MSPNetworks Blog

Stuff happens, and this stuff can often be bad. That’s an inescapable part of life, especially if you’re trying to run a successful business. That said, the consequences of this bad stuff can usually be minimized—if not mitigated entirely—when you have a proper disaster recovery strategy.

Let’s review what goes into preparing this kind of strategy in the most effective way and what makes it so crucial.

"I don’t need to worry about cybersecurity… my business is too small for hackers to target."

This is one of the most dangerous misconceptions a small business can have. If you believe this, you may not fully understand how modern cyberattacks work. Let’s break down why this mindset can leave your business vulnerable.

Nobody likes getting large support bills from technology companies—especially when they are unexpected. This is the case for both the business owners footing the bill and the employees who might be held responsible for racking up the bill in the first place. This puts SMBs in a bit of an impossible situation; either spend money to keep employees productive, or save money and suffer from productivity issues.

More small and medium-sized businesses than ever are seeing AI's potential to transform their operations. However, like any technology, AI has its own set of pros and cons. Let's discuss three major advantages and drawbacks you can expect if using it in your business. Hopefully, it helps you make an informed decision about adopting AI.

With technology being so important for all businesses in at least some capacity, it’s no small wonder that effectively using it (and having someone on-hand to manage it all) is tremendously valuable for any company. This is where a managed service provider (MSP) can be helpful, even for businesses that have a dedicated IT department. All small businesses benefit from working with an MSP.

Operational Benefits Aplenty

An MSP can help your business achieve greater operational efficiency in the following ways.

Proactive Maintenance Leads to Fewer IT Issues

Stopping problems from occurring in the first place is much easier than responding to them when they disrupt operations. An MSP will monitor your network to ensure that any telltale signs of problems are addressed quickly and efficiently. This will minimize downtime and keep your business profitable.

Indeed, the best way to see an MSP’s true value is to look at what you don’t see: technology problems. If they are doing their job right, it will be like they aren’t even there.

Guidance on Technology Implementation

You started your business to provide a good or service that you are an expert in to your clientele, but if that good or service doesn’t include technology, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have the expertise to succeed in this realm of your business.

MSPs can help you overcome this deficit by providing an expert technology specialist for your organization’s needs. They can optimize your technology, work with your vendors, and manage technology over time to ensure that it’s working for your business, not against your operations.

Focus on the Here and Now, But Also the Future

If you want your business to succeed in the future, you need to start planning for it now. An MSP can help you identify what’s working well now and what might pose a challenge for your business in the future. Additionally, they can help your business stay on top of trends and developing technology solutions that will prove crucial moving forward.

How to Choose Your MSP

We think you’ll find our services helpful, but we want you to come to that conclusion yourself. Here are some aspects of an MSP to consider for your company’s needs:

• A dedication to security: You don’t have time to spend on securing your business and ensuring that all regulatory compliance requirements are met. An MSP can keep your business safe while ensuring adherence with industry regulations so your business can focus on profitability.
• Offers educational resources: Security extends to your employees who need refreshers every now and then on how to keep the business safe. A good MSP will invest time and resources into ensuring your team knows how to navigate the often-confusing world of technology.
• They might as well join your team: You might expect an in-house IT team to know your infrastructure inside and out, and an MSP can deliver on this expectation without actually being on your payroll in the traditional sense. A good MSP will be invested in your business’ success considering important factors like your budget and priorities when thinking about technology-related issues for your company.

Ready to get started with an MSP? We know the best in town (hint—it’s us!). Call us today at (516) 403-9001 to get started.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the better your relationship is with your employees, the more your business will benefit. Despite this, many businesses today lack trust between their organizational levels. Let’s go over a few simple tips that you can use to help maintain positive feelings amongst your team.

Communicate

Just as in any relationship, cultivating a positive rapport with your team members is critical to making things copacetic in the workplace—even if that workplace is dispersed, as remote work is apt to do. Therefore, it is in your best interest to keep the lines of communication between you and your team members wide open, both in terms of the group and as individuals.

Not only should you ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for your team members to speak with you, you should encourage them to do so about a variety of topics, including non-work-related ones. Getting to know them on a more personal level and speaking to them from that perspective will not only give you the information to communicate more effectively, but will help encourage them to be more communicative.

