MSPNetworks Blog

When you run a business, solid decision making is crucial to achieving success. This goes from hiring and managing your staff, choosing the right prospects, supporting your customers, and procuring tools and resources that make your business possible. Today, technology is not only important, it is a major consideration when determining your yearly budgets. Let’s go through a couple of tips on how to make the best technology decisions for your company.

What could be the most crucial variable in the whole technology-procurement process, understanding how the technology you purchase will work for your business. There are a lot of cool technologies that are effectively worthless for your company because it just doesn’t fit the practical needs of it. If you want to spend the money that you’ve earmarked for your technology needs, following these four suggestions will help you get rolling in the right direction. 

Consider Alternative Costs 

Your business is putting in a new system that promises to enhance efficiency and boost productivity. Great. How is that going to work when 99 percent of your staff has never seen, let alone used, the technology that promises these returns? Technology typically just doesn’t work, it needs to be ushered in with security and usability in mind. If you expect to get returns out of an implementation without considering the costs and time in training and testing your staff, you probably will be disappointed about the return you get on your new investments. 

Involve the Right People In the Discussion

The technology you purchase for your company very rarely is utilized by a single individual. As a result, during your evaluation you should look for perspective from the people who have the most to lose if the technology implementation goes sideways. That means receiving input from experienced employees, stakeholders, as well as management before spending a dollar on new technology. These perspectives can give you the best idea of what exactly needs to be done to improve the processes you already have. 

Choose Your Partners Carefully

One consideration many less-adept business owners don’t make is who they are dealing with. Sorry to say, not every business you work with will have the future of your business in mind when working with you. Sure, they want the sale, but if you get a vendor that doesn’t see the relationship as a two-way street, you may want to consider backing off.

Remember to Set Achievable Goals 

One of the most important parts about implementing anything new into a business that already produces is to set realistic goals. Sure, to make big changes you must have some notion that this is the direction you want to bring your company, but even small projects can bind up productivity and cost immense amounts of money if they aren’t handled correctly. You’ll want to Identify goals and create objectives that progress toward them; putting too much pressure on any deployment will be sure to have negative consequences. 

Business owners need to listen to their instincts and have realistic expectations when trying to make technology decisions that will have an effect on the health of their business for years to come. At MSPNetworks, our consultants understand that business technology is a tool that can be leveraged for great benefit if it is implemented and supported correctly. If you would like to have a conversation about the future of your business’ technology with some of the best IT minds in New York, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

Despite hearing about a constant stream of cyberattacks over the past few years—most of which cause millions of dollars of damage to businesses—it might still be difficult for you to justify spending a lot of money on your business’ cybersecurity plans. There is a finite amount of capital to go around and many times CIOs and network administrators will be rebuffed by management when asking for money to spend on cybersecurity. Today, we thought we’d discuss three ways that you can spend on cybersecurity initiatives and not feel like you are throwing your money down the drain. 

Today, many organizations have gone as far as to hire a CISO, or chief information security officer to handle budgetary issues when it comes to the protection of a business’ digital resources and information systems. Even though they operate under the CIO, they typically have budgetary discretion to spend cybersecurity money as they see fit. If your business doesn’t have a defined CISO, these four tips should help you out. 

Identifying Your Organization's Digital Strengths and Weaknesses

As with most IT-related initiatives, in order to intelligently spend your organizational cybersecurity capital, you need to assess your current standing and how they relate to putting together reliability in your IT. You’ll want to start by identifying the assets that need to be protected. You may be surprised at what you find after an assessment.  Most businesses, especially in the small business sector will find that they come in woefully short in:

• Business continuity plans - Businesses tend to put in minimal effort into their contingency plans and will find that if something were to happen to their business’ information systems that they would be facing major downtime events and other disastrous situations.
• Phishing and cybersecurity training - The threat landscape is littered with businesses that haven’t prioritized training for their staff. Today, phishing attacks are the number one source of malware attacks and other cyberattacks. 
• Cybersecurity insurance - There are many cyber insurance plans out there that can help protect a business against data loss and cyberattacks. 

