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  • The threats out there: Have you considered their impact?

     

    The threats out there: Have you considered their impact?

    Oct 28, 2012–Hurricane Sandy hit New York, America’s largest city. The consequences were disastrous and resulted in a shutdown of a city of 8.6 million people. Places that weren’t supposed to ever close, such as major hospitals, had to be evacuated. It was from the intense flooding of the city that many large corporations and hospitals discovered an unanticipated vulnerability many had never considered: the massive banks of batteries that support uninterruptible power systems and backup generators are located on the lowest floors of buildings at risk of flooding. The flood waters that poured into underground tunnels and subways also poured into the basements of downtown buildings, incapacitating what was a key part of standard disaster recovery plans. Electricity to Manhattan was not fully restored until six days had passed and many emergency power sources were disabled.*

    Think you are not subject to hurricanes? Far from a floodplain? Not near tornado alley? In a tectonically stable area? Don’t rest easy. How about the Great North American Ice storm of 1998.

    “From January 4 through January 10, 1998, a devastating ice storm with high levels of precipitation moved across a broad, high-population area, from eastern Ontario to southwestern Quebec,…(as well as northern New York and parts of New England). According to Statistics Canada, the heavy ice load brought down more than 30,000 wooden utility poles and toppled more than 1,000 transmission towers, of which 130 were major structures. Approximately 90% of the 4.7 million people affected by the region-wide power outages lost electricity for more than a week, some for as long as a month. “ **

    The point here is that no matter where you are located, you will be vulnerable to extreme natural disasters. And even if you never experience a disaster where you are, the interconnectedness of our digital business community and the extensive long distance supply chains make us vulnerable to events half a world away. Think of the supply chains for American manufacturers that were cut as a result of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. As the Harvard Business review noted a few months after the event,

    When a natural disaster hits, relief organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders swing into action with crisis-response plans that have been honed, refined, and improved with experience. Not so manufacturers and their complex webs of suppliers, who in many cases lack that same experience or large-scale backup plans. The result: a chaotic scramble resulting in production delays, product shortages, and higher prices.***

    All of these examples are strong evidence that every organization, small or large, needs to recognize the need for a comprehensive Business Continuity plan. Call centers and contact centers are extremely vulnerable. They rely very heavily on multiple platforms and tools, and are expected to be operational 24/7. They may also be heavily invested in one single geographic location, which can leave them especially vulnerable. Call and contact centers have a profound need for carefully crafted business continuity plans. It is also important to be aware that various regulations and laws may influence your plans and some laws and precedent may imply that responsibility falls to individuals and organizations who fail to take adequate steps to protect their company’s interest against potential threats. So, don’t put off developing your plans. Too much can be lost when something happens. And it will.

    *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_in_New_York

    **http://www.air-worldwide.com/Print-Preview/32004/

    ***https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/japan-disaster-shakes-up-supply-chain-strategies



  • Understand your Cookie to manage it better!

    Understand your Cookie to manage it better!

    There are 3 kinds of cookies, each having different functions. One of them is session cookies. If it weren’t for session cookies, you wouldn’t be able to do any online shopping, banking, social media posting or any other activity that requires you to be logged in/identified. These session cookies are temporary cookies and they disappear once you log out of the website, thereby ending your session. It is the session cookies that enable the website to identify you and your actions and react accordingly. Without them, every click you make on the site, will be treated as a new one, unrelated to the previous action. For example, you logged into your bank account to transfer money to a friend. If you click on “Money Transfer”, without a session cookie, the bank’s website won’t recognize you from your log-in and you just won’t be able to proceed further. You will be stuck in an endless loop of log-ins.

    The second kind of cookies are called persistent cookies.These cookies are stored in the hard drive of your computer. Unlike the session cookies, they are not temporary and don’t disappear until you clear them proactively. Persistent cookies are used by websites to offer you a customized browsing experience. For example, when you visit the website of a company that has a global presence, you may be given the option to choose your preferred language and country, so the site displays relevant information. Unless you clear the cookies from your computer manually, the next time you visit the site, you will automatically be taken to the version of it that you chose last time–probably English, US.

