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Category Archives: Managed Services

Relocating Your Business
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Managed Services, Tech – Business

The Biggest IT Concerns When Relocating Your Business

When you decide to get involved in the process of relocating your business, it’s vital to take the time to map everything out so that the relocation is as smooth as possible and that you stay within the budget.

Here are the top concerns that you should keep in mind when relocating your business.

Equipment and Internet Installation

Many things go into pre-planning. One of the key ones will be thinking about how your equipment and internet will settle into the new environment. That is why you should always include your IT department when making plans for a big move. They are the ones that will be able to tell you if the real estate properties you found are suitable for the scale of your current and future operations.

Not only should you think about the hardware, but you should also think about the internet connection and software. Keeping these things in mind will save you heaps of money – imagine picking out a place, signing a lease, and finding out it doesn’t suit your business!

Another player to factor into planning is your internet provider. Not only are they great for consulting on these issues, but they’re also essential for setting the moving date. Since they need to be part of the moving process and relocate your IT infrastructure, you should look in advance if their schedule has an opening that suits you both.

If the provider is unavailable for a longer bout of time, it may be time to look for another internet provider.

Potential Loss of Productivity and Downtime

There may be a period of lower productivity you should account for, as well as a time when your systems are down. Even the best companies need to deal with those things when packing up equipment, scheduling providers, and moving from one place to another. Try thinking of a plan B that will lower the blow of losing time due to relocating the business. That way, it’ll be easier and quicker to set everything back up.

An efficient way not to slump in productivity is to have cloud-based solutions that let you work from anywhere, anytime. That way, your employees will be able to work from home temporarily. 

Possible Impact on Employees and Stakeholders

People are drawn to companies that make it convenient for them to come and work there. No one wants to spend 30 minutes each day looking for a parking spot. Your company can deal with this by renting a lot or paying for parking. But once more, this will affect the price of your move and needs to be considered.

Next, from the perspective of commuting, the location should be in a convenient area. Take into account the fact that nobody wants to commute for more than 30 minutes to work.

Thinking About Future Growth

Relocating Your Business IT Growth

When relocating your business, it’s crucial to consider how the new location will affect you in the long run.

It is essential to check whether the labor pool at your new site can accommodate any potential employee increase. It might not be a major concern if the majority of your growth will come from business professionals like developers, accountants, lawyers, and marketers.

However, if you need to hire 50 more people with in-depth knowledge of agriculture, you might want to research to see if the local labor pool genuinely has the potential for that.

This is not limited to human capital. It also applies to the requirement to expand your facility’s space.

Renovations

A thing to factor into future growth before relocating the business is possible renovations. Whether you need a server room, meeting space, or restroom facility, you must consider these updates and check with the professional IT team if their needs are met. For instance, they can let you know the ideal spaces for outlets and other tools if you’re building a new conference room.

Final Word

Once you have decided where, when, what, and who you’ll move to, make someone the designated point of contact for the relocation. They will be pretty busy with tasks of all sorts – from soliciting bids from movers to keeping staff in the loop about the plans.

In business, not every move works out. But by making sure the chosen location meets your needs, you increase the odds that the grass really will be greener and that your staff and yourself will flourish at the new location.

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gain ROI
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Managed Services

How to Gain ROI from your Managed Service Provider?

Keeping your business up and running can be costly at times. Not to mention a gamble, particularly if you’re a startup.

A trustworthy IT service is not an expense – it’s an investment. Handing a portion of your responsibilities to a proven managed service provider adds value to your organization and helps you gain s return on investment (ROI).

Managed service providers function through economies of scale and shared resources. A proven provider helps you gain a measurable ROI. But some returns on your investment may be harder to quantify – that doesn’t mean you should overlook them.

The Benefits of Managed Service Providers

The demand for managed service providers rose in recent years for a good reason. CEOs and managers clearly see the value MSPs bring. Reports show that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for a forecasted period of 2022-2027 is at 12.44%!

Here is a rundown of the most obvious ways MSPs benefit businesses:

  • They standardize processes – These are companies that are pros at what they do. They have a blueprint when approaching each new business and its challenges. They standardize processes, leading to better performance and lower costs.
  • They know everything about certain industries – Most great MSPs are experts in a few niches and industries. So when you pick them, you know you’re getting someone who is following the latest trends in your industry.

Top Ways You Gain ROI from MSPs

You’re not just choosing an MSP for a piece of mind – you’re choosing them to scale your business and gain ROI. So you need to choose wisely, otherwise, you risk not getting the neat perks we will be listing below.

Savings with Scalability

Let’s start with a short one, and with a benefit people tend to overlook – it’s much easier to scale up or down when using MSP services.

