Revenue generation is the name of the game for businesses. That’s why the decisions they make with their available capital are really important. SMBs especially need to have a rapid and noticeable return on their investments if they want to keep pace. To that end, technology is one investment that can provide that kind of fast ROI. Here are three ways you can use technology to benefit your business.
Each business uses a certain amount of technology to get things done, but today, no technology is as important to businesses as the Internet. You’ve begun to see businesses of all sizes spending thousands of dollars a month on Software-as-a-Service platforms designed to get workers the tools they need without placing undue pressure on a company’s capital budget. Today, we will talk about another cloud-based platform that is growing rapidly: Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
The pandemic has been difficult for many business owners, but in this time of peril there has been a silver lining. Many business owners have taken some of the time away from business to sharpen their technical skills. Some of the skills these entrepreneurs are looking to improve include their understanding of the software, telecommunications, and marketing that they use in the course of doing business. To do this, they are using some of the same resources that you use when you want help sharpening your skills: YouTube
Cloud computing has seen momentous growth over the past decade, but despite this, many business decision makers have been resistant to the change. However, with stay-at-home orders now keeping employees at home for months at a time, the cloud is swiftly becoming the best option to fulfill many of their needs. Let’s review how businesses can use the cloud to present solutions to solve potential problems.
It isn’t exactly news that businesses of all sizes need to be concerned about cyberthreats - especially since, as time passes, these threats have become more serious and insidious. Up until this point, there have been tried-and-true methods that businesses could leverage to stop these threats, but hackers are very clever when it comes to their attacks. What can a business do?
March is Women’s History Month. Historically, there have been many industries where women haven’t traditionally played a role. Fortunately, roles are changing, and with the use of technology today’s workforce has become more inclusive and dynamic.
Today’s businesses are much more flexible in how they can hold meetings, thanks to the development of conferencing solutions. Using these solutions, many organizations have experienced operational benefits. Today, we’ll go over the considerations around selecting your business’ conferencing solution.
The Internet of Things is nothing to shake a stick at - with well over 15 billion devices connecting to the Internet, it has become a force that cannot be ignored. This applies not only to the consumer devices that many associate the IoT with, but also the many IoT applications in the business world as well. Here, we’ll go into the IoT’s significance to businesses of all types.
Business cards have long been part of business etiquette. In the late Renaissance period, visitors were announced with special cards that signified the arrival of the guest and reminding the recipient of their social obligations. The Industrial Revolution transformed these into trade cards, and the professional business card as we know it got its start. Today, the business card is a useful networking tool, even though transferring the information into a phone can be a hassle.
This has been observed by app developers, who have devised applications to simplify this process. For today’s tip, we’ll analyze a few and their features to give you an idea of what to look for.
Drop
Drop is a specialized app that serves a dual purpose. Not only does it act as a virtual business card itself, it also allows you to snap a picture of a new business acquaintance’s card and have it automatically be saved as a new contact based on the information on the card.
Touted as the “Ultimate Live Networking Tool,” it is easy to see the benefits of Drop. After all, rather than being stuck on a card that is easy to lose, your new contact’s information is right where you’ll use it: your phone. The application processes the information on the card and incorporates it into the contact record. However, the app isn’t perfect -- it can only recognize one physical address per card, and has been known to misread names.
Despite this, Drop seems to be a solid enough solution, working with both Android and iOS devices. It also features a nifty geolocation feature that groups together cards that were scanned at the same place, and can even extract details from pictures you may have taken of business cards before. Drop also allows you to create and share your own digital business cards, even with those who don’t have the app installed.
CamCard
CamCard offers users a means of managing the business cards they collect and scan using the mobile app and associated tablet and web apps. As a cloud-based service, scanned cards are automatically accessible from any device the user happens to be working from. Scanned cards can have notes added to them, reminders scheduled, and can be shared out at business networking events.
CamCard also has a business app that allows you to share business cards and their information with your internal sales team. CamCard Business enables your employees to share business cards within the entire organization or by department, while integrating with Google Contacts, Outlook Contacts, Microsoft Excel and other solutions. You can even set access control rules based on your users’ roles.
Of course, these are not the only two applications that allow you to manage business cards. Are there any others that you’ve tried? Share your experiences with us in the comments!
Surprisingly enough, there are a lot of benefits to letting your employees work remotely. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still benefit from it--you just need to put a little more care into planning for it. Your business’s infrastructure must be set up to allow for remote capabilities without being influenced by the potential risks.
The Ideal Solution
Allowing employees to work remotely is a fundamentally great strategy, as it circumvents a lot of issues that can crop up with a commute to the office. For example, you have an employee who is quite ill. While they might still be capable of working, the last thing you need is a sickness spreading around your office. With remote capabilities, the employee can stay home and work without putting your other employees at risk. In other words, productivity remains without compromising the future.
Furthermore, working remotely allows an employee to keep productivity levels high. Since they don’t need to be in the office to do their work, working remotely allows them to get more work done--particularly if the employee has a lot of responsibility and can’t get all of their work done in one sitting.
What’s the Issue Then?
One of the biggest problems with working remotely comes with the technology that your business has on-hand. Let’s say that there is a major presentation coming up that has a lot on the line for your company. If a remote worker has the presentation stored on their computer, what happens if that computer breaks down? What if the file was lost or stolen? The end result is a considerable loss for your company, and you need to ensure that you have your bases covered in the event of the worst.
Additionally, the added security risk that comes from working remotely is also a major issue. Your data is one of the most important assets that you control, and it’s vital that you don’t place it at risk in any way whatsoever. If information isn’t stored on your company’s network, and is instead found on your remote employees’ devices, how then can you protect it adequately?
These situations are only the tip of the iceberg. Whether it’s a lost thumb drive, an email that failed to find its recipient, or a computer being misplaced or stolen, there are situations where you will wish that you had more control over your remote workers’ technology.
Maximizing Your Business’ Control over Data
It’s your responsibility to make sure that your data isn’t being exposed to unnecessary threats, but you still need to ensure that your remote employees are able to do so in a productive and safe environment. With help from IT solutions, you can make this a possibility. There are some measures that you can take to make sure that your data is secure both in the home office and in transit to and from your network. Furthermore, there are solutions out there that can help you maintain the integrity of your business’s data without worrying about whether or not the data will be lost or stolen.
Through the use of cloud-based technology, your remote workers can access important business data through a connected device in a secure fashion. Plus, with a virtual private network, you can ensure that your data is protected while it’s traveling to and from your network. Basically, your data travels through an encrypted tunnel, keeping onlookers from looking too closely at your data.
BEI can help your business ensure that it’s as safe as possible without compromising productivity. To learn more, reach out to us at (844) BIZ-EDGE.