Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Optimal IT

Tip of the Week: Simple Steps to Optimal IT

Running a business can be a fulfilling and rewarding endeavor, but on the same token, the technology that is needed for it to run can quickly become a stressful obstacle to struggle with.

Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take that allow you to minimize these moments and prevent them from occurring. We’ll review a few basics for this week’s tip!

Prepare to Lose Power

The thing about business technology is that it needs power to run, so losing power suddenly can be a big problem for a few different reasons. First and foremost, data loss – if you ever experience a power outage in your business, here’s hoping that everyone working was saving their progress somewhat frequently. Otherwise, any progress on whatever tasks they were working on is probably gone.

Losing power (or alternatively, having it surge) suddenly can also be damaging to your infrastructure itself, shortening the lifespan of your components. In order to protect your investments and your business’ continuity, you need to ensure that you have safeguards in place against these kinds of factors.

Surge protectors should isolate all workstations from their power sources, and really crucial components (like servers and pieces of your network infrastructure) should be shielded from sudden power loss with solutions like uninterruptible power supplies. This gives you the chance to shut them down properly if there is a power outage.

No Man is an Island, and No Business Should Be

The Internet has become an absolutely crucial tool for effectively running a business, which means that many businesses would find themselves stranded if something were to happen to their Internet connection.

Worse still, if their downtime was caused by damage to the line itself, they are stuck waiting for their Internet provider to fix it. Therefore, many businesses have considered adding a second, backup Internet connection.

Assuming that any repairs done by the provider will take a minimum of four to six hours, calculate how much that length of downtime would cost your business and compare that to the cost of maintaining a backup connection. You may find it to be worth it.

Put Boundaries on Your Staff

Your staff should be your most trusted and valued resource, selected for their abilities and work ethic. This doesn’t mean, however, that even the best workers can’t make mistakes. For instance, many will take it upon themselves to seek out a solution that works for their work style and install it. These kinds of programs are referred to as shadow IT.

Shadow IT can easily put your network at risk, as it opens it up to malicious programs and threats – at the very least, it can bog down your network and eat up your memory. Make sure that you communicate that any and all software needs to be approved by the IT department, and remind your team periodically of the proper procedures.

Notice any patterns? Each of these tricks relies on proactive measures in order to be effective. That’s the secret to successful IT maintenance – not waiting around for a problem to strike, and preparing for it beforehand.

WheelHouse IT is here to help you make these preparations, augmenting your business operations in the process. Call (877) 771-2384 to learn more about the solutions we offer.

How to Form Better Business Relationships

How to Form Better Business Relationships

Even the Lone Ranger didn’t do it alone.

Harvey MacKay

In business, there’s a good argument to be made that the most important capital is your social capital. In other words, your relationships with those around you hold quite a bit of value.

Below, we’ll review some ways to form positive relationships with those that you have connected with as a result of your business operations.

Clients and Customers

Where would your business be without these people? These are naturally some of the most important people to develop a relationship with, as they are ultimately the ones who decide whether your doors will remain open, or close forever. Therefore, you need to be sure that each of your clients is treated as more than just a faceless number in a group of potential paychecks, they need to see a more personal approach.

It doesn’t take much to accomplish this, either. With a bit of background information on the client – if they have kids, their favorite sports team, or another factoid – you can incorporate a more personal touch into a professional interaction.

You also should be sure to remain open and informative for your clients. It isn’t enough to just tell them how much of an expert you are, you need to act like one and provide them with some actionable value. By openly sharing your expertise, your clients will see that they can trust you and can come to you for assistance.

Finally, it is crucial that you also speak to them candidly, and with your own voice. Beating around the bush will frustrate more people than it impresses, and trying to sound like something you aren’t won’t have much better results. Be yourself – it is still a business relationship, after all, which makes authenticity the most valuable impression to make.

Vendors

Your vendors are another crucial component of your business – after all, you need to get the solutions you offer and key components of your services from somewhere. This is what makes it so important to develop some kind of relationship with these contacts that is based in trust and communication.

