Significant IT Challenges for 2021

2020 was… well, 2020… so it really isn’t any surprise that those businesses that made it to 2021 aren’t quite out of the woods yet. The many difficulties and challenges that 2020 brought will carry over into this year, many of them pertaining to information technology and how businesses utilize it. Let’s take a few moments to anticipate how these IT challenges will manifest this year.

Where Work Can Be Done

In the recent past, remote work was almost seen as a taboo subject—many businesses either discouraged it or neglected to implement any organized policies in the first place. Even amongst those businesses that did adopt some form of remote work, only 20 percent or so of their employees were able to work remotely.

2020 changed this considerably, as many businesses hastily adopted remote work as a means of remaining operational. Some businesses—if they were able to do so—completely transitioned to remote work.

These shifts have necessitated numerous changes to be made so that businesses can ensure their workforce’s productivity and safety simultaneously. These changes won’t go away anytime soon if projections are to be believed.

Moving forward, companies will need to ensure that the correct security protocols are implemented, and processes carried out, particularly because many users will likely be working on their personal devices. This means that implementing remote monitoring and management solutions will be an important step for businesses to take from here on out.

Fighting Burnout and Downtime

With the prospect of remote work preserving productivity, it becomes important to protect it from other negative influences. The fight against downtime should be a matter any business takes very seriously… after all, its clients will expect 100 percent uptime, and anything less than that will quickly erode the trust they have.

After the year we’ve all just experienced, that trust is something no business can squander.

In addition to having trustworthy technology, businesses must also make sure that their team members are receiving the requisite TLC. Technology solutions aren’t the only component of your business subject to downtime: fatigue and burnout can each have a considerable impact on morale and output. Considering this, these factors also need to be addressed.

Budgeting

The past year flushed many business’ budgets down the proverbial toilet, which will carry over into this year by some measure. Money is bound to be tight. As a result, any proposed investments need to be scrutinized for the return they provide to the business.

We predict that this will lead many more businesses to the cloud as a means of acquiring the services and solutions they need. In addition to this, we expect automation and tools like it to be given much more consideration.

One way or another, 2021 will see some considerable changes to how businesses do their business. Net Activity can be here to help you see them through, and beyond. Learn more about our solutions and how they can benefit you by calling 216-503-5150 today.

Increasing Remote Workforce Creating Rise In PC Hardware Sales

In December 2019, the covid-19 pandemic began, and it spread across the globe in early 2020. To curb the spread of this deadly virus, lockdown tactics were employed. Companies all over the world responded to this situation by having their employees work from home. This led to a great increase in the remote workforce and consequently the rise in PC sales. This kind of rise was last noticed in 2010.

PC hardware producers such as Acer, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, and so on have noticed an increase in demand for their products. Lenovo got back the top position in the hardware PC market during the third quarter of the year 2020. They had an 11.4 percent percent increase in sales and shipments attaining more than 19 million units.

HP rated next, with a growth of around 23.6 percent and shipments summing up to 18.7 million. Dell attained the third position despite a 0.5 percent decline in shipments compared to 2019. Apple had a growth of 13.2 percent and ranked fourth, while Acer claimed the fifth position with an increase in sales of 15 percent. Ryan Reith, the program vice president, worldwide mobile device trackers said the rise in demand in the PC market would last.

According to the NPD, notebook and laptop sales increased by 10 percent in the first week of March 2020. They claimed that this significant rise in sales was due to the shift to working from home. A 14 percent decrease in the sales of mobile devices was also noticed due to the quarantines that made people consider larger screens. International Data Corporation (IDC) also documents that the fourth quarter of 2020 saw international shipments boost for the sales of 91.6 million units of PC which is equivalent to a 26.1 percent difference when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.

Information from Gartner also shows that laptops and notebooks global shipments summed up to 79.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2020, which is equal to a 10.7 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2019. The initial results by Gartner, Inc. for the year also shows that PC shipments attained 275 million units in 2020, which is a 4.8 percent increase from 2019 and the highest growth in a decade.

The increase in the remote workforce has been an advantage to a lot of PC hardware producers. The necessity to have a functional and efficient working area influenced the decision to set up high-quality workspaces at home. This necessity subsequently led to the surge in acquiring PCs, monitors, and other required gadgets.

How Office Delve affects Microsoft 365 users

Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite widely used by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It comes in a wide variety of subscription plans, making it a popular choice for businesses. However, users have expressed some security concerns about storing and accessing data on this platform. Microsoft addresses this problem with Office Delve.

What is Office Delve?

