ATECH MSP Blog

Technology is important to most small businesses today, especially when looking to improve it affordably. That’s why when making technology decisions, you should consider the following solid practices.

Of all the technologies currently used by businesses, the Internet is a strong contender for the most important. Regardless of their size, many businesses invest thousands each month into online Software-as-a-Service solutions as a means of more affordably equipping their users. Let’s talk for a moment about another cloud platform that has seen some advancement: Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

There is no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some major operational shifts in how most businesses conduct themselves and their processes, with many of these shifts relying on technology solutions. While there’s still no telling for certain how much longer these conditions will persist, we predict that many businesses won’t abandon these solutions once the present danger has passed. Let’s discuss why we have this expectation.

Okay, time for some real talk: There is no denying that 2020 has held a few unique challenges for everyone who runs a business. Economic challenges, political tensions, and an honest-to-goodness pandemic have all thrown us all for a loop. As a result, it is important that businesses all adjust their technology priorities to survive. Let’s discuss these priorities, and how they will need to shift. 

If your procedures and policies aren’t currently documented, they need to be. A written policy and procedure guide can help keep your team up-to-speed on the expectations that you have of them. Consider it a quick and easy reference for your employees to use to answer their questions. In light of this, here’s some tips to keep in mind as you put together your business’ employee handbook.

In uncertain times, one of the most important things for any business to do is to stay the course—albeit in an adjusted fashion. To help, we’ve put together a few key practices to work positively to achieve this end.

Contracts are a huge part of doing business. The practice is as old as the legal profession. You’ll be hard pressed to complete a transaction where money changes hands where there isn’t a document outlining the specifics of the liability each party takes on by entering that financial agreement. We call them receipts, but in retail, they are a signed contract. 

When a budget comes into play, it is important to remember that there are a few ways that you can adjust it beyond eliminating line items. For instance, you can instead optimize some of the most egregious financial requirements your technology has--its support costs--by translating the unpredictably variable costs you likely deal with now for your support, to the much more sustainable agreement that a managed service provider will operate through.

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?

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.

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.

Every so often, we encounter an IT solution that could prove to be intensely beneficial to businesses when it can be fully adopted, but also has a few obstacles to its complete implementation. Here, we’ll review how augmented reality can be used practically in the future, and the challenges that will need to be overcome in order to do so.

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.

As a business owner, you’re constantly looking for new ways to improve customer interaction with your website, and your company in general. In the old days (the early-to-mid aughts), market research required a lot of phone calls and legwork. Today, thanks to the rapid growth of technology, numerous applications and software feature real-time analytics that can help you gather instant feedback and statistics on your clientele. Here are three technologies that can make market research a cinch.

As your business grows, understanding how it runs may not be as simple it once was. There was a point where you may have known everything there was to know about it. You knew the vendors and the first name of every sales rep. You knew who were buying your goods from, you knew who made them, and how much they cost to make, package, and distribute. This is the story of business in the 21st century; and the shift that is making businesses run better: business intelligence.

Of any solution that might help your business out of a jam, a data backup is possibly the most important. However, a backup is only as reliable as it is configured to be. To ensure your backup is optimized to your business’ needs, we’ve compiled a few questions to ask as you examine your backup solution.

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.

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.