Hurricane Season is Half Over – Be Prepared for Next Year’s

Hurricane Season is Half Over - Be Prepared for Next Year’s

We have almost made it through this year’s hurricane season, but unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that businesses will suddenly be safe again.

Many businesses that are impacted by these kinds of disasters are unprepared, and so when push comes to shove, some ultimately close their doors after trying (and failing) to bounce back. We’re going to tell you how to help avoid this outcome for your business the next time there’s a disaster.

Don’t Go in Blind

First, as is the case with any kind of disaster, you need to have a business continuity plan prepared that addresses what you need to do in response.

While weather is an important part of that, many businesses that don’t have to deal with things like hurricanes forget that there are many other factors that can come into play. A full 30 percent of all downtime is caused by any of numerous environmental factors – including flooding, yes, but also extreme temperature, humidity, and others.

You need to be sure that you know what your risk factors are, and that you have the systems in place to see them coming. While you may not want to make the investment into a monitoring system, its cost is minuscule compared to what an unforeseen disaster can incur.

Downtime costs alone have jumped up by 38 percent in the last eight years, making any investment to avoid the ill effects of a disaster well worth it. Hurricanes have become larger and, in some areas, even the run-of-the-mill rainstorm can drop over 70 percent more water than they have in the past. As a result, you need to know what makes your business vulnerable.

Plan for The Worst…

Once you know the risks, you need to identify what would constitute your business’ worst-case scenario and prepare yourself to deal with that. Naturally, an off-site data backup is going to be a key part of this. Make sure that your business’ data is backed up in multiple locations, away from your actual workspace. This keeps your data that much safer, as it reduces the likelihood of a single disaster wiping out both your business’ stored data and the backup you’ve kept.

You will also need to ensure that your business has a communications plan to ensure that you can confirm the safety of your employees throughout the hurricane, as well as to keep your clients informed of your status. You may also want to consider, depending on your risk factor, keeping a supply of provisions in the office in case you and your team find yourselves stuck there by conditions outside.

It isn’t uncommon that a disaster should make the complete shutdown of a business the best available option. Make sure your plan addresses both how to initiate such a shutdown, and how to start your business back up once the threat has passed.

…And Negate It

Once your plan is prepared, you should do all that you can to make it so that a disaster will only have limited influence on your business operations. For instance, enabling your employees to work remotely will allow them to resume productivity once they and their families have reached a safe place. You should also make sure your location has the necessary equipment to help mitigate the damage that a hurricane, tropical storm, or whatever disaster pertains to your location, can cause. An example would be maintaining water pumps to help minimize flooding.

Finally, you need to make sure that you and your staff not only know your plan but are prepared to enact it. Just like schools run fire drills, you should have your staff practice what they need to do in the midst of a hurricane or some other disaster.

WheelHouse IT can help. Our experience with backup and disaster recovery solutions allows us to handle that aspect of your business continuity planning, leaving you free to focus on the rest.

Call us at (877) 771-2384 to find out more.

Can You Identify Productivity Issues?

Can You Identify Productivity Issues?

High degrees of productivity can be difficult to achieve for a lot of organizations, and this is primarily due to everyone’s least favorite part of the workplace: rampant distractions.

Your business’ productivity can suffer from even the most unlikely reasons. We’ll help you address them so you can minimize distractions in the workplace.

Environmental Issues

The first productivity issue in your workplace could potentially be the office itself. Even something as simple as the type of lighting (and its quantity) can affect productivity, for better or worse.

If your office is dark or dim, it can create sensations of sluggishness in your employees, convincing them that maybe it’s okay to not give it their all and relax a little bit. In particular, the influence of Daylight Savings Time can have a major impact on your workers, as it has been shown to affect workers for up to three weeks.

Adjusting the lighting of your office can remediate this issue considerably. Light is measured in Kelvin temperature (K), and if you adjust your office’s light accordingly, you can create the desired effect in your workers.

For example, a warm glow of a fire would be measured at 2,000K, and an overcast winter’s day would be about 7,000K. Of course, neither of these make for a particularly productive day, so you can aim for somewhere in the 5,000K to 5,500K mark–about the level of a lovely sunny day.

Other senses can also play a major role in your employees’ productivity. Take, for example, sound. Everyone is going to perceive their ideal working conditions differently. If an employee needs silence to work as hard as they can, they will be vulnerable to countless distractions that the workplace inevitably creates.

Taking these employees into account, it can’t hurt to consider creating a quiet area for your workers to use when they really need to hunker down and get work done with minimal distraction. As for the other workers, you can give them the opportunity to work with their preferred noise level by giving them some noise-canceling headphones.