Regardless of your business’ situation, a full security assessment can give you the answers you are looking for to help drive a robust cybersecurity strategy. 

Aligning Your Security to Support Your Business

To understand how they get a return on your security investment, decision makers need to see potential issues in practical means. This often means breaking it down into dollars and cents. Security spending will always be justified if decision makers see how inherent risks can ultimately affect ongoing continuity and business processes in general. 

You need to make them understand that security efforts have to go further than just maintaining regulatory compliance. You will want to make them understand that your security budget is used for risk mitigation, sure, but also can benefit productivity and boost revenue. One way you can accomplish this is to automate certain security processes. Not only will this remove the repetitive and mundane tasks thrust on your IT team, it will also provide the data needed to justify the increased security spending as it will lay out how spending on security can save an incredible amount of capital when compared to dealing with cyberattacks and other security issues. 

Onboard Solid Contributors

Finally, everyone knows that new hires are some of the costliest line items in a new budget, and to justify the need for them on the cybersecurity side, you also need to cultivate a strategy that requires investment to be made. That may just be having extra eyes on your IT infrastructure, or bringing on people that can help train your employees on the best practices that will keep your business’ data and infrastructure secure. Investing in solid contributors that quickly understand the role they play in your organizational security and don’t need to have their hand held while navigating your business’ computing environment can bring significant dividends. 

Network security is always going to be a touch and go issue, especially for people who need to release funds to your IT team. Getting them the tools and resources they need to mitigate the negative impact to your business takes work but is possible. If you would like to have a conversation with one of our security professionals about how to best spend your security dollars, give MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

Running a business can be stressful, and if you can’t find time to juggle the countless variables that are at play every day of the week, you’ll quickly find yourself falling behind what needs to be done. Technology is one such area where falling behind is easy, especially when it comes to purchasing and implementing new tools. Unfortunately, your IT budget is not limitless, so how can you make the most of it? Let’s take a look.

Identify Inefficiencies

When you need to make your investments count, it can often be difficult to make large purchases without a little bit of reticence. You should first determine where your business could benefit from technology spending, then make implementing these solutions a priority. If you can address inefficiencies in your operations, you’ll be more likely to gain more from your technology and, thus, make the investment worthwhile.

For example, if you have ten employees and two of them have two displays, then these two employees are likely getting more work done than the rest of your employees. If you can invest in eight more monitors, then you can exponentially increase productivity for the entire crew, making the investment an excellent way to reduce inefficiencies. There are tons of other ways your business can use this principle to make the most of its technology budget—you just have to think a little outside the box and examine the baseline operations of your infrastructure.

Invest in Training

You can invest in technology, but you can also invest in something which is less likely to break down and require replacing eventually: training. If you purchase new technology or equipment, your employees will need to know how to use it. By ensuring that your employees are properly trained, they’ll be more likely to yield a return on investment for your new technology solutions.

What it really boils down to is that the better your employees are at doing their jobs, the more money they will save you in the long run. By training your employees, you are giving them access to knowledge and tools that will aid them while going about their duties. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Association of Talent Development, companies that invest in comprehensive training programs see 218 percent higher income than those that don’t.

Furthermore, today’s threat landscape is so advanced that your employees will need all the help they can get to avoid falling prey to a hacker or other advanced cyber threat. If you invest in security training now, you can save money by preventing security breaches in the future. Plus, it will help you maintain customer relations; nobody wants to work with a business that doesn’t take security seriously, after all.

Outsource

Outsourcing can be an effective way to take advantage of goods or services you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. It effectively gives you access to more for less, and it helps to control costs in the budgeting process. In particular, outsourcing technology services can be an effective way to keep your IT in proper working order. Through managed services like those provided by MSPNetworks, you can utilize all kinds of technology solutions that you might otherwise have difficulty implementing with limited resources at your disposal.

