, or they simply don’t get the work done at all. Both of these situations are far from desirable. Either the work will get done poorly, or the work doesn’t get done at all. In fact, a project implementation gone wrong could be even more costly if it has to be redone, putting even more pressure on your organization.

In these types of situations, it’s helpful to have someone you rely on to get the work done right. Managed IT services allow small businesses to take advantage of many services that allow them to focus on creating revenue, rather than managing technology. Your company can leverage all of the great technology solutions that larger businesses don’t think twice about. Whether you need supplemental technology maintenance or full-on management of your in-house network, Telesys Voice and Data has you covered.

We offer several services to small businesses in your area, including:

• Security solutions: Spam protection, content filtering, antivirus, and firewalls
• Business continuity: Data backup, disaster recovery
• Communications: Voice over Internet Protocol, email hosting
• Network management: Remote monitoring and management
• Software and hardware procurement

Does your business need help managing technology? Telesys Voice and Data wants to make sure that you’re always on top of your technology maintenance. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

Ransomware is a growing problem for businesses, being one of the most difficult threats to remove from an infrastructure. Not only is it easy to spread, but difficult to avoid as a whole. How can your organization prepare for this threat? It starts by being mindful of how ransomware is spread and how your employees react to it, both now and in the future.

Ransomware locks down files on your business’ infrastructure. Through ransomware, it’s easy to cripple a business by limiting access to important information or files located on an infrastructure. If the user fails to pay the ransom, they risk losing their data for good. Even if they do pay the ransom, there’s no guarantee that the hacker will give up the encryption key. The user is presented with a conundrum; pay up for a potential to get your data back or ignore the request and hope for the best.

Ransomware was primarily spread through the use of spam when it was first introduced to the online environment. Hackers would create ransomware campaigns to spread it to as many users as possible, hoping that any number of them would choose to pay up rather than lose access to their precious files. As time went on, however, ransomware became used in a more targeted fashion. Rather than claim as many targets as possible, hackers instead chose to go after only those who were most likely to pay up with spear phishing tactics designed to fool even the most stalwart and mindful user. In many cases, these targeted attempts were made against businesses, whom value data more than the average end user might.

These spear phishing attempts are incredibly difficult to identify for the untrained eye, and the amount of damage they could inflict on your company is untold. Your employees need to be able to identify potential ransomware threats. Even the cautious approach might not be enough, however, as the future of ransomware could potentially hold even more dangerous threats. Already, hackers are taking advantage of threats that can be purchased on the online black market, including ransomware threats, vulnerabilities, and even lists of targets. How can a small business protect themselves from such a prominent threat?

It all starts by remaining as mindful of security best practices as often as possible. By this, we mean trusting no suspicious message in your inbox without first double-checking any information found in it. If you receive an unsolicited message with an attachment claiming to be a resume, bank statement, shipping information, or anything else that seems out of place, think twice before downloading them. The same can be said for any links that cannot be verified as secured.

Is your business prepared to handle the next generation of ransomware? While we don’t know what the future holds, we know that you can confidently face it with security services from Telesys Voice and Data. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

Every business needs technology support. This statement is more true today than it has ever been before. As your organization adds new technology to its infrastructure, it will naturally grow more complex and difficult to maintain. Thankfully, you don’t necessarily have to go about this alone. By working with an outsourced third party, your business can take advantage of all kinds of great solutions for a fraction of the cost.

Depending on the way you go about technology maintenance, you can either wind up investing in your business’s future or wasting vital capital. Traditional break-fix IT strategies take a responsive approach to IT maintenance. By this, we mean that you’re reacting to issues as they crop up rather than preventing them outright. This is not the ideal way to approach IT maintenance, as you will spend more time and resources addressing issues that could have been avoided in the first place. Instead of traditional break-fix, you should consider investing in a more preventative approach to technology maintenance.

If you want preventative solutions, your business is better off working with a managed IT service provider like Telesys Voice and Data. Managed IT takes advantage of solutions that are designed to detect issues before they become costly problems. This affords your business ample time to resolve them, which mitigates downtime and the costs of replacing technology. Here are a couple of ways that managed IT can help your business save time and money:

• Security: Have you ever been the victim of an online security threat? Chances are that if you have, it’s a situation that you’ll never want to suffer from again. The issue with security is that it’s costly and embarrassing to be hit by a hacking attack. You not only have to remove the threats from your infrastructure, but you also can’t work until it has been done. Furthermore, you might be subject to fine and other regulations regarding data privacy, which is just the icing on the cake. Preventing these issues with a firewall, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filter can make for a much more tolerable security situation.
• Hardware issues: A computer breaking down can be a considerable problem for your business. Hardware failure could mean a workstation or even a server unit breaking down, which could lead to data loss or a loss of operations. If you can use remote monitoring and management to provide maintenance as needed, you can keep the risk of a hardware failure at a low. Furthermore, you can detect signs of hardware failure early on if you’re monitoring your network, which helps you avoid unexpected hardware breakdowns.
• Data backup: Imagine that your entire data infrastructure has just been destroyed due to an unforeseen event, like a data breach or a natural disaster. What do you do? If you haven’t taken any action to ensure your data is safely backed up, it’s likely that your business won’t be able to function as intended for quite some time. This puts your future in jeopardy. Proactive solutions like Data Backup and Disaster Recovery, or BDR, can ensure that your business suffers minimal downtime and data loss in the event of a disaster. Furthermore, you should have a comprehensive business continuity strategy implemented to guarantee you know how to react in the event of such an incident.

Does your business need managed IT support? Telesys Voice and Data can help your business take better care of its technology. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

Cloud computing is one of the best ways that your business can compete with larger enterprises. Today, you can adopt the cloud and take advantage of countless services, but are you doing so yet? If not, we’ll help walk you through some of the best ways that your organization can leverage the cloud.

Of course, the type of cloud you will need depends on several factors, including data control, maintenance responsibility, and the complexity of your operations as a whole. You will generally be choosing from a public, private, and hybrid cloud for your business’ needs. With each of these comes new benefits and challenges to overcome, however, so you’ll want to consider all options before going all-in on a solution.

Public Cloud
If your business has a limited budget, the public cloud may be an ideal solution for you. The public cloud allows users to take advantage of the cloud without investing in on-site cloud infrastructure. You can use all of the great parts of the cloud, including storage, access to cloud-based applications or services, and communication solutions. The public cloud offers a great starting point for businesses that want to utilize the flexible cost the cloud offers, and don’t have the assets available to invest in anything more complicated. Some of the services provided through public cloud solutions include Google’s G Suite and Microsoft Office 365. Yet, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine for the public cloud, as the lack of customization and control may deter some organizations.

Private Cloud
Where the public cloud provides general catch-all solutions for businesses that don’t want to manage or maintain their own infrastructures, the private cloud offers hosted or on-site solutions that need to be maintained by an IT department of some kind. Basically, you need to have the infrastructure to manage a cloud system, as well as a team that can provide maintenance for it (unless you have arranged to outsource this--more on that later). Private clouds are in high demand because they allow businesses to easily customize their solutions to suit their needs--particularly in regard to network security and scope of services offered. Private clouds are best for businesses that want to maximize control over their data and know exactly what they want out of the cloud.