Show Your Appreciation and Respect

Working for anyone, regardless of how nice they are, can be a lot to deal with at times, so make sure that you prioritize showing your employees your honest (and that honest part is key) appreciation for their efforts toward your business. Acknowledging their hard work is one of the simplest things you can do, but it can be the difference between an exhausted employee mentally checking out at 3:45 and an exhausted employee rallying and putting in their best effort to finish out the day strong.

On a related note, it is just as important to show your team members enough respect to hear their opinions and input, even if you disagree or there are reasons that their input wouldn’t work effectively. In fact, hear them out and acknowledge the valid points they make before sharing how circumstances might make them impractical.

Embrace Any Opportunity to Learn

Continuing this line of thought, you also need to acknowledge that the role of “boss” makes you the authority in the business’ concerns, but not necessarily the authority on all the goings-on in terms of its operations. There are going to be certain aspects where your employees do in fact know more and/or better than you do, and there’s always more information than any one person can keep up with. Acknowledging this is a good first step, and is best followed through actively trying to learn as much as you can.

Allow Autonomy

Finally, it is important that your team members have the freedom to conduct themselves as they see fit as they work to meet the goals you have set for them. Not only will this help them feel more trusted and validated in their input, it can often result in more effective outcomes in their tasks and ultimately for your business.

It’s on you to get the most out of your staff, but we can help you get the technology in place to make that easier. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today to learn more about how we can play several roles to help get your business where you want it to go.

I was meeting with an old colleague the other day. We met over Microsoft Teams to just check in and see how they were doing—no real itinerary, just to check in with a familiar face that I haven’t personally talked to in a few years. They had a little trouble getting into Microsoft Teams, since they were used to Zoom. I patiently smiled and helped them through it, and told them “No worries, it’s always the little differences that complicate things!”

At the time, I said this just to be empathetic. At first, the nerdy computer-geek part of my brain told me that the process to get into a Zoom meeting vs a Teams meeting, from their perspective, is exactly the same. But after the call, I really thought about this small interaction, and you know what? Things have gotten complicated.

Modern Technology is Amazing, But Also Very Chaotic

It’s easy to take advantage of literally anything in our modern world. Take your car, for example. Some of our readers might have a pretty decent idea of how to diagnose some issues with their car, but more likely than not, you probably aren’t going to take apart your engine to replace a camshaft. An even higher number of you will probably just rely on the professionals for just about everything when it comes to your car. And sure, cars have gotten a little more complicated over the years, but the same basic principles haven’t changed much. Still, there’s going to be this layer that you (and the general public) understands, and then a much deeper layer underneath that only a select few understand.

Your computers and your network are the same way. You see and work with one side of it. As a business owner, you might have a little more knowledge when it comes to some of the inner workings—after all, you did have to pay for it. Still, what matters to you is that the outer layer works for you and your staff, and all of the complicated, technical pieces on the inside perform as they are supposed to.

Look at your average desktop, or even your smartphone. Not much has changed in that landscape over the last several years that makes the average user say “Wow, this is so much better than before!” Each subsequent device gets a little better, a little faster, and a little sleeker. Your new phone has a slightly better camera than before, or the stylus it comes with is a little nicer, or the screen is a little bigger. Your new laptop isn’t quite as loud and the battery sure lasts longer, but all in all, any changes just seem arbitrary, right?

I know it seems like I’m saying a lot here, but to get to the point—even as a techy, who eats, breathes, and sleeps IT, I understand where you are coming from.

Everything Under the Hood is Extraordinarily Complicated, And It’s Only Getting More Complex

I’m not talking about computer hardware. I’m not talking about the stuff that you see and touch and use every day. I’m talking about the underlying way that a modern business needs to be set up in order to succeed when it comes to its IT.

It’s complicated.

Ninety percent of this complication is due to cybersecurity. Nothing has rocked our industry (and the business world in general) more than cybersecurity in a long time. Oddly enough, up until very recently, cybersecurity has all but been ignored by most businesses. It’s seen as a luxury—a nice-to-have expense. 