That way you can make sure you’re balanced in your spending, which can lead you to gain ROI. Saving through scalability means that you pay just for what you need. MSPs provide tailored packages. That is because even in one industry alone, not all businesses have the same needs. So MSPs offer custom-made packages, and it’s up to the user of the services to choose which one they need the most.

gain return on investment

Lower Downtime

Downtime is rarely cheap. In some companies, lost minutes amount to thousands of lost dollars.

When looking to gain ROI, pay attention to the downtime you experience before and after using MSPs. You will probably see that you were saving money when using MSP services, although the exact number varies from one situation to another. But overall, MSPs will provide support, strategic guidance, and an experienced team that knows the ins and outs of the industry and the potential crisis situations.

Pro tip: When trying to calculate your ROI and separate it from reduced downtime, it’s vital you find out exactly how much downtime you had before and after hiring your managed service provider. Furthermore, you should figure out how many of your employees were affected and how long each issue lasted.

Using the Latest Tech

You snooze, you lose. Or translated for this article – if you don’t keep up and innovate, you’ll bleed money eventually. MSPs help you keep up with the competition, as well as stand out – the perfect combo to gain ROI.

Some of the tech perks you get when working with MSPs:

  • AI technology that streamlines processes
  • Optimization for B2B customer profiles
  • CRM platforms and project manager platforms
  • State-of-the-art reports and data analysis 

By partnering with proven professionals, you’re taking the future-driven and proactive approach that leads you to gain ROI.

Project Delivery

You’d be unpleasantly surprised to find out how many businesses miss their project delivery deadline. Why does this happen?

Well, the reasons are many, but often we see businesses and organizations that fail to engage end-users, which leads to drop off and a needlessly missed chance of ROI. Other businesses overestimate themselves and realize in the middle of the project that they won’t be able to deliver everything required. Add inadequate project managers to the mix and you have the recipe for the perfect disaster. MSPs built the foundation of their whole industry based on efficient delivery management. An MSP with strategic expertise has little problem with meeting a deadline and executing projects.

Final Word

The ways MSPs help your business are many. In this blog post, we listed the most obvious ways you can gain ROI when partnering with a managed service provider.

If you’re smart with using your future MSP, you’ll be able to focus on other important business goals you have set.

If you want to be that smart, contact us at Demakis Technologies and begin your increased ROI journey by outsourcing your IT needs to a proven provider.

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Incident Reporting Process
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Cyber Security, Managed Services

How to Create a Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Process?

In this day and age, it’s a given that any organization serious about growth will have a robust cybersecurity strategy in place. That includes having a well-rounded incident reporting process drafted, tested, and approved.

Any incident, both big and small, should be reported for analytics and pulling lessons from it. After all, chances of at least a small breach happening are high these days, since no strategy is 100% full-proof. Data dumps, ransomware attacks, and cloud breaches could happen to you today. Cloud-based workloads are especially vulnerable due to the interconnected nature of IT environments.

Start creating your detailed incident reporting process today. We’ve listed tips that can help you both put together an incident reporting template and the steps coming before and after its fulfilling.

Importance of Incident Reporting Processes

As much as it is practicable or functional, the response to cybersecurity incidents should be based on well-documented incident response plans that are periodically reviewed, tested, and put into practice by the people who will be required to use them in the event of an actual incident.

When an emergency does take place, that is most definitely not the time to use outdated documentation and rely on incident reporting processes that have changed a lot or are simply outdated.

At its core, the incident response process entails:

  • Detailed Preparation
  • Detection
  • Analysis
  • Containment
  • Eradication
  • Recovery
  • Following-up actions

And as always, bear in mind that you should use professional vocabulary and write concisely.

Proper Preparation and Data Accumulation

The first step is to realize that an incident will probably occur at some point and that there is an inevitability to it.

There are four main steps at this initial stage of creating an incident reporting process:

  • Training: You need to have the right people for this job. And that means helping your staff get the education it needs. Ask if they’re willing to go through cybersecurity webinars and courses, and if they’re willing to read and stay informed on the newest developments in the cybersecurity world
  • Aggregation: In marketing, content is king. In cybersecurity, data is king. To properly assess what went down, you need to develop a way of aggregating data. That way, when even something minor goes down, you’ll have answers to the questions of “How?” and “When?”
  • Identification: You can’t report on an incident before you know it’s happening. Recognizing abnormal behavior is the most common way your staff will know something is afoot. This step is usually a combo of manual data processing and powerful AI systems that should be in place. Consider implementing automated tools that can spot strange patterns in IT environments.
  • Cross-validating: Many organizations are rightly moving a part of their IT needs to verified outsourced teams. These managed IT service providers can notify you of incidents and cross-validate information with your inhouse IT team. Such a team often plays a crucial role in stopping minor incidents from growing into full-blown problems.
Incident Reporting Process Cybersecurity

Familiarize Yourself With Industry Regulation

All organizations should follow the incident response process accustomed for their niche. Different industries have somewhat different incident reporting processes. For instance, you might need to adhere to the HIPAA incident reporting requirements if you work in the healthcare industry.