Hybrid Cloud
If neither the public nor private cloud are attractive to your organization, then perhaps a mixture of the two will provide the best results. A hybrid cloud takes all of the benefits of a private cloud and combines them with public cloud offerings thereby allowing for a customizable and flexible solution that is built specifically for your business’ needs.

The best part of this is that you can have an outsourced provider like Telesys Voice and Data host your cloud infrastructure so that you don’t have to. It’s the best way to take advantage of the best of both worlds. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

The sad truth about computers is that when they inevitably break, you have to get them fixed; or, you have to order a new one. When PCs started to be utilized for mass productivity, however, businesses had to find a better way. It’s been years since the first managed services provider hung out their shingle, and over that relatively short time the managed services industry has grown to be a $150 billion-a-year industry. The combination of IT becoming an important part of nearly every business resulted in the obvious demand for affordable IT support. This trend has seen many businesses cutting IT staff to make way for outsourced managed services, and all it provides. A problem that both businesses, and the MSPs that they hire, face is that computers eventually break.

For years now businesses have had to set aside capital to fix and replace their information systems; capital that could be better served invested elsewhere. Managed services tries to put a flat rate on every piece of IT you need managed and comes up with a consistent billable figure that not only allows a business to plan their operational IT budget more accurately, but allows them access to the expertise they may have lacked without a dedicated IT administrator. MSPs form of proactive maintenance can go a long way toward providing the kind of longevity that any organization would want from their hardware; but, while we can do a lot to protect your systems from failure, there’s no way to definitively know when a piece of hardware is going to fail.

When technology breaks, it leaves a hole in your functioning business that has a cost attached to it. If it's a switch or a router, or even a workstation that needs to be replaced, it’s cheap enough. The cost to replace an in-house enterprise server, however, is between $5,000 and $20,000 dollars. Couple that with the fact that hardware prices that had been dropping for a decade have begun to rise, it suggests that it won’t be getting cheaper to replace a physical server unit anytime soon. At Telesys Voice and Data, we like to think of ourselves as solution providers, and today there are more options than ever for the housing, management, and maintenance of an organization’s computing infrastructure, including storage and applications.

When your server is about to fail, and you need a new one, buying a new one has to be a no-brainer. So how do you go about it? How do you get the data from the old hardware to the new hardware? What about networking? With so many factors to consider, relying on the experts is a must. If you have in-house technology professionals, they probably have this process worked out as to not cause the business a lot of additional problems. After all, a failed server carries with it enough anxiety without the additional fear that goes with not being able to do the work that is required to sustain profitability. But, if you don’t have dedicated IT personnel on staff, the process might get a little overwhelming.

Let’s assume that (for this example) your organization’s file server is about to fail and you don’t have any contingency in place. What variables do you need to consider?

1. Are you backed up?
2. Do you have failover?
3. In-house or Cloud
4. Migration plan: RTO & RPO
5. Functionality and Security

Are You Backed Up?
Has your organization put in place a backup function? Before we start in on a new server, every business should be utilizing a comprehensive backup and recovery system. Not only do you protect your data (one of the most lucrative assets your business has), but it also gives you failover options that many organizations might not have. Our Backup and Disaster Recovery system features incremental backups and the ability to use the device as a failover server, so your business isn’t dealing with sustained downtime while you replace or repair your server.

Do You Have Failover?
A failover system is a system in place that allows you to protect your organization from system failure. By having a system to continue to access critical data, you can keep business moving while you replace or repair vital hardware. As stated above, our BDR gives temporary failover server capabilities to ensure the smoothest transition you can expect.

In-House or Cloud?
The big decision many businesses have to make nowadays is where to host your server. There are pros and cons to moving your infrastructure to the cloud, as today a well-designed-and-implemented cloud server is often more beneficial depending on the needs of your organization. The average business has multiple servers, so when one is on the verge of failure (or fails outright) and you are forced to use your failover platform as a temporary server, considering a move that will allow you to manage to get the server up and running again efficiently has to be a consideration. There are many cloud-hosted options to consider. Performing the cloud vs in-house determination. When your hardware gets old (or your software is), you have to start to consider your options. Let’s look at some variables you should be cognizant of when deciding whether or not to move your computing infrastructure offsite.

In-House Computing - The traditional method of computing, some would argue, is tried and true. You purchase the hardware outright, you license the software you need, you equip it with the storage you need, and you manage and maintain it in house. The server unit itself is a big expense, but most small to medium-sized businesses could justify the purchase if it was between losing data and continuing efficient production. You have to ascertain what the costs are and see if a new onsite server is cost effective for you.
Cloud Computing - If your computing infrastructure needs to be replenished, there are several great cloud-hosted computing options your business could consider. From affordable public cloud solutions to resource and capital intensive private cloud solutions, the cloud has options for any business that needs to upgrade their computing infrastructure. The cloud also helps organizations that want to put an emphasis on remote work and collaboration.

Migration Plan: RTO & RPO
When migrating data onto a new server from backup, you need to understand the costs of doing so. That’s why disaster recovery experts have defined the necessary metrics you need to understand when recovering data after a server failure (or any major data loss incident). They are Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective. (RPO). In the context of data recovery, the RTO is a measurement of the amount of time your business can go without storage or applications while they are restored, while the RPO is a measure of how far back data recovery needs to go to get your organization up and running efficiently. Typically the two values work against each other, so determining how much data you need and how fast you’ll need it by to keep your company functional becomes extremely important.

New and Old, Side-By-Side
Once you have your new computers up and running with all the software and appliances configured, make sure to leave your old system up (if possible), even if a hardware failure is imminent. This will allow you the time to ensure that your new server is working optimally when it matters most. After you’ve ironed out all the kinks, you then can shut down and recycle your old server.

There are many more tips and tricks we can give you to ensure that in replacing your old technology, you are getting powerful, effective, and reliable upgrades. For more information about proactive managed services that can tell you if it’s time to refresh your hardware, call the IT professionals at Telesys Voice and Data today at (800) 588-4430.

How much does your business rely on technology to keep your organization running forward? As business technology becomes more complex, it’s becoming increasingly popular for organizations to have their own internal IT departments to manage and maintain it. Yet, small businesses don’t often have the necessary funds for such a feat. How can your company afford quality IT service? You can start by pursuing managed IT solutions from a managed service provider.

Unlike break-fix IT solutions, which depend on your technology breaking down, managed IT solutions aim to keep your technology in proper working order, as well as take action to proactively treat issues before they become long-term problems. Here are some of the best ways that managed IT can help your organization take better advantage of its technology.

Guaranteeing Flexibility
Let’s say that you choose to hire more employees for a specific department of your business. This means that you have more users, which can lead to more software licenses needed, more email accounts to archive, more endpoints to secure, and much more. Basically, as your workforce needs change, so too must your managed IT service agreement. Telesys Voice and Data offers scalable solutions that can be customized to fit the needs of your business.

Supplementing In-House Maintenance
Let’s say that you do have an in-house technician or a small group of workers dedicated to IT maintenance. They might be able to get most of their work done, but generally speaking, your in-house technicians probably have their hands full. They might have their hands full with acting as help desk support, or they might be too busy maintaining the status quo to help the everyday worker with their technology. A managed IT provider helps to augment and work beside your in-house team to create greater success for your organization as a whole.