One common way that businesses outsource is with their cloud platform, but the cat isn’t out of the bag yet in regards to how much ROI you actually get from implementing it. Still, the fact that outsourcing gives you access to solutions you wouldn’t otherwise be able to manage is more than enough reason to consider it. Outsourcing your cloud, for example, gives you the ability to scale your services per user or per GB used, so you can still leverage the services according to your operational needs.

If you partner with a company like us, you can take advantage of several services designed to help your business thrive and gain value from technology. Here are some examples:

• Comprehensive backup and disaster recovery
• Remote monitoring and proactive management of all IT
• Best in New York technology procurement
• Dynamic cybersecurity tools
• Patch and licensing management
• Vendor management

And more. 

Even without a huge IT budget, your business can be successful and innovative. To learn more about how you can accomplish this, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

How often over the past year or two have you gone to replace a device on your infrastructure, only to find that the price has increased or the device simply isn’t available? This is an issue with the current hardware shortage, particularly for business electronics. Since businesses depend on technology, it becomes critical that you understand how this shortage impacts your day-to-day operations.

As you are surely well aware, there is a hardware shortage out there for computing devices due to a component shortage. This shortage stems from semiconductors, and it’s bleeding into every facet of device creation, from manufacturing to acquisition. Naturally, this creates issues for businesses that need to invest in new hardware for their employees. Here are just a few of the ways this shortage has impacted businesses like yours.

Price Point

As the costs of components increase, so too do the costs of the devices they are a part of. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the costs of manufacturing increasing, and the consumers ultimately pay more for devices. This can also impact the costs associated with services offered by providers, as they need to purchase and maintain equipment to manage these services.

Timeline for Acquisition

With hardware being in short supply, you can expect the acquisition of any new devices to take a bit longer than usual—particularly if you are looking for something very specific. We recommend that you build out a hardware acquisition timeline so that you know when and how often you need to perform hardware refreshes on your infrastructure.

It Makes Upkeep Even More Important

Finally, since devices are more expensive and harder to come by, you should understand that upkeep of your current hardware infrastructure is even more important than before. If something critical fails within your infrastructure and you are unable to immediately replace it due to shortages, what happens? Be sure to take care of what you currently have so that you can get as much value out of it as possible before it kicks the bucket.

What We Recommend

MSPNetworks recommends that you work with us to ensure that your hardware needs are met within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. Due to our connections and our working relationships with vendors, we know the most reliable ways to get the technology you need to succeed. Plus, it’s always better to have someone else do the legwork for you so you can avoid the frustrations that come from devices simply not being available when you need them most.

To get started, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

When it comes to procuring technology and working on technology projects, budgeting is a key issue that must be ironed out long before project implementation begins. This process can be troublesome and fraught with all sorts of challenges, but you don’t have to do it alone! We’ve got your back. Here’s a crash course on how you can manage your IT budget for maximum value.

First, we must identify what IT budgeting really is. It’s the process of allocating funds and resources towards your business’ technology, including a roadmap for how to approach the procurement and implementation of new solutions. Depending on the way your current infrastructure is set up, you may have funds allocated toward recurring services, staffing, and other expenses. Businesses tend to work out their IT budgets annually, but some may choose to budget for individual projects as necessary.

You can essentially split your organization’s expenses into two distinct categories: ongoing expenses and project expenses.

Ongoing Expenses

Your ongoing expenses may include those that recur every month or so, such as your staffing and payroll, the operational expenses for any hardware or software your organization uses, and support contracts you have with these companies or service providers. We recommend that you take a comprehensive audit of all your ongoing expenses on a routine basis so that you are not shocked by how much you spend on them, and especially so that you are not throwing away capital on goods or services that are no longer used.

You can think of your ongoing expenses as operational costs.

Project Expenses

Project expenses are the up-front costs you utilize when you are trying to implement a new solution, be it hardware or software. In some cases, you might pay for consulting services as well, especially if technology deployment is not your strongest suit.

It is not a perfect comparison, but you can think of project expenses as capital expenditures.