Office Delve is a cloud-based data solution, file hub, enterprise social network, and collaborative tool developed using Microsoft Graph. It is currently available for Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Standard, Office 365 Government, Office 365 Education, and Office 365 Enterprise. This nifty tool allows you to:

• Discover new information – Delve displays information from different sources in Microsoft 365 that you may find useful for what you’re currently working on.
• Discover what you need – Documents you have seen before, or have recently worked on, are highlighted and made easier for you to find, regardless of where they are stored. This makes it less taxing to find work you have done/started in the past, and continue from where you left off.
• Discover new connections – Typing a name in Microsoft 365 will allow you to see what a user is working on, their connections, and even connect with them to build relationships and share information.

How does it work?

Microsoft created Delve with a tool called Graph to provide users with information they’ll find useful. Graph maps the relationships among the various Microsoft 365 users in your company and the content/information related to them.

This “map” is then used by Delve to provide users with the information they need, when they need it. Content and information are displayed on a card-based screen, which is found under the Delve tab in the main Microsoft 365 launch screen.

Aside from content such as profile information and document links, users can also see likes, views, comments, and tags, bringing a deeper social integration into Microsoft 365.

Delve also orders content in different ways, including:

• What you’ve recently worked on – shows you content in card-form that you recently opened or worked on
• Content that has been shared with you – shows the content your colleagues have shared with you
• Content that has been presented to you – shows content that colleagues have presented recently, or content that has been sent to you

If you don’t have access to your desktop or if you’re working outside the office,you’ll be glad to know that Delve is also available for iOS and Android. The mobile app version of Delve lets you browse cards with files, search for colleagues, view documents they have shared with you, and view their recent activity.

Is my data safe with Office Delve?

Delve keeps all your documents private by default unless you want to share them with other users. For example, if you have a document stored in a private folder, you’ll be the only one who can access and modify it through Delve. If that document is in a shared folder, it’s accessible to you and the people you shared it with.

If you are looking to learn more about Delve, contact Net Activity today.

Does Your Business Have Too Much Technology?

Starting a business is certainly no easy feat. It was likely a hassle just to get things up and running at a basic level. While most organizations that provide a product likely had to focus on getting that product to market, technology has begun to help aid this endeavor considerably. Unfortunately, it’s easy to fall into the trap that your organization uses too much technology–so much that it negatively affects your bottom line.

It’s understandable that some technology is absolutely required for organizations to function, but there are always those who look to technology to solve every single issue facing them. This is a dangerous practice. Technology might be great for sharing data, increasing collaboration, and ensuring that your business can meet its designated requirements, but too much technology can make it more difficult for organizations to get their jobs done. Let’s take a look at some situations when technology doesn’t help a business, but hinders it.

Unnecessary Technology
It’s not necessary for your organization to implement every single new solution that is released. It’s often the case that more technology creates more stress for the average worker–particularly if that employee doesn’t need to use the technology in order to go about their day-to-day responsibilities. For example, a CRM solution might be able to help your organization manage customer and interdepartmental communications, but if you only have a small number of employees as is, is it really worth it? There isn’t as big of a need to track how long everything takes, or how your few customers connect with your company, simply because you only have a small number of employees or clients in the first place. It will become apparent if somebody isn’t doing an adequate job, or if one of your clients isn’t happy with how they are being treated. This isn’t to say that your organization can’t benefit from a CRM solution–rather, it’s about weighing the costs versus the benefits that your organization receives from a CRM solution. Basically, if a centralized software solution is what you need to keep your employees busy, it’s probably more than just a technology issue that needs to be addressed.

Of course, this is only one example. Technology that’s not needed ultimately wastes both time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Therefore, you need to be careful about how your organization implements new solutions, as well as how you determine whether or not a solution is worth investing in. To do this, start by analyzing how much value your business gets from implementing it. To use the CRM as an example, consider how much time is actually spent using a CRM when you have only five employees. Now compare this to the time spent using a CRM when you have 40 employees. Compared to the smaller workforce, you’ll practically have to use a CRM in order to ensure that you can properly manage all of the relationships and communication within your organization.

Old Technology
In contrast, you might consider implementing new technology if your business has been around the block a time or two. If your business has existed for several years, has a dedicated consumer base, and is still growing despite the fact that it’s using outdated technology, it can be a detriment to your organization to resist implementing new technology. Simply put, old technology is more prone to failure, leading to more revenue spent on maintenance and management, as well as opening up the door for security threats.