Working with Your Vendors
You work with a lot of vendors to give your company the access to the products your organization needs to be successful. This includes hardware vendors for your workstations and server units, software developers for all of your productivity suite needs, and any other service providers that you have. Reaching out to all of these can be time-consuming, which is why managed service providers like Telesys Voice and Data offer vendor management services to create a single point of contact to keep your attention on your business and not your vendors.

Improving Operational Efficiency
Your business will generally function better by working with a managed service provider. The reason for this is simple: hands-off IT maintenance that takes up little, if any, of your time. Telesys Voice and Data can remotely monitor and maintain your business’ technology infrastructure to provide as much of a hands-off approach to IT maintenance as you can get. To learn more about what Telesys Voice and Data can do for your business, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

How many documents does your organization accumulate just by simply staying in business? There’s no doubt that you’re sick of the traditional filing cabinet, which is both hard to move around and a pain to organize. Thankfully, modern technology solutions have afforded businesses just like yours with the ability to host and manage documents in a digital, cloud-based environment.

Cloud-based document management solutions provide your business with a ton of great benefits and opportunities to improve the way your business stores and manages files. Here are some of the most notable strengths and weaknesses of this approach.

Easier to Organize and Access
Storing files in a document management system is much like storing files into folders on your workstation or in-house network. It’s much easier than color-coding with tabbed folders. Just imagine being able to store each of your related files in a cloud-based folder system and always knowing where specific files are located, depending on the type of file you’re looking for. You can save time and energy by making your files easier to find. Furthermore, you can access documents and other important files on any connected devices, allowing for more flexible for your workers.

Easier to Navigate
You’re familiar with how a search bar works in both your web browser or online search engines like Google, but what if we told you that you could add this ease of searching to your file storage? Imagine being able to enter in your search credentials for your physical documents, and you have a great reason to implement a document management system in the cloud. All you need to do is plug in your searches and find the files that you’ve been looking for, and it couldn’t be any easier.

Easier to Preserve
If you were to suffer from a fire in your office, would your paper documents survive the disaster? Our guess is “no,” which leads us to the next big question: how can you properly back up your physical file storage? There isn’t a way to do this without wasting a considerable amount of time and money on making copies of each record your business stores. If they are digital files in a document storage system, you can simply implement a data backup and disaster recovery solution to properly preserve documents in the event of the worst.

The Risk: Data Security
The concept of storing data online or in a network-connected cloud system comes with the added likelihood of a data security risk. What if a hacker infiltrated your company’s network? They would be able to indiscriminately steal your company’s documents or access information that’s not for their eyes in the first place. Therefore, you need to consider security issues a top priority for your organization should you implement a document management system. Furthermore, you need to ensure that your data is properly backed up so that even unexpected incidents don’t sink your productivity.

Is your business ready to get rid of physical file storage and instead focus on a digital documentation system? Telesys Voice and Data can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

For the modern business owner or executive, making smart business decisions has become a necessity. Margins are small, efficiency is key, and if we were to be completely honest, business is a day-in and day-out grind. In the course of doing business much is made of cost reduction and curtailing inefficiencies that lead to wasted capital. Much is made of collaborative systems that allow for remote access. Much is made of protocol, process, and performance. With so many moving parts in every business, there has to be the “glue” that allows for cohesive actions to be taken. That “glue” is software.

IT is a multi-trillion dollar business ($3.5 trillion in 2017 according to Gartner), and enterprise software, that is the software that businesses use to conduct business, makes up for around a tenth of it, at $351 billion. Any way you slice it, software is a significant expense for most businesses. This month, we are going to take a look at the types of software that businesses use most, what they use it for, and how to decide a certain software works for your business.

Business software comes in many types. It includes custom systems, cloud systems, and programs you buy off the shelf anywhere. Businesses have been using software for decades; long before the PC revolution changed the economy forever. Today, there are very few businesses left that don’t rely on any software at all. At first software was extraordinarily pricy, but as demand went up, prices went down and now even the smallest business can utilize much of the same software that their enterprise counterparts use.

For our purposes we will split the software businesses use into three separate categories. They are: security, operations, and relationships.

Security Software
We’ll start with security software, since without it, you may not even need the other two types. Security software is, as the name suggests, the software you use to keep your organization’s computers free from threats. Any computer with an operating system will have some security built in, but for a business, you are likely going to need more, and in some cases, a lot more.

The first thing you’ll need to know about security software is that you are in danger. Your data is being targeted by innumerable entities that are looking to steal it from you for their own gains. In fact, for every threat that is developed to breach network security, there has to be a solution created that mitigates it. This fact has led to a massive security market in which consumers, even the IT-savvy ones, are left overwhelmed and scratching their heads. Some threats include:

• Ransomware
• Phishing
• Viruses
• Malware
• Trojan horses
• Denial of service (DDOS)
• Hackers
• Human error
• Sabotage
• And more...

Conversely, if you are able to stop these threats before they get in to your business’ computing network (or onto the PC where you do your business computing), you will have a secure computing environment 100 out of 100 times. This is why it is essential for small business owners and technology executives at larger businesses to understand what they need to do to ensure that threats can be intercepted, destroyed, or avoided completely.

Some examples of security software include:

• Access control - As the name suggests, access control provides a construct in which to manage permissions for the people inside and outside of your organization’s network to access certain parts of your computing infrastructure.
• Antivirus - For good measure we’ll add anti-spyware, anti-malware, and any other program that is designed to take the teeth away from any unwanted program on your network or PC. An updated and maintained antivirus is your best hope if threats somehow make it onto your network or PC.
• Backup software - Part of building comprehensive organizational security is having a plan in case a threat gets through. Having a backup system in place is essential; and, today there are enterprise-level software solutions that will help your entire organization protect the data your staff depends on.
• Firewall - The firewall is a virtual wall that aims to keep any threats out of your network or PC in the first place. As mentioned above, many computers come with firewalls installed, but an enterprise firewall that is constantly updated and maintained is your best chance to avoid trouble all together.
• Intrusion detection/prevention - Intrusion detection is a system that continuously scans your network or PCs for malicious activity or policy violations. Intrusion prevention actively works to mitigate any malicious activity or policy violation.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) - A system that provides real-time analysis of any alerts, allowing administrators to automate the process of threat analysis and logging.
• Spam protection - Generally found in a dedicated email filtering solution, or as a part of a unified threat management system (UTM), spam protection deciphers incoming emails and determines which emails are delivered and which ones aren’t.

Keeping your network free from threats will go a long way towards running an effective business. Speaking of which, in the management and operational side of your business, software has also become extraordinarily important. In fact, without some forms of productivity software, your business may not even exist.

Operations Software
When you talk about operations software, we mainly mean the software that is used to complete the work your organization does. Productivity software is made up of all the applications used to complete the work.

There are millions of different applications that people use to get work done. In fact, there is effectively software created each day to fill in the gaps left by other pieces of software. If security software is the walls around the city, operations software is the city itself, providing the infrastructure for goods and services to be rendered.

Productivity software comes in many forms and has been designed to make human work easier. Whether your staff depends on simpler, less-resource-intensive programs such as word processors or spreadsheets; or, they depend on graphics studios or resource-intensive video-editing or 3D rendering suites, productivity software is where the goods and services your business offers get built in earnest.