These business regulations cover who they apply to and have very strict legislation regarding incident reporting:

  • You must comply with HIPPA if you create, obtain, keep, or transmit protected health information digitally.
  • If you work for a federal agency or a contractor for the government, you must comply with FISMA and NIST.
  • If you receive, store, or transfer credit card data, you must adhere to PCI DSS.
  • If you work for an energy or utilities provider, join NERC/CIP.
  • If your organization is a public company, you must comply with SOX.

Put Together an Incident Report Template

The following are some essential details to include in your incident report:

  • Incident reported:  The person’s name who submitted the incident ticket
  • Acknowledgement date: It is crucial to record the correct date and time of the incident.
  • Services affected: It will be possible for the adequate team to take part in the troubleshooting process if it is known which services are affected.
  • Detailed account of the incident: Instead of writing too much detail, the description should be brief, pertinent, and include information about the actual event.
  • Impact on business: A serious incident may result in major breakdowns or outages that have an effect on companies.
  • Action taken: Following the resolution of the issue and the restoration of regular services, all phases and troubleshooting tools are recorded for future reference.

Final Word

We have learned how crucial it is to establish an incident response team with expertise in cybersecurity analysis and a well-documented cybersecurity incident report process.

A company also has to have solid rules to support these essential elements. The goal of incident response is not just to stop the occurrence; it’s also to learn from it and strengthen the flaws that were revealed. Since it is more a matter of when than if an incident may occur, it is important to constantly be prepared.

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Customer Support
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Managed Services

The Best Ways to Improve Customer Support and Delight Customers

No matter how great of a product you have, its attractiveness can quickly become secondary if your customer and leads are faced with your unreliable, unpleasant, or hard-to-reach customer support.

So don’t be one of the many organizations that underestimate the importance of investing in customer service. It’s one of the many often overlooked factors for long-term business success.

That is why we prepared this neat guide to get you started with reliable support. And not only will we give tips for helping customers – we’ll give tips for delighting them, as well! That’s right, there is a slight difference, and we’ll cover that, as well.

Difference Between Regular Customer Support and Providing Customer Delight

Offering customers basic help and information just doesn’t cut it these days. Regular support means customer expectations by providing support and answering inquiries via phone, email, chat bots, live chats, etc.

Providing customer delight means going a step further. It means exceeding customer expectations and building authentic bonds that last. To do this, you need to get the customer to feel like they just had a positive experience with your brand, product, or service. Virtual and in-person events, online fairs and other happenings should use certain tools and processes to provide such a delightful customer service experience. 

Do this right, and you’ll incite an emotion. And positive emotions in business lead to loyalty.

Your business strategy, brand, and understanding of your target market all contribute to the unique experiences you provide. Customers are willing to pay more for a better product or service.

Unquestionably, having a “wow” moment can influence customers’ attitudes and improve their level of customer satisfaction. That can contribute greatly to fostering long-term brand trust and loyalty.

And the numbers support this sentiment, too. Over 65% of people have higher expectations for today than they did three to five years ago.

Improve Customer Support

10 Tips for Delivering Great Customer Service and Customer Delight

Now, here are great ways for leveling up customer support.

Get the Right People for the Job and then Provide Them Job Security

In today’s world of remote work, outsourcing, and other ways of tapping into the global pool of talent, it’s easy to slip into behavior that leads workers feeling uninspired.

Don’t treat customer support as an afterthought. Your customer service representatives shouldn’t be people just willing to sit around, and answer calls. Rather, hire those who fit the required attitude, and are willing to hone their skills. You need passionate people with empathy and patience, willing to grow and adopt new trends in customer support.

And once you have them, do try and keep them. That means not treating them as overworked call center operators, but as employees whose ideas are needed to be heard and seen.

Unify Your Communication Tone, Business Mission, and Vision Statements

Having a unified brand identity isn’t just a thing the marketing department follows. It trickles down to other departments, as well. The Support team must have a mission and vision statements they follow.

If you’re unclear about these terms, think of the mission as your team’s present primary objective. The vision statement is more of a future goal. You should keep both in mind when dealing with customers and communicating with them in a manner akin to your brand’s identity.

These things are helpful for newcomers to your team that need a sense of direction. As they grow and gather experience, they can pepper their approach with the best their own personality has to offer.

Automate Your Processes With a Help Desk Software

Surely you didn’t think we’d finish off without the perks of technology?

Enticing customer delight means using the best humans and machines have to offer. Cloud-based help desk tools can assist in taking off some work load from your team, so you can get more done in less time. That not only automates internal processes, but it also boosts employee productivity.