In general, the more operating expenses you have for your business’ IT resources, the more predictable and manageable your technology expenses will be in the long haul. Remember, capital expenses are those that are large, up-front expenses that are often unexpected. Operational expenses, on the other hand, fit easily into any budget as recurring, monthly expenses. A perfect example of this is working with a managed service provider like MSPNetworks for any and all of your business’ technology needs.

Don’t wait to get started! MSPNetworks can help your business implement an IT budget that allows it to flourish both now and in the future. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

With the COVID-19 outbreak forcing businesses into unenviable situations, it’s probably not surprising that business owners and decision makers are looking at what expenses they need to cut in order to keep their businesses afloat. Today, we’ll discuss the trends we are seeing and how managed IT services can be a godsend in situations like this.

Inevitable Cuts

While technology has helped millions of businesses from all over the world stay relevant during the pandemic, we’re seeing that IT is one of the elements of a business that is seeing the most spending reduction. After all, most businesses have to cut some costs just to make everything work. Furthermore, analysts are saying that after the outbreak ends, the remaining recession will actually cut IT expenses by two or more percent for the next year. For an industry that has seen spending rise by five or more percent for each of the past eight years, that is problematic.

To sustain profitability businesses will need to free up as much capital as they can during times like this, and many businesses including ones that operate in the hospitality and manufacturing industries are already seeing massive declines in revenue. This suggests that their 2020 and 2021 spends will probably be less than their 2019 spends. 

This means that many businesses will be cancelling their planned technology projects, especially if they are non-essential. They are using this capital to improve their liquidity and to fund the transitions necessary to support their newly remote workforce. 

Telework and How Managed IT Services Can Help

If your business is looking to make some cuts to your operational technology, choosing the right IT service provider can be a great solution. Not only will you be able to maintain your current IT infrastructure, but a managed IT service provider (MSP) can help you find and implement the solutions you are going to need to get through this situation. 

Let’s start with the remote workforce. Before the pandemic only around eight percent of full-time workers were able to have the flexibility to consistently work from home. With states mandating people stay at home during this situation, telework has exploded. If your company was one of the few that provided telework options before the stay-at-home orders hit, you probably have had a much easier transition to supporting a completely remote workforce. Most businesses, however, didn’t, and are seeing that setting this up properly isn’t terribly cheap.

The challenges of supporting a staff that works remotely aren’t necessarily the same as you would have envisioned. Many businesses didn’t provide the work-from-home flexibility out of the fear that they would lose substantial amounts of productivity (and therefore revenue). While this is still somewhat of a concern, most workers that work remotely understand what their responsibilities are and go above and beyond to ensure that they aren’t the weak link. It's been said multiple times over the past several weeks, but if you have an employee that does not work well from home, it's a pretty good bet that he/she wasn't working that well from the office, either. 

One consideration that does have to be made, however, is how to secure your endpoints and data-in-transit. If this wasn’t already a main consideration of your disaster recovery policy, it will be now. Working with remote access and virtual private networks can go a long way toward mitigating the risk your company will see. An MSP can quickly help you find solutions that will not only keep your data safe and protect your existing infrastructure, it can provide you with new and affordable tools to leverage to keep your business compliant of the regulations your business falls under. 

What’s more, with the use of a state-of-the-art monitoring and management platform, the trustworthy MSP continuously monitors your network and infrastructure to ensure that everything is working properly, efficiently, and securely. In times like this, when there are files coming in and flowing out of your network, knowing that you have professional technicians versed in contemporary knowledge of threats and inefficiencies, alike, can be a huge benefit for your business.

Finally, an MSP does all this (and more) for a fraction of the cost of paying an onsite IT department (who would be working from home right now anyway). An MSP will help you reduce downtime, keep your network and infrastructure working effectively and securely, and do it for a static monthly cost. This allows you to cut your IT support costs and have a number that won’t change from month-to-month.

If you would like more information about how managed IT services can help your business in this time of crisis call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001.