Some businesses wait so long to replace or upgrade their technology that they face major legacy technology issues down the line. Others simply don’t have the resources available to upgrade as every new version is released, compounding the problem and making it even larger the more time passes. Either way, failure to upgrade your technology when it’s needed can lead to considerable detriment:

• Loss of productivity: Old technology can lead to a decrease in operational performance. The latest and greatest solutions are much more efficient, leading to faster processing speeds and more productivity.
• Problems with security: More recent operating systems are more likely to have addressed security concerns found in older operating systems and software. This makes them much more secure overall. Plus, older technology is more likely to be fast approaching its end of life event, where it’s no longer updated or maintained by the developers.
• Redundancy: Technology is often the solution to the redundancy issue, but work needs to be invested so as to allow both new and old technology solutions to be compatible with it. This takes time and resources that not all organizations have access to.
• Loss of opportunity: Regarding your web presence, having an outdated website or page can negatively influence your potential interactions with clients. If they don’t like what they see, chances are that they will take their business elsewhere. On the other hand, if your website is streamlined and sleek, they will be more likely to invest in your organization.

Does your business want to take full advantage of business solutions so as to improve your organization’s functionality for the long haul? Net Activity can help. To learn more, reach out to us at 216-503-5150.

Fix these Business Security Risks Now

As businesses have become more reliant on technology, they’ve also become a prime target of cybercriminals. If you want to protect your organization from cyberattacks, make sure your cybersecurity system doesn’t have the following risk factors in place.

Open wireless networks

With just one main internet line and a couple of wireless routers, an entire office can get online. A wireless internet connection saves money, but there’s a risk that it might be insecure.

It’s not enough to plug in a wireless router and create a basic network to secure your wireless network. If you have an open network, anyone within range can connect. With simple tools and technical know-how, cybercriminals can capture incoming and outgoing data, and even attack the network and any device connected to it.

Ensure that all wireless networks in the office are secured with strong passwords. Many internet service providers that install hardware when setting up networks will often just use an easy-to-guess password for the router. Change this password immediately to minimize the risk of unauthorized users gaining access to your network.

Unsecure email

Most companies that have implemented a new email system in the past couple of years are most likely secure. This is especially true if they use cloud-based platforms or well-known email systems like Exchange, which offer enhanced security and scanning.

The businesses that are at risk are those using older systems like Post Office Protocol, or systems that don’t encrypt passwords (also known as “clear passwords”). If your system doesn’t support encryption, anyone with the right tools can compromise your systems and data.

Unsecure mobile devices

Mobile devices help you stay connected and productive while out of the office. However, if you use your tablet or smartphone to connect to office systems without proper security measures in place, you run the risk of compromising your networks.

Imagine you have linked your work email to your smartphone but don’t have a password enabled. If the device goes missing, anyone who picks it up can have access to your email and your sensitive information. The same applies if you install a malicious mobile app. If you use this same device to connect to your company’s network, the malware will spread across your systems and disrupt your business operations.

Ensure that employee devices have adequate security, such as passcodes, and your company has sufficient security policies in place to regulate their use. Lastly, implement mobile device management solutions to prevent employee devices from being a security risk to your network.

Anti-malware software that isn’t properly maintained

Anti-malware software needs to be properly installed and maintained if they are going to stand a chance of keeping your systems secure.

If your anti-malware scans are scheduled during business hours, some employees may just turn the scanner off because it slows down their computers. This makes your systems vulnerable to malware.

The same goes for not updating your anti-malware software regularly. Updates are important for anti-malware applications because they implement new databases that contain recently discovered threats and fixes.

Lack of firewalls

A firewall is a network security tool that filters incoming and outgoing network traffic and protects data from being accessed from outside the network. While many modems or routers include firewalls, they are often not powerful enough for business use.

Get a firewall that covers the whole network at the point where data enters and exits (usually before the routers). These are business-centric tools that should be installed by an IT partner like a managed IT services provider for them to be most effective.

How do I ensure proper business security?

The best way to secure business systems and networks is to work with an IT partner like us. Our managed services can help you set up cybersecurity measures and ensure that they are managed properly. Tech peace of mind means you can focus on growing your business. Contact Net Activity today to learn more.

VoIP Theft of Service: What You Need to Know

Theft of service is the most common type of fraud that impacts Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems. Let’s take a closer look at how it affects VoIP networks and how your organization can prevent or minimize the risk of this type of fraud.

What is theft of service?

VoIP theft of service is the most common type of VoIP fraud. At its most basic level, it involves the theft of your organization’s VoIP account credentials, including usernames and passwords, either by eavesdropping or by introducing malware into your system. Once cybercriminals gain access to your account, they can freely make phone calls or change your call plans, running up your VoIP bill.