In business, some of the most utilized productivity applications come delivered in cloud-hosted suites. This allows the developer to provide businesses and individuals value, while still maximizing their software’s profitability. One example would be that Microsoft Word has more demand than PowerPoint, but by bundling Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the rest of their productivity apps into a cloud-based package: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft is able to offer all these useful titles as a monthly service, delivering enterprise products to users and, through these apps’ collaborative capabilities, strengthening their value proposition to consumers.

Some types of productivity software for business include:

• Project management software - Effective management of a project is essential to its success. With project management software you can assign work, manage timelines, deadlines, and collaborate with others.
• Office suites - Generally it is comprised of a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation app. Most will also offer an integrated email and calendar app, a database manager, note-taking app, website tools, and more.
• Accounting software - A business needs to manage its money, but today’s accounting software can bring with it a lot of nice additions that are designed to help meet any organization’s needs.
• Industry-specific software - Advertising-to-zoning, and every industry in between, developers have made a software that will help your organization be more efficient.
• Custom software - Having a custom piece of software developed that directly meets your needs is a good way to boost your organization’s efficiency.

With the cost of doing business going up, investing in the right operational software will go a long way toward improving productivity and helping you build a better business. If you want the best business you can manifest, however, our last type of software is essential.

Relationship Software
Business is all about creating relationships. Business owners and executives have relationships with their staff, their staff have relationships with their vendors and customer, their vendors and customer have relationships with other businesses, and other businesses are in open competition with you. Without properly managing your relationships, your business will have a hard time being successful.

From a business perspective, if operations software is the city, relationship software is all the people; and, since chances are you are building your product or service for people to use, managing relationships has to be a priority. Typically, the software that allows you to best manage the relationships you have are also the most difficult to master and are expensive.

When people think of relationship management, they typically think of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), but there are more types of relationship management tools that may fit your business better. There is Professional Services Automation (PSA) software that has been developed for professional services like lawyers and IT professionals. There is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software developed for manufacturers and distributors. All this software is developed with one thing in mind: managing the relationships you have to keep business moving efficiently.

No relationship is more important than the one you have with your customers; and today, managing their expectations of you is more difficult than ever. With social media being what it is to our society, managing expectations, demand, and being able to properly support your products and services are essential to maintaining a healthy business. For the smaller business, online marketing, social media, and maintaining an active role in the community in which you work is extremely important. By utilizing software to make your social media and marketing activities a little easier, you can cut down on the time you are focusing on maintaining your relationships and spend more time developing and producing products and services that are valuable to your consumers.

Some additional relationship management software to consider include:

• Content management system - If you plan on being active on the Internet, finding a content management system that allows you to quickly and affordably manage your website is a good plan.
• Social media management software - Having a central hub to be able to manage all of your social media initiatives can save your organization plenty of time and money.
• Human resources software - Not only do all your employees depend on your HR department for the administration of their work experience and their professional development, you typically depend on them for quite a bit (often including payroll). Having a dedicated HR software can streamline what is a time consuming and often frustrating part of doing business.

Software is important to every business. If your organization is looking to put together a software management strategy that will help you get all the software you need to manage, operate, support, and market your products and services, the IT professionals at Telesys Voice and Data are the ones you need to call. Contact us today at (800) 588-4430 and learn how to make your business more effective through software.

Small businesses often have to rely on different means to achieve the same level of project management as enterprises. This is due to the demands of project management being significantly different in scope, but also the way that your company implements new technology solutions. Instead of worrying about the specifics of project management, you can outsource these responsibilities to a managed service provider.

Your business relies on its technology being maintained properly, but it’s not always as simple as updating a software application or replacing a hard drive following a catastrophic failure. You have to think about who you’re paying to maintain your technology solutions, if there’s anyone doing it at all. You need to consider what happens when you lose data or when your organization experiences downtime. How do you keep technology from becoming a hindrance for your business?

Managed IT is one of the best ways your organization can capitalize on its technology without worrying about whether or not you’re maintaining it properly. The ideal way for a small business to manage its technology is to have professionals handle it while you focus on other aspects of the management process.

In other words, let’s ask you a question; is your business running as smoothly as possible? Can you honestly say that you have time in your day to handle multiple technological troubles, as well as all of your other responsibilities? Upper-level executives like the CEO and COO have other responsibilities that are more pressing, and as such, technology maintenance is often left to your employees, who may (or, more likely, not) know what they’re doing. Technology maintenance is something that should always be done by professionals, as any mistakes could become costly mistakes that lead to downtime caused by having to do the same work twice, or even your technology failing completely.

Imagine what would happen if a hardware failure occurred and you lost the entirety of your business’ data. What would you do then?

Instead of relying on your employees, who have other jobs to do as well, managed IT can make sure that your organization’s technology is always maintained. Since a managed IT provider like Telesys Voice and Data is dedicated to maintaining your business’ technology, you won’t have to worry about other tasks getting in the way of it happening. You’ll receive customized service and solutions based on your service agreement, as well as the opportunity for more great tools such as unified communications, security solutions, data backup and disaster recovery, remote monitoring and maintenance, and so much more--all to make sure that your organization can run as optimally as possible.

To learn more about managed IT services and support, reach out to Telesys Voice and Data at (800) 588-4430.

Communication is one of the cornerstones on which your business functions, and without it, you will find that going about your daily duties is considerably more difficult. Communication is one of the many ways your organization accomplishes both major and minor tasks, so you want to pay especially close attention to how your business handles phone calls, email, and even mobile devices--both in and out of the office.

Unified communications include several solutions that your organization can use to stay connected, including a unified email solution, mobile device strategy, and a telephone solution. All of these types of solutions should be built around today’s expectations of mobility and flexibility. Here are some of the ways your business can build out a unified communications system that improves connectivity.

Email
Email has long been a staple of business, but how do your employees use it? Do they access it on multiple devices? Do they use the same email service (Hint: They should)? An employee who prefers Gmail over Microsoft Outlook might decide that they would rather use the solution they are most comfortable with. This is an issue, as it spits in the face of your attempt at unified communications.

Email is most useful when it’s kept to your preferred email solution, so you should ensure that your organization is prepared to spend time on training employees how it works. The solution you choose should be one that can be used on several different devices so as to provide your employees with maximum choice in how they use the email system. If you’re worried about hosting your email server, Telesys Voice and Data can help you out with that, too.

Mobile Device Management
Mobile devices are all over the place now, and your business could benefit from having them become a part of your infrastructure. However, they need to be managed properly, as the more apps have access to your business’s data, the more exposure it gets to potential threats. You need to make sure that you’re prepared to handle this influx of mobile devices if you’re hoping to provide a truly unified communication infrastructure for your organization.

Beyond compatibility, you want to make sure that your organization is prepared to handle lost or stolen devices, fraudulent apps, and other security risks. Telesys Voice and Data can help you whitelist and blacklist apps, as well as remotely wipe lost or stolen devices. This helps you keep your data as safe as can be.

Unified Voice over IP
Traditional telephone solutions don’t take the flexibility of the modern business in mind. Landlines tend to bundle together services with little flexibility, leading to organizations overpaying for services that they don’t need. If you’re paying for services that you don’t need, you’re wasting assets that are better spent elsewhere. Furthermore, you’re limited to taking calls on your work phone in your office, hampering your ability to be productive while out of the office or on a business trip.

A Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application is one of the best solutions an organization can implement, as they often work across multiple types of devices and work from a shared database of contacts. Your workers will always have access to client information, even when they aren’t in the office. Employees have the option of using their smartphone, desktop, or traditional handset. Having VoIP makes using Unified Communications so much easier for businesses.

To learn more about unified communications solutions, reach out to Telesys Voice and Data at (800) 588-4430.

Security is an aspect of running a business that absolutely cannot be ignored, regardless of whether or not you see it as a considerable issue in the near future. The fact remains that your organization will always be at risk unless you take actions to keep it safe today. By taking advantage of some of the latest and greatest security tools on the market, you’ll be able to protect not only from the basic threats, but more advanced ones as well.

No matter how advanced technology becomes, it can fall victim to even the most basic of threats if left unchecked. Your desktop workstation is certainly not immune to threats like viruses, malware, spam, and so much more, and even the most vigilant business could expose its infrastructure to these common threats. Since consumer-grade services are likely not strong enough to protect your business’s important data, you’ll need to turn to enterprise-grade solutions that can be tricky for small businesses to afford.

One of the greatest ways you can protect your organization is by implementing a Unified Threat Management tool that fulfills the roles of various security solutions in one convenient package. For example, you could implement an enterprise-grade antivirus and firewall to keep threats out of your infrastructure and promptly eliminate those that do infiltrate your defenses. Furthermore, preventative solutions like spam protection and content filtering can limit your organization’s exposure to threats in the first place, which saves time and money in the long run.

More advanced security protections, however, are certainly important for your business as well. Some of the more powerful measures include two-factor authentication and biometric scanning. Two-factor authentication is particularly important, as it provides a secondary credential that must be used to gain access to important information and accounts. Basically, it forces hackers to do even more work to break into an account, as they would have to physically steal your smartphone or other device to which the secondary credential is being sent to, all just to access an account and maybe find something useful.

Biometrics, on the other hand, are a bit harder to fake. Using fingerprint scanners or iris scanners make it considerably more difficult to unlock devices. A hacker would basically have to have the exact same fingerprint or iris as you, so unless there is some incredibly shady business going on, they won’t be able to access your devices.

How does your business secure its sensitive information and data infrastructure? Telesys Voice and Data can help your business avoid considerable security troubles. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

People spend a lot of money on the Internet. From an individual standpoint, the amount the average person spends on Internet-based services is their largest expense outside of the money they spend on their residence, and perhaps their transportation costs. In order to understand the landscape of what is effectively a battle for Internet supremacy, you first have to take a look at the battlefield itself.

As of September, of the 7.5 billion people on the planet, nearly 3.9 billion of them (51.7%) use the Internet. In North America, 88.1 percent of people (or roughly 320 million) use the Internet in some fashion. This presents opportunities for thousands of companies. Some provide Internet access to would-be consumers. Some deliver content services. Some deliver applications, computing storage, or processing. This has led to the marketing boom you see on the Internet today; and, is where you find a battle raging between the demand created by billions of consumers, and the companies that deliver the services needed to access that customer base.

A lot of questions have been asked recently about what the Internet is. Questions like:

• How do you monetize access to billions of potential customers?
• Should Internet access be free?
• Is Internet access a utility (and thus governed by different rules)?
• Who is in charge of the Internet?
• What is the Internet of Things?

Questions like these produce a variety of answers. With the smoldering embers of the U.S. net neutrality laws suggesting further corporate control of the Internet, we’ll look at the way the Internet is set up in 2018, the costs for businesses and individuals, and why the companies that control access to the Internet are licking their proverbial chops; and, how it challenges the core interpretation of what exactly the Internet is.

The Internet in 2018
The Internet has come a long way in a short time--so far it seems, that it’s hardly recognizable. The Internet of 2018 will continue to be the predominant marketplace in the world. It is seemingly in the process of being consolidated. In fact, 50% of Internet traffic in North America is from 35 websites. In 2007, that same amount of traffic was spread around several thousand websites.

Whether or not a handful of companies own most of it is irrelevant to a consumer, but it’s getting to the point where the product is so consolidated that prices will almost assuredly increase. It’s like Gap Inc. They own The Gap (obviously), Old Navy, Banana Republic, J Crew, H & M, and a few other companies that do largely the same thing: manufacture and sell clothes. Each of these retailers has its own branding and its own management teams, but the money goes to the same place.

The Internet, for all its vastness and entrepreneurial promise, is seemingly controlled, like many industries in the United States, by heavy hitters--companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. Without playing by their rules, many companies may as well peddle their wares from a kiosk at the local mall. 80% of referral traffic comes from Facebook and Google. This is why many retailers’ sustainability is tied to how they are able to properly advertise their product...for these two company’s search algorithms. Today, tens of thousands of marketing companies have supplied the immense demand to build constructs that meet the demands outlined by the masters of the Internet.

The Cost
The Internet is extremely important to us. Our business, and our clients’ businesses, rely on it every single day. We aren’t alone, and in many ways, the Internet is the newest (and arguably last) frontier. If something were to happen and the Internet were to go out for an extended period of time, tens-upon-tens of thousands of businesses, including ours, would likely cease to be. The truth is that we’d pay what we’d have to pay for Internet service.

For individuals who have come to depend on the Internet, they likely feel the same way. There is a story of Stamford professor, Jeff Hancock, who used to ask his students to try and stay off the Internet for 48 hours over the weekend and see how it affected their lives. In 2009, when he assigned the task, “...there was a class revolt,” Hancock said, “The students emphatically said the assignment is impossible and unfair.” They stated several reasons for their near-constant Internet use, but it was clear that the biggest reason is that every one of those students had a mobile device that had made near-ubiquitous Internet accessibility a major part of their lives. They paid for access, and didn’t think it was reasonable for their professor to run rough-shot over their lives (for 48 hours). This new world that is so dependent on computing can be seen in the numbers. In September of 2009, a quarter of the world’s population, 1.7 billion people used the Internet. That number would double by December of 2013.

This growth in demand for Internet access (affordable or otherwise), which you can now see in parts of central Asia and Africa, created markets, which in turn created more markets, and nearly overnight, the Internet went from what could be considered a novelty to a must-have utility-like entity--as necessary as food and water to some. In fact, it’s easy to relate. Think about how much you use the Internet. It’s enough to purchase it for your home AND for a mobile device. If you take your mobile data plan into account, the average U.S. and U.K. consumer pays over $100 a month (just over £73) to have near-ubiquitous Internet service.

The invention of social media has made it even more necessary to people. In the United States alone, over half of people (nearly 180 million) use social media. As a culture, we rely so heavily on it, the President uses social media nearly every day to comment on situations, and in some cases, state changes to federal policy. The combination of mobile devices and social media, e-commerce, and secure payment has created an insatiable demand for Internet access, Internet-based services, and the speed to properly broadcast all the content that people today have come to use.

In some places Internet costs more, and people pay it. In fact, people have so bought into the Internet that a whole generation of people would be completely lost without access to it. Whether that is a problem or not is a matter of opinion, but whether you pay $60 a year for Internet like the average Iranian, or $3000 per year like some do in Southeast Asia, people will compromise their own well-being for an Internet connection.