And automated processes also means a more refined chatbot, so that simpler inquiries can be dealt by an AI. Moreover, customer’s get more effective support 24/7, year-round! In the meantime, your employee can focus on more complicated issues.

Analyze Customer Feedback

If you’re not looking into customer feedback analytics, you’re losing valuable insight. There is lot to be learned about your product from those who have experienced it or at least looked at it with fresh eyes.

To acquire actionable feedback, you should ask for it at the end of a live chat conversation, a checkout, or the resolution of a support ticket. Some tips for analzying customer feedbacks can be found below:

  • Group feedbacks into categories
  • Sort feedback into negative, positive, and neutral ones.
  • Consolidate results to make an action plan.

Final Word

You’ve taken the right step if you’re here and taking in all the information that can help you provide better customer support.

If you’re aiming for that customer delight, doing the following won’t hurt, as well:

  • Keep Website Updated With Fresh Info and FAQ
  • Have Each Customer Support Representative Learn Thoroughly About Your Product
  • Maximize Chat and Email Templates
  • Respond Quickly
  • Utilize Creative Problem-Solving

Remember, customers want to be treated like people, not a number. For customer service-driven growth, combine your best soft skills with the wonders of technology.

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Remote Workers’ Data Secure
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Cyber Security, Managed Services

How to Keep Your Remote Workers’ Data Secure

The worst of the pandemic may be behind us, but the tremendous changes it made to the workplace seem here to stay. Most of the changes, at least. Many businesses were forced to (finally) allow their workers to work from home.

Now, companies are staying by this model since it means saving costs on office leasing, for instance. Not just that, but CEOs and our superiors couldn’t help but notice something a lot of us already knew or were guessing – lots of employees are more productive when working remotely!

So, as many organizations are sticking to the remote way of work, or at least a hybrid and flexible way of work, we wanted to help you tackle some glaring issues. You may have noticed or heard that the topic of cybersecurity is not waning in popularity. And for good reason – cyber criminals are shamelessly stealing company data. In such an environment, how can you keep your worker’s data secure?

We got some advice below.

Make Sure Your Staff is Working on Company Computers

These days, most of us have personal laptops and desktop computers that are powerful and reliable enough to handle our work obligations. While it may be tempting to save some money and not invest in such devices for your staff, a smarter move is to think ahead and secure your business from damage.

working remotely Data Secure

Because when your staff works on their personal devices, there is a greater risk of data breaches and leaks. Why? Simply, you can’t control their device and how it’s kept safe. Even more alarming, you can’t control confidentiality, so your business and trade secrets are easily compromised.

Moreover, if you find yourself dealing with a disgruntled ex-worker, you don’t want to end up in a situation where you don’t have any rights or control when it comes to your business’s sensitive data.

Protect Your Internet Connections

Criminals often use unsecured WiFi as a gateway to your business operations. So while it’s a great idea that your remote workers get out and about, working from a cafe for a few days – criminals are waiting for a chance to breach your organization. So, your remote workers simply need to be instructed on how to keep the firm’s data secure.

The easiest method is to mandate that the staff uses a virtual private network (VPN). Using VPNs before connecting to public WiFi networks will encrypt the remote employer’s internet traffic and scan for breaches.

But to adequately protect yourself, bear in mind that not all VPNs are equal. To ensure that your firm is using the correct VPN, get one that covers all of the factors you require, not just last-mile encryption. Since this is a delicate operation, partner up with a reliable MSP (managed service provider) that can secure your operations fully.

Create a Safe Remote Access IT Infrastructure

You must pay special attention if you have digital assets both on-site and in the cloud. Cloud-based assets, for instance, sometimes have sufficient security procedures File servers, email servers, and corporation databases – are all examples of on-site assets. And they may have not been set up to support remote employees.

As a result, if you have both, you will require a security and access solution that covers several unconnected systems. It may be more cost-effective to move existing on-site systems to cloud services and cancel the existing arrangement. Another alternative is to centralize the software and data on a terminal server designed to support remote access. 

All in all, it is a good idea to use a single-sign-on (SSO) solution to connect all corporate IT systems. This allows the company to set access rights for numerous systems and monitor employee login activities from a single point of control.

Remote Workers’ Data Secure

Educate Your Staff on Cyber Dangers

A great way to think ahead is to give lectures and send staff on seminars concerning safe work behavior. Particularly if, among your staff, you have older generations more accustomed to working offline. 

Every day, phishing emails and spam land in your worker’s inbox. It seems easy enough not to fall for these emails, but sadly, some employees are more easily duped. If you take the effort to educate your staff on the hallmarks of phishing emails and spam, they will be less likely to fall for these scams. That is a basic way for ensuring the integrity of your company’s data security.

Final Word

It’s not easy to keep your business data secure in today’s world. But with the right combination of diligence, attention, IT infrastructure, good IT managed service providers, and staff education – your chance of growing a business is much, much better.

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