    The third kind of cookies are called third-party cookies and are typically used to retarget customers as a part of online advertising campaigns. You might have noticed that sometimes after you visit online shopping sites, ads related to the items you viewed on the shopping site shows up as you browse other websites too. That is a situation where third party cookies have been deployed.

    While cookies by themselves are harmless, cybercriminals can use them as a medium to attack you virtually. But you just cannot make do without cookies. So, how do you manage cookies effectively to stay safe? Download our whitepaper, The Cookie, monster is coming for you to learn more!

  • Outsourcing? Really. Its OK: How it can save time and money

     
     
    Outsourcing? Really. It’s OK: How it can save time and money
     
    Almost by definition, small business owners and entrepreneurs cringe at the concept of outsourcing. Those who start their own companies like the control and autonomy it provides them. Unfortunately, that preference for control and autonomy may have some bad side effects when it comes to IT.
     
    Small business don’t have the resources to fully support all of their IT infrastructure needs. The present in-house staff is most likely very busy putting out day-to-day fires. One statistic suggests 65% of IT budgets go to nothing more than keeping the lights on. In short, staff is busy making sure the printer works or reloading a PC infected by a virus after an employee fell for a phishing email. This means that small firm’s expenditures on IT are not improving operational, efficiency, or enhancing productivity or competitiveness.
     
    There is an alternative. Managed Service Providers are outside consultants you can bring in to handle the day-to-day tasks, so your own IT resources can be used more productively.
     
    How might an MSP supplement your IT efforts?
    1. 24/7 operations center – Small businesses can benefit from, but simply cannot afford 24/7 internal monitoring of their IT infrastructure. Many of the issues that become costly business disruptions, such as hardware, software, and applications failures are completely preventable if they’re detected and addressed early enough. It is a reality that your systems run 24/7, but you can’t support a 24/7 IT staff. A MSP, however, can use economies of scale to provide around the clock monitoring of your IT operations.
    2. Disaster recovery and business continuity plans – Small businesses have limited resources, so if there were to be a serious business interruption or data loss, they could be completely out of luck. However, risk assessments and continuity plans are likely outside of a small business owners field of expertise. A MSP can be brought in to design a complete solution.
    These are just 2 ways that a small business owner can benefit from passing along IT support to an outside source. In both cases, small business owners don’t lose any control of the key parts of the business operation. Instead, the distractions of IT support are moved along to an expert, while the entrepreneur focuses on what she does best: running her business. We’ll talk in another blog about other benefits of outsourcing IT, but in the meantime,  see our e-guide “Outsourcing Isn’t a Dirty Word: Meet Managed Services, Your IT Team’s New Best Friend – Managed Services”.


  • VISUALIZING THE SLAPPEY PLEDGE: SUPPORT ONE TEAM [VIDEO]


     I WILL SUPPORT ONE TEAM. I will consider how my actions impact my teammates and check my ego at the door. We win and lose as a team, so I will support other’s decisions even when I may disagree. I will step into another role or help a co-worker when that is what is required for success.

    WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:


    “One of the largest, strongest horses in the world is the Belgian draft horse.  Competitions are held to see which horse can pull the most and one Belgian can pull 8,000 pounds. The weird thing is if you put two Belgian horses in the harness who are strangers to each other, together they can pull 20,000 – 24,000 pounds. Two can pull not twice as much as one but three times as much as one. This example represents the power of synergy.  However, if the two horses are raised and trained together they learn to pull and think as one. The trained, and therefore unified, pair can pull 30,000 – 32,000 pounds, almost four times as much as a single horse.” —from EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey


    image credit:  grendelkhan

    We are just like these horses. When we work together as ONE, we can do so much more. In order to do this, we have to actively choose to put aside our egos—put aside the desire to be right or to say “I told you so”—and instead support each other.  We will not always agree with each other, but we can choose to support each other even when we disagree and all live with the results, whether that is failure or victory.

