Remote Collaboration Depends on Good Conferencing Practices

 Like many other businesses, COVID-19 has foiled the big plans you had for 2020, but it has presented a different set of opportunities.

Many businesses had deliberately avoided providing remote work opportunities for their employees, mostly out of the fear that their teams would become inefficient, less productive, and present management and security challenges. Now, after a few months with little choice but to suddenly embrace it, the major challenges are actually delivering the resources your nelly remote workforce needs to produce results in line with expectations.

One important solution that has emerged during the duration of the pandemic was one that most businesses already had access to but didn’t have to use in the manner they do now is video conferencing. With health concerns surrounding a full-time return to the office, video conferencing gives your remote staff the opportunity to work directly with contemporaries and clients to drive business initiatives forward. In fact, in many cases major projects that couldn’t be delayed any further are now being administered over the Internet. Collaborators have discovered that many of these platforms have responded with feature-rich offerings that include integrations with operations and project management software. 

Project Coordination Without Leaving Your Home

For a while, most small business owner’s only goal was to get the capital they needed to keep business running. It was important that the core revenue streams were maintained, and with workers finding themselves working remotely for the first time, it was essential that they were able to stay involved in a manner that would allow them to produce. Much of the time, this means collaboration. Let’s look at some strategies businesses are using to maintain their collaboration using video conferencing. 

Collaboration Strategies

Most businesses rely on a coordinated effort. Some rely on side-by-side cooperation. This typically means meetings. Workers are now utilizing video conferencing to eliminate a lot of wasted times that in-person meetings create. This is all well and good as long as the video meetings are used productively. Here are three suggestions to make this a reality.

1. Don’t be brief just to save time - Video meetings, like meetings in a conference room, aren’t very interesting to people if they aren’t included. As a result, most people will try to duck out of meetings early. You’ll want to keep your meetings short, but don’t just fly through an agenda just to be brief. A big part of coordinating a team effort is making sure everyone knows their roles and how it fits into the whole. 
2. Don’t send too many messages - Remote workers--especially ones that work as a part of a team--get a lot of messages. Getting redundant messages on multiple different mediums can be downright frustrating. Try to keep your messages targeted and in one medium. 
3. Don’t just use the video conference for work - When people work side-by-side in an office and collaborate on projects, being in different places can alienate people. Have optional team-building exercises over video conferencing. It will also give them the idea that it’s a valuable tool, not just an interruption.

Keeping your business on solid footing is going to take both an acceptance that you will have to rely on new tools and strategies and having the right technology in place. Call Net It On today at (732) 360-2999 to talk to one of our expert consultants about getting the tools your remote team needs to stay productive and secure.

New batteries in the weather station sensor 9-27-20

 

Solid Inventory Management Starts for Under $100

 While stocking up ahead of time may be a sound strategy for things like breakfast cereal and toilet paper, the same cannot often be said in your business. In fact, excess inventory can sometimes cost your business a lot of money. That’s why we figured that we would discuss how an inventory strategy can help prevent redundant spending in your business.

Keeping Track of Your Hardware

To begin, let’s go over a surprisingly old-fashioned solution to this age-old problem: taking inventory.

You want to have a running tally of all of your hardware resources, from your servers and their components to the extra computer mouses (technically the plural for the component) you have saved in a box. The best way to do this? Invest in a label maker. Today, you can get label makers available for less than $100 that can print out barcodes or QR codes. Tagging all of your hardware with these labels makes it a lot easier to pull up the information on each piece when you need it.

Managing Your Inventory

Once you have a handle on what you have, you need a platform that will help you to manage it going forward. An inventory management system (or IMS) is a tool that allows you to track your items as they move about your business. This transparency can help eliminate some of the redundancy while making your overall management much easier.

This software can also allow you to embrace automation. Items can be reordered automatically when supplies are low, your team can be alerted when items need to be restocked, and other basic processes are made much easier. Try to find a platform that supports the following:

• Barcode scanner - An obvious addition that allows quick information on any tagged item. 
• Optimization - Make sure that you have the right amount of a product. Overstocking and under-stocking can be problematic for numerous reasons.
• Report generation - Being able to view sales history, manage current inventory, manage sales levels, and more. 
• POS integration - One beneficial strategy is to integrate your point-of-sale system and your IMS. 
• Purchase order management - Get an IMS that gives you a single view of purchasing records. 

Some of these solutions have even more features, intended to automate warehouse management, and give you product demand insights. Most businesses won’t need these features to simply manage their own operations, so keep this in mind as you review your options.

Point-Of-Sale Systems Do More Than You Think

 We’ve come a long way since 1879 and the invention of the cash register. Today, point-of-sale (POS) solutions offer massive benefits to businesses who take advantage of their capabilities. Let’s go over how these capabilities can help the modern business and its owner.

Defining the Point-of-Sale System

As the system that’s in place at the point where a sale takes place, a point-of-sale system has a pretty accurate name. The basic concept behind these devices is to minimize human error in as many ways possible, as productivity is simultaneously maximized at the final transaction.

This once meant that a POS system was effectively a cash drawer with a calculator tacked on, but today, there are many more features available to a business. For instance:

Big Data Metrics and Insights

“How many of this tchotchke have we sold this year? When did we sell most of them?” Modern POS systems can provide a business with precisely that kind of data, assisting them by delivering insights and simple reports for them. These reports can help business owners identify trends, which can help them boost sales and benefit their other metrics as well. The inclusion of customer relationship management into the modern point-of-sale system has given even more benefits to business owners.