The Economy of the Internet
Projecting the economy of the Internet into the future is like projecting anything’s future state. It is largely unreliable. Today, the Internet is going through another shift. Looking past the hosted utility computing craze that we see today, you see a world that is completely connected. The Internet of Things, the title given to the act of connecting all things, is in its infancy, but some estimates have it being as big as 11 percent of the global economy by 2025. This strategy not only warrants the production of products that have the capabilities of being connected, it also makes certain that more money will be put into securing these systems.

The current state of the Internet’s economic success is a hotly debated issue by economists. On one hand, many, like Northwestern professor, Robert Gordon, suggest that as good as the Internet has been at growing economic productivity, it’s shockingly less important than the establishment of electricity-producers at the turn of the 20th century. This is largely because productivity (that is, the creation of tangible goods) has shifted from manufacturing goods to fulfilling service requests. The Internet of Things, however, alters this thought, clearly presenting ways to boost efficiency and revolutionize traditional business operations in manufacturing, transportation, communications, and retail.

The new economy of the Internet is tied up in “things,” but that’s not to say that there isn’t an immense amount of commerce taking place. Ecommerce generates over $2.3 million every minute, every day, or roughly $3.3 billion a day; almost a quarter of which changes hands over wireless mobile networks. These levels of enterprise will be growing exponentially as the IoT grows.

Net Neutrality and Its Elimination
There are currently around 2,700 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States. With this amount, it is really impossible to consider that there isn’t enough competition. Some critics, however, have stated that there are a handful of ISPs that control access to the Internet for most Americans. The FCC had stated many times that Net Neutrality actually hurt ISP competition. While there were some that would corroborate that claim, many smaller ISP owners considered it only a pain when they couldn’t secure capital that would allow them to deliver service that customers have come to expect. Some even considered net neutrality a good thing, since the money content providers such as Netflix would be forced to invest, would be invested in larger ISPs such as AT&T, Comcast, and Spectrum.

When the FCC decided to roll back the net neutrality laws in December of 2017, it became evident that a more laissez-faire attitude over the regulation of ISPs will have a long-term effect on consumers. Thus far there hasn’t been much of a change, but going forward it will be corporate entities regulating themselves, as the FCC gave up all regulation of Internet providers.
Expect the ISPs to consolidate further through acquisition, and to establish a pricing structure that will allow them to maximize the profitability of their service. It remains to be seen if net neutrality is finished forever, or if the repeal of the mandate will increase infrastructure spending as many of the ISP lobby have suggested.

The Internet is important for individuals and business, alike, and it’s growing larger and larger by the day. The more the third-world develops infrastructure and allows the other half of the human race access to the Internet, the more important the Internet will seemingly become. For more great information about today’s most important technology topics, sign up for our newsletter today.

Your data is one of the most important assets at your business’ disposal. It’s really indispensable. Not only are large amounts of it the result of successful operations, it also can help your organization better understand the intricacies of its own operations, and where you want it to go in the future. Does your business have a process for collecting, storing, and sorting vital data so that your organization can figure out where to go next?

At Telesys Voice and Data our technicians come to work every day to help organizations like yours make full use of your technology. Moreover, we are just starting to realize the potential of data ourselves. By having our certified technicians build a dedicated data warehouse, you are creating a construct that embraces the future of data analytics. This analysis may just be the key that allows your staff to strategically plan the next initiative that will take your business to the next level. Here are some of the types of data a comprehensive data warehouse will hold.

Client Information
Your business depends on the patronage of many clients--people who buy your product or service on a varying basis. However, all of your clients will have information that you want to keep on-hand in the event that you lose it. This includes contact information (like email addresses and mailing addresses) as well as phone numbers and otherwise. You should also include any information about services that you’ve rendered for them so that you’re not caught unaware should you lose records of what type of relationship you have.

Vendor Information
Similarly, your organization also depends on contact with vendors who provide the resources required in order for your business to succeed. This could be in the form of software solutions provided by a developer, or hardware issued by a distributor. Utilities, like your Internet, electricity, HVAC, etc. are equally as important, as they make your office an environment suited for work. In the event the information about your vendors is compromised or lost in any way, you will want to be ready to recover it so that your business relationships can continue to function properly.

Analytics
While storing data and backing up any data related to your vendors and clients can help your business recover in the event of a disaster, you also want to use this information to learn more about your consumer base and create a profitable future for your organization. Doing this is called analytics. Leveraging analytics is a great way to take seemingly arbitrary numbers and find trends that mean something for your business. There are applications that can help your organization find new markets, target the best client base, and identify inefficiencies that compromise your organization’s ability to turn a profit.

If your business truly wants to take advantage of data during the new year, now is the time to take the initiative and invest in data warehousing and corresponding analysis. To learn more about these solutions, reach out to Telesys Voice and Data at (800) 588-4430.

If we asked you how your organization backs up its data, would you be able to smile and tell us all about it in detail? While it’s important to be optimistic about the future of your organization, you should never believe that you are impervious to data loss. We’ll discuss some of the most important terminology behind data backup and recovery, as well as the best way to protect your organization from the crippling situations presented by data loss.

Recovery Point Objective
How much data can you reliably restore in the event of a data loss incident? This number can be measured by RPO, or Recovery Point Objective. Basically, the recovery point objective is determined by how much of your data can be recovered following a loss incident. Situations that could cause data loss include natural disaster like a flood or fire, or it could be at the hands of a hacking attack or user error. Either way, you lose data and it is a negative situation for any organization.

Depending on the type of data backup you have, you could go from either losing a negligible amount to up to a whole day’s worth, or more. Tape backup, which has long been a staple in the business world, is only capable of so much. Since tape backup is considerably more resource-intensive than network-attached or cloud-based backup, you can only take one large backup at the end of the day, meaning that you could lose so much more data through tape than you would through a backup and disaster recovery solution like the one we offer.

Recovery Time Objective
Once you’ve established how much data that you can recover in the event of a disaster loss scenario, it comes time to establish how long it will take for you to achieve recovery. The reason for this is that the time your organization is recovering data is time that your business isn’t functioning as intended. In other words, downtime, where you’re creating negative revenue. Therefore, the goal should be to minimize downtime and achieve a low recovery time objective whenever possible.

Tape backup offers a longer recovery time compared to a network-attached or cloud-based backup solution specifically because the backups are larger and take more time to process (not to mention that they aren’t automatic like the backup process you’ll find with the BDR). Since backups can be taken as frequently as every fifteen minutes, they can be restored more quickly as compared to the antiquated processes you’ll find by using tape backup. It’s just one of the ways that our BDR can reduce downtime and make recovering from a data loss incident more manageable.

Does your business want to guarantee that it can survive from a data loss incident? Telesys Voice and Data can equip your organization with a BDR solution that can maximize its chances of successfully restoring operations following a data loss incident. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

How does your organization manage its IT? For some businesses, it’s not an easy choice or even a remotely affordable one. Some companies are forced to endure subpar services from break-fix IT providers that don’t necessarily have the tools available to prevent issues from happening. Others try to prevent issues from evolving into major concerns. These others are the organizations that have the right idea behind technology maintenance.

Yet, this preventative maintenance can seem a little intimidating to business owners on a budget. The break/fix method to IT maintenance is designed to provide organizations the service that they need when they are having trouble keeping their technology in proper working order. This could be something as simple as an email access issue, or a major problem like a hardware failure. Regardless of the issue, businesses would pay out massive amounts of funds just to purchase IT support whenever it’s required.