Burnout

No one can work at 100% productivity for as long as your business would like them to. People aren’t machines–they can’t work as hard as possible for long periods of time without bringing user error and frustration into the mix.

To keep this kind of burnout from ruling the roost in your workplace, it’s important to foster engagement for your employees. If you can promote a positive environment, including wellness and personal well-being, you might be surprised by how much you can improve your employees’ motivation and willingness to work harder.

It’s also critical to keep in mind that your employees don’t live so they can work for you. The truth of the matter is that even the best, most loyal employees are working for you so they can live. Therefore, you should avoid encroaching on their personal time as often as possible.

If you have no choice but to ask them to come in on their days off, consider compensating them generously for their additional work. You can also make their lives easier when they are in the office by implementing automation solutions for the more menial tasks. This allows your workers to focus instead on tasks that have more substance to them.

Managerial Shortcomings

You should also consider the possibility that your business is losing productivity due to managerial shortcomings from your higher-ups. If you look at your business’ management style with an external perspective, what would you see?

Would it be a place that trains employees properly? Do you provide helpful feedback and have realistic work expectations? If you fail any aspect of this, there’s a very real chance that your employees aren’t the ones at fault here–you are.

Thankfully, this is easy enough to fix. All it takes is a bit of solid communication with your employees. Make sure that they are always welcome to discuss any potential issues they might have with your management style.

This can also help you make sure that you’re providing enough guidance for particular tasks. It’s important to remember that you might be the leader, but you’re all on the same team–be sure they know this.

Poor Technology Practices

One of the easiest ways to make sure your employees get the least amount of work done is to give them technology solutions that simply don’t work for them.

After all, employees are only as effective as the tools they use. If you want your employees to be as productive as possible, you need to make sure they have the equipment needed to do their jobs.

WheelHouse IT can help your business get the most out of its technology, and by extension, your employees. To learn more, reach out to us at (877) 771-2384.

Co-Managed IT Can Get Difficult Projects Off the Ground

Co-Managed IT Can Get Difficult Projects Off the Ground

Your company is successful and growing so fast that it is outpacing your current IT. You need to upgrade your systems, but your IT staff is constantly busy, making it extremely difficult to successfully plan, implement, and support new IT initiatives.

When your organization is short on technology expertise and resources, outsourcing some part of your organization’s new technology initiatives can work to move your company forward.

Managed IT

Driving nearly every business decision is money. Since on staff IT professionals are extremely costly, when an organization cuts their IT expenditures, they can save money. The problem becomes that they won’t always have the IT expertise needed to manage all the organization’s technology, let alone deploy and support any new technology that the organization would need to implement.

One way that organizations are getting the IT help they need is by outsourcing their management to a managed IT services provider (MSP). The MSP provides a lot of services at a fraction of the cost of that of an internal IT department. Not only will an MSP monitor and manage your computing network and infrastructure, they will also promote the use of industry best practices that can reduce many of the technology issues your organization could potentially deal with. In this way, the MSP provides extraordinary value.

Co-Managed IT

For the organization that looks at their IT staff as essential personnel, you’d think that hiring an MSP would just be a redundant cost. After all, an internal IT staff costs your organization a lot of capital as it is; but, you couldn’t ask for people who are more dedicated to your company’s IT. The problem is that many smaller businesses that choose to staff an IT administrator have problems deploying new IT solutions or completing higher-end projects.

With WheelHouse IT’s co-managed IT services, our technicians serve as a subsidy to get that IT initiative that you really wanted to accomplish off the ground; or, we can handle all of your network and infrastructure management to ensure that your IT staff can have the situation they need to accomplish your organization’s goals.

Call us today for more information at (877) 771-2384.

Tip of the Week: 5 Foundational Pieces to Computing Securely

Tip of the Week: 5 Foundational Pieces to Computing Securely

Every so often, it can be good to get back to basics for a bit of review. That’s why we’re going over five ways that you can improve your security through basic best practices for this week’s tip!

1. Keep Your Computer Protected, Inside…

Your device, whether it’s a workstation or something more mobile, relies on software in order to function. Malware and other threats will seek out vulnerabilities in this software.

To ensure the security of your system and files, you need to make sure that you are proactive in applying software patches and installing antivirus, anti-malware, and firewalls to your device. Utilizing encryption tools will also assist you in keeping your private data as it should be… private.

2. …And Out

Of course, many people tend to focus on threats that are delivered digitally, but some cyber criminals do things the old-fashioned way. You should never leave your computer unattended and unlocked, especially if you’re working remotely and are out of the office environment.