In addition, cybercriminals may use the stolen data to carry out other fraudulent activities. They can also use theft of service to flood your VoIP network with promotional calls similar to junk email via an attack called spam over internet telephony, or SPIT. Once they infiltrate your communications network, they might broadcast unsolicited messages or advertisements over your VoIP system. This keeps users from making or receiving calls, which can have a significant impact on your business’s operations.

How can you avoid theft of service?

Preventing VoIP theft of service simply requires using a little common sense and implementing some technical preventive measures.

1. Make your passwords as secure as possible. Passwords must be 8–12 characters long, consisting of a combination of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. For added security, use passphrases, which are sentence-like strings of words. They’re usually longer than passwords, easier to remember, and more difficult to crack.
2. Install firmware patches for your VoIP phones and infrastructure regularly, and keep your antivirus software up to date.
3. Use fraudulent call routing detection and encryption software.
4. Set up an enterprise-grade virtual private network (VPN) for employees working from home. A VPN encrypts incoming and outgoing traffic without compromising call quality.
5. Review your organization’s call logs for any unusual trends or behavior, such as higher-than-usual call volumes or calls made during off-hours.

VoIP is an essential business communication tool, so it makes sense to understand what theft of service is to avoid its impacts on your company’s operations. For more information and useful tips on how to keep your VoIP system secure, reach out to Net Activity today.

Why Dashboards are Vital Tools for your Business

People are visual creatures, which means we interpret visual data better than written words. That’s why most businesses turn to dashboards as a business intelligence tool to present data in a way that’s easy to understand, making dashboards a critical part of the business analytics process. Here are some common uses of dashboards across various business functions.

Marketing insights

An organization’s marketing department analyzes a significant amount of data from various channels. Whether the purpose is to forecast monthly sales, predict trends, or build marketing strategies, marketing specialists use dashboards to compare, sort, and analyze raw data to churn out meaningful information presented in an easy-to-understand format. This helps key decision-makers in formulating better marketing campaigns.

Tracking sales opportunities

Sales dashboards are perfect for tracking your organization’s products and services. They help you identify sales opportunities by monitoring top-selling products and comparing the growth in revenue on a regular basis. Sales dashboards sync to your raw data, so your charts are always up to date, thus eliminating the need to spend hours manually entering and preparing sales reports and charts.

Social media management

Social media management is more than just posting statuses on your business’s social media accounts. And in most cases, your social media platform’s default dashboard doesn’t give you deep insight into your social media campaigns. What’s more, managing multiple social media accounts can quickly become a cumbersome process since you have to use several login credentials. Instead, you can manage your accounts all at once through a comprehensive social media dashboard, saving you valuable time and effort.

Financial reports

Presenting financial data is a complex process that it often leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of critical data. Dashboards make creating financial reports much easier, and financial analysts can take advantage of dashboards to display sensitive data in a comprehensible graphical format — be it customer invoices, progress toward revenue goals, or business expenses.

Project collaboration

Businesses of all sizes require their employees to collaborate on projects, whether on-site or online. Project supervisors need to get their teams together to give them projects’ requirements, deadlines, and responsibilities, and to get progress updates. With the help of project collaboration dashboards, members will see the complete workflow of the project, allowing for a more efficient and collaborative working environment.

Dashboards eliminate the complications of presenting complex business data and make your team more efficient. If you’re looking to implement dashboards and other cutting-edge tools to make your job easier, contact Net Activity today.

Start 2021 Off Right with These 5 Business Technology Resolutions

For many, the Holiday Season is a time to look back and reflect on the year gone by – and what a year it was! It is also a time to look forward, plan, and consider how we can do better in the coming year. Often, this results in making resolutions for the new year. In that spirit, let us consider five technology resolutions that you might consider adopting for 2021.

1. Use the Internet to its Full Extent

The Internet offers businesses of all sizes a huge number of benefits, of all different kinds. Not only can you use social media to interact directly with your customer base, but you can also attract their attention and pitch your business as an option to them by maintaining a website.

Operationally, the Internet can also support you by enabling you to access cloud-based services and data storage. The advantages to leveraging these services cannot be understated. With cloud-based software, you aren’t committing to repeated investments into your software solutions to make sure they are sufficiently updated and secure. Cloud storage allows you to mitigate the risk of data loss by keeping a copy offsite… a key component to our recommended business continuity planning.

As soon as possible in this coming year, figure out what is out there that would benefit your business the most, and take advantage of it.