These days, a cybersecurity incident can end up costing a business their reputation, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and can lead to subsequent attacks over and over until the business is forced to throw in the towel. 

10 years ago, the standard practices for defending a business were implementing centralized antivirus, running scans regularly, and having the network logs monitored daily. You could establish decent network policies to make sure people only had access to what they were supposed to see, enforce some strong passwords, and maybe implement a firewall and content filter for added security and productivity.

That’s pretty simple. Today, that’s far less than the bare minimum.

You see, computers haven’t changed much on that top layer that we all interact with, but the inside layer that only a select few understand is wildly different. Unfortunately, a portion of the “select few” who understand technology are using it for illegal and otherwise nefarious purposes. They are taking advantage of businesses and organizations that aren’t properly secured.

Our Role in This Ever-Complicated Technology Landscape

MSPNetworks can serve as your organization’s technical liaison. Our current clients tend to look at us sort of like an internal IT department that just works in a separate office. We’ve truly worked hard to convey this sort of culture over the years. We’re not a service provider who just does XYZ, gets paid, and leaves. We align ourselves with your organization’s goals, and work with you to personalize your IT to make sure it suits your business. On top of that, we handle the complicated inner workings so you can focus on your business.

If you haven’t tried us out yet, we encourage you to give us a call at (516) 403-9001 for a consultation. We’d love to meet, talk shop, and chat about how we can help give you and your business confidence in its technology.

I hope I don’t have to tell you how important your business’ data is to its continued survival, just as I hope I don’t need to explain why this makes this data a priority to protect, regardless of your business’ size. What I do want to explain is the concept of the 3-2-1 Rule and how it pertains to your data backup, and why we would recommend that one for your business’ purposes.

What Makes a Data Backup Such an Important Asset?

In a word: insurance.

Data is, as we’ve well established, a crucial component to your business’ continued operations and survival. Tons of it is generated, collected, stored, and updated each day to support our daily lives. If a business were to lose the data that it had accumulated, it would suddenly find itself in a very bad spot.

This is what makes the idea of a data backup such a good one—in many cases, it is this backup that keeps a business from going under. Of course, this requires that the data backup be properly maintained as well.

To put themselves in the position that offers the most success, we generally recommend that businesses prepare their data backups in accordance with the 3-2-1 Rule.

What is the 3-2-1 Rule of Data Backup?

Simple: keep at least three copies of your data, in two mediums or formats, at least one copy of which kept off site and separate from the others.

Why multiple copies? Multiple copies ensure that—should one of your backups become corrupted or infected or otherwise infiltrated, you have a spare or two to fall back on. While we say three, three should really be considered the bare minimum.

Why multiple formats or mediums? Well, consider what would happen if you made yourself two lunches in case it rained, but packed both into a paper bag. With both in a paper bag, the backup lunch would end up equally soggy as the original lunch. Keeping your backup in a different format or storage medium helps prevent it from being impacted by the same thing that damages the original.

Why the offsite version? Keeping a backup offsite helps to ensure that—even if a disaster were to completely annihilate your business’ physical location—the data you rely on would still be accessible to you by virtue of the data backup. This gives us something else that is important to consider: the concept of an “air gap” in terms of data security.

What is an “Air Gap?”

Let’s go back to our “backup lunch” example, for a moment. While having an extra lunch was a good idea—our example made it clear why—keeping it so close to the original removed its benefits. However, if we were to take the same concept of having a backup lunch and add in an air gap (keeping an extra lunch in the break room at work, or stashing a few bucks to order something out, perhaps), we removed the threat of a single disaster preventing us from eating.

In terms of the data on your network, an air gap is just that—physical distance and separation helping to isolate resources and protect them from many threats.

MSPNetworks is here to help businesses like yours manage all the complexities of their technology so that you have more room to succeed. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today to find out more.

When we say “improve communications” you probably are expecting an article about telephone systems or which video conferencing platform works the best. Normally, you’d be right, but today we decided to briefly go over four ways that you can foster better communications between management and their employees inside of your business.

We know that good, effective communication can be tricky, but if you can set up constructive give-and-take, your business is sure to benefit from it. Let’s take a look at four ways your business can create an environment where communication actually helps your business. 