A good way to do this is to take the first steps and put yourself in your vendors’ shoes and ask yourself what you would look for in a client, and emulate those behaviors. By proactively planning ahead, keeping your lines of communication open, and settling your bill on time, you can prove yourself to be the kind of invested and engaged client that your vendors will want to continue doing business with.

In essence, the real key to developing a positive business relationship with your vendors is to remember that they are trying to run a business, too. Making it easier for them to operate will likely lead to them returning the favor as they deal with you.

Employees

Finally, we come to one of the most important relationships there is in the business world: that between an employer and their employee. You need to ensure that there is a sense among your entire team that you can be approached if there is ever an issue or concern.

Accomplishing this is just a matter of frequently initiating meetings with your team, both in a group setting and on a one-on-one basis. Don’t be afraid to incorporate the occasional company outing as a part of the workday, either – some time spent casually as a team can have the effect of increasing trust in one another, ultimately allowing everyone to work more cohesively as a unit.

Your business is largely driven by its relationships, so don’t let them go neglected. How have you cultivated professional relationships before? Share your experience in the comments!

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.

Economic Security for Businesses

Economic Security for Businesses

As with all other branches of computer technology, the branch of “security” is broad and can be sophisticated depending on how and what security methods are implemented — it doesn’t have to be costly or even sophisticated. A couple of common scenarios are discussed herein.

If a business owner or manager needs security software installed on a network of computers which aims to mitigate the threat of common types of malicious software, that doesn’t necessarily mean monetary resources must be tapped to buy the software.

There are many different types of software that can be downloaded for free from the internet which include free security software suites. The only potential drawback to using free software is the loss of time which it takes to obtain support for using the software — free software is generally harder to obtain support for.

Paid software generally comes with better support from the manufacturer. In summary, the tradeoff between convenience and loss of time must be weighed when deciding whether to use free or paid software.

Another common facet of computer security that should be considered is physical security — how to prevent criminals from getting physical access to a business’ computing devices.

While this side of security can be complex, it doesn’t have to be expensive and can even be managed simply by a business owner or manager.

Installing locks on the right doors allowing employees access to devices and resources only to the extent that allows them to get their jobs done, installing basic security cameras, and locking desks are some fundamental components of physical security that can be accomplished without much use of financial resources.

While for the most part, installing these types of systems are relatively simple, some businesses can require more sophisticated security systems to be installed in which trained professionals may be better-suited for installing and configuring.

For security needs, please contact us for help in making economic choices.

How to Use Google Calendar for Business

How to Use Google Calendar for Business

Google Calendar is a great free tool to keep up with both your work and personal responsibilities. It’s easy to use and can be synced across all your devices. Here are a few tips for being more efficient with Google Calendar.

Change Your Timezone

If you are working remotely with a company in another time zone, you can easily change the time zone in the settings. This way, you can easily stay on track of events and deadlines in other countries. You can add multiple time zones if needed. Alternatively, you can click on the Show World Clock option to display different time zones on your calendar.

Get Notifications

In the event notifications settings, you can choose which notifications to get about events, canceled events, event changes, and so on. Never miss an important meeting again.

Create an Event Quickly

You can add an event to Google Calendar without even opening it. Just search “add event” or “make an appointment” in your browser bar or on Google.com, and type in the day and time. Google will automatically give you the option of adding an event to your calendar. You can also use Google Assistant on your smartphone for this by using Google Voice commands.

Browse Interesting Calendars

In the Add Calendar option in your settings, you can click on Browse Calendars of Interest in order to add new event reminders to your calendar. You can choose calendars of different religions to be reminded of religious holidays. There are also all sorts of sports calendars if you are a fan of specific sports. You can show phases of the moon as well. Of course, you can simply add a co-worker’s or employer’s calendar as well to stay in touch with work responsibilities.

For more IT help and computer tips, contact us today.