2. Simplify Your Business Management

On the topic, there are many software solutions out there that can help simplify—if not outright automate—many of the processes and procedures that your business relies upon to function.

How well do you track your relationships with your individual clients and customers? How cohesive are the systems that allow you to manage the many facets of your business? Are your team members using the most efficient means to complete their workflows, whatever they may be?

From Customer Relationship Management to Enterprise Resource Planning, to various other productivity-focused software solutions, your business’ operations can be made easier and more productive by embracing the tools now accessible to you. Investigate your greatest needs and find the software that can help you fulfill them.

3. Equip Work-From-Home Team Members Appropriately

In the understatement of the century, 2020 was a year of unprecedented business change. At the outset of the pandemic, business leaders told millions of workers to “pack up your computer, take it home, and figure out how to work from there.” And these team members did an outstanding job of making the best of the situation. Along the way, many realized they prefer to work from home and will continue to do so in the future. Therefore, the third of our five technology resolutions center on remote team members. We must ensure that our remote workers have the equipment and tools necessary for the “new normal.” Stated differently, they need to be at least as productive at home as they were in the office.

In addition to addressing hardware issues and fast and secure internet connections, also carefully consider issues such as desks and chairs.  Remember, employers typically have a responsibility to ensure that team members have the equipment they need to get their jobs done efficiently and safely. In most cases, workers’ compensation laws still apply, even if a team member works from home. Hence, it remains necessary to address workstation setup and safety measures, including those related to ergonomics. Further, do not let relatively inexpensive technology expenditures hamper productivity. For example, purchasing an inexpensive scanner or other hardware devices may pay big dividends in increased productivity for team members working from home or other remote locations.

4. Be More Secure

Regardless of how much (or how little) your business relies on technology, cybersecurity needs to be one of your biggest areas of concern. Remember how we mentioned solutions that could automate your processes? Cybercriminals have those, too, making no business too small of a threat to pique their interest.

Due to this, you need to proactively establish and enforce security parameters to counter these activities… which will require you to invest in cybersecurity-focused solutions. In addition to this, you’ll also need to establish a security policy to match. Enforcing solid password practices, access limitations, and other rules for your team to abide by will result in a more secure business moving forward.

5. Keep Your Team “In the Know”

Finally, for any of these improvements to take, you need to keep your team updated and bought into these concepts. By focusing on the benefits that these improvements will offer to the business, and by extension their workplace experience, your team will be more likely to adopt them. Without this crucial step, your business’ capacity to improve will be limited.

Net Activity can directly assist you with many of these steps, in addition to providing our ongoing IT maintenance and management services. To learn more about what we could do for you, reach out to our team at 216-503-5150. Happy New Year!

Windows 10 features You Really Need to Know Now

Configure Windows 10 to suit your needs with the following tips. These will help raise productivity and improve your overall user experience.

Night light

This feature lets you reduce the amount of blue light emitted from your screen, which helps reduce eye strain and boost sleep efficiency. Night Light is disabled by default, so you need to enable it by following these steps:

1. Click the Start Menu.
2. Open the Settings app (or press the Windows key + I to quickly open Settings).
3. Select the System icon followed by the Display option in the left-hand pane.
4. Set Night light to “On” or “Off.”

Taskbar pin

Opening browsers and typing in web addresses are simple tasks as they were, but Windows 10’s taskbar pin feature makes it even easier than before. This is an essential shortcut for anyone who relies on specific web-based apps such as email or company intranets. Simply right click on the app or document you wish to gain easy access to and choose “Pin to Taskbar”.

Organize your open windows

Do you struggle to organize a screen cluttered with open windows? Holding the Windows key and pressing an arrow should solve most of your problems:

1. Windows key + Left – Resize the current window’s width to half the size of the screen and align it to the left
2. Windows key + Right – Resize the current window’s width to half the size of the screen and align it to the right
3. Windows key + Up – Maximize the current window to fit the entire screen
4. Windows key + Down – Downsize the current window

When none of those keys are enough to set you straight, holding the Windows key and pressing the Tab button will show you all the apps you currently have open.

Focus Assist

Notifications are frustratingly distracting. Windows 10’s Focus Assist feature helps you tackle this issue by customizing which contacts and applications can interrupt you during predetermined periods of time. Try it out by:

1. Opening the Settings window
2. Clicking the System icon
3. Selecting Focus Assist from the left-hand pane
4. Adjusting the notifications settings based on your preference

If you want to disable Focus Assist and receive all notifications, simply click Off.

These are just a few of our favorites. For more software and productivity recommendations, give our experts a call today.