    Consider two scenarios:
    • Someone makes a great decision, but the team bickers and complains and everyone veers off in different directions from each other.
    • Someone makes a poor decision, but the team pulls together and works in unison to accomplish the goal.
    Which scenario do you think will be successful?  Making great decisions is important, of course, but even the best companies make a lot of poor decisions. What we do as a team with the decisions we make and how we support each other makes all the difference in us being successful or not. Please join me in choosing the team, and remember: we win and lose as a team!

  • Three things to consider when investing in new software

    Three things to consider when investing in new software

    When running a business, you will often find yourself in need of new software tools to enhance the productivity, efficiency, effectiveness and even the security of your various business processes. These software programs range across a wide spectrum of tools including accounting, finance, IT, e-commerce, marketing, sales and many more. In this blog post, we discuss the key elements you should consider before investing in software tools for your business.

    1. Whose software is it, anyway? Learn more about the company that owns the software. Find out how long they have been in the business. Are they dealing in similar software programs across different industries, or is this their only product? Get more information about their company size and business model. How do they sell? What kind of after-sales support do they offer in terms of training, troubleshooting and product updates? You need to have answers to all these questions. This is especially important if you are investing a considerable amount of money in the software tool. You don’t want to purchase something that may be outdated or produced by a small operation that goes out of business in a couple of months leaving you with no updates or support. Plus, the most important thing, you need to be able to trust the software vendor with your data.
    2. What’s the market saying? Never make impulse purchases when it comes to business software. Check out online reviews, get to know from peers who have used the product/ similar products and even ask your software vendor for references and testimonials. Third party sites like G2Crowd, Capterra, Software Review, etc, are some good examples of neutral software review sites. Though, some of these do have incentivized review programs, for the most part, they appear to be pretty reliable.
    3. Ask for a free trial: Ask your vendor if they can arrange a free-trial or sandbox version of the product for you team to play with for a while before making the decision. This will help you get familiar with the product and then decide if it is worth signing up for in the long run.
    4. How much will you be actually paying? Understand how much you will end up paying finally for using the software to its fullest potential. There are various kinds of pricing models. You may have to pay per user, per device or you may be offered a tiered pricing where certain features of the product are made available to you only upon subscribing to a higher tier. So, while the starting price of such software programs may be in single or double digits, to actually be able to put it to good use may end up costing you thousands of dollars!
    5. Flexibility: How well does the software fit into your current business process. Remember, you are buying the software to make your existing process more efficient. If your process is already set and working optimally, you shouldn’t have to make any drastic changes to fit the software into it. Instead, it should make your process even smoother without causing any disruption. Secondly, let’s say you find it not to be a good fit for you. How easy will it be for you to get out of it in such an instance? Do you end up paying a penalty for early termination of the contract? This may be especially the case where it is a SaaS agreement.
    Whether you are buying from a value added reseller (VAR) or a software manufacturer directly, these are some of the elements you need to look into before investing in any business software. However, if you are like most business owners, then you’d probably be too busy to look into all these details. That’s where a trusted MSP can help you. They can recommend the right software based on your needs and also do the necessary due diligence for you before you make the purchase.

  • 3 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR BUSINESS TELECOMMUNICATION VENDOR

    If it’s time to invest in an entirely new business telecommunication system, you may be overwhelmed by the sheer number of voice and data vendors in the market these days. It is important that you take the time to ask a few hard questions of each potential vendor until you find the one that works best for you. Here are three big questions that will have a big impact on how much you pay and what you get.

    WHO ARE THEY WORKING FOR?

    First things first, your vendor needs to be your partner. Their role in your business should be to assist you in overcoming all of your voice and data barriers going forward. They should be working on your behalf to find solutions that fit your business instead of trying to convert your business to services it can’t or won’t effectively use. Make sure you choose a vendor who is going to represent your best interests and form a lasting relationship with you as your business expands, adding new technology down the road.

    WHAT OPTIONS DO THEY OFFER?