Create a Collaborative Company Culture

A collaborative company culture is one where people trust others to pick them up when they need help to produce the best products and services possible. It’s true that every business relies on the efforts of their employees. Why then are there often such efforts taken to keep them out of the loop? Sure, the staff doesn't need to know everything in order to do their jobs, but in order to build the relationships necessary to create trust, being transparent about how things are going and the goals you have for the business is a solid practice. 

If everyone that works toward a singular goal understands where the organization stands, they will not only be open to being helpful toward others inside the business, they are more likely to provide feedback that is a key resource to better business processes. 

Listen to Learn

Business is often fast-paced and doesn’t offer a lot of time for reflection. This is why when employees talk, managers have to listen. The truth is that people aren’t adept at listening. Everyone has their own responsibilities and sometimes the thought of taking more on is impossible. For decision makers, it can be difficult to listen to superfluous information that doesn’t have anything to do with getting the job done. 

Well, it’s your job to listen.

If you want to have the kind of business where communication is a major part of what you do, you better listen. Most of those superfluous gripes are not actionable, sure, but if you just don’t listen to what your staff is saying and go about dictating what needs to be done without taking any of their suggestions or comments or complaints seriously, you are going to be in for a tough time. You can’t make everyone happy, but what you can do is listen to the people you depend on if only to ascertain their perspective. 

Don’t Rely on Meetings

If you are going to make an announcement to the staff, a staff meeting is the best way to do so. You can gather everyone there either in the conference room or via video conference and make announcements. If you are looking to enhance communications, however, meetings are some of the worst settings for communication between people. Firstly, people never say what they are thinking as to not rock the boat or cause arguments, so they are much more conservative in a meeting setting.

If you want more effective communications, choose settings that will keep people from putting their defenses up. That means smaller meetings or one-on-ones. You’ll get more out of many smaller chats than you ever will out of a large-scale meeting. Managers should always encourage feedback and accept it with grace, and check in on those they manage from time to time. Your managers should also expect to be checked in on by those above them too.

Solid communications can boost productivity and the morale of your entire organization. What do you think? Do you have any other tips that can help knock down barriers and create a better flow of information within your business? Leave your comments below and reach out to us at (516) 403-9001 to talk with us about finding the technology to improve your business’ communications.

Cybersecurity is critically important to businesses of all sizes, which means that all businesses need to put forth a concerted effort to ensure their security is locked down. This, in turn, will require someone to take point on developing a cybersecurity-focused internal culture.

Who better to do this than the boss?

Here’s the deal: it doesn’t matter how advanced your cybersecurity solutions are, or how recently your team updated their passwords. No amount of cybersecurity safeguards will protect you if your team members aren’t behaving in a security-conscious way.

The Importance of a Cybersecurity-Centric Company Culture

Have you ever heard of social proof? While it is more often a term associated with marketing, describing how people can be convinced by testimonials from their peers and contemporaries, it can play a significant role in shaping your workplace environment… although this can be a double-edged sword.

Basically, the culture around your cybersecurity will reinforce itself over time.

Let’s say that John Doe gets a job with a company, and is busy getting set up with network access and permissions to everything he will need to do his job. With a poor cybersecurity culture in place, his coworkers may suggest he just repeat his username as his password, or take some similar shortcut. If the whole department insists that this practice is okay and accepted, it’s likely that John will do just that. What’s more, old Johnny boy will likely amplify this message to Jane, the next person hired, and so on and so forth.

However, if we take this same scenario and change just one detail—the message that the team shares with their new coworker—the outcome could be much, much different. If company policies outline the expectation that passwords will meet a set of best practices and the employees emphasize this in their day-to-day, it is far more likely that they will be upheld.

The Boss is the One Who Sets the Tone in the Business

So, apart from turning your employee handbook into a glorified cybersecurity dream journal, what can you do to infuse security awareness into your day-to-day? There are a few things, actually:

• In addition to implementing password policies, you can enforce them by only permitting passwords that meet these policies to be accepted.
• In addition to establishing access controls, you need to audit your protections at regular intervals to identify any overlooked weak points, civilly calling attention to these shortfalls as you encounter them.
• In addition to adding security training into your onboarding processes, you should periodically have your employees go through a refresher training course on occasion.

