The IT Experts

Let’s first take a look at where businesses typically use IT. The main goal of IT is to make things run smoother, help teams collaborate, automate tasks to save money, and protect the business from disasters. IT also plays a key role in how employees interact with their work, as many workers are already comfortable with digital tools, which makes it easier for them to be productive and collaborate.

This seems like an ideal scenario: more productive workers and streamlined processes. Many small business owners say that their tech investments don’t always meet their expectations, unfortunately. Some of the reasons they cite are:

• Ongoing maintenance costs
• Payroll impact
• Technology becoming outdated quickly
• High upfront costs making it hard to see fast returns
• Complex solutions
• Unreliable technology

With these issues in mind, how can businesses ensure they get a good return on their tech investments?

• Set realistic expectations - Every new piece of technology comes with a learning curve. It’s often marketed as a quick fix, but adjustments are needed before you see a strong return on investment (ROI).
• Evaluate your current operations - Are you looking at new technology because it will make you more profitable, or would updating your existing systems be a smarter move? Sometimes, businesses get caught up in shiny new tools and overlook practical upgrades that would offer a better ROI.
• Consider cost-effective options - These days, cloud-based services like Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and hosted communications can provide powerful solutions to your problems without high upfront costs. 

What’s the Goal?

Upgrading just for the sake of it is nice if you can afford it, but most businesses can’t. It’s important to make sure each new technology helps you meet your goals. For example, are you expanding your data analytics to get clearer insights? Will a new communications platform save money? Will end-to-end management software save enough time and money to improve customer service?

In the end, many technologies promise to make your business more efficient. The key question is: will this investment help solve a specific problem? If you choose technology that addresses an issue, it will likely be worth it.

There’s a lot of technology out there that could benefit your business. Our IT professionals at KB Technologies Managed IT can help you find and implement solutions to your most pressing operational challenges. Call us today at (954) 834-2800 to talk to one of our consultants.

Just Do One More (And One More, And One More, And…)

That’s it. Just do one more task or step, and keep doing just one more. Rinse and repeat.

This approach helps minimize the obstacle that the sheer size of an objective creates.

Let’s say you were tasked with stuffing envelopes for a business initiative, and there were a lot of envelopes to stuff, as in, a lot. The stack fills a table, piled high with enough correspondence to keep you busy for the foreseeable future.

This would be highly discouraging, right?

Probably! However, by repeatedly committing to “just one more,” you can more easily make progress without the task overwhelming you.

Which sounds easier, after all: a few hundred more or just one more?

This is the key to this strategy’s efficacy. A big task is a lot to tackle, but many smaller ones aren’t.

So, Doing Just One More Can Help You Get a Lot Done

Using this simple mind trick, you can make it far simpler to accomplish a large task! However, make sure you do take a break at some point (another key element of remaining productive).

How Does VoIP Work?

Really, it’s all in the name.

VoIP uses your Internet to make and receive phone calls and multimedia communications in the same way that your typical telephone solution would. The big difference is that there are a lot of good reasons to use VoIP when compared to its competition. You’ll find it goes above and beyond what you might expect from a telephone system.

Here are some of the features that you can expect from your typical VoIP platform.

Save Money

Since you’re already using the Internet anyway, you can save on your operational costs by ditching your telephone company and investing in VoIP as a replacement. You can also avoid long-distance calls and international fees, so it’s a great option for remote workers or those who have global clients.

Increase Scalability

It’s easy to scale VoIP solutions, as there are no hardware installations involved with the process. You can add or remove users as needed to accommodate growth or cuts.

Improve Mobility

Since your employees are using their own mobile devices or computers, teams can communicate without being tethered to their workstations. This ultimately allows you to build a more collaborative and mobile business.

Leverage Advanced Features

VoIP includes features like voicemail-to-email, video conferencing, call forwarding, and virtual phone numbers. With these features, teams can collaborate and coordinate with more efficiency.

Integrate with Your Other Solutions

VoIP has the capacity to integrate with all kinds of collaboration platforms, making it a seamless hub for productivity. Your employees can work together, track conversations, and stay ahead of their tasks—all in the same app.

Provide a Better Customer Experience

With VoIP, you have more advanced options to take care of customer queries, like auto-attendants, call routing, and customer interaction tracking. With these features, your team can offer a better experience to its customers.

Ensure Business Continuity

VoIP takes the guesswork out of business continuity for communications by rerouting calls to mobile devices if the need arises. With this reliability, you’ll never have to worry about what would happen if you lost access to your network.

To learn more about how you can save money and work better with VoIP, call us today at (954) 834-2800.