Flexnet Networks LLC Blog

No matter how you look at it, technology is expensive. You’ll rarely look at your IT invoices without cringing a little on the inside. However, it’s important that you take a glance at these every once in a while to understand just what you’re getting from your technology budget. Ultimately, you want to ensure that your IT purchases are yielding a positive return on investment, and therefore, providing value for your organization.

There are a few sounds that are familiar to any office: keys clacking away, coffee being sipped (or slurped), and the rattling, squawking hum of the printer. Yet this image presents a crucial question: do you know how much your printer is costing your business each time it is used? In today’s blog, we’ll review how you can calculate this investment.

How does your business leverage data backup? Depending on the way your business functions and your specific needs, your data backup solution will vary from other organizations in your industry. Yet, one thing is absolutely certain, and it’s that your organization can’t afford to not implement some type of data backup system. In the event of a data loss scenario, you won’t want to be left wondering if you could have prevented it with a little proactive action.

An IT project manager is an important part of any new technology initiative in your workplace. Therefore, you should be looking for specific requirements when finding a project manager for your latest project implementation. Here are some specific traits that your business should look for in an IT project manager.

One experience that almost everyone has been involved in is the clashing of personalities. This is only natural, as different people are born with different predispositions and are raised in differing environments. However, in the business world, one should do their best to keep personal differences from affecting the professional relationships they form.

Your business either has a sound plan to manage its IT maintenance, or it does not. There is no middle ground here. Either you have an internal team dedicated to maintaining your IT infrastructure, or it’s not being taken care of as well as it should be. Even if you do have an internal team, you might notice that they simply don’t have time on their hands to handle all of their responsibilities. We’re here to introduce you to one of the most notable ways of keeping your technology in proper working order: managed IT services.

How does your organization manage its mission-critical technology solutions? We know that most small businesses have some sort of trouble with this topic, either due to budget constraints or a lack of personnel. Either way, we know that there is a better way to manage your business’ technology, and it’s all thanks to managed IT services.

In order for small businesses to remain competitive in this economy, there has to be the opportunity for them to participate as a viable competitor. This is the goal of a United States bill that has passed through the House of Representatives and is moving forward to be voted on by the Senate.

Google is taking steps to protect the data of a small group of its users who run the highest risk of experiencing a data breach or hack. This new service, the Advance Protection Program, shows promise in protecting the information that these select few can access.

It should come as no surprise that the practice of business continuity planning is one that every business needs to undergo. This planning serves as essentially your only insurance against some form of data disaster or another. Consider your own business for a moment--could it survive a fire, a critical failure in part of your infrastructure, or theft? With a business continuity plan, there’s a chance it just might.

Let’s say that you have an employee who wants to do some good for your business and save your IT some cash on a piece of business software. They find a “free” version of it on the Internet, thinking they have found you a bargain deal. Little do you know that there is an agency out there that’s specifically looking for businesses like yours that don’t keep track of their software licensing, just to make a quick buck off of copyright infringement.

As a business owner, you expect to stay in control of what your business does. Unfortunately, there are certain variables in running a business that simply can’t be controlled, like the weather. Therefore, you need to take special care to ensure that these uncontrollable instances don’t become a threat to your business’ prolonged existence. To this end, we recommend a business continuity plan.

As one would expect, a business will run a lot more smoothly when its employees have the resources to work cohesively toward a common goal. This is why collaborative solutions are becoming a staple in many office environments. Today, we’ll examine how one of these solutions, Microsoft Office 365, can help a workforce to achieve its goals.

When your organization is implementing a new project, there are a lot of expectations and deadlines that are watched with a close eye. While it might be ideal to get the project finished as quickly as possible, doing so can put a lot of pressure and stress on it that can ultimately be its downfall. For example, if you don’t think out the planning phase carefully, the entire implementation process can suffer--particularly when working on new IT initiatives.

How much time does your staff spend actually doing work compared to simply communicating about work? There’s a big difference, primarily in terms of making you money versus costing you money. Truth be told, employees spend nearly 80 percent of their time either in meetings, on the phone, or responding to emails. By finding ways for your team to communicate more efficiently, they will effectively spend less time yapping and more time making you money.

Two major concerns of every business owner are the protection of their company and making sure their technology does what it’s supposed to do. It can be overwhelming to manage these two aspects on your own, which makes outsourcing the security and maintenance of your IT such an attractive option.

Entrepreneurs enjoy an almost mythical standing in the business world as visionary leaders risking everything on an idea that, if successful, pays off in a big way. Yet, few understand the role of the intrapreneur; those who have equally big ideas, but operate in the context of established companies. Your business likely has dynamic intrapreneurs in your midst, but how do you make sure their voices are heard?

We have been very fortunate to assist many organizations, and this experience has given us a certain perspective of how many businesses approach their technology maintenance. We often work with new businesses to audit the performance of their IT. We’ve found that small businesses tend to have more issues and are susceptible to bigger vulnerabilities. These aren’t networks that go ignored either--many of them currently pay for an “expert” to support them.

Unless you’re at the helm of a Fortune 500 company, it’s likely that you’re always on the lookout for new ways to save money by tweaking your company’s operations. When you’re in money-saving mode, you understand that even a small change can rack up a lot in savings. To help you in your quest to save money, consider implementing these four practices.

It turns out that the old adage “iron sharpens iron” is true and it applies to the modern workplace. This, according to a new study by Harvard Business Review, which found that the productivity of a worker can be enhanced by an average of ten percent simply by having them be in close proximity to someone who’s more productive than they are.