Who’s to say that someone wouldn’t snatch your work laptop in your favorite coffee shop as you walked to the counter to pick up your freshly-made beverage? Even if they don’t try and access your data, that’s still a computer gone… good luck explaining that one.

3. Be Smart

Other attackers will try to fool you, and convince you that they’re someone else to gain your trust before exploiting it to their own ends. Phishing, where an attacker will send an email doing just that, has been the driving force behind many of the more successful recent cyber attacks.

Including a malware-riddled attachment to deliver the payload, the attacker will leverage their victim’s misplaced trust to their advantage. A similar tactic is often used with free, online downloads. Remember, few things in life are truly free, and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

4.  Keep A Backup

Stuff happens. Whether you get bamboozled by a phishing scam or one of your employees leaves their laptop open at that coffee shop, there’s a chance that you’ll have to start fresh and wipe your network and/or device to get an unwelcome entity out.

However, without any of your data surviving the wipe, you’re almost in a worse position than before…  unless you maintained a backup solution in keeping with best practices. Your data should frequently and automatically be saved to a remote location, safe from cyber attack and the odd act of nature, to hopefully go unused.

5. Stay In The Know

Cyber security is far from a static, unchanging thing. New threats are constantly in development and familiar ones are always being improved upon.

Therefore, you need to stay apprised and up-to-date not only in your solutions, but also in your knowledge of the state of cyber security. Otherwise, you’re apt to be blindsided by some unforeseen issue. Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to managing your information technology.

We’re here to help. Keep checking back to our blog for more assistance with your IT, including security concerns, best practices, and other useful tips. For more help, reach out to us directly by calling (877) 771-2384.

How Your Cash Flow and IT Are Linked

Modern IT

In order to remain open for any considerable amount of time, a business needs to have an inbound cash flow. This can be accomplished with the help of some clever IT solutions. We’ll discuss how, but first we have to get a deeper understanding of what makes a good cash flow.

Examining Cash Flow

There are three parts to any successful cash flow:

● New money is coming into the business
● Money is coming in faster
● Less money is going out than is coming back in

Simple, right?

Putting Theory into Practice with Technology


Well, as easy as it is in theory, implementing these parts can be a challenge without the right tools. Fortunately, there are plenty of solutions that can help you to encourage all three with the help of information technology.

Let’s break down the three parts again and define what they mean in terms of technology and IT solutions.

● New money is coming into the business
● Money is coming in faster
● Less money is going out than is coming back in

This can be rephrased to say:

● More clients are being signed on to services
● Billing is made more efficient and easier
● The business is making more than it is spending

Leveraging IT to Accomplish These Goals

There is an incredible amount of technology in the world today that can benefit a business through multiple avenues, although there are a few specific tools available now that can assist with each of the parts of your business’ cash flow.

New money is coming into the business
More clients are being signed on to services

This is how your cash flow is initially generated, so it is a crucial part of the process. In order to make money, you need to find people who are willing to pay you to provide them with some good or service – and perhaps more importantly, keep them and the rest of the people important to your business organized.

A customer relationship management system can help you do so. These programs are designed to fulfill that very need for business organization, keeping you from juggling your crucial data and allowing you to make better inferences that inform your actions. A good CRM platform will allow you to track your progress and responsibilities, allowing you to act proactively and optimize your business strategy.

Money is coming in faster
Billing is made more efficient and easier

The vast majority of businesses were formed with one goal in mind: to make money. This is accomplished by selling goods and services. However, these sales need to be tracked in order for payments to come in accurately, yet in a prompt manner. Moreover, customers and clients may need to be reminded that they have a balance to settle. There is no shortage of tools and systems to assist you in this regard.

Whether your CRM also includes a baked-in finance management tool, you use another service, or you even keep an impeccably organized spreadsheet, you need to make sure you know where your funds are coming from and where they are going.

Less money is going out than is coming back in
The business is making more money than it is spending

This is the kicker – the final, crucial piece of profitability: are you actually making a profit?

One of the keys to this is to spend your budget wisely and take advantage of the capabilities that modern technology offers. Which scenario sounds like it would be more expensive, struggling with the same IT issue day in and day out, hiring someone to come in and fix it every time it drives you too crazy (only to have it pop back up later)… or have experienced professionals monitor your IT remotely, identifying and actually resolving issues like those–before you even knew they were there–all for a predictable monthly fee?

Successfully budgeting your business is the cornerstone to making it profitable, and the more predictable costs you incur, the better your budget will work for you.

WheelHouse IT can do all of this for you, and more.

Reach out to us at (877) 771-2384 to learn about our other services, or more about something mentioned above.