Well, no matter what your budget is, we know that there is one solution for your business that is extremely valuable, that being remote monitoring and management. This solution manages to skirt the issues related to acquiring IT assistance by utilizing remote support. In general, managed IT can bypass the issues that most small businesses experience with budgeting for technology maintenance and support. If you move in the direction of a remote monitoring, maintenance, and management solution, you might find that your business can save money and make great strides toward increasing your bottom line.

Remote Monitoring

Businesses need someone to monitor their networks for signs of problems associated with bottlenecking and other inefficiencies, as well as security threats that need to be addressed. Remote monitoring gives your service provider the ability to do this without an on-site visit, meaning that they aren’t in your office to distract your workers or pull them away from work. They can simply perform their tasks quietly and behind the scenes. Proper use of remote monitoring can give your employees the ability to address issues before they become major problems.

Remote Maintenance

Waiting for technicians to arrive and resolve issues is a waste of time and resources, as, while you’re waiting for them to make their way to your office, you’re experiencing wasteful and expensive downtime that could be prevented with remote assistance. Remote maintenance provides a more dynamic, responsive, and cost-effective way to get the help you need, as needed.

Remote Management

Configuring systems can be challenging, and while certain aspects of it might require the occasional on-site visit, many solutions these days can be configured remotely. With the right settings and technology solutions in your office, our technicians can remote into your infrastructure and make adjustments as needed, all without waiting for someone to arrive at your doorstep (and paying them for the travel costs).

Coleman Technologies can be your go-to provider for remote assistance, support, management, maintenance, you name it. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Businesses usually have either an in-house IT department that can handle everyday maintenance and support, or they forego updates and support for only when operations cannot continue as they had previously been. While it might seem like a solid strategy, not paying for something that’s not needed until it is needed, the fact of the matter is that reaction-based IT maintenance and management is both risky and expensive. Furthermore, some companies rely on untrained employees to make sure maintenance and management occur as needed, but this is also a dangerous practice, as there is too much potential to botch necessary maintenance and ruin more than a little bit of infrastructure.

Events like hardware failures, hacking attacks, and software crashes are infinitely more common with organizations that take advantage of break-fix IT management. Furthermore, the facade of saving money is overshadowed by the crippling budgetary concerns that stem from downtime.

Even businesses that have an in-house IT department don’t have the luxury of providing organizations with IT support. They might be too busy implementing new solutions to bother answering questions. On the other hand, perhaps they are too weighed down by answering daily queries to worry about innovating and implementing new solutions at all.

Long story short, a help desk solution is designed to help your organization fill in the gaps that are left in the absence of a qualified IT technician. It can be used to supplement your current IT resources or act as a fully outsourced IT department that can perform all the roles traditionally allocated to this position. To learn more about how you can take advantage of a help desk solution, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

The Pros
There is more than one application and way to use automation. While the uses are more general than specific, they can be applied to several different kinds of goals or processes, whether it’s customer service or data processing. In this sense, automation can be used in a pretty universal way.

Efficiency
It’s obvious that certain processes take a considerable amount of time to complete, but if they are handled by automated systems, they can be completed much more efficiently than before. In other words, since you don’t have to focus on these tasks, you can instead devote the time to something else entirely. This effectively adds more time to the workday by removing routine tasks that can be handled by an automatic process.

Minimizing Repetition
If someone has to do the same task over and over again, they are doomed to lose interest and make mistakes. If these tasks don’t require focus, then the employees will likely let their mind wander, and productivity can suffer. This makes even a quick task more likely to be repeated multiple times, making it less likely to yield a return on the investment. Automation makes it more convenient and less risky to leave monotonous tasks to employees. Trust us when we say employees will thank you for taking these tasks off their plate and freeing up their schedule for others.

Convenience
When someone reaches out to your business, it’s likely they need your help with something, and they need it fast. If you can’t provide it on a convenient time frame, chances are they will take their needs elsewhere. Automation gives them the ability to get help from a chatbot or other similar automated system without the need to staff someone at all times to address immediate needs. This gives you a better chance at being able to respond to their needs when they reach out to your organization.

Potential Cons
Automation might be quite helpful for businesses, but there are some issues that should be addressed in order to ensure it doesn’t become a liability for your business. For example, some processes are simply too complex for a machine to handle in the same way a human brain can. Most automated systems are limited by design, thus ensuring that they will be limited to the task assigned to them. After all, an automated system’s purpose isn’t being fulfilled if you have to provide constant feedback to it. Here are some ways you can make sure the faults of automation sting less:

• Use automation sparingly: Some of the services that could be automated likely don’t need to be. This is particularly true for more complex issues. Consider that many of the people who contact your business have a point of contact within your organization and regular requests, meaning that working with a human might not be such a bad thing if they are available at that time. In this way, automation supplements human contact rather than replaces it.
• Have employees direct the automation: If an automation system can’t perform a task on its own, having employees direct it during more complex tasks can work to mitigate the issue. A complicated request can be made, but still processed and understood with the right direction.
• Ingrate your automation: You don’t want to stop processes midway. As long as your automation is well-designed and thought-out, tasks can be integrated with automation to ensure they are handled in the most complete way possible.

What are some ways your organization can benefit from automation? Let us know in the comments.

The Cloud
The cloud has risen in popularity over the years, and it’s because the benefits are simply too incredible for businesses not to adopt the cloud. Many of these benefits are a result of the cloud improving productivity. For example, cloud computing’s flexibility makes it great for use on mobile devices. Users are no longer limited to being in the office, and as long as they can access resources in a secure way, they can get just as much work done while out of the office over the Internet as they could if they were in-house.

Outsourced IT Management
Technology is only worth the investment if you have the time and resources available to properly manage it, as if you fail to take proper care of your technology, it could fail much sooner than you expect it to. The problem is that not all businesses can afford to hire a full-fledged in-house IT department to properly maintain their IT infrastructures. Thankfully, businesses like Coleman Technologies provide outsourced IT management to businesses with limited budgets who want to turn IT from a capital expense to an operational expense. Even if you have in-house IT resources, you can supplement them with outsourced IT to save time and make opportunities for other employees to get more value out of their employment with your organization.

Collaboration Solutions
There are many solutions out there that are designed to help your organization be more effective at collaboration. Whether it’s Voice over IP, hosted email, or instant messaging applications, your organization can use them to collaborate and share experiences in a way that facilitates cooperation and productivity.

Does your business want to implement technology to focus on improving productivity? Coleman Technologies can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.