    Business telecommunication systems are not one-size-fits-all. Ask potential vendors about the types of products and services they offer. Do all of their products come from the same company? Do they have ongoing contracts with multiple carriers so that you can shop for rates and packages from multiple sources? Are they capable of giving you a complete voice and data solution, or will you have to hire multiple vendors to round out your telecom setup? This is also a good time to ask why they have partnered with particular device manufacturers and carriers and if they have any recommendations based on their experience. You will likely consult and quote with multiple vendors before you make a decision, so learning about any common likes and dislikes in the industry can give you a good idea of what to steer away from.

    WHAT IS THEIR SERVICE POLICY?

    Uptime is everything when it comes to telecommunication. You need a vendor who not only claims to have great service, but one who takes their service seriously enough to track and measure it. Ask about their current stock of parts, how they handle service calls, and what you can expect if your system does go down for any reason. Get an idea of which parts fail frequently and what they keep on-hand versus parts that may need to be ordered and shipped overnight for service the next day. If you fail to ask about the service policy and measurements up front, you will almost certainly be frustrated when something goes wrong and you end up in a bind.

    The world of business telecommunications is quickly expanding and new vendors are entering the market each and every day, offering a variety of data and voice solutions. Before you choose a vendor for your business, ask plenty of questions about how they can help you implement a strong telecommunications infrastructure and which options will best fit the needs of your growing business. After you have an idea of the solutions they have to offer and which options come highly recommended by industry experts, learn about service options and what to expect as you continue to work with them long term.

  • 3 WAYS COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY SPURS PROFITABLE GROWTH


    There is plenty to be said about how new phone technology for business can help your employees work more efficiently and improve their productivity. However, it is not always easy to see how your ability to answer phones quickly will directly translate into profitable growth. If you are looking for measurable metrics, consider these three major factors and how they impact your profitability.

    BETTER CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

    Upgrading your phone technology for business is a great way to provide better support to your customers. You can open up chat rooms, social media messaging, text support, and other avenues for interacting with your customers. When they know they can reach you any time of day or night, in whichever way is most convenient for them, they will come to trust that you are there to really serve them.

    Naturally, you need to back this up with a knowledgeable staff empowered to resolve problems effectively. Long term, customers who have a strong relationship will spend more money on each transaction and will be far more likely to return. Plus, customers who have a great experience with your team are increasingly likely to share their story with friends and family or tag your company online in a positive review.

    DATA MANAGEMENT

    Lost and conflicting data contributes to a significant number of customer complaints for companies every year. Data management is a huge burden for companies due to the cost of buying and maintaining servers, hardware, and software. The latest round of advanced phone technology for business minimizes these costs by moving much of this functionality to the cloud. The result is lower operating costs and more reliable storage of data.

    MARKETABILITY

    Every customer interaction is an opportunity for an upsell. The trick is making sure that the customer is satisfied with the way their call was handled in the first place and offering them a service or product that they can really use. With that in mind, your phone technology has already allowed you to build a stronger relationship with the customer and has given you access to more accurate information about their account. You can see what they have and what they’re using, making recommendations based on the data you have. If you can convert a customer service call into a sale, you will immediately see a difference in profits.

    Driving profitability is about more than just one-time sales. Having the right phone systems in place to support your team in serving customers well will pay off for years to come. It all starts with giving your employees the tools necessary to really form strong customer relationships and offering great products that build on those relationships over time. Once you master how to use your new phone system, the profits will follow naturally.

  • Five reasons to invest in a password management system ASAP

    Five reasons to invest in a password management system ASAP

    Password management tools are software programs that put up enough security and safety mechanisms in place to ensure there’s no password breach.

    Your employees can use the program to generate random, high-security passwords as per the industry best practices. They don’t have to worry about remembering them either, because these tools have built-in mechanisms to store the passwords securely and retrieve them automatically when needed.

    All passwords are encrypted and stored privately, so no one, other than the authorized user has access to their passwords.

    It takes care of timely password update reminders and password reset, so you don’t have to worry about them.