As the business’ leader, it is on the boss to take the lead in all things. Security is not where you want to make an exception. MSPNetworks is here to facilitate your improvements to your cybersecurity. Reach out to us today by calling (516) 403-9001 and find out the many ways that we can assist you in improving your business—whether it's regarding your security, your processes, or any other IT considerations.

It isn’t often that you’ll hear a managed service provider say something like, “There’s no school like the old school.” In many ways, however, the basic principles of a solid business IT strategy haven’t changed all that much… despite the momentous changes that we’ve witnessed in terms of the technology we use. Let’s consider some of these principles, and how they’ve changed over time (if at all).

Securing Your Hardware Solutions

Restricting access to your business’ essential hardware solutions is certainly not a new idea. Even when on-site network and storage infrastructures were the way of doing things, these elements were restricted to employees who needed to work with the equipment—and had the key needed to get in.

Of course, these hardware solutions can be expensive to procure, run, and maintain, particularly for a small business. So, rather than investing the time, space, and energy into supporting these processes, businesses have instead shifted to procuring cloud services. This gives the subscribing organization access to the computing resources required for their needs, while freeing them of the associated responsibilities.

This also helps secure the business’ hardware, as the important stuff is tucked away in a provider’s data center. Since it is stored there, it is under their care and protection… certainly an effective means of restricting access.

The Purpose of IT

Let’s make something clear: information technology was never to be—and should never be—seen as a luxury investment for a business to make, or to simply be procured for the sake of having it. Rather, every new solution brought into your business needs to have an operational benefit.

Therefore, a business should not look to its IT resource to constantly be adding to its solution set, but it should also anticipate that the IT resource will do more than just keep their operations going. Instead, there needs to be a concerted effort by IT to establish how a new technology or approach to the business’ processes would provide some observable, positive results. In this regard, any IT resource that an organization leans on should be considered a consultant: an expert voice providing beneficial feedback and input—not just the reason that the computers work.

Threat Management

The typical processes for a business’ IT threat management have gone through a few iterations. Initially, a lot of these processes were responsive in nature—if a hacker could potentially get in, throw a few restrictions and password requirements into the mix. As time passed and threats developed further, this restrictive approach was amplified.

More recently, this has seen a bit of a shift, although keeping a network secure is still a priority. Nowadays, however, the solutions that are being utilized themselves feature greater security features, with more emphasis placed on educating users to better identify threats. After all, the employees a business hires are going to inherently be one of its bigger security liabilities without some understanding of how they make a company vulnerable.

Clearly, while the available technology we have access to has improved, the practices we’ve developed have needed to in kind. MSPNetworks is here to help you implement the technologies and processes that can make your business operate to its highest efficacy. To learn more about the solutions we can help you put into place, and how to leverage them to their full potential, call (516) 403-9001 today.

Let’s be real. For most small businesses during this period, it’s been extremely difficult.  If you were somehow able to sustain operations during this time, you most likely had to make some serious alterations to the way that you normally do things. Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the technologies that you probably already have, and how you can change the way you use them to benefit your business as concerns spike over COVID-19. 

Working With What You’ve Got

When the pandemic first hit, and many states mandated that businesses close or move their operations offsite, not many people had the foresight that the situation would last as long as it has. Of course, the situation was new to almost every living person, but as far as business goes, many organizations chose to close up shop and wait it out. As the days turned into weeks, however, it became evident that if they didn’t do something they could stand to lose it all. For those businesses, and the businesses that went to a remote workforce right off the bat, the transition was filled with issues. How can I pay my bills? How can I get everyone set up with the technology they’ll need to be productive? How can I ensure that my staff is capable of being productive from home? What other choices do I have? 

For most businesses that chose to lay off their workforce at the outset of this thing and suspend operations, they were given a lifeline from the paycheck protection program (PPP) and were able to function at a limited capacity for many weeks. Does this mean they didn’t struggle? No. But with the subsidy, many hired back their best workers and made it through by replacing the productivity they would get from their additional staff with automation. Since payroll is a major expense for any company, in times when you need to keep your finances as liquid as you can, automation helps. 