The problem with this approach is that it is rather passive until disaster strikes. Let’s say that your business has a major project to complete or deadline to meet, but you can’t accomplish this due to networking complications or hardware failures. You have to wait for a technician to arrive on-site to address the issue, and during this timeframe, your employees are being paid to sit around and wait for the issue to be resolved--all so they can do their jobs. This is how break-fix IT works. Your organization is basically a time-bomb when your technology isn’t maintained properly. It’s only a matter of time until you experience a crippling issue that completely derails productivity and costs your business an arm and a leg.

A better way to handle business-level IT support is by implementing what are known as managed IT solutions. By working with a managed service provider, your organization can take advantage of services previously anathema to it--namely, preventative solutions that aim to keep issues from happening in the first place. You can get all of the services that your organization has long-desired, but in a more conveniently priced way. You can achieve enterprise-level network security, back up your data with cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery solutions, and remotely apply patches and security updates so that your hardware and software are always in proper working order. All of these solutions require a dedicated IT technician who can properly manage them, and Telesys Voice and Data can provide this expert level of service.

Perhaps the best part of managed IT is that it is much more affordable than traditional break-fix IT services. Since managed IT allows for smaller and more affordable monthly payments, it’s easier to handle than the large up-front expenses accrued by sudden charges made by break-fix IT services. Furthermore, since you won’t have to pay for downtime, you’ll save a considerable amount of capital regardless of which services you implement, as they will be implemented with the intention of keeping issues to a minimum.

Does your organization need help with technology management? If so, Telesys Voice and Data can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

The modern small business will face several challenges in 2018. The world is changing, and with it, so is business. For many small businesses, this can either be looked on as the opportunity they’ve been waiting for, or, it can be viewed as the beginning of the end. No matter what situations you are faced with this year, understanding what problems your business faces, and how to solve them is imperative to your small business’ success.

In the technology world, 2018 will be more about utilizing innovations to the technologies that are already available rather than deploying newfangled technologies, as many small businesses focus on revenue generation rather than simply cutting their technology costs. Chances are your organization already takes advantage of many of today’s most cost-prohibitive technology trends. Whether or not you are using them properly will ultimately be the difference in meeting your yearly projections. We take a look at some of the most compelling variables a small business owner needs to consider in order to take their business in the right direction.

Running a Smarter Business
While 2017 was a good year for the small business, many smaller organizations fall into the trap of not focusing on revenue generation; setting their sights on sustainability rather than success. If your business has been around the block a bit, you may be comfortable with the “business as usual” approach. You may be surprised to know that by changing the way you approach certain core strategies, you can initiate greater revenue generation and stop focusing so much of your time and effort on practices that aren’t effective and just hold your business back.

Cost cutting initiatives have been all the rage for the past several years. Many businesses utilize outsourced services such as cloud computing, print services, and staffing agencies to reduce their capital expenses. This strategy is sound--it provides an organization with more upfront capital--allowing for more a targeted approach at projects that can spur on revenue generation. The issue is that by not making ANY true capital investments, you are likely paying more.

One way to improve your business’ position is to consider the value you get from recurring services. A service like the one Telesys Voice and Data provides, where you can see an immediate return on your recurring investment, is valuable, and rare. There are some services, however, that don’t provide a rapid or sustainable return, and by paying more up front, you could actually mitigate cost that adds up over time. Paying for software you barely use per month may seem affordable if you look at the operational cost, but in true capital, renewing a yearly license for a single copy of the software may actually save you money.

As far as the revenue generation problem goes, there are two solutions that are available to every business that, once implemented, are likely to provide a solid ROI. The first is analysis. Your company generates a lot of data, and much of that data is relevant in the context of making better business decisions. Business intelligence, that is the structured analysis of warehoused data, can provide some very useful answers. Consider that your operational data, data about staff effectiveness, data about your marketing and advertising initiatives all hold in them a small piece of truth about the way your business operates. By gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how your business functions, you can make better strategic and operational decisions.

At Telesys Voice and Data, we are just starting to understand how to help our clients run smarter businesses. Since profit margins and returns on many goods have shrunk significantly over the years, businesses have looked to services to fill in the gaps when they don’t have the capital to undertake major investments for staff, technology, or otherwise. Today we can set up a data warehouse to store all the relevant data so that you can use automated analytic software to crawl the data to get the truth about how your business functions, and what to do to boost revenue generation.

The second is sometimes looked on as an antiquated strategy; but, in the information age it remains as true today as ever. Invest in your people. It’s simple, the better your people enjoy working for you--the more they see your sacrifice and hard work--the more they have reason to be proud to have their job with your organization--the better your company will function. While we push automation every day to help you get more out of your company, you won’t get anything out of it if you view your employees as a hindrance. Think about it this way, your people are your biggest expense, and as a result, should be your biggest priority.

With the technology that is coming, this tried-and-true method of running a smarter business is going to be tested. Many larger enterprises have begun utilizing automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in an effort to provide higher returns for their investors. It’s only a matter of time before small businesses around the world will be using the same technologies to try to turn a penny into a nickel. While there are some jobs that can be eliminated with these technologies, there will be different jobs created through the use of them. With automation beginning to redefine the job market, independent workers will be in demand to fill in the gaps. So, while these jobs have less definition, the need for hungry, happy workers will be there for as long as goods and services are produced.

To get your staff working the way you need them to work, you have to invest in them. Here are three ways you can run a smarter business by getting more from your staff:

1. Improve retention - Onboarding new workers is expensive and time-consuming. It puts a strain on almost every part of your business. Small businesses often can’t pay their workers the same rate that a major corporation might, but they can provide them with more value. By investing in training/professional development, benefits, and other courtesies, people will want to work for you and won’t be continuously looking for a way out.
2. Improve morale - If your workers are stressed out, you can see it immediately. How do your workers interact? Is there a buzz in your place of business, or is it silent? A silent workplace is great if you run a public library, but if you run an office the lack of noise is deafening, and a telling symptom of people just waiting to punch out for the day. Most people may work for the paycheck, but if they are working for the weekend, you need to make an effort to boost morale.
3. Two-way Loyalty - Many small business owners demand loyalty out of their people, but refuse to reciprocate. There is nothing that will make a worker throw in the towel faster than a lack of loyalty. Very few people prosper in an unsupportive environment. To keep your workers in a productive mindset, make them realize that you are working together for a common goal, not just working for you.

Getting smarter about the way you do business doesn’t start with technology, and doesn’t start with capital, it starts with a dedication to do the right thing for your clients, for your staff, and for the myriad of other people that depend on your business. If you handle your staff in the right way, it will provide you with the largest ROI of any investment you can make this year, and any year.

Learn Where You Can Compete and Where You Can’t
Many of today’s small business owners look at their more-successful competition and try to emulate the practices that have made them a success. The fundamental problem with this strategy would be that you are in competition with these companies for revenue, and by doing things the same way as they do it doesn’t set your business apart from them. That being said, there is are reasons that the company you are setting out to emulate is having success. By copying your competitors’ best features, you could create some space in even the most saturated market. Whether they boast superior brand recognition, have superior customer service, are superior at fulfillment, etc. you have to know your place in your market. In fact, many experts consider the act of finding your niche inside of your target market to be one of the largest differentiators to achieving success for a small business.