    Password management tools make it easy for you to enforce role-based access permissions. For example, a data entry executive may be able to enter data into the sheet only once, and may need authentication from the manager to edit the data, or only someone at the managerial level may be allowed to make edits to the data.

    Some password management tools support multi-factor authentication, thus helping you make this important security feature a part of your data security process.

    Password management tools also offer administrators and managers full view of the log-ins and also generate detailed access reports. You will know which user logged in, at what time, using which device. Some password management tools can send alerts when there’s a log-in from devices, networks or locations that are unusual.

    There are a variety of password management tools available in the market. While their basic function is the same–keeping your passwords secure, password management tools can offer you a lot more in terms of data security. Consult with an MSP who deals with cybersecurity as they can help you pick the password management tool that’s right for your business. But, remember, at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for good password hygiene, so no matter what tool you deploy, you still need to educate and train your employees to follow good cybersecurity practices.

  • Transitioning from average to best-in-class with IT

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    Transitioning from average to best-in-class with IT

    Many small or mid-sized businesses don’t focus much on IT as they should. For a lot of them, the focus is on customers, ensuring they have enough staff to meet their client needs, expanding their business and driving revenue by selling. IT comes into the picture initially when the business is being set up. Once they have their IT infrastructure up and running, it tends to take a backseat. The typical mid-sized or small business owner seems to prefer the firefighting approach to IT–meaning, they reach out to an IT service provider only when they have an IT problem.

    Interestingly, this is the key difference between the average SMB and best-in-class SMBs. The best-in-class SMBs tend to adopt a more proactive approach towards IT. They either have an in-house IT team or sign-up with a Managed Services Provider to take care of their IT needs on a regular basis. In contrast to the average SMB, the best-in-class almost always has a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a reputed MSP.

    Businesses that have service contracts with MSPs have access to the latest technology. The IT industry is constantly evolving and managed service providers are well aware of the changes. They know it first when a new technology is gaining widespread adoption across various industry verticals and can advise their clients accordingly. On the other hand, the in-house IT team may be too busy handling the day-to-day IT requirements to be able to focus on new technology and the various ways in which it can be applied to benefit the business. This specialized focus of MSPs also makes them a great asset to have on board when implementing new technologies or deploying new IT projects within the business.

    Having a dedicated MSP-partner to take care of all IT needs helps businesses give 100% to other areas that help the business grow. With IT issues off their shoulders, management can focus more on clients, brand and market expansion.

  • Has Your Website Been Optimized for Mobile Users?

     
     
    Did you know that this year there will be more mobile web surfers than stationary ones? That means more prospects are accessing your business website more through their smart phones, tablets or other mobile devices than with a laptop or PC. If you thought you had time to make the switch this year, you may want to reconsider in light of new research. A recent study revealed that around 40% of prospects move on to a competitor if they have a poor mobile experience. How prepared is your business for this change? Well, if you are just starting out, the following checklist will help…
     

    1. Make sure your mobile site is different from your regular website – While you must stick to your branding standards, your mobile website should be simpler than your web version. The reason being is that complicated designs that load well and look good on computers are often distorted when accessed through a mobile device. Plus, mobile surfers don’t really have the time to sift through a lot of content. Bottom line: your website’s mobile friendly version should be short, simple and sweet…offering your viewers the most important and basic sections of your website.

    2. Option to access the actual website – That said, do provide your viewers with the option to access your regular website through their mobile device, as some viewers will prefer to stick with what is familiar.

    3. Sitemap – Whether it’s your actual website or the mobile version, make sure you have a sitemap in place. A sitemap just makes it easier for your viewers to navigate through the site.

    4. Get rid of flash – Most mobile devices don’t support flash. Keep this in mind when optimizing your website for the mobile surfer. Simple images that load fast are your best bet.

    5. Testing – Make sure you test your mobile website thoroughly on different operating systems, browsers and devices. What looks good on one device might be totally distorted on another.

    You could also develop a mobile application instead of a website, but most SMBs find that option too expensive and complicated. So, for now, put the 5 tips mentioned above into use and get your mobile-friendly website into action…