Many of the automated tools that were added included payroll processing tools, operations management tools, and invoicing tools. These tools are designed to keep businesses from having to deal with actions that usually take up time and money, and are often outsourced. Other parts of the typical business, including employee collaboration, supply chain management, and project management can be improved dramatically through the use of automated tools. 

Security In Uncertain Times

Another part of the business experience that has seen less attention due to all the other things that are going on is cybersecurity. In fact, despite more business being conducted online than ever before, cybersecurity spending is conclusively down. It was actually one of the first places small businesses looked to cut when they realized that they were going to see a drop in revenues.The cybersecurity industry, which as a whole has been growing at about five percent per year for the past eight years is only expecting growth of just over one percent this year. 

If you are relying on a remote workforce, it stands to reason that you would want to provide them with the best chance to succeed. The numbers suggest that many organizations, despite reducing their overall cybersecurity outlay, are holding fast to their endpoint and intrusion protection spending. This means that with the uncertainty of when--or if--the world will return to normal, businesses acknowledge that by securing their network endpoints, their organizational risk goes way down. 

We should mention that no automation is going to stop cybercriminals. While newfangled IT solutions use AI to better identify and eliminate threats, most of the threats that will be a problem for your business in the foreseeable future will be from phishing scams. If your workforce works remotely, this risk is exacerbated by the fact that most people work from their personal devices and not from company owned hardware when they are out of the office. You will want to keep your phishing identification training strategies going and keep them frequent. The last thing that you want is for a remote employee to trigger a major malware attack on your company’s network because you didn’t properly train them. 

The future of business is one that is done over the computer. That much is clear now. If you need help with your business’ technology, you want to talk about what strategies are best, or if you just want to make sure you are doing the right things, call our knowledgeable team of IT technicians today at (516) 403-9001.

While all a business’ technology solutions are important, some are bound to take priority over the others, especially when certain ones become an industry-wide focus. A recent survey evaluated the top concerns of small-to-medium-sized businesses for the coming year. The results of the survey identified a few telling trends regarding the priorities that SMBs hold now, and for good reason.

Techaisle, a market research and industry analysis organization, collected and consolidated data to identify where SMBs and small businesses specifically saw their biggest business issues and their technology challenges and priorities. Let’s bear down specifically on the answers provided by the small businesses to see if your internal priorities and concerns match up to theirs.

Issues

According to the survey, a small business’ largest concerns are all what one would generally expect of any business. Here they are as the survey identified them:

1. Attracting and retaining new customers
2. Increasing profitability
3. Increasing business growth

These were the highest priorities for the survey’s respondents. The areas of least concern, as the survey identified, were: 

1. Improving workplace productivity
2. Improving effectiveness of sales and marketing
3. Focusing on new markets

Oddly enough, these areas of lower concern could directly benefit the efforts of their top concerns if perhaps prioritized more… but I digress.

Priorities and Challenges

Speaking of the priorities that the surveyed small businesses presented, the trends therein were exceptionally clear. Nearly as clear, is how directly these priorities line up with the IT challenges that these businesses face.

Here are the top four priorities and challenges, respectively:

1. Cloud / Cloud security
2. Mobility solutions / Customer experience
3. Collaboration / Maintaining current IT infrastructure
4. Managed services / Budget constraints

What this tells us is that businesses largely have the right idea of how they can use information technology to help address their biggest concerns. By adopting relatively new approaches to IT services and their delivery of them, like cloud solutions and managed services, businesses can better increase their profitability and scale upwards through bringing in more people to sign on.

The IT challenges that the surveyed businesses specified are also well-managed by implementing precisely what they have prioritized. It makes sense that, with cloud ranking as their number-one priority, cloud security is correspondingly elevated. Similarly, with customer service standards to uphold, the ability to collaborate with the rest of the team needs to be a priority.

Finally, the budgetary limitations and the maintenance requirements play even more deeply into the adoption of managed IT services, which help relieve both concerns for businesses.

There’s a lot more that a managed service provider can deliver to a business, and we’d be happy to discuss it with you further. If you have any more questions or want to learn more about managed services and what they entail, give the professionals at MSPNetworks a call. Reach out to us today at (516) 403-9001.