Consider your smartphone for a minute. You decide to start a company to make smartphones. Chances are you aren’t going to compete with the Apples, Nokias, and Samsungs of the world. So, while it stands to reason that you may want to abandon your plan altogether, you start looking at the data and there are no phones made specifically for doctors. If you deliver on your promises and create a device that works for the needs of doctors, there is a chance that you can compete within that niche market, while not really competing at all in the larger market at all.

Anything you can do to deliver your goods and services to the most people should be the aim, but be cognizant that by setting your sights too high, you may just be putting your company in a perilous predicament. You need top tier customer service, a trustworthy product that you stand behind, and a plan on how to get your product to your consumers if you are going to compete in any market. Find your differentiator and exploit it.

2018 is another year where technology will be in the mind’s eye of every business owner, but to find success by using technology, you have to apply it in the right way. For more information about business technology, how to stretch your IT budget properly, or any other technology related subject, call the IT professionals at Telesys Voice and Data today at (800) 588-4430.

All businesses require at least some type of software in order to perform as expected. It’s how organizations acquire this software that has a considerable impact on cost. For some, software can be a budget-breaking nightmare, but others have found a much more convenient way of acquiring this software: as a service.

Software as a Service is a method of software distribution designed to help your business acquire the applications it needs without suffering from the large upfront costs that software acquisition typically carries with it. Do you remember purchasing software licenses for each and every user on your network? This can get somewhat challenging to maintain, as these licenses need to be renewed frequently, and if they are not, your organization could be put at substantial risk.

Businesses can instead use software as a service offerings to purchase access to cloud-based applications and storage. Basically, you pay for access to the software and reap all of the benefits of actually owning it--plus some additional ones--by leveraging cloud computing.

More Cost-Effective
Think about how much it costs to purchase software for your organization. The same services that are necessary for operations, could be a major detriment to turning a profit. With the use of an application hosted in the cloud, you can cut the cost of ownership and transfer the once recurring capital expense into a manageable operating expense.

Up-to-Date Editions
When you purchase software as a service applications, you always access the most recent version of it through an online interface. This means that you’ll never have to worry about updating the apps with patches or security updates, as they will be taken care of by the service provider.

More Flexibility
Purchasing new software licenses can be troublesome, especially when you’re a small business that’s experiencing growing pains. You can add new users easily enough just by creating accounts for them--no additional purchases necessary. Changes in your service plan are generally added on your next billing cycle. This provides the scalability every growing business needs.

Does your business want to use software as a service? Telesys Voice and Data can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (800) 588-4430.

IT maintenance is something of a sensitive topic for some organizations. While most understand that it needs to be done, they often don’t have the resources to make it happen, either due to a limited budget or timeframe. How does your business handle IT maintenance? If your organization is having troubles managing its annual technology budget, or if you are consistently experiencing profit-sapping downtime, consider managed IT services the answer to your problems.

Simply put, the traditional method of technology maintenance doesn’t work well anymore. The break-fix method to technology management is generally how small businesses have run their organizations for quite some time. Break-fix relies on your business reaching out to a maintenance provider only when your systems are malfunctioning, causing downtime and inefficiency that is sure to show up on your organization’s bottom line.

Without a reliable way to guarantee that the downtime-causing issue won’t happen again, the break-fix method is like slapping a Band-Aid on a wound and hoping that it won’t reopen. Managed IT, on the other hand, is designed to address problems before they happen by taking preventative measures.

Managed IT accomplishes this goal by providing you with comprehensive access to technicians who you can proactively monitor and fix any technology problem you may have with your network or infrastructure. For businesses that lack an internal IT department, managed IT can fill the void you have in technology administration quite nicely. Furthermore, managed IT can provide value even for organizations that have dedicated internal IT staff.

More often than not, a small business will have, at most, an internal team consisting of only a handful of technicians who, more than likely, have a lot on their plate. By supplementing their skills with a managed IT service provider, you’re giving them more time to focus on the quality of their work, as well as assisting your in-house team with any technology problems they might have. It also allows your organization to add profitable IT projects to its roadmap, which provides for higher degrees of productivity and a rapid ROI.

Basically, managed IT does whatever needs to be done for your business’ technology, be it acting as a supplementary force to support your current technicians, or taking on the full responsibility of managing and maintaining your organization's current IT infrastructure.

One of the most important factors of managed IT services is how much more affordable it is. This is explained primarily by how you prevent issues from happening in the first place. Plus, by keeping issues from evolving into bigger problems, you can spend less on your technology support.

Could your business use help with your IT solutions? Reach out to Telesys Voice and Data at (800) 588-4430.

In terms of identity theft, data loss and good ol’ fashioned pickpocketing, the holiday season is one of the riskiest times to travel. When it comes to protecting your personal information, thieves and cybercriminals are counting on you to be distracted and make careless mistakes. In 2016, the number of fraud attempts went up by 31% during the holiday season. In addition, credit cards, mobile devices, and open Wi-Fi are common targets throughout the holidays.

Here are a few tips that can help keep you and your family safe from hackers and thieves.

• Hide the Goods - Pickpocketing is an old-world method of theft that is still extremely effective - especially in a hectic environment like an airport during the month of December. A favorite target of pickpockets are smartphones. Travelers should avoid storing any personal belongings, including smartphones, in places that are easily accessible.
• Bring Only Necessities - Between work and personal uses, most adults have at least three mobile devices. In general, bringing all of them with you while traveling isn’t necessary. The more devices along for the trip, the more targets there are for criminals. Travelers are encouraged to bring only the technology they need.
• Free Wi-Fi is Not Free - To conserve mobile data usage, many people are tempted to hop onto Wi-Fi whenever possible without fully comprehending the risks. Some open Wi-Fi access points are easily hacked and you’ll likely have no idea what kind of security the connection will have. It might be a bit costly but using your data instead of open Wi-Fi may save you from having to deal with identity theft in the future.
• Patch It - It’s always a good idea to keep your technology up-to-date with security patches and bug fixes. Many of the large ransomware attacks that made headlines earlier this year could have been avoided by security patches. When traveling, reduce vulnerabilities by patching and updating your software before you leave for your trip.
• Go Phishing - During the holiday, phishing scam emails emulate holiday-centric messages. Scams will often appear to be from legitimate establishments like FedEx or Amazon. They will often ask for account or password information - or offer exclusive coupons that need to be downloaded to use. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Avoid downloading any attachments and never give out your password or account information.
• Skimming a Bit Off the Top - For those of you who aren’t familiar with card skimmers, the premise behind this type of theft is to copy your credit or debit card information by disguising a scanning device on a legitimate source, like a gas pump or ATM. The scammers are then free to use or sell that information. Skimmers are easily overlooked and protecting your information requires constant vigilance. Whenever you’re using a credit card during your holiday travels, look closely at any device that you are going to be swiping your cards on.
  *Note: You can access an application designed to help you identify skimmers with your Android device here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=skimmerscammer.skimmerscammer 
• Social Media for Burglars - For many, social media is about sharing their good times and memories with friends and family. For thieves, it’s a road map to determine when a home is going to be vacant because their owners are traveling and how long they’re going to be gone for. To eliminate a breaking and entering from your holiday season, avoid posting specifics of your trip information on social media.

Approximately 100 million Americans are going to be traveling this holiday season - meaning that there is no shortage of potential victims. By following these tips, you are taking a proactive approach to keeping your identity and finances safe.