Consolidation

With online retail came more business opportunities, but also more data to process. Unlike the POS systems that were around when online retail first became viable, modern systems can integrate the data sets produced by online and in-house transactions. This gives business owners a more streamlined means of properly managing their inventory.

Mobile Functionality

In no small part due to the health and hygiene benefits that come with them, cashless and contactless payment options have also seen an exponential growth in popularity. Recent predictions see a 2025 with 75 percent of all transactions as cashless, so it is important that these solutions are put in place sooner than later.

How We Streamline IT Support for You

 As people have increasingly shifted to working remotely, the importance of accessible support for their devices has risen substantially. This has led many businesses to use managed IT service providers, or MSPs, like us to provide this kind of support. To do so, we’ve invested in a series of tools collectively called remote monitoring and management software (RMM). Let’s share some of the reasons that you want an IT support provider that uses RMM to their advantage.

Let’s consider how your employees may experience an issue while working remotely.

They’re at home, trying to accomplish everything that they need to accomplish. Their schedules are full, and deadlines are looming. Obviously, it would not be good if your team’s technology encountered an issue, so it is naturally going to happen. Someone on your team is bound to have some problem with their tools, where nothing they try makes anything better.

Here’s the challenge: as your employees are floundering, they are also distanced away from whatever in-office support they would normally have.

Working with a managed service provider means that your provider has remote capabilities as well, and that they can use these capabilities to solve your team’s IT challenges. This is generally accomplished proactively with an MSP’s services, and as a result, you and your team will experience fewer interruptions overall and accomplish more as a result.

To achieve this, we use the RMM tool as we mentioned above. Using it, we’ll keep track of the solutions your workforce uses and ensure that your team is able to work.

Of course, this isn’t the only thing that an MSP can do for you. With their remote monitoring and management software, they can offer much more for your operations, including:

• If given the opportunity, RMM solutions are low-profile enough to be installed and configured in the background of a device ahead of time. In doing so, you guarantee that your employees and clients are protected, as you can remotely push critical patches and other updates and install them to their devices as well as provide support firsthand.
• On the topic, RMM software can also be used to help manage and support your clients and employees by providing them with the solutions that they will need. Whether it’s a VoIP application for your telephony needs, basic productivity solutions, or other essential business resources, you can ensure that your team is equipped with what they’ll need.

Here at Net It On, our team is ready and able to fulfill your needs. Regardless of where your employees are as they work, we can use our tools to help support them. To learn more about the various IT solutions we have to offer, give us a call at (732) 360-2999.

Dark Star Orchestra Drive-In concert. Philadelphia PA.

Watching my goal keeper son.

A fun day at LBI. September 2020

Tip of the Week: Advanced Google Searches

 Google—the name that has become synonymous with searching online, it is (if we’re being totally honest) the go-to means of seeking out the information we need. We’ve all used it, but did you know that there are tricks to make your searches more efficient? For this week’s tip, we’ll go over these tricks so that you can use Google Search that much better.

Exact Phrase Search

Let’s say that you were seeking out a resource that contained a very specific line of words. Google gives you the capability to search for that phrase directly. Simply type it into the search bar while enclosing it in quotation marks.

So, if you wanted results that expressly said managed services, you would type in “managed services”. Easy!

Synonym Search

This tool can help when you’re unsure of the exact term that would be best to search for, but you have a general idea. By incorporating a tilde (the little squiggly line) into your search, you instruct Google to also consider synonyms of the word that follows it.

Therefore, if you were to search for ~red paint, you would also get results that involved scarlet paint, vermillion paint, cherry paint, and so on.

Website Search

There may be the time that you know that you’re looking for something on a specific website, but you’re not sure where on the website to find it. Alternatively, you might be seeking out anything related to a certain term on that website. Google gives you the means to do so with Site Search. All you need to do is add the website’s name and a colon in front of your search term.

For instance, amazon.com:red paint will deliver a results page filled with links to Amazon pages selling red paint.

Exclusionary Search

However, what if you want to search for something, but knew that it would likely kick back a bunch of results that you had no interest in? This capability allows you to proactively take results related to specific keywords out of consideration. All you need to do is add a dash in front of the terms that were to be excluded.

For example, if you were looking for a recipe, but had a few people with a peanut allergy, you could find some options by searching for recipes -peanut, or whatever ingredient that needs omission.

Range Search

If what you’re searching for falls between two numbers on a scale, Google offers a simple means of eliminating the rest of the scale from your results. For instance, let’s say you were looking for a copy of the fictional newspaper, The Exemplar Chronicle, that you knew was published between 1943 and 1947. By searching for Exemplar Chronicle 1943.. 1947, you will be presented with any results that match those specific parameters.

Multiple Query Search

Finally, Google also can search for websites containing multiple keywords at once. To do so, all you need to do is separate each query with a vertical bar, and the search engine will look for each.

So, if you wanted to seek out an IT provider that could offer proactive services and other crucial solutions, you could type in managed services | backup | data recovery, and you’d be much more likely to find the local company to serve your needs.

Of course, if comprehensive managed services are your end goal, you’ve already found the best provider available. Net It On can serve every one of your business’ technology needs. Find out more about what we offer by calling us at (732) 360-2999.