Businesses around the world now find themselves in a situation unlike what most have ever seen. With so many trying to keep their distance from one another, many workplaces have deemed it necessary to close down for the time being or to operate remotely in order to reduce the risk they present to their clients and customers… but it isn’t as though these clients and customers are going to expect radio silence from these businesses.

As a result of this, maintaining a presence on social media has perhaps never been more important for businesses to prioritize. Let’s go over why this is, and how you can best use social media to your advantage during any kind of crisis.

How Can Social Media Assist My Business in Times of Crisis?

There are a few ways that social media has benefited businesses—as well as society as a whole—during the COVID-19 crisis that we are all facing. For one, it is a highly effective means to get a message out to the people who are meant to hear it, while completely abiding by the recommended social distancing guidelines that so many people are strictly subscribing to. In the same vein, social media has also proven to be exceptionally effective as an educational tool (for better and for worse) for governments, businesses, and other organizations to use to educate their clientele.

Ideally, this would all be old news to you, and you would be one of the businesses that are currently using social media as the tool it has the potential to be. However, many other businesses have yet to fully embrace the capabilities of social media in a time like this, while others are still resistant to adopting it in the first place or have refused outright. Those businesses are missing out on a significant opportunity to reach out to the people they need to communicate with.

Therefore, if you are in one of the latter categories of business social media use you need to make some significant adjustments to your stance on social media now - before it is too late.

Ways to Use Social Media During a Crisis

Let’s consider how a social media presence can prove useful to a business when a serious issue of any kind is at hand.

Communication

While we don’t wish to be flippant, this one should be tremendously obvious. If people aren’t coming to you or calling you for updates, broadcasting them is the only way that you can reach out. Social media platforms are the perfect place to do that, as they allow you to keep anyone looking at your business page up to speed on how your business is coping. You can share news that explains any changes to your business hours and other pertinent topics in one of the first places many people today look for such things.

Take, for example, restaurants - not technically designated as an essential business - have managed to continue their operations relatively by subscribing to certain practices, like accepting orders for takeout or delivery exclusively, or operating for fewer hours. Other businesses have shifted to largely remote operations. Social media is a great way to inform clients and customers of these measures, ensuring that they know of everything that is going on.

Value and Insights

While it may seem a little silly, especially considering the gravity of the present situation, just keeping a dialogue open on social media can prove to be extremely useful for a business to keep the attention of those that follow them. This can be as simple as, again, simply keeping their clientele aware of how the business is working in response to the situation at hand or doing what they can to provide other kinds of value. While the way this value takes shape is very reliant on what this business offers, there are plenty of ways it can be expressed.

For example, a cleaning company might share useful tips and best practices to staying hygienic and healthy, while a daycare center could offer some fun games and activities for families as they social distance. Any business could simply share some engaging content of what their employees are doing during this time.

In short, social media is just another technology that businesses can and should use to their advantage. MSPNetworks can provide other tools that help your business operate, even remotely, to help you sustain it. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to discuss your options.

If you’re trying to minimize your operating costs to improve your budget, it is important to keep in mind that sacrifice isn’t your only option. Instead, you also have the option of streamlining and minimizing some of your larger expenses by enlisting a managed services provider and the more sustainable business model we adhere to.

What follows are a few ways that support costs can inflate, and how recruiting an MSP can provide superior services at a reduced cost.

How Support Costs Inflate

There are various reasons that acquiring support for your technology can quickly become an expensive investment:

• Your technology may be inherently expensive to repair, or if need be, to replace.
• Repair fees factor in additional fees and travel costs, on top of the charge for the actual service.
• Repair services tend to only focus on solving the immediate problem, with no consideration for the future. This leaves the possibility of the issue recurring, or even for the fix to create more problems in the future—either of which would often require another billable visit from the provider.
• The responsibility ultimately falls to you to call in a technician to fix any issues that do pop up and schedule a time for them to come in, potentially leading to significant downtime and the lost revenue that comes with it. This lost revenue can be considered an additional cost and therefore adds to the total bill you’re stuck with.
• These expenses are effectively impossible to accurately plan for, considering how variable each support bill will be. As a result, it is very easy to over-budget or under-budget for your annual IT support needs.

This is all the case if you were to rely on the more “traditional” method of obtaining technical support, rather than subscribing to an MSP’s services. Let’s go over how the MSP is far-and-away going to provide better value for your investment:

How an MSP Prevents Cost Inflation

There are various ways that the MSP eliminates the challenges that the traditional provider’s services present.

• In addition to remaining up-to-speed on best practices regarding repair and remediation, an MSP will have formed business relationships with a variety of vendors who offer them better prices for the technology you need.
• Rather than requiring a member of their staff to travel to your location, your MSP will utilize remote access tools to diagnose and mitigate everything that doesn’t require hands-on intervention, resolving issues more quickly. Any additional travel time and associated costs included in the agreement are also covered by the monthly fee.
• When needed, the MSP goes beyond fixing the symptoms of a problem. Instead, they’ll use their access and monitoring tools to identify the source of the issue and resolve that, helping reduce the likelihood of further action being needed.
• Using their toolkit, an MSP is also capable of monitoring your network and systems for errors, inconsistencies, and other signs of a problem… even identifying potential, not-yet-realized issues. As a result, they can proactively prevent obstacles from interrupting your workflows.
• As an MSP operates similarly to a subscription service, budgeting becomes particularly simple as your financial commitment is made much more predictable. This also makes it simple to adjust your agreement to meet your needs, as your fee is simply adjusted to match whatever your business requires.

To learn more about what a managed service provider can do to benefit your business and its operations, reach out to MSPNetworks! Give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

For the small business, being more efficient with resources can make a massive difference. In fact, it can be the difference between organizational sustainability and organizational failure. The bottom line is that, no matter how big or small they are, today’s businesses need to be smarter to compete. As a result, some businesses have begun to utilize data management platforms (DMP) in order to put themselves in a better position to understand their business, their market, and their customers. Let’s take a look at the DMP, and how it works to help businesses like yours be more effective.

Data Management
The first thing you have to understand about data management is that your business creates and receives a lot of data that it can use. The first problem that you’ll see when attempting to set up comprehensive data management is that your data is likely strewn about around your network. There is data on your old servers, on your new servers, in the cloud, and on disks that all could be used to provide you the best look at your business.

To manage this properly, you’ll first want to identify your storage needs. If you can centralize your storage simply, without incurring too much additional cost, you’ll want to try to do that. If you are worried that you will struggle to find the right data storage solutions, or you need help ascertaining where all your data is, you may want to contact an IT professional like MSPNetworks to help you ascertain your options. Either way, once your data is in one place, this more inclusive data management system will allow you to do a lot more.

Data Warehouse
In order to take advantage of a dynamic new business intelligence (BI) platform, or if you are looking to do some high-end business analysis (BA), you will want to consider setting up a data warehouse. The data warehouse is a centralized database that is used by business intelligence software and data analytics software to gain access to all types of departmental data. By warehousing your data, you can then utilize all types of innovative software to crawl the standing data. This is where BI and BA come in.

What is BI and BA?
It is important that you understand that these two terms are not synonymous. In fact, there is a pretty big difference between the two. Business analysis, or BA, is the act and practices a company goes through to to define why the strategies and processes that have been utilized by the company are performing the way they are. If adjustments are required, the business analyst will identify inefficiencies or ineffectiveness and use the data to help predict an outcome and suggest solutions to help an organization optimize that outcome.

Business Intelligence, while also using your organization’s data, looks into what your company is doing and how it is doing it, rather than why the results are the way they are. BI is the act of choosing certain metrics to mine for, and then using all the available data to ascertain how they go about getting the results they do. In this way BI, is a practice that provides answers using data from past and current business performance, rather than potential performance found with a BA approach.

Backup
No matter how you want to forge your organization’s data management plan, we recommend that you have a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy in place. We offer the BDR service, which incrementally backs up files with periodic changes in two places (locally and in the cloud) so that, in the case of a major data loss disaster, you have fast, reliable access to your data.

If you haven’t started utilizing your company’s data to learn more about your business, consider reaching out to one of MSPNetworks’s professional IT consultants. We can provide you with a more detailed description of data management tools, backup, and recovery; and, how they can work to help you build a better business. Call us today at